For the curious reader of science fiction (scifi) and fantasy
I love the smell of burning mosquitos in the morning. The zap racket is the greatest invention since the wheel! The snap of a mosquito being electrocuted is the best.
Yeah, we have a lot of mosquitos here on the hill, but we’re doing our best to reduce their numbers.
Oddities are always fun, and we found a few in Rincón. On the way into town, we passed these humongous gears in a field by the side of the road. We don’t know what they are, or what they’re from. They seem to have been placed there as a sculpture. A truck parked nearby had the word “crane” on it, and that got us wondering if these were taken from some old, enormous crane. The big one was probably 15-20 feet high. Edit: I later learned that these were left over from now-defunct sugar cane operations.
The second was botanical. It was a tree right next to our hotel balcony. It had a very odd trunk, splitting into multiple, curving sections just above the ground. Rather alien-plantish, actually. The thick, smooth branches appeared to be bare when we arrived, and also when we headed out for dinner. When we got back, it was stunningly transformed—filled with beautiful magenta-pink flowers, with very fine filaments. The next morning, most of the flowers were on the ground. The second evening, the scene was repeated.
An internet search revealed it to be a Pseudobombax ellipticum, also called a shaving brush tree, or a Dr. Seuss tree. Proof that nature has a sense of humor?
Here’s one of the flowers.
Rincón is a charming seaside town on the west end of Puerto Rico. It’s known for its surfing and gorgeous beaches. Allysen had always wanted to see it, so we visited for a couple of days to celebrate her birthday. The beaches lived up to their reputation. The character of the town was a lot like parts of Cape Cod, but warmer. Lots of seaside hotels and eateries. Here are some pix from our stay.
This is Dome Beach, named for the dome of a decommissioned nuclear reactor, visible in the trees. It’s a favorite surfing location; we watched some surfers enjoying the swells, including one fellow zooming on a surfboard with a hydrofoil under it, which levitated the board above the waves.
At the same location is the beautiful Punta Higueras Lighthouse, surrounded by a park.
Our hotel, Rincón of the Seas, was right on a long, lovely beach, perfect for walks. It also had a pool featuring a swim-up bar, which was fun. (I ordered a daiquiri, which was totally forgettable, but the ambience was enjoyable.)
Rincón attracts a lot of English-speakers; in fact, we chatted with folks from Texas, South Carolina, and Utah. We also had brunch with a childhood friend of Allysen’s, at a delightful café called the English Rose, which we reached by driving a narrow, winding road with truly alarming roller-coaster ups and downs. At one point, while approaching a crest, I croaked—with feeling and total sincerity—“I really hope there’s a road on the far side of this incline.” I could well imagine pitching off into space, and that would have been that.
And finally, while waiting for dinner at another restaurant, we got into selfie mode. Here’s what we looked like.
Books & Buzz Magazine, in their wisdom, has decided to feature me on their cover this month, with my short essay, “How to Find the Story You Want to Tell.” Lord knows why. I actually titled it, “On Writing, for Those Who Struggle.” Their title is unquestionably better marketing, but I think my title is a little more to the point. No matter. You can read it at https://booksandbuzzmagazine.com/, along with a bunch of other interesting stuff. The magazine is free, so if you’re interested in writing, I encourage you to take a look.
The Ho Chi Dog Trail, which we have worked so hard to shut down, is open and thriving. Or perhaps we should call it the Ho Chi Puppy Trail, since it’s a litter of stray puppies that’s currently thwarting our best efforts to close off entry. They can get under gates and between bars that the larger dogs cannot. And then they trot warily through the grounds, and presumably out again. They and their mother are sometimes to be seen up on the street, but we think their den is somewhere on the side of the hill, in the brush outside the house property, in the “back forty.” We hear them squawking; they sound like squeak toys. Once again, we are faced with the question: Do we try to trap them and take them to a vet for worming and neutering and shots, and then…??? Or do we let nature take its course?
Update: Allysen managed to snag a picture of three of them.
This takes me back to 2013, when we had a previous great Invasion of the Puppies. (Several of the puppies you see in the photo below ultimately came to Boston and found new homes, and the rest found homes in Puerto Rico. So, happy ending there.)
Tomorrow morning, I’ll be speaking with Bria Burton about The Chaos Chronicles, and whatever else she wants to ask me about. This Bria is not to be confused with Bria the gokat, who features in The Reefs of Time and Crucible of Time. They didn’t even know each other until recently, and I didn’t know the human Bria when I wrote the gokat Bria. But one became a fan of the other, and don’t you love those coincidences?
Not wanting to spend too much time in one place, I got on a plane yesterday and boomeranged back to Puerto Rico. A lot of families with kid on this flight; I guess it’s a vacation week. Climbing out of Boston, I was treated to these views of Martha’s Vineyard and Nantucket.
Allysen and a friend were there to greet me in San Juan.
Yeah, right. The two weeks (feels like two months) since coming back to Boston have been a carnival of people working on the new porches, installing the new boiler, installing and fixing electrical stuff, and starting today at 7:30 a.m. putting new insulation into the attic. Oh, and did I mention hunching for hours over Quicken, pulling together a year’s worth of numbers for the tax man? God willing, by this time tomorrow, all that will be done, or mostly done. And then I’m going to leave it all behind to return to Puerto Rico! (This time for some actual leisure, and writing I hope.)
Here are some pix of the porch! Those round columns, by the way, are made of a resin-stone composite with a permanent finish. No painting required! And the railings are powder-coated aluminum. If there was one theme to this design, it was “low maintenance.”
It’s quiet here on my last full day in Puerto Rico (for this round). All our guests have left. Crystal back to L.A., which we hope hasn’t washed away in the rains there, and A’s cousin Vanessa and her husband Cesar back to South Carolina, via San Juan. The air here has turned intensely humid and muggy. Earlier, we had a brief wind-and-rain storm that made me wonder if I’d missed the memo about an approaching hurricane. Wish I’d taken a picture.
Tomorrow, I return to Boston, while Allysen stays to greet Jayce and her boyfriend who are flying down from Boston at the same time I’m flying north from San Juan. We’ll pass each other over the Atlantic. While I start dealing with house issues at home, Allysen will be working with a contractor she’s found to do some of the larger repairs needed here. (Cesar and I fixed a bunch of small things, including—long-time readers will recognize this—yet another patch on the fabled Ho Chi Dog Trail.)
I’m going to close out this chapter with various pictures from the visit. First, Crystal and Allysen at El Yunque…
An egret at the beach at Caña Gorda…
An interesting tree in the dry forest right next to the beach…
And an evening at a new discovery, a delightfully idiosyncratic Ponce restaurant, El Rastro. This is Vanessa and Cesar.
I’ll be back down at the end of February. Lots to do between now and then.
But the boiler is dead, Jim. Dead, dead, dead. Both daughters and their significant others were plenty scared, when—with Allysen and me away in Puerto Rico—the smoke alarms at home went crazy and they found one of the steam-heat boilers in the basement smoking and starting to glow. I believe terrifying was the word Jayce used. I got a not-quite-panicked call, “How do you turn off the boiler?!” with a lot of beeping and commotion in the background. I said, “Unplug it and get out of the house and call the fire department!” The firemen got there fast, turned off the gas to the unit, and confirmed that the boiler was toast but it was safe to stay in the house. I don’t know how long it took the family to stop shaking. (Connor remarked later that the boiler was glowing orange at the bottom and looked like a rocket about to take off.)
What happened was, it boiled dry, and the automatic low-water cutoff failed. The result: our own mini Three Mile Island meltdown. But as I say, no one was hurt, and the house didn’t burn down, and the smoke alarms worked, so I choose to regard it as a win-win. Plumber Mike came the next day and started making plans to replace the unit.
It was mostly my fault for not properly briefing everyone on checking the water level from time to time. Anyway, why is it that every time I leave for Puerto Rico, there’s a major plumbing problem while I’m gone? It never fails.
Because we had ductless minisplits installed a few years ago for cooling and bumper-months heating, there is still heat available in our apartment; no one had to freeze. So that’s a win, too. There is actually a statewide effort to get people to use electric heat pumps instead of gas heat, so one could argue that we should just switch over. But our experience has not sold us on that method of heating in winter. And forget running a heat pump in a power outage with a small backup generator, which I can do with a boiler. We are all in on offsetting climate change, but I guess our solar-electric panels and our solar hot water will have to be our contribution for now.
Here’s the boiler with the phaser blast marks.
