What a week. Hurricane Wilma has been causing havoc in Jamaica and with our plans. The weekend at Hedo sucked. It rained most of the weekend. Time at a resort is no fun unless there is some sun. The sky was very dark and gray the entire time. Let’s face it, no one goes to Hedo for the wet weather program of bingo and you can only sit in the hot tub for so long while getting rained on. At least we get one day free.
Although Jamaica was not hit by Wilma, we got the edges of her. This means constant rain and flooding all across the island. The trip to Hedo was a nightmare. It normally takes us 4 hours to travel the approximately 80 km. This time it was 7+ hours. We had numerous detours as flat bridge was impassable. To add to that, everyone and their dog was trying to get to the north coast at the same time. It doesn’t take much water to flood the roads. Whoever built them didn’t take into account drainage. In addition, the roads are about a half inch of asphalt over crushed rock. This means they can’t take much traffic and there are potholes everywhere. Add rain to this and the potholes quickly become swimming pools.
On Monday, the roads were so bad we decided to stay another night at Hedo. This would normally been great, but by this time the rain was so steady I did not even want to go outside. Luckily I brought a bunch of books to read, else I would have gone crazy.
By Tuesday, the road to Newcastle had been cleared by all the landslides and it was thought we could make it up. We drove back to Kingston and Up Park to meet up with the rest of the course for the trip up the hill. At about the ¾ mark, we hit another landslide. This is about 9 pm and it is already dark. The call is made to wait a bit and to try and get the JDF Engineers up here with their front end loader (FEL) to clear the slide. Not really a good idea in the middle of the night, in my opinion. After about 4 hours packed in a bus in the dark on the side of a mountain, we find out the FEL cannot make it up to the slide. We head back down the mountain and spend the night in a hotel. I get to my room about 3 am. Quite a long day.
On Wednesday it is decided not to further risk the trip up and we will carry on starting Thursday at the base in Kingston. This means a trip up by helicopter for a small number of us to get clothes for the students. I need to get a bunch of training aids for classes the next day. In Jamaica, nothing does smoothly and on time. To make a long story short, we had planned to fly up at 1pm, give ourselves a good 3 hours to pack up all we need, and fly back down at 4pm. Due to a bunch of things, including a casualty evacuation, I get back at 9pm. To top it all off, at about 6pm we find out the road is now open. How do I find this out? I am sitting there waiting for the chopper and this van packed full of people drives up and they get our cheering. Great passage of information.
We had planned to have classes in an old building on the base. This room had no AV equipment, so my Sgt and I went up to bring this stuff down. This is a big pain in the ass, as we have to pack up and weather proof a bunch of laptops, a projector, 2 printers, speakers and all the cables, powerbars, etc that goes along with this stuff. Thursday morning the decision is made to move the class to the JDF Air Wing. We rush over there in the morning to recce the place. It is completely wired for A/V stuff. All the stuff we brought was not needed.
What’s that you say? Stop complaining, the new location was much better. You would think so. Have you ever tried to teach/learn about 100 meters from a flight line? Since rescue operations were still going on, helicopters were taking off and landing all day. To top it off, and this is just great, the Air Wing was hosting the JDF inter unit volleyball tournament. The classroom exits right to the hanger floor, where the games were being played. I kid you not, the game was going on 10 feet from our room. You had to be careful exiting the class, as you could get a spike in the head. And Jamaicans love volleyball. People were yelling, screaming, and cheering. I did get to see some good volleyball. Overall, it was a comedy of errors.
After two days of that, I was tired of the place and just wanted to go home, so we came up to Newcastle on Saturday. The ride was quite easy, and we actually made it up in record time. It’s funny that I am starting to think of this place as home.
Hopefully we will be back on track on Monday. The course hasn’t been up here for over a week and it is starting to have an effect on everyone. The two days in Kingston were almost a waste of time. I think the students didn’t really absorb what they were taught, what with the noise, the distraction of girls playing volleyball, and the wild dance bars of Kingston calling them.
We shall see. I bet the instructors will have to crack the whip tomorrow.
On a more personal note, I thought the wife might still be mad at me for what happened on our vacation. I had no emails from her when I checked on Wednesday. I finally got her on the phone on Friday night. She is not one to hold a grudge and we had a nice conversation, so I think things are back to normal.
I guess I have staved off divorce for another week.
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