I'd expected to explore Old San Juan this past week, take some long walks around the islands, that sort of thing. Unfortunately, it rained consistently from my arrival Sunday afternoon through Monday night, stopping long enough for me to thoroughly drench myself on a bioluminescent bay tour, before resuming on the drive back.
Here's my hotel's rooftop bar that I didn't spend a lot of time on, as it was pouring:
So instead of 17th-century buildings, I'm posting photos of my hotel room:
That little guy on the bed is literally a houndstooth hound:
I've got a few other photos including some not-raining shots from Vieques later.
I read half of Hamilton in Puerto Rico, and now I'm catching up on everything I refused to do over the past six days. Photos and more details to follow.
It finally stopped raining in Puerto Rico late this morning. That was a few hours after half the main island and all of Vieques lost power. Ordinarily I'd link to the news report but, it turns out, an island-wide power failure isn't actually newsworthy here.
And yet I'm really loving this place. Vieques has a rare combination of undiscovered and verdant that I find compelling. My only other experience in the tropics is Saint-Martin, which I love (because airplanes!) but which hordes of people visit by cruise ship. (Let that sink in a bit, especially as it explains why in several trips to Sint Maarten I've never visited Phillipsburg.)
I'll have a lot of photos when I get back to the mainland, but for now all I've got are shots that have filtered through Facebook. Here's this afternoon:
And yet, here is my real purpose for visiting Puerto Rico and drinking rum from St. Croix:
Sometimes you just have to retire to a tropical island with a big book and a beverage.
I should report that today's lack of pouring rain has slowed my reading somewhat, as I felt it necessary to hike down to a volcanic black-sand beach and swim in the hacienda's pool instead of digging in to important reading. Which, I think, is the point of vacationing on a small island.
I'm spending a couple of days on two U.S. islands in the Caribbean, Puerto Rico and Vieques. So posting is a little iffy. Right now I'm waiting for the island hopper to take me between the two islands, a flight that will spend less time in the air than it will taxiing on the ground.
There has been a minor problem, though. It has rained every day, and the forecast calls for more rain every day. Here's Condado Lagoon from the roof of my hotel:
Right now it's a little sunny but still not what I would call dry. The rain also dumped a good layer of fresh water on the bioluminescent bay that I visited last night, sending all the glowing critters deep into the warmer, saltier water on the bay's floor. Disappointing, but hey, it's nature.
I'll have more photos and posts from Vieques, assuming there's WiFi.
Folks, if you have to evacuate a burning 767, leave your fucking bags in the plane. That would have prevented most of the injuries sustained when this happened yesterday at O'Hare:
The plane's 161 passengers and nine crew members scrambled down emergency chutes on the left side of the plane while flames flared and thick black smoke billowed from the wing on the right side, according to the airline and video from the scene.
Twenty people were taken to hospitals with minor injuries, mostly bruises and ankle problems, according to fire Chief Juan Hernandez, head of emergency medical services at the airport.
The aircraft experienced an "uncontained engine failure," in which engine parts break off and are spewed outside the engine, a federal official said. The official wasn't authorized to speak publicly about the incident and spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity. The danger of such a rare and serious failure is that engine pieces effectively become shrapnel and can cause extensive damage to the aircraft.
Scary, and they can't use the plane again, but since everyone survived and there were only minor injuries, this counts as a good flight.
All of these articles look interesting, and I hope I get to read them:
Oh, fun! Another meeting!
Recaps of the debate comprise just a few of the things I haven't had time to read today:
- Who hated Trump's caginess on whether he'd accept the election results if he lost? Everyone: The Economist, The New Republic, The National Review, Talking Points Memo, everyone.
- Trump's debate performance is being compared to book reports by kids who haven't read the book.
- Pilot Patrick Smith says Trump's airline wasn't that bad for customers, but it never made a profit either.
- Meanwhile, the Cubs beat the Dogders 10-2, which means the series will be decided at Wrigley on Saturday or Sunday.
- Looks like Chicago will have a warm-ish November and a normal-ish winter.
- One of the world's largest data centers, here in the South Loop area of Chicago, will soon be a lot bigger.
- Funny statistic: almost all airport noise complaints come from a handful of people—like the one person in Maryland who complained about Washington Dulles 1,024 times last year.
- Finally, "Hamilton," which I saw Sunday, got a rave from the Tribune.
Back to my meetings.
Pretty good, from space. Benjamin Grant, who runs the Daily Overview feed, has put together a "greatest hits" collection in book form, which will be available October 25th:
The best images appear inOverview: A New Perspective of Earth. The book reveals the many ways humans shape the world. Groves of bright green olive trees stand ready for harvest. Deep blue and purple caverns cut into the earth at a uranium mine. Iron tailings turn a pond bright pink. Grant uses juxtaposition to underscore the point, placing, say, a deforested rain forest alongside a paper mill. “You’re able to make comparisons within the chapters, in a way that you can’t if it’s one image per day on the Instagram feed,” he says. The last chapter celebrates remote places, like the reptilian ridges of Rub’ al Khali, the world’s largest contiguous sand desert.
Many of the images are aesthetically beautiful in the abstract, but troubling in context: the aligned grids on a rust-red landscape of the Dadaab Refugee Camp in Kenya, or the yellow stripe and black ridges of a coal shipping terminal in Qinhuangdao, China. Grant hopes to show that tension. “You have an overwhelming sense of the time that would be required to create these staggering landscapes—erosion, build up of mountains—compared to what we’ve developed in the past 100 years,” says Grant.
I pre-ordered the book as soon as Grant posted he was publishing it.
The Chicago Tribune reports that the annoying trend of using smaller airplanes for longer routes is taking off over the Atlantic:
The re-engined 737 Max and A320neo jets offer a 15 percent fuel saving meant to cut costs on the shortest inter-city services. At the same time the revamp has added about 800 km to their range -- just enough to allow the narrow-bodies to span the 5,000 km between the eastern U.S. and Western Europe.
Norwegian Air Shuttle, JetBlue Airways and Portugal's TAP are among airlines buying the jets for trans-Atlantic routes, with NAS set to lead the way when it becomes one of the first carriers to get Boeing's Max 8 next year. Its initial flights may link Edinburgh, Birmingham in England and Cork and Shannon in Ireland to smaller airports in New England and the New York area.
Yeah, 8 hours in a 737 or A320 does not sound fun. The only exception I'd make is for BA flights 1, 2, 3, and 4, which are 32-seat, all-business-class A319s that fly between London City and JFK. Of course, they're not exactly marketing to price-conscious leisure travelers: a round trip on that route will set you back about $6,000. And one more thing: the return trip tops up its fuel tanks in Shannon, Ireland, because even a stripped-down A319 can't make it all the way from London to New York yet.
On my trip home from Minneapolis a couple of weeks ago, I came across this lovely girl at the MSP airport:
Didn't get to say hi, but ain't she sweet?