Blazing Bermuda in red & my Guatemalan flight seatmate adventure

Bermuda, my favorite island for both business and to be on in general, is steadily growing as we paint the island red.   In May, we ran around the island, literally, blazing it in Milwaukee red during the Bermuda Day Half Marathon Derby.  Since the success of the Bermuda Race Weekend 10k that I ran with one of my customers in January, we’ve been planning the Bermuda Day half marathon rugby team sponsorship.  Working together with 2 of my 3 accounts in Bermuda, Milwaukee Tool had the privilege of sponsoring the Bermuda Teacher’s Rugby Team as over 50 runners on the team participated in the half marathon, wearing shirts that said Milwaukee Tool.  The island is only 20 square miles, so to have 50 runners in Milwaukee shirts run from one end of the island to the other for 13.1 miles was awesome PR for Milwaukee!   

Here is the back of the shirts!  My customers got along swimmingly (not always the case!).

One of the three pace groups...the Teacher's Rugby Club runners try to stick together and foster camaraderie.

The purchasing manager from Gorham’s Home Center and the general manager from Baptiste Ltd. are both on the Bermuda Teacher’s Rugby Team (they’re not all teachers), and we all worked nicely together to plan this event out, from the making of the shirts to the making of the Red Gatorade for the Milwaukee Hydration Station.  Yep, we had our own hydration station!  Right in town at a prime location, around mile marker #11, we had a Milwaukee tent set up with volunteers from the stores to man it, handing out RED (not blue or yellow!) Gatorade and blasting motivational music out of the Milwaukee Contractor Radio.  Shout-out to Melissa of Baptiste and Chris of Gorham’s for getting up before 6 a.m. to man the hydration station while Henry, Bill, myself, and about 50 others blazed the island in red—literally!!! 

The Milwaukee Hydration Station at Mile 11.

Post-race at the hydration station, cleaning up and prepping for the afternoon parade.  Thanks Melissa and Chris!

 Since Milwaukee sponsored the jerseys, the $18,000 that the Teacher’s Rugby Club raised was all able to go toward purchasing a Braille machine for an autistic child as well as donate the leftover funds to the Bermuda Heart Association.  The race itself was grueling in hilly and humid (94% humidity) Bermuda, but I felt like almost everyone who lives there was out cheering.  For me personally, I wanted to run a good time, but it was more important to enjoy the race and the atmosphere.  I ended up running a time I was happy with, and I felt like I could smile and appreciate the people and the BEAUTIFUL scenery (running along the shore viewing the ocean) the entire race. 

Almost finished!

Awesome teamwork, no joke.  Everyone pushed everyone else through the finish.

 After the race was the annual Bermuda Day Parade.  We had to wait a few rainy hours in between, but we did what I would call tailgate…we had our hydration station tent set up on the sidewalk, marking our spot.  We had stocked up the night before on food and drinks, the Milwaukee radio, sunscreen, and a whole possee of Rugby runners, hardware store workers, families, and Milwaukee fans in general.  The parade is where I saw a side of Bermuda I hadn’t seen before!  One can sort of group Bermuda in another category separate from other Caribbean islands.  In fact, they don’t like to say they’re ‘in the Caribbean’ because they really aren’t.  They’re north in the Atlantic, 600 miles off the coast of North Carolina.  BUT, they love their Calypso and Soca music just as much as Barbados does!  Apparently since I’ve only been there during fall, winter, and spring, I haven’t experienced a Bermuda summer where the island becomes more ‘tropical-y’ and feels more like a Caribbean atmosphere.  I look back at sitting on the sidewalk to watch the parade and remember how happy I was!  It sounds cheesy, but there is SUCH a mix of culture and I LOVE IT!  Bermuda is a British territory, so there’s Scottish influence, Irish influence, English influence.  Bermuda also has a big Portuguese population, mostly from the the Azores (islands off the coast of Portugal).  Then, as I said, being an island close to the Caribbean, it has an Afro-Caribbean influence with the Reggae/Calypso feel.  Finally, Bermuda has its own style of dance and music, so there were floats with Gombeys dancers.  To me it looks similar to a native/Caribbean dance, but it’s distinct so don’t be confused.  With Gombeys, Reggae, Portugese folk music, Reggae, and Caribbean Calypso, it made for quite a diverse national parade.   

Gombeys dancers!  I can still hear the drums and the whistles...

Jack, me, and the Bermuda flag.  Jack is my customer's son who LOVES the Gombeys.

Photo bomber!  My Gorham's customer, Henry, with his adorable children.

That night, before going to my hotel to pack for my early flight the next morning, I went to my friend/customer’s mom’s house, where we had an authentic (and not very healthy but oh well) Portuguese meal: chourico and feijao assado.  Portuguese is similar to Spanish, and I took 2 classes of Portuguese my last year in college, so since Melissa’s mom speaks more Port than English, I was able to practice my few words I know and speak some “Portuñol” (mix of Portugues and Español...same concept as Spanglish).

During the month of June I was not on any islands – unbelievable!  But instead I was been in Central America, speaking mucho Español and embracing my inner ‘Latina de Corazón.’  Last week I was in Panama for a week of intense training.  I confidently say I speak fluent Spanish, but WHEW when you’re in training where you’re learning detailed specs on power tools and accessories, and then part of the training is to have you get up on the spot and present on any given Milwaukee Tool product in detail, it is quite humbling.  That sort of thing is hard for me to do in English!  Nonetheless it was really good training, and since I went through it in Spanish, going through it in island English shouldn’t be difficult.   

One section of training: impact wrenches, our motor technology, and Milwaukee/DeWalt go head-to-head!

We didn’t get to see much of Panama City, but we did get out of the hotel one night to go downtown and rent a turf soccer field and play 7 on 7 (I’m on an international Milwaukee team with 13 guys).   

A bit blurry, but that's my Milwaukee Tool International Team!  A few guys from Panama, a couple from Mexico, and the rest of us live in Miami (I am one of 4 'Gringos' on the team...the rest are Latinos).  Que cultural!

We drove by the Panama Canal a few times.  On my next trip I hope to take the canal tour.  There is a ton of business investment in Panama right now with the expansion of the canal, new construction, etc.  The canal itself is about 50 miles long, and it can take anywhere from 8-14 hours to go through.  From our hotel you could see the Pacific entrance to it, with boats big and small lined up all day, waiting their turn to cross to the Atlantic.    

The last 2 weeks of June I was in Central America again, this time in Guatemala.  I helped Roberto, my Mexican co-worker whose territory is Guatemala, Nicaragua, Honduras, Belize, set up new displays in his stores, and we went to some really good meetings at the main sugar refineries (a big industry in Guate), who use a ton of tools and are slowing moving to more Milwaukee…poco a poco.  As you know, I always encounter interesting people on my islands, in airports, on planes, etc., and my trip to Guatemala was no different.  I got to the Miami airport on Wednesday morning June 20th, we boarded the plane (I got my free upgrade to Business Class since I fly so much…thank you Milwaukee), and then they told us our scheduled pilots were over the limit of consecutive hours they could fly, so we had to wait until a flight from Cuba landed in order to take those pilots.  It ended up being a 4 hour delay, hanging out with a New York man who made the time pass quickly.  I honestly still don’t know if he was intoxicated, high, or simply just tired.  He was extremely chill and relaxed, at first impression.  He owns a textile business that has a plant in Guatemala, and proceeded to tell me about his homes in Connecticut, New York, and Guatemala, and how his life revolves around his job and how he was flying to Guatemala to clean up a bunch of messes that were happening with his plant and employees.  He was on the phone numerous times having conversations that went as follows:  

"You guys had better get your [stuff] together or it's gonna be a miserable 3 weeks with me.  And what's up with the Aeropostale hang tags?  We don't have another minute.  Move the MCL.  Move the Marmox.  Get it moved, it has to ship by 6:30.  Do you understand when I'm saying?  Or it's a 50% deduction.  Get it moved."

And, "Jorge.  I'm not doing so good Jorge.  What's going on with my Marmox fabric?  You told me it was dyed.  Now Julio's telling me we're missing 3 of the 6 colors.  What's going on?!?" 

This guy was intimidating, and poor Jorge on the other end of the call.  The guy ended up losing his Blackberry case on the plane, stealing the little bottles of vodka from the flight attendants’ rolling carts when they were looking the other way, lecturing me on why I should eat meat (I'm currently a pescatarian), and holding the whole plane up after we landed (we were in row 6 of 36) while he reorganized his life in the middle of the aisle.  He was quite interesting to meet, to say the least.   He also had diabetes, so after eating four “delicious Florida oranges,” he gave himself way too much insulin, and then had to order drinks with sugar to counter it.  Too funny.  I met one of his workers at the Guatemala City airport (and they actually drove me to my hotel), and everything seemed fine.  Julio really respected his boss.  I don't want you to picture a modern-day slave driver...he's just a business owner who's trying to be lovingly stern to his employees.  Never a dull moment...

Finally, I’ll end this post by telling you what my initial reason for going to Guatemala was.  A few months ago I started looking into doing a service trip.  I wanted to do something different this year, go somewhere using the COUNTLESS frequent flyer miles I have, and disconnect from my job.  I thought about going to Europe to backpack around for a couple weeks, but I didn’t know anyone who wanted to go.  I started looking into a mission/service trip.  I signed up with a non-profit, Christian organization called Living Water International (www.water.cc) to go to a jungle town of Guatemala for a week to build a water well, teach the women and children proper hygiene, and simply put—love on those in need, meeting both a physical and a spiritual need.  My eyes were opened in a big way, I was humbled more than ever before, and the trip rocked my world.  I'm very VERY excited to write about my trip and share photos with you all, so look for that in the next couple weeks for my next blog post!  Love you all and thanks for reading...until next time!

There's the water well!  Can't wait to write about my experience for my next post!!

Fire trucks and bumble bees and sales reps, oh my!

“Friends don’t let friends go to the Bahamas.”  That’s what I jokingly say to my friend, Kim, when she asks what island I’m going to, and I’m on my way to the Bahamas.  It’s a short 50-minute flight from Miami, the Bahamian island of New Providence (the Bahamas consists of over 3,000 islands, islets, and cays!), and 3 of my largest hardware stores are there.  The capital of the Bahamas is Nassau, the main city in New Providence.   I don’t really know what it is, but I was rarely in a good mood on this island in the beginning.  The traffic is insane, everybody lets everybody in, everybody cuts everybody off, and it’s hard to avoid potholes and stray dogs.  You never get above 35 mph.  It’s a fairly big and busy island…lots of business there…but it’s just chaotic and it took me over 5 trips to not have to use my map.  ANYWAY, I don’t want to bash it too much, and when I really think about the situation, it’s just some cultural differences…some that I see on other islands too.  I like to think I have an open mind because I LOVE culture and the differences and get plenty of travel to fill me, but I clearly gotta shake this negativity toward the Bahamas.  While, like many other islands, it is not wealthy nor has a strong infrastructure, there are still blue waters, beautiful beaches, and loving, happy-hearted people. There’s a sense of order that takes a different meaning on the islands – it’s more like an organized chaos.  Now, with all the travel I do across the Caribbean, I am aloud to be a bit of an island snob, right?   With that said, I still would not take a personal vacation to the Bahamas.  From what I hear (I have not actually been to them), the beaches are nice, and I see really blue water driving by in my rental car.  There’s a section of the island by Nassau called Paradise Island, and it’s really nice with casinos, Starbucks, Dunkin Donuts, and fancy steakhouses.  It also has complete tourists, music coming from little speakers in the bushes and workers constantly sweeping the streets…as if you were in Disneyworld.  If that’s what you like, well then go, but personally I prefer a place that may be a bit out of my comfort zone but where I can experience some culture, some differences, observe, eat local food, etc.

The Bahamas upon landing.  Blue, blue waters.

 I do have one highlight of Nassau, Bahamas, that took place on my last visit which reminded me to appreciate the island.  One of my customers, FYP Ltd. (Fix Your Place), has a fire truck parked in the parking lot.  Mark, the owner of FYP, bought it from the states and had it shipped down.  He wanted a fire hose for I-don’t-know-what, and when he realized it was cheaper to buy a full fire truck than just a hose (I have no idea why), he bought the whole dang thing!  Mark is really involved in the community, sponsoring kids’ baseball and soccer teams, and he puts that fire truck to good use!  He drives that thing around town to grab attention and go to sporting events.  Well, 2 months ago he suggested I had a banner made that says “Milwaukee Supports Bahamian Athletics,” one that he could put on the truck and park at the baseball and soccer fields during the games.  I had his 12-foot banner made, and on my last visit I got to ride in the fire truck to a baseball game with our 12-foot Milwaukee/FYP banner hanging from the side.  It was 4:30 pm and traffic was heavy in Nassau, but that didn’t matter—we had sirens and horns!  We seriously would blare the sirens to get people out of the way.  Until you looked in the cab and saw 3 people in t-shirts and jeans (one being a young white girl), it looked as if we were on our way to fight flames somewhere.  I do not know how this is legal, but I guess stuff like this can slide when you have a country with a lesser-developed infrastructure.  They let a lot pass.  The thing is registered as an F-150 (I’m guessing he paid them off or has connections with the government), and he can cause quite a ruckus with it on the narrow streets of Nassau, making K-turns and barely fitting on the roads.  Here is a 45-second video I took in the fire truck...

There it is! The fire truck!

The Avengers t-ball team, sponsored by FYP Ltd. and supported by Milwaukee Tool.

Most of the time I don’t experience big delays or craziness on my flights, but the bumble bee problem that delayed us 2 hours back in April is one for the memory book.  We had all just boarded a flight in Miami, flying to San Juan, and they announced that there was a bee problem outside so the ground crew could not load the luggage.  There were swarms of bees I could see from inside the plane and they wouldn’t leave.  They tried spraying the bees and plane with some sort of foam (my first glance out the window and I thought it had snowed in Miami – no joke!), and after realizing the foam was corrosive, they then sprayed the Boeing 757 down with water twice more…to no avail.  You know how when there’s a medical issue on a plane, there always seems to be a doctor or nurse?  Well a man walked up to the front and said that he was a beekeeper and asked if he could help…too funny!   Too bad he didn’t have his gear in his carry-on to be able to go outside and move the bees.  Anyway, after about an hour, the bees moved away and we could take off.  I had a flight to catch from San Juan to the island of Tortola, as did the older English couple next to me.  They were concerned we were going to miss the connection, but –since I travel all the time and have learned not to fret about the ‘small stuff’—I assured them we would have ample time, and if not then there was a later flight to Tortola.  They said they wouldn’t want to wait, so they would charter a plane for the 20-minute flight to Tortola and that I could join them.  We ended up making our connection on time…dang it – a chartered flight wouldn’t have been too shabby!

Random photo of a meal in Grand Cayman Island in April.  Banana soda and roti (almost like a burrito filled with pumpkin, garbanzo beans, spinach, potato, curry and other spices) from a Trinidadian restaurant in Cayman.

Finally, my last random topic in this email is about a sales rep I met on a return flight to Miami last month.  I meet a lot of sales reps on planes and on islands, but this guy stands out in my mind.  His name is Luis Felipe, a Spanish-speaking Latin American from Miami, probably about 55 years old.  I really feel like you will get a crack out of these stories, so I’ll briefly share two of them. 

We got chatting in English and then in Spanish (as I prefer!), and he asked me what was the craziest thing that had ever happened to me in my travels.  I really didn’t have one solid answer, but I told him a few stories that go along with the “never a dull moment on the islands” theme.  Then I asked him the same question and for the next hour he had me captivated with a few stories.  He has been traveling for his job for over 20 years.  One was an experience in Mexico, where he had to travel to Valladolid from a coastal Mexican city.  He was in his rental car and it was getting dark and he had to find a hotel.  He drove and drove and drove, hoping to find a place before Valladolid to sleep at.  He drove through towns that he said were out of a movie.  In Spanish he said, “it was a dusty, old, main road of a town that was almost deserted.  There was an old cathedral on one side and on the other side was a store with a bench outside where 3 old men in hats sat, slouched over.  And what’s the name of that plant that blows around?”  I said, “tumbleweed?” Yep.  He kept driving and finally after 9pm came to a really nice-looking hotel.  He pulled in, relieved, and asked to stay one night.  They asked him, “and where’s your partner?”  He said “what do you mean?  I’m traveling alone for business.”  They told him it was Club Med – you had to be there as a couple!  He assured the lady that he just wanted to go to his room and sleep…he wouldn’t go walking around the resort alone or anything.  Per Club Med policy she still would not let him stay, so he got back in his car and kept driving.  It was 10pm by then, and he saw a car pulled over on the side of the highway.  He slowed down and peered in to see 3 children sitting in the backseat with the 2 adults outside.  Feeling bad upon seeing the children, he pulled over.  It turned out they had a flat tire and did not have a spare.  They were Mayan Indians, complete with traditional face paint and headbands.  Luis got out of his own car to look at the flat and while he was bent over checking it out, he thought to himself, “what am I doing?!  I’m a foreigner here and my laptop and passport are sitting in my front seat with the car wide open.”  He said there was no other solution but to take them to the nearest town.  They said they knew people 5 minutes up the road, so into his rental car piled 3 Mayan children in the back and the 2 adults in front with Luis.  Just picture this!  And he said to calm his nerves and the awkwardness, he’d ask them how to say certain things in their indigenous native language (Luis spoke Spanish but these Mayan Indians spoke their language and some broken Spanish).  He’d say “how do you say ‘car?’ and they would answer “carro,” or whatever the word was…and that was it.  Well after driving 20 minutes, they directed Luis to exit, and they proceeded to climb up and up an old road on the side of the mountain until they finally got to where they knew people.  It was a Mayan village with traditional teepees and everything!  They got a spare tire and Luis drove them back to their car.  He continued on and reached Valladolid by midnight, and crashed for 5 hours on a rock-hard bed before he woke up to meet his customer.  When he told his Mexican customer the story, he couldn’t believe it.  As Luis already knew, he told him it was not really safe nor wise to stop on the side of the road in the middle of nowhere in the countryside of Mexico.  Luis couldn’t believe he did it either, and was extremely thankful to be alive.  What an experience.  Don’t worry Mom and Dad – I have no stories like that nor do I stop on the side of the road at night.

One other quick and CUTE story from Luis was when he was stuck in Peru for a weekend.  He was in Lima, the capital, for business, and when Friday came around and Luis was waiting on a major customer to close a huge order, Luis’ boss informed him not to leave Peru until the order was closed.  So as he sat eating dinner alone in downtown Peru, wondering who he should call of his Peruvian friends to hang out with, he saw a newspaper with a picture of Macchu Picchu, the old Inca village in the mountains where tourists flock to because of its grandeur and adventure in getting there.  He booked a trip for Saturday and Sunday.  The next day he met a young woman at the group lunch who was in Peru for business from Spain.  They hung out until their separate tour groups parted ways.  Later, when Luis was at Macchu Picchu ready to do the climb, he met a young Mexican man who was in Peru for business as well.  They were walking around Macchu Picchu chatting together when they ran into the Spanish woman!  By the end of the trip, the 3 of them had become friends, and for years they stayed in touch and tried meeting up in Miami (where Luis lives) or somewhere in Latin America where they all traveled for work.  One day a few years after meeting, the Mexican guy called Luis and said he was in Miami.  They planned to meet for lunch, outside of Luis’ office, and when Luis walked outside, there stood the Mexican man with their Spanish friend!  They told him they had news – that they were engaged and wanted Luis to be the best man!  Awwww, what a story, right?  Luis is by far the most interesting person I’ve met on a flight thus far.  We then proceeded to wait in the longest customs lines we had ever seen when we landed in Miami, so we chatted some more.  He had a couple other stories for me, but those were the top two.

Thanks for reading!  I need to close my laptop.  I’m on a plane, wedged in the middle seat between two larger men and my arms are cramping.  Happy weekend, y’all!!!

TV appearance in Grenada. Dessert overload in St. Lucia.

My nationally-televised morning talk show appearance…on an island. 

Last month I was in Grenada, the most expensive and difficult island to fly to.  It’s the southernmost island in my territory…Trinidad is further south (right above Venezuela) but my co-worker covers that island.  Direct flights to Grenada (that are over 4 hours long) only go a couple times per week, so you have to overnight in either Trinidad or Barbados, or you can island hop and make a big trip out of it.  So, I took 5 days – flying directly from Miami down to Grenada to start, hopping over to St. Lucia on Wednesday,  and then up from St. Lucia to Miami to get back home on Friday.  These islands are on a 220 volt system.  In case you don’t know, the U.S. is on a 110V system.  Europe, parts of South America, and some Caribbean islands are on 220V.  Milwaukee Tool doesn’t carry a lot of 220V, so my trips to islands like St. Lucia, Grenada, and St. Vincent are limited.  Well, we have one account in Grenada, called The Creative House.  It’s your typical hardware store/home center, only this store has a morning TV show that airs in their building called Day Break Grenada.  Since Day Break Grenada uses The Creative House’s space for their show, The Creative House gets some freedom to have air time every once in awhile.  So, using that free air time, Milwaukee was nationally televised on the island for 2 different mornings!  The first one we were supposed to be on at 6:30 am, but Day Break got behind (island time….) and I didn’t go on until 7:30, when “everyone was already heading to work so no one saw it.”  The next day, though, the marketing lady I work with at Creative House picked me up at my hotel at 5 am so we could be on-air at 6:15…and we were!  Click the link below to see the 6-minute YouTube video of my first-ever interview on a nationally-televised news show.  It actually went REALLY well.  I’m not a natural in front of the screen, but watching the video gives me a bit more confidence that I actually DO know what I’m talking about!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mGqOHISbXlM&feature=share

I didn’t have a script prepared, I just winged (wang?) it.  This just shows how much power tools have grown on me…it’s scary.  They didn’t powder my face or anything, and since I was up at the butt-crack of dawn, my raspy voice was even raspier, but I think I communicated the benefits of Milwaukee Red Lithium Ion Cordless Technology pretty well.  My boss got a crack out of it.  “Milwaukee is at a blu-ray level of battery technology while everyone else is at a DVD level.”  Yeah…I made up that analogy on the spot, but I think it worked out pretty well.

The indoor set of Day Break Grenada

Preparing the tools for the TV appearance

On the radio 98.3, talking about tools!

Aaron and me, talkin' tools.

A couple other things about Grenada – there’s a sugar cane juice man on the island who, every day, brings his cane juice making machine to the same location in the main town of Grenada to sell sugar cane juice.  He invented the machine himself.  He picks sugar cane from the fields in the morning, takes his machine to town, and shoves the cane in to produce a liquid sugar cane juice…can’t get much more natural than that!  He told me times were hard years ago and he had no money, so he invented the machine and is now sittin’ pretty.

The Grenadian sugar cane man.  He invented that machine.

Grenada from the air.

Finally, I’ll end on Grenada with a little Grenadian lingo I learned from Lou and Rhesa, the buying and marketing managers I work with at The Creative House:  at the end of MANY sentences, they say “you understand?” in a way that I never really understand, haha.  The island accent in Grenada is thick, and they speak very fast.   Next time you talk to me, I can imitate the accent for you, but it sounds something like “yunnastan?”…really really fast.  Also, instead of responding to someone by saying “we’re good” or “sounds good,” you say straight.  “Ya, everyting’s streeeight.”  “Ya, we streeeight.”  Lou and Rhesa gave me pronunciation lessons at lunch…not sure if they were laughing AT me or WITH me.

Lou "everyting streeeight," me, and Annika, one of the marketing ladies at The Creative House.

Barbados from the sky.  I had a layover here going from Grenada to St. Lucia.

 Eating 3 desserts in one meal because my hotel was all-inclusive…on an island.

Yes.  Three desserts.   A trifecta.  Story of my life, trying to stay in shape and eat even healthier than I ever used to in high school or college while constantly giving in to the ‘homemade bread’ or the ‘catch of the day with cream sauce’ or the ‘decadent tiramisu’ in restaurant after restaurant, island after island, week after week.  Oh well, one must enjoy good food when it’s available…the problem just comes when you’re at an all-inclusive hotel in St. Lucia, you have a sweet tooth and there are over 8 options of dessert, all of which you can indulge in as much as you’d like!  Ah!  This particular time I ate some healthy seafood and vegetables for dinner, but then what happened?  My lack of self-control and sweet tooth kick in, and I somehow justify eating chocolate mousse, apple pie, and banana ice cream…one after another!  I mean, they weren’t HUGE portions, but still...c’mon Anna – avoiding the potato and white rice during the meal has no point if you justify that you can then eat 3 desserts to make up for it.  Anyway, I had to share this and vent it out because I walked back to my hotel room and couldn’t believe I did that.  I manage to eat pretty healthy in all my travels, but it gets really hard sometimes, especially when you’re really hungry and lonely.  As you can tell, I occasionally cope with that by eating things with high gluten and high-fructose corn syrup.  Oh well…such is life.  On another note, I’m running a half marathon in Bermuda in May (a team of runners will be wearing Milwaukee Tools jerseys!), and so a few months ago I decided to try being pescatarian, which means partially vegetarian but you are allowed to eat seafood.  I’m just trying it, both for training reasons and for ethical reasons (talk to me, watch Food Inc., or read books by Dr. Michael Pollan if you want to know more).  This pescatarian thing works well for me since I don’t really eat pork, don’t eat much beef, and am sick of chicken.  And I’m traveling in places surrounded by ocean…you bet your britches they have fresh seafood.  The pescatarian diet is going well.  Growing up in a meat ‘n’ potatoes family back in Wisconsin, I do crave a burger or a steak once in awhile, but I will survive.  I’ll go back to eating meat again, I’m pretty sure, but I do know that once I do, I’ll be more conscious of where the meat I’m eating is coming from, how the animals were treated and fed, etc.

ANYWAY, this section was supposed to be on St. Lucia, but I’ve gone off on a food tangent, probably because it’s lunchtime.  So I had 3 desserts in St. Lucia, felt a bit guilty and laughed it off, and all is good.  As aforementioned, I’m not in St. Lucia a lot, but it was good to be back.  The island is the most mountainous of them all and thereforse is bit nauseating when riding in the taxis but extremely breathtaking and worth the upset stomach.  I met a new TINY account with a fitting name, called Tool Hut, and the owner was super chill.  He introduced me to his wife and kids and told me that next time I’m in St. Lucia, I’ll have to watch his band Chasing Monday play at a local beach bar.  We cleared up a few issues, one being that the product he is ordering from us contains owners’ manuals in Spanish.  St. Lucians speak English.  Woops!  Because it is 220 volts, the limited 220V product line available to St. Lucia was originally meant for the 220V market of Argentina, where they speak Spanish.  There’s a big risk that the St. Lucia Bureau of Standards will stop in the Tool Hut and see the Spanish manuals, which is not ‘up to standard,’ so I’m working with Milwaukee to get some sort of English manual that they can put in these boxes. 

A guava!  Call me sheltered, but I had never seen a real guava fruit before this one.

In St. Lucia, riding in the taxi amidst the banana fields (on right).

In St. Lucia

St. Lucia from a cloudy sky.  Notice the Piton Mountains, the two peaks above the clouds.

Now while St. Lucians speak English, they also speak ‘patois’ (pronounced pa-twa).  It’s a French patois, so to me it sounds like French.  St. Lucian patois is a mix of English, French Creole, and African words.  It’s the native language of the country while the official language is English.  The word patois actually means ‘informal speech’ or ‘incomprehensible speech.’  Most of the population speak patois, but it has started to die out with the newer generations.  I would compare it to what happens in cities like Miami and Dallas with Spanish.  You have heavy populations of Latinos who speak Spanish, and they teach their children, but then their children speak more Spanglish and English in the schools/with friends, so then when the next generation comes along, it’s even harder to maintain pure Spanish unless it’s strictly spoken in the household with parents and grandparents.  So, most St. Lucian adolescents understand patois but are more comfortable responding in English.  On the flip side, once you get deep into the mountains of St. Lucia, you’ll find some who rarely leave their villages and only speak patois.  Patois is found on other islands (Jamaica, Trinidad, and in parts of Latin America), but it varies from place to place.  Patois actually means ‘informal language,’ sort of like slang, even though it’s not just a few words – it’s a full-blown language.  Here is a 15 second example of St. Lucian patois (from the reliable YouTube).  Again, to me it sounds French, and you can hear the guys say ‘oui’ in the dialogue.

Thanks for keeping up with me, y'all!  I have a few other random things that I'll write about next time, including the CRAZY stories I heard yesterday on my flight back to Miami...my seat partner, a fellow sales guy, was HIL-ARIOUS.  I'll have to share a few of his adventures with you.  Below are a few random sky photos...happy weekend, everyone...all the best!


-Anna Banana

Car keys in the ocean and a bit of Caribbean radio education.

Hi everybody, here’s another post…it may be my shortest one ever.  No lies, no lies.

St. Thomas, as I’ve written about before, is one of the U.S. Virgin Islands.  I go there about every 2-3 months, and the last time I was there I traveled with Mike, a door and window sales guy who lives near Miami and does the same thing I do on the islands – only I sell tools and he sells doors and windows.  I met Mike last year at a big hardware store event on a different island, so like I’ve done with numerous sales reps, we exchanged information and once in awhile we’ll shoot each other emails asking where the other person is traveling in the next month.  We ended up going to the U.S.V.I. for the same week back in February, so while we each had our own rental cars and agendas, we were able to meet up at night a couple times for dinners and then ended up on the same return flight back to Miami at the end of the week.  Mike is in his 40’s and can sell ice to Eskimos.  He’s good at what he does and is hilarious, so what happened to him came as no surprise to me.  Mike was getting off of a ferry in St. Thomas from being on the island of Tortola all day, and when he was crossing the little bridge from the boat to the main land, he saw something slip out of the portfolio he was holding and into the water.  He noticed at the last second that it was his rental car keys.  Oh no!  He calls Avis, and they say it’s a $300 fee to replace the keys.  He gets stressed and frustrated, asking around if anyone’s a diver…to no avail.  What does Mike decide to do?  NOT pay the $300.  He finds someone with a mask, asks the local boatmen to spot him, and he dives down into the ocean IN HIS JEANS to try finding the car keys!  He said he dove down about 25 feet (typical salesman because when I heard him telling the story the 2^nd time, he said it was 50 feet…), and as it got darker and colder and “there were these huge barracuda fish swimming around me,” there sat his keys at the bottom, on a rock!  He grabbed them, swam up to the top, and went to his Toyota Yaris rental and the remote to unlock the car worked!  He’s gotta write to Toyota so they can use that as a testimony to their keyless entry technology.  So I wasn’t there when it happened, but I was finishing up at my own customer’s store a few miles down the road and walking out to my car when Mike pulls up and rolls down his window saying “Anna!  I don’t have any pants on!”  My first thoughts and response was “What?  Mike it’s only 5:30 have you been drinking already?!”  And sure enough, I walked over to his car and he was in boxers sitting in the driver’s seat.  He dove down in jeans, so he ended up driving back to the hotel and walking back to his room in boxers.  Maybe you had to be there, but it was hilarious.  He told the story that night at dinner (when he said it was a 50-foot dive) to the other guy we’d met, who happened to be a Canadian sales rep who covers the same islands I do, selling JEWELRY!  (Side note.  Picture that conversation:  “Hi my name is Martin, I’m here for work.”  “Hi I’m Anna, I’m here for work too.  What do you do?”  “I travel the islands as a jewelry sales rep.”  “Oh, I travel the islands selling power tools.”)  If what happened to Mike happened to me, I honestly don’t know what I’d do.  Probably cry and get a guy to dive down and get them since I can’t hold my breath more than 8 seconds!

Mike is the 2nd one in, going left to right.  A hilarious sales guy who can sell ice to Eskimos, no doubt.  Picture from when we met in Feb. of 2011.

Random picture of me trying to climb a palm tree in Babados.  Feb. 2012.

 A couple other things about St. Thomas…it’s a typical island with small windy roads and no speed limit, but you can never really get above 35mph.  One thing you can do, though, is get pulled over for illegally talking on a cell phone, like I did.  Now don’t picture a cop coming up behind me and turning his lights and sirens on until I’m pulled over.  Basically I was on the phone (for business!) and rounded a corner going up a hill at about 20 mph, and right as I turned the corner there were 2 cops, and they got me.  One just looked, pointed at me, and then motioned for me to pull over.  It was a bit unorthodox and I thought about speed off at 29 mph, but I abided.  I did not know there was a cell phone law, so I was thinking that my 20mph was somehow too fast.  At any rate, I had to pay a small fine (yes, I tried playing dumb and smiling…I guess I should have tried crying too), and I’ve learned my lesson. 

Random cloud formation from an airplane.

  

Sunset with the moon coming up, on an evening flight to Grenada.

Another thing I’d like to share about the islands in general (with a specific example from St. Thomas) is the radio stations and some of the songs.  I couldn’t stand it at first, but both the Caribbean music and the way the DJs talk on the radios are a lot different.  Sure, they listen to the music we do (even some country on a few islands!), but much of the stations have Caribbean calypso and Soca music.  Calypso is lighter and happy with the steel drums, and Soca is more like native dancing music (I’d compare it to merengue if you’re familiar with Latin merengue), really upbeat and intense.  If you listen hard to the lyrics, you might understand some of them, and if you do, they’ll probably make you smile.  Here’s an example of a Caribbean-style song from Youtube (click the link):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d90IiQOgTxo&feature=related

Now, this song doesn’t have these lyrics, but some lyrics I wrote down while listening to a song similar to this style in St. Thomas went like this…I’m going to spell out some of the words as they pronounce them to attempt to make it more real, haha:

“I love when dee mango stick in dee teeth.  Dats when you know dee mango is sweet…She gone took me mango, what I to do?  She gone took me mango, what I to do?…”

Now imagine the accent from the Youtube link, with lyrics about anything random (not always rated G, but the innocent mango song is pretty funny), and THEN you have to add in the DJ.  Can you say ‘interruption?’  That’s all that happens during many, many songs on different Caribbean radio stations.  The DJs will just turn the song volume way down and ad their own comments.  So with the mango song, the DJ would cut in and say things like “not dee green mango!”  music music music “she ain’t sweet”  music music music “oh no man dee mango be green!” music music music…then the DJ takes a caller who says “I like dee mango with meeelk! (milk)”  And then music music music and the DJ responds “What kinda ting is dat a mango wit meelk?” 

Please understand – I’m not bashing the music or the DJs at all.  It’s simply different.  At first I couldn’t listen to it much, but it has definitely grown on me because I tend to leave the radio on these days, and sometimes I even recognize songs.  That’s when you know you island hop too much…  The accents you hear in the songs are also how they speak, so one could say that I speak 3 languages: English, Spanish, and Island.  This sort of stuff fascinates me.  As you know, I love different languages, diverse accents, differences in word pronunciations and local customs, and culture in general.  I guess if I didn’t enjoy it, I wouldn’t blog about it and wouldn’t probably survive in this job.  The difference in the English accent (which is ‘different’ to me…but I sound foreign to them…remember it’s all relative) is a part of this whole experience, and one must embrace it! 

 

That’s it for now.  Enjoy your week, everyone, and thanks for reading.  Or should I say “tanks for readen.”