Monday, March 12, 2018

Windward Ramblings

We're just hanging out in Carriacou right now waiting for this weather to settle a bit before moving on up the chain. The north swells were amazingly huge but not amazingly rough for us here. I think we caught a break. KN was gently rising and falling on those swells and it was not uncomfortable.

We watched a few people surfing those swells into the harbor which looked like awesome fun and there was a thought in my head about getting the surfing kayak out but there were also thoughts of bloody welts all over my body from the coral and a lump on my head form the kayak. You get smarter as you get older.
Life is pretty slow right now. We manage to have lunch or beach time with friends once in a while and we still meet strange people at bars. At this point it's difficult to talk about some of those strange people because they may be reading this blog. The cruising world is a small world.

We ran into some Americans from Oklahoma. They chartered a large cat and arrived at a restaurant for dinner. Deb and I were at the bar and I was approached by the woman from Tulsa and we all made some small talk. After a few meet and greet questions she asks me where she could buy some weed. Apparently I have taken on the look of someone who would know. I mentioned a spot on the beach and she took note but I told her I'm not speaking as a buyer. It's just what I've been told. She then proceeded to tell me how unfriendly the locals are. She said this with a local, the bartender, standing right behind her in the quiet bar. Damn embarrassing. I told her you need to engage the people with a greeting and a smile because it makes a difference. She wasn't buying it but I had to change the subject before I became associated with her rude behavior.

A European couple popped in and chatted with us before we were wrapping it up for the night. While in a conversation about European and American politics the Tulsa woman came over and asked me if I would take a group photo of the Oklahoma gang. Sure.

I get over to the group and the bartender (local) was taking the photo but they wanted me to take it instead. Seriously!?  I told them she's knows more about the iPhone than I do and they wanted me to make sure it was taken properly. Honest to god I wanted to slap them all for being so damn racist. I can't tolerate that bullshit any more. So I get back to the bar and the woman I was talking to leans into me and says, "So, the Americans did not trust the black woman to take their photo eh?" I just shook my head and asked them to not judge all of us based on the actions of a few misguided individuals.

"Oh no we don't do that. We know Americans do not get out of their country to travel much. We understand most are good people but they are just ignorant of how to act outside of their homeland". This was going to be a nice long conversation but it was getting dark and we had our fill of good cheer and crazy talk so...

We fled the bar because we did not expect to be out so late and we had no anchor lights on but I was damn glad to get out of that scene.

Some times you just want to run and hide from people.



Cheers!
P

4 comments:

  1. Yes, there are many stories I can't tell on my blog. We do meet some truly strange and interesting people. Of course, people probably think we're the strange ones :-)

    It's a shame when you see fellow Americans behaving in such a boorish way.

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    1. When we were still moving it was easier to tell the sordid tales because what were the odds of seeing some of them again? Now we're in the hood so we can't talk about the hood. People here are odd in a fun way and I think we fit in just fine at times. Sometimes it's just bizarro world and we run screaming. :D

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  2. Do did you take a good pic? I am afraid my pic would have been blurry or off-center. Do you find you two find yourselves secretly hoping someone behaving badly like that is Canadian? We do. We see something like that and immediately give each other the look and in our heads we are chanting "please be Canadian. Please be Canadian. Please be Canadian." But of course they aren't.....except once.

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  3. Nothing worse than (most) Americans abroad!!!

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