Banana Bending

My week on the catamaran complete, I disembarked back in Airlie Beach and the Club Crocodile Resort. That week cost me a veneer, a bit of pride, and the further understanding of and respect for the dangers of diving.

I flew up to Cairns, where I became far more distracted. Unlike the week before, there was a lot to do and see, with little planning done on my part as to what I might do. I was just banana bending (slang for having nothing better to do than laze around and bend bananas; don’t believe me, look it up).

My accommodations were great. The Cairns Colonial Club Resort was definitely posh, certainly far more opulent than a hostel. It has a central pool, swim up bars, small cafes and clubs tucked away throughout, everything that someone accustomed to resorts in the Caribbean would expect, but nestled in the centre of the city, close to the piers, the travel agencies, and the Esplanade and the Cairns Square. There were a number of fine restaurants, tiki torches, the rooms laid out like cabins in a maze. I got lost in there once, walking around and around for about 45 minutes trying to find my room. That only happened once. I made a point of memorizing its layout after that. All in all, it was a great place to hang my hat for a week. What more could anyone ask for?

A companion.

Travelling alone has its costs, loneliness being one of them. I’ve never had difficulty meeting people while on vacation, but all that probing for day pals can be tiring, especially after having spent a week on a 60-foot catamaran with the same six people, three of them crew. That week almost didn’t happen. The boat almost didn’t leave, citing a lack of paying passengers, but the travel agency in San Rafael, California I had dealt with, and would deal with again, had insisted they take us out, cajoling and ultimately threatening the boat owners with a future boycott were they not to do what they’d been contracted to do, full boat or not. It did. They honoured their bookings, despite having presumably done so at a loss. I guess you sometimes have to take a loss to maintain goodwill. So small a group made for an intimate group, with little to no separation between crew and customer. I missed that in Cairns.
Cairns was a blur of possibility. Trips to the outback. Day trips to the reef aboard high-speed catamarans, taking 30 minutes or so to reach the inner reef, compared with our sedate hours to reach the outer reef the week before. Four hours isn’t that long when one spends it unconscious, sleeping off sea sickness and jetlag.

I found myself shopping, browsing more accurately. I did buy some t-shirts and souvenirs, but not a lot as I’d have to cart it back with me. I looked into day trips, but found most trips out into the outback were for a week or more. You’d think it was a big place or something. I was paying top dollar to stay at the resort in Cairns, so sadly, the outback was out.

That left the sea. I looked into day trips to the reef. I couldn’t see how it could possibly top what I’d just experienced, but I didn’t just want to spend a week drinking in Australia. I could have done that at home.

I did club it for a time. I met a lot of backpackers. I also discovered that despite my having met Australians working in Timmins, and despite their reputation for being world travelers, many of whom end up in Whistler, working as ski bums to help finance their stay, most Australians prefer to travel almost exclusively in Australia. They certainly have the room for it. They have a temperate south, and vast metropolises thereabouts, but they also have a tropical coast to the north, a reef the world envies, replete with innumerable archipelagos. So, most backpackers I stumbled across were Australians.
With one notable exception. I found myself escaping the midday heat of the Esplanade with a Scot. I found his accent thick and indecipherable at first. Oddly, a couple beers cleared that right up.

We chatted. He showed me his TD bankbook, explaining how he hid his money in Canada for tax reasons. I grew tired of trying to suss out his words amid such a bray, so I suggested a game of pool. He accepted. We had the table to ourselves for a while. Then a group of Aussies arrived, and asked if they could play, too. We accepted. They employed some rather dodgy rules. The Scot and I conferred. We compared the rules I knew to the rules he knew and found them largely in step with one another. Not so the Aussies’ rules. We asked if there were bar rules posted, but there weren’t. And we were unwilling to get in a scrap for the sake of a pool table when we were clearly outnumbered.

We left. We hopped a few bars.

At least until I was told by an Aussie we met in one that I should lay off the beer, once he discovered that I had booked a dive the next day. I’d had too much already, he said. I disagreed, at first. It was likely only a shallow dive, not terribly technical. They took bookings off the street, after all. “Real” divers booked actual dive vacations with travel agencies who specialized in that sort of thing. I certainly did.

I found I’d had enough when the sun plunged down to the horizon, painting the unseen outback as red as it had the Cairns shallow skyline.

I cabbed back to my resort, ate a late supper, settling on water over wine.

The next morning, I rose. I was a little worse for wear from the night before, but I didn’t think that I was so hung-over as to be risking life and limb on the dive.

A shuttle picked me up, I boarded the high-speed catamaran, and found myself among clusters of happy little cliques with little interest in the fairly experienced diver among them. We flew from cap to cap, landing hard. I wrenched my shoulder, putting an end to more daytrips for the remainder of my time Down Under. There was little enough time to do much more by that point, anyways.

How was the dive. Not bad. Not great. The reef was as grey and as dead as that first one I’d ever dove in Jamaica. Innumerable touchy, feely tourists had left their mark over time. The divers were novice at best. They fought the current, gripped the coral to stabilize themselves, killing each polyp they brushed up against.

I was a good boy my last evening, I stayed within the confines of the resort, trying to gain what feeble tan I could muster in too short a time. I failed and became resigned to the fact that I’d return to Timmins almost as white as I’d left and destined to having to explain to seasoned sun worshippers how I could travel to the tropics and not come back with a tan.

My final evening at the resort, my eyes were drawn to a group of like aged young adults sitting across from me. They were a loud cluster of twenty-somethings, their faces as rosy as the sunset I’d just watched, laughing, smiling at one another, clearly enjoying each other’s company. I watched them, trying not to appear that creepy guy across the bar. What I hoped was that they would notice this solitary creature at the next table, one of like age amid so many middle-aged sun seekers, and take pity on me, bringing me into their fold.

They didn’t. I didn’t expect them to.

I asked the bartender who they were. She told me they were a Contiki tour. I had no idea what a Contiki tour was. She enlightened me. Contiki tours catered to tourists under 35. I filed that information away for later use.

The Bends

I spent a week on that 60-foot live-aboard dive-boat, 100 kilometres off the coast, hopping from reef to reef. This was not a tanning vacation. There is little Uv penetrating the ocean, certainly not 30 to 100 feet below the surface where everything takes on an eerie shade of dusky blue. One does not tan through neoprene, either. This was not a drinking vacation, either. Drinking and diving don’t mix, unless you’re a fan of the bends. I did indulge in a single beer every night after dinner, reclined on a couch, Thomas Pynchon’s Vineland nestled in my lap. Bed came early. It’s exceedingly black out there on the ocean, so far away from our garish neon and incandescence. It’s peaceful. Its therapeutic. It’s exhausting and dangerous.

We’d rise early, breakfast, and dive before weighing anchor. We’d then cruise to the next reef, where we’d dive midmorning, after lunch, and before dinner. There was usually a dive after dinner as the sun set, ideal for watching the changing of the guard. Day trippers scurried for cover and the night owls emerged from their dens, and the reef took on a new look. Colours were different at night, too, obviously. Our lamps led the way, displaying the true spectrum, unsullied by depth.

You’ve never dove? Colour bleeds out at depth. The colours you do see are altered by what spectrum penetrates to wherever you happen to be hanging. Lower energy waves are absorbed first, so, red disappears first at about 20 feet. Orange disappears next at around 50 feet. Then yellow at about 100. Green stays longer and blue the longest, which is why things look bluer the deeper you go. As long as the water is clear, that is. In murky water there is less light penetration and things tend to look greenish-yellow. That’s not hard and fast, either. Bioluminescence muddies the rules. So does fluorescence.
At 60 feet, red becomes black. Orange now looks drab and almost an olive-green. Yellow holds fairly true, but green is now looking closer to yellow. Blue and indigo are OK, but violet contrasts with black about as well as red. Everything shifts up in the spectrum the deeper you descend, until everything is blue, and then black.

I learned this from the photographers. Vast flashes were attached to their cameras. Even so, distance is the same as depth, so they’d swim up as close as possible, mindful of spooking their prey, mindful of angles, art, and perspective. They took great shots, but I realized that there was a trade-off; to be in the zone meant not being in the moment. Focus was gained at the cost of the panoramic. Clarity banished wonder.

How long was each dive? That depends. The answer is a slippery slope, at best. Depth cost dive time. The deeper one descended, the more volume was required to equalize. So, a dive at 30 feet could be as long as an hour, a dive at 100 feet could last as little as 10 minutes. Depends on your breathing. Gaspers don’t last as long as sippers. I was a sipper. I never inhaled while ascending. As one ascends, one needs to exhale, lest one explode. The pressure on the lungs decrease, the air within expands, and the unused air in one’s lungs remains rich in oxygen. Breathing in becomes unnecessary, exhaling on the other hand, essential. Too much depth, too many minutes dove, and one’s dive tables, one’s dive computer, limited one’s time, or extended one’s decompression stops. And if one ignored those tables and those decompression stops, one invited waivers and steel beach.

What’s steel beach? It’s a decompression day. One needs time to purge nitrogen from one’s blood and bones, lest one become intimate with the bends, not to be mistaken with Radiohead. I recommend Radiohead, not decompression sickness, unless you’re a fan of joint pain, paralysis, and death.
I was not. But I wasn’t a model diver, either.

A sipper, I spent a lot of time at depth. My deco stops tended to be longer. It’s dull just hanging there, watching the timer tick down.

One day, mid-week, I hit the water. I piked, and plunged like a stone, and when I reached bottom, my dive computer was already blinking, warning me that I required 30 minutes of decompression at 30 feet before surfacing. The longer I remained, the longer that deco stop was sure to be. But as I was deciding what to do, a reckless decision in itself, a school of barracuda rose up from the cliff wall that fell off into eternity. There had to be a hundred of them. Their silver flanks flashed in the intense sunlight that descended to that 80-foot depth I floated weightlessly on, the light undulating in their multitudes. I had to get closer. I had to see each of these wonders gliding past. So, I let the current carry me closer. I burped a little air, and I slipped down another 10 feet. Five minutes later, they faded into the distance.
I lifted my dive computer. I had about 8 minutes of air left at that depth, and about an hour and a half of deco stop. Not particularly good math.

I waved down my partner, pointed at my gauges, and indicated that I was rising. I inhaled deeply and began to rise. And as I rose I began to exhale. I spoke a light and slow “ahhhhh,” just enough to purge the ever-expanding air in my chest cavity. That slow “ahhhhh” would allow me to rise up the next 60 feet without ever needing to inhale again, saving air for my decompression.

But when I reached 60 feet, I realized that I didn’t have enough air for the two stops I needed. I continued rising, my exhaled bubbled rising marginally fast than me. At 30 feet, I had 30 minutes of air left, and a need of 60 minutes to decompress. I waited. With 5 minutes of air remaining, I rose to the surface, breaking the top with 1 minute remaining. My computer rebelled. It flashed. It told me that I was not done with decompression yet. And when I broke the surface, it froze, and would not release any information except a countdown, the time required to purge all the nitrogen from my system. I could not dive again until I was clean.

That would be in 24 hours. Until then, I was stuck on the boat, forbidden to dive for my own safety.
Steel Beach.

That evening, the sunlight waning to a rich golden hue, I settled in to supper. I bit down on whatever soft morsel I was eating. And my tooth exploded. Not my actual tooth. The veneer that covered it.
I heard a high pitch squeak of air, and a pop, and the porcelain cap was in pieces in my mouth.

A little pressurized air had made its way behind my tooth when I was diving. It was still trapped there when I broke surface. And it blew apart my veneer when a little pressure was applied.

Now imagine your joints were that tooth, the pressure trapped in there.

The Bends.

Down Under

I had every intention of continuing to travel in the Caribbean. It was close. It was affordable. But I’d also become a scuba diver and I wanted bragging rights. I wanted cool stamps for my dive log. Grand Cayman was supposed to be the crème of the crop of diving in the Caribbean, so I had my heart set on it. There was also Belize, Cozumel, and a whole host of other fantastic places to dive, but for whatever reason, I’d become fixated on Grand Cayman. Until I was informed how much it would cost me to go there. There was no single supplement in Grand Cayman. You know what single supplement is, don’t you? It’s where singles have to pay extra for a room that was intended for double occupancy. That might make sense in all-inclusive resorts, but not in a pay as you go resort. At that sort of resort, a room is just a room, so a single supplement is just a cash grab. And in Grand Cayman I was expected to fully pay double the cost for not being married or travelling with another.

“I could probably go to Australia for that,” I said at the travel agency, remembering how that New York backpacker had told me that I needed to get off the reservation.

“Let’s see,” she said.

She crunched some numbers. Long story short, I could go to Grand Cayman for one week for $10,000, or I could go to Australia for three weeks for $7,000, most of that being my flights. Sold! I opted for Australia. I was giddy with excitement. The Great Barrier Reef! I’d be the envy of everyone I knew.
The flights were long, longer than I’d ever had up till then. Ten and a half hours to Honolulu, landing there at about 1 am. I didn’t sleep. I tried to, but rest was illusive. I was far too excited by this adventure to relax. I read. I closed my eyes. I ate. But I didn’t sleep. I disembarked into a sweltering open air terminal. The Leafs were playing. That surprised me. Then I considered the time zones. Exhausted, but having to remain awake, I grabbed a beer and settled in until my next flight was called. Another ten hours to Sydney. I slept on that flight. I couldn’t stay awake. Four hours to Brisbane. One and a half hours to Proserpine. With layovers in each and every terminal.

Needless to say, I was a little jetlagged when I arrived in Proserpine. I booked into my hotel, a place called the Club Crocodile Resort in Arlie Beach, and was able to stay awake until about 9ish, before crashing for about ten hours. I barely remember it. There was a central pool, a cabana bar alongside it. I showered and shaved as soon as my door was closed and my case hit the bed. I needed it. I stunk to high heaven. I ate. I had two beers at the bar before an overwhelming fatigue swept over me.

I was picked up the next morning. It was hot by all reckoning by 8 am when the shuttle collected me. The driver talked my ears off, wanting to know all about tornados, like I knew anything about them. I tried to tell him that I’d never actually seen one, that I might have experienced one once, but I was hidden behind a building and had only seen the wind shear along the ground, but he persisted, so when he asked me how fast the wind was in one, I made up a number, saying the wind inside a tornado was 700 km/hr, a number that both awed him and satisfied him. I boarded the 60-foot catamaran, found my stateroom in the starboard nacelle, and settled into the common room for induction as we sailed out to the reef, an ordeal of about four hours. I watched the horizon pitch in and out of sight through the porthole, growing more nauseous by the minute. Induction complete, I stumbled out on deck to Captain Dave’s, “You must stop drinking!” It’s an old joke, common on dive boats. Land lubbers have heard it time and again. It’s all in good fun. I hadn’t touched a drop for over twelve hours.

It was too much. I was exhausted, growing sea sick with jetlag, so I begged forgiveness, saying I was going to bunk down for a few minutes.

I made it as far as my stateroom, opting to hug the head for a few minutes, deciding that my breakfast was not to my liking after all. Once I’d expelled by diaphragm into the bowl, I collapsed on my bunk, exhausted, in pain, my head awhirl. I was too sick to climb under the covers, so I fished out a towel and threw it over me. Darkness descended.

I came to about two hours later, weak, but thinking I could stand some fresh air. I rose from my bunk, climbed the gangway to the common room, and came face to face with a platter of prawns. They were a roasted red. Their beady little eyes stared me down. They smelled as you’d expect, like I was going to puke again. I made it back down the ladder and into my head again, without a moment to spare.

Two hours later, I was awakened again. We’d stopped. The boat rolled gently. Water lapped against my hull. I climbed to the deck again. I staggered back out into the sunshine. No one teased me this time. Seasickness is a serious thing when you’re about to spend the next week away from sight of land.
The crew were fussing with gear. The dive master, a burly Aussie named Gordo, looked me up and down and said, “Hey Dave, up for a dive?”

“Fuck no,” I said, the prospect raising my gourd again.

“Seriously, mate,” Gordo said, “you’ll feel better when you hit the water.”

I shook my head, no.

So, Gordo picked me up and threw me into the sea, shorts, shirt and all.

I hit the water flailing, and almost managed to keep the brine from my mouth.

But you know, Gordo was right. Once I was in the water, I felt perfectly fine. The crew fed me ginger pills for the next few days to calm my innards, but I gained my sea legs in no time.

“C’mon up,” Gordo called down to me, gesturing for me to swim back once I righted myself and was trading water. “Hurry up,” he said, “we got to get you suited up and weighted down. We dive in 5 minutes.”

A Touch of Envy

The Casey’s crowd took an annual trip to Buffalo to watch the Bills play. Why the Bills? Proximity I suppose; that and Brian Reid was a Bills fan.

I never went. Not once. I really wasn’t a football fan, not really. I watched the CFL sporadically, more often later than then, but that didn’t stop me from wanting to go. It looked like fun, taking a road trip with a bunch of guys I knew. I thought it might open up my social circle, make me more friends, and get me out of my weekly rut. I just didn’t have the holidays to spare in those days. It took years to accrue four weeks holidays at Kidd. It still does for P&M (Production and Maintenance). I’m not certain when they began to go. I became aware of them later on, and by that time I’d begun investing in a two-week international adventure and a Stratford road trip, usually with a stop in Toronto to watch the Jays.

I’d mentioned that I only had one week’s holidays my first year at Kidd. I had two weeks in my second and third years, three weeks in my fourth and fifth. It wasn’t until 1994 that I finally had four weeks, and that was the year I really began to travel. Prior to that, I was rather limited to what I would, could, do.

I really couldn’t tell you what I did with my holidays in those early years of employment. Not much. Garry was still in town, doing his accounting placement at Ross Pope, deciding he didn’t actually want to be an accountant. Henri was in town, working for the city, then Aquarius Mines. Neil was in town holidays, summers, and for a time after dropping out of university. I spent time hanging out with them. I spent time trying to convince my friends to go somewhere with me, something they never did for a number of reasons. Long story short, I didn’t do much. I hung out. I spent weekends at Casey’s and Dirty Dave’s, and then Mendez’.

Because of that, I had few markers to chart my progression through those melancholy years. They got all mixed up and jumbled together in my mind, taking some thought after all these years to disentangle. Further research resolved some of these, requiring corrections to my timeline. That’s nothing new. If you recall, I’ve had to do this before. You wouldn’t have known had I carried on, but I would, and I’d have felt bad about it, so here’s what I did do to set things straight:

1989: I began work

1990: I bought my first car, the Pontiac Sunbird

1990: Blue Jays with Henri

1991: Sudbury and the Watchmen

1994: Jamaica

1995: Jamaica 2

1996: Caribbean Cruise (with Henri and Sylvie) mid-winter; and my first Stratford trip, “Waiting for Godot” and “Sweet Bird of Youth.”

After that, I began hearing about the Buffalo trip.

I watched Mike Reid post a sheet to the bar. When I asked him about it, he told me that he and Brian were organizing an autumn football trip. The fee was included. Not being much of an NFL fan, and not having any holidays left for the year, I put it out of my mind.

It was only after they returned and I heard their stories that I wished that I’d gone. It sounded like fun. Mike and Brian had gone, obviously, their having organized it. Dave Payne and Pete Cassidy, too. Peter Vernick, among others. But in some ways, I was also glad I hadn’t. The drinking began as they climbed into the bus, continuing until they stepped back off in Timmins. I don’t think they actually remembered the game. I’m certain they didn’t. They’d drank way too much to remember anything. What they did remember was the comradery. I was jealous of that.

Their tickets were crap those first years, usually nose-bleeds in line with the visitors’ end zone. They’d begun to plan too late for good ones. But as the trip became an annual event, a time-honoured tradition, the week was set aside by all as a given, they booked earlier and gained better and better tickets. They added Leafs games later, too. It was an event, not to be missed by those dedicated attendees.

“You’ve got to go,” some said.

So, one year I watched the game they were set to see. Bills and the 49ers. Being the bookish sort, I grabbed a book and a pot of tea and settled in front of the set.

They returned with stories of how great the game was. The Greatest Ever, in fact. I begged to differ.

“How drunk were you?” I asked.

They shrugged that off. That didn’t matter, they said. It was a GREAT game, they said.
“It wasn’t that great a game,” I said. “I made a point of watching.”

They reminded me that I wasn’t much of a football fan. True enough.

But I reminded that that I had watched quite a few games while at Casey’s. I’d listened to their opinions and their comments, so, I did know the game. I did know the rules. Most of them, anyways. And I had watched the game. Sober. So, I began to describe it to them.

At the half, the score was 3-0, 49ers. There was a lot of stoppage. That in itself caused the game to drag. In fact, there were so many flags in the first half that when all the penalties were added to the forward yards gained, the 49ers had advanced 3 yards cumulative, the Bills had lost 4.

I fell asleep in the second half.

If that were my introduction to the NFL, I’d have never watched again.

Actually, I haven’t. Not really.

Cruising

1996 was a big year. It was the first year I went to Stratford, that alone would have made it noteworthy, but before that, it was the year I went on my first cruise. It would also be my last cruise in decades. That is not to say that it was a bad experience or a bad holiday, because it wasn’t; it just wasn’t what I wanted at the time. A cruise was just a floating resort, I’d learn, and I’d had my fill of resorts after peeking behind the curtain and seeing what backpacking could offer.

Henri asked me in late ‘95 if I wanted to go. He told me that he and Sylvie wanted to get away now that Eric (their firstborn) was old enough to not require Sylvie’s full attention. After all those years I’d spent trying to get him and others to go on a trip with me, I could hardly say no. If anything, I was thrilled at the prospect of travelling with friends. He told me later that his sister Cecile had expressed an interest and would be coming along, as well. The more the merrier. I’d learned that travelling alone can be a lonely affair at times.

I’d never been on a ship before; indeed, I’d never even seen one up close either, so in my humble opinion at the time, the Seawind Crown (I think that’s what its name was) was enormous. It wasn’t. It was actually quite small compared to the ships being built at the time. When Henri told me that it was older and smaller, I was actually pleased we weren’t on one of those larger boats. I expected the passengers on a smaller ship to be friendlier than those on a larger one. We’d meet more people, I thought.

I was wrong on that count; there were well over a thousand passengers on board, and as the ship was “small,” dinner was set in two seatings. We’d opted for the second seating on the advice of our travel agent on the pretense that we would not be in a rush to get ready for dinner after shore excursions. That sounded like sound advice. It was, and it wasn’t. Our later dinner was served while the shows were being performed, so we didn’t see any of them.

I thought we’d meet people after the shows. I was wrong on that count, too. The Seawind Crown became a ghost ship after the shows were done, and Henri and Sylvie went to bed early, far earlier than I did. I suppose the casino was hopping until all hours, but I was not a gambler, and all the whoops and bells and jangling of the slot machines drove me out of my mind, so I stayed clear. I did haunt the other bars looking for people, the nightclub, the disco, the piano bar, the forward and aft lounges, but there was almost nobody in them. I’d wander in, see a table or two in attendance, and within the hour, they’d throw back their nightcaps and tootled off to bed.

I began to observe the other passengers day and night to discover who was actually on that boat with us and decode their habits. Most aboard were newlyweds and octogenarians. They both went to bed early for reasons I need not explain. There was at least one extended family, Italian, their parents looking more harried and exhausted as the week wore on. But there were few singles that I could see. There was the staff, but the staff were under strict instructions not to fraternize with the guests. I did get to know the bartenders. And they got to know me by name.

But those girls I did see were young, too young. Or Italian and there was a language barrier. But hope abounds. I’d had a couple holiday romances and was hoping for a third.

Alas, I found myself wandering the halls by myself late at night, the self-described ghost of the Seawind Crown. It was quiet. It was eerie at times how quiet it could be.

Henri was gracious enough to give me a wake-up call each morning at 7 am. Henri and Sylvie were always up early, they were still on baby time, hence their early to bed, early to rise schedule while on board. If not for him, I’m sure I’d have missed a few excursions. There weren’t many, not that I was interested in, but Henri and I signed up for all the scuba diving available. We were new divers and wanted stamps for our dive logs.

The diving was good. The diving was great. In Curacao, we dove with stingrays. I’d say we dove with sharks too, but that wasn’t entirely true. That first dive site was a walled in cove, the animals and fish trapped within. In a way it wasn’t a real dive. It was a zoo. As for the sharks, there was a glass barrier between us and them. We’d feed them through holes, careful to keep our digits away from their teeth.
Dominica was far better, the best of the trip, in fact. We dove a champagne reef, sulphurous bubbles rising us from the flat rocky seabed and curling around us. I pass a hand over one of the vents. The water was hot enough to cook my fingers were I to linger there for even a minute.

We didn’t dive while in Guadeloupe. There was little time there to do much more than step off the ship and visit the farmers market. Guadeloupe was expensive. It was dirty. The streets had ditches deeper than any I’d ever seen, mostly filled with detritus from the jungle, washed down with the last rains.
Barbados was good too, if uneventful. Getting there wasn’t. We had to leave the Caribbean shelf behind, entering the Atlantic in earnest. That evening, we watched as the crew placed airsick bags everywhere. The ship began to pitch. The ship began to roll. Passengers weebled and wobbled, a few fell down. Seasickness grew to epidemic proportions within a few hours. When Henri and I came down for dinner, there were only six other passengers in attendance. Sylvie was deathly sick, so Henri stayed out later than usual. It’s boring watching someone else sleep, after all. We cast about, taking a tour of the ghost ship by night. We even rounded the promenade, at least until we nearly pitched overboard; after that we promenaded indoors. I was rocked to sleep while listening to and feeling the ship shudder with each wave was straddled and crashed through.

We dove another flat reef in Barbados, carried along by a swift current. We couldn’t stop to get a good look at something, even had we wished to. They dropped us off on one side of the reef and picked us up by runabouts when we surfaced after spotting the “end” posts. I’m not complaining. The water was delightfully warm and clear. The day was gorgeous, not a cloud in the sky. I spent my afternoon browsing the curios shops and street venders, buying some beads after haggling atrociously.

I did meet a few day-timers at the aft lounge of the ship, where I spent my steel beach days. One was a judge, and he and I spent more than a few hours sitting about chatting. There were others in that little group, those of us who weren’t chasing the bragging rights of a tan.

But every day I’d share a beer at about 4 pm with the same gentleman. He was working class like me, I imagined. He spoke in the same gruff manner I’d grown accustomed to underground. He was abundantly tattooed, had two sleeves, from collarbone to wrist, a belly and back full of them, too.
One day I asked about them. He said it was something that he and his pals did.

I read the script scrolling around one, a pair of dice. “Pair of Dice,” I read aloud, not reading it properly through his tan and mass of hair that all but obliterated all of his tats.

“Para-dice Riders,” he corrected me.

“What’s that?” I asked.

“It’s my club,” he said. “It’s a motorcycle club.”

Henri just about choked when I told him about it a little while later, after the tattooed gentleman had left with his friends to dress for their first seating.

How was I supposed to know he was part of a criminal biker gang?

I’ve never been into True Crime.

Mining Games, Part 3, The Co-ed Edition

We didn’t have students in Backfill until Kidd began hiring girls specifically to work underground. The boys were reserved for the more manual labour positions, like production crews, where they usually employed at servicemen, and on Oreflow, manning picking belts and the loadout.

Girls weren’t considered strong enough for those positions. Depends on the girl. Some boys weren’t strong enough for those positions.

I was instructed by my shifter, Norm Bernier, when I was still a student, to train another student for another crew. I had my doubts he’d be able to do the job when I saw him. He was small. He had little definition. But, it was a simple enough job. All he had to do was keep the place clean and blow the chutes clean when they built up with muck. I gave him the guided tour of the transfer house and the belts he’d have to care for. We did our pre-check, called the hoistman to give him the all clear, and set to wait. The chute began to choke off, so I stopped the belt and showed him how to blow the chute clean using a blowpipe, giving him hints on how to hold on to it, how to let the pipe do the work. When I was finished, I reset the pull-cord, and we waited for the next plug. I told him to clean the chute, “just like I did.”

He stepped up to the platform, opened the door, and pointed the pipe at the muck. When he turned on the valve, the pressure lifted him off his feet and off the platform. I leapt up behind him, took hold of the pipe and set him back on his feet. I turned the valve off. I tried to show him again, and this time standing directly behind him instructed him to try again. The pressure lifted him off the platform regardless whether he turned the valve on quickly or not. He was too light and not nearly strong enough to control the blowpipe. I had to tell the kid to go sit in the booth and called my shifter on another phone.

“He can’t do the job,” I told him, explaining why. Norm collected the boy and that was the last time I saw him. He was given a job in the yard, mowing the lawn, picking up litter. It was a job better suited for him. Had he been settled on the other crew he’d have been seriously hurt.

So, when girls were assigned to underground crews, they were handed off to Backfill, as if that were an easier job. It wasn’t that easy. There were those same high-pressure blowpipes, high pressure water hoses, and hours of manual labour like shovelling to do.

Karen Chieu joined our crew. She was an engineering student, and although not as strong as a boy, she was capable. And eager to pull her wait. We were of a similar age, the closest I’d ever be in age to a student ever again. And she was cute. If you’ve been keeping up with these missives you may have noticed that I was inclined towards Asian girls. But she was my partner and I thought it a dereliction of decorum to make a pass at her. Besides, she had a boyfriend named Andy, also working in Timmins, if not at Kidd. And I was a little older, my hair thinning. I thought it unlikely that she’d be interested, so I kept my crush to myself. That said, I had a suspicion that over the course of the summer she may have developed feelings for me. Maybe that’s just vanity, but I believe she made a few moves that I only became aware of after the fact. She’d sit close, once with our thighs touching. I harboured fantasies. I didn’t act on them. Maybe I should have. I did ask her out for a beer at the end of afternoon shift once. I thought she might be interested, but I’d met her boyfriend by then, and she declined, saying she ought to get home. I let it slide after that, never presuming to make moves again.

She called me once. Their car had broken down and they were due to leave to a weekend rock festival down south. I was groggy. I’d been awakened from a deep sleep. I told her no, she couldn’t use my car for a road trip I’d have loved to be on (although I didn’t put it that way). I told her that her boyfriend would have to rent one. I apologized, but when I told her I was going back to sleep (I’d just finished my last nightshift, a shift she’d not taken, as they ought to have been on the road all night to get to the festival that morning) she took the hint. That was her one and only summer in Timmins. I’ve no idea what became of her. She most likely married Andy.

The next couple years our student was Mia Sweet. The first summer she worked with Jim Imhoff; I rarely saw her. She did not take to me, nor me to her. But the next year she WAS paired with me. My stomach dropped. I had to work with her? Jesus, I thought, we hate each other. I was premature. Tension was high our first shift together, but I told her to take the booth, and I’d work in the field, explaining that were anything to go wrong, I’d have to walk in to fix it anyway. She was a little surprised at that. She had been the one in the field when she worked with Jim. I told her it wasn’t that hard, and sat with her for a few minutes, writing out the pertinent numbers she’d need, and the step by step instructions on what to do. I also told her that I was on the other end of the pager line if she needed me. In time the animosity cooled, then faded, then disappeared altogether. In time, we were amicable, maybe even friends, but our acquaintance was too short for anything lasting.

Mia was a fast learner. She was also a pretty girl. Half the crew had a crush on her, so much so that one day our shifter, Fern Carriere, found another of our crew who was supposedly working four levels away in the booth with her, and another who also ought to have been working on the phone with her. Fern was furious! He’d been trying to get in touch with us for over an hour. Fern stormed in to give me shit too after laying into the other parties before walking in to where I was.

He began. “Why aren’t you controlling what’s going on in the booth?”

I was perplexed. “What the fuck are you talking about?” I asked him.

He explained what he’d just walked in on.

“You explain to me how I’m supposed to know what’s going on over there when I’m out here?” I asked. It was my turn to get mad, “Are you going to run a camera out here so I can keep tabs on her? And do you think I can control those dogs when they smell a bitch in heat?”

He cooled down.

“It’s not my fault they all want to get in her pants. Jesus,” I said, “half the goddamned Mine drives to wherever she is to sniff her up! It’s up to her to hose them down!”

Fern never bitched to me about Mia again.

The Sunset Cafes

Scratch the surface of Negril and you’ll find debauchery as lewd as any that you’ll find in Hedonism. Hedonism is just a little more up front about it.

I suppose if you scratch the surface anywhere you might be surprised at what you might find.
I scratched the surface. It was just a scratch, and by its very nature, not very deep.

The New Yorkers were more forward than I took them credit for when I brought them to the sunset cafes. Not all were Americans, either. One was German, and Germans are far more forward than North Americans. No sooner than we arrived, he was off like a shot without us, looking for a Jamaican woman to bed. We knew what he was about. He made no bones it. He said he “wanted to try some dark meat,” even before we piled into the cab. The New Yorkers asked me if he was safe on his own. I suppose they hadn’t spent much time off the reservation, either. I shrugged. How should I know? I thought. I was alone on the strip and nothing happened to me, but I didn’t go searching for extracurricular comfort, either. They wondered if we should stick by him, to keep an eye on him.

“Suit yourself,” I said, noting that he was already lost to sight.

They were concerned, so I suggested we trawl the bars in the direction he was headed. There was good music coming from that direction, and one direction was as good as another, as far as I was concerned. Two birds, and all that.

The ska band the night before was not in residence. In their place, a hip-hop disk jockey spun his disks, accompanied by a rapper. I’ve never been a rap fan, so I was eager to be on to the next spot. The next one was a reggae affair. The place was packed, our German not to be seen. We did meet one of the resort staff there and struck up a conversation with him when he approached us. They asked him if he’d seen our German. He had not. He asked us if we liked sports, boxing specifically. I said I knew a little, not much. That was enough of an invitation for him to tell us that he was a boxer, a good one too. Sure, I thought, you can be a boxer if you’d like. He was a nice guy, and it was irrelevant what I thought. But I must say, he looked the part, without his shapeless shift covering him. Then he told us about his Olympic experience. He told us how he went pro afterwards. That perked me up. An Olympian? A pro boxer? Working at a tourist resort?

“If you’re a professional boxer,” I asked, “what the hell are you doing working at a resort?”

“Ya got to make ends meet, man” he said.

“I hear that.” I asked him how he liked it. He shrugged, and said, “A job’s a job.” I heard that, too.
He asked me if I’d buy him some Ting. It’s a Jamaican carbonated grapefruit drink. It was cheap, so I thought, what the hell? He stuck by us, talking about Jamaica, boxing, women, how rough the bars could be, asking us/me about our homes, where we lived, what we did, and asking how much it cost to live there.

Someone approached to sell us some weed. I waved him off, but the fellow was insistent. I walked away a few steps but he followed me. He reached out and gripped me by the arm to restrain me. Our resort boxer shoved him off me, stood nose to nose with the dealer and beat him back with a little patois.

Our boxer suggested that we leave. Our German wasn’t there, so, as there was nothing keeping us, we took the hint. We found him two bars down in a disco, hours drunk in the minutes since we’d last seen him, with a predatory Jamaican woman on either side of him. I wouldn’t say that either was what I’d call pretty. Shapely, yes; voluptuous, definitely; but pretty, I’d never have accused them of that. He called us over and introduced us to his “girls.” He was so hammered it took some work to decipher what he was saying. The volume didn’t help. His now thickened accent didn’t help, either. He eventually asked one of the New York set to negotiate payment for his needs. The New Yorker did. Those negotiations took some time. It’s not like he was a pro at that sort of thing. How much for this? How much for that? How much for both? Together? One after another? What about by the hour? He didn’t look happy about doing it.

“Fuck me,” he said, afterwards. “I felt like a pimp!”

I bought him a Red Cap and told him to put the whole seedy experience behind him. “At least you know what everything costs now,” I said, clinking bottles with him.

“Do you think he’ll be alright?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” I said. “His choice.”

Our boxer approached me a little later on, introducing me to a woman he knew. He told me that he’d gone to school with her. He told me he was in love with her. He also told me that she was a prostitute. He asked me for 20 American dollars so that he could have her for the night.

It takes a Jamaican a long time to save up twenty bucks, he explained, all but pleading with me.
I handed him the twenty.

I never once wanted for anything at the resort while he was on shift.

Off The Reservation

I was still recovering from the flu when I arrived in Negril. I was weak and still a little unsteady on my feet, but by the time I arrived in Negril, I was up for more than sleeping in a lounge chair.

The Coral Beach resort was smaller, cozier, owned by a Jamaican doctor and not an American corporation. That was much of its appeal. And both Trelawny and Negril were family resorts, unlike Hedonism. There were kids of all ages about, so people were much better behaved. A naked swinger humped Becky’s leg once at Hedonism. I don’t care how sex-positive you are, that was rude, disrespectful, and a little creepy.

That said, there were a lot of Europeans about. The woman went topless. That was distracting at first, but by the next day I was taking it all in due course.

There were a lot of Americans, too.

There was one very important American. She was a New Yorker. She was pretty. She was about my age. When we spied one another we took to chatting. Before long she’d meet me at the beach bar after 3 pm, and then again in the waning hours of the night. She disappeared between those times, returning giddy and drunk each night. I wondered where the hell she’d gone. The resort was quiet. The bar I was seated at was the only distraction after the nightly show had packed it in for the night. So where the hell did she go? I asked her. She talked about the sunset strip and all the parties that carried on there. She asked me if I’d like to go. I said sure, but when the time came, she and her friend were already gone. When she returned, even more drunk than I was, I’d already gone to bed. We flirted by day, and had she been sober, things might have followed their natural course; but I was sober by day and she was not, and I didn’t feel right about doing anything while she was in such a state.

Before long, she was gone and later that same day, I met another New Yorker. She was a backpacker. She’d just spent a month tramping around the islands, ending in Jamaica where she wanted to bask in a little luxury after hostels and budgetary restraint. She and I noticed one another straight off. We too were of a like age, and single, surrounded by an abundance of families and retirees. I asked her to lunch, but didn’t see her after that. She’d donned her daypack and was off to see Negril. I envied her daring do. I looked for her for dinner, but if she was there, I didn’t see her. I did see her at two in the morning. She sat by me at the bar, made small talk for a bit, and convinced me that I ought to be off to bed.

The next day I asked her to have dinner with me. She accepted.

Midway through the meal, she said, “You must be so fucking bored.”

I said, “Why would you say that?”

“Because you’re not an alcoholic,” she said, “and you were totally hammered last night.”

“That’s encouraging,” I said.

She explained: I was sober by day. I did not smell like an alcoholic. I was easily convinced to lay off the booze and go to bed. And she said that I remembered the night before. Therefore I could not be an alcoholic.

Having known plenty of alcoholics in my time, I could see the holes in her logic, but I was eager to see where she was going with all this.

“You need to get off the reservation,” she said.

“The reservation?”

“The resort. This is just a fairy tale that feeds you food by day and booze by the gallon. The entertainment is freeze-dried and as boring as fuck.”

“And what do you propose I do?” I asked.

“You’re coming with me,” she said.

“Where are we going?”

“The sunset cafes.”

“Been there,” I said.

“Rick’s Café?” she asked.

I nodded, “Among others.”

“Not there,” she said, “the real ones.”

We caught a cab outside the resort. She haggled the price with the driver like a pro. I think we headed south. We travelled about 5 or 10 minutes, arriving at a car park filled with cabs, the drivers leaning against their cars, heaters glowing about their faces. The lot smelled like tobacco and cannabis. So did the beach when we spilled out onto it. There were people everywhere, Jamaicans, Europeans, North Americans. There were accents folding over one another with each step. I heard Ska to the left, reggae to the right. What do you want to hear, she asked me. Ska, I said. An hour later we were back on the beach, seeking food. We found a little cabana where a woman as wide and she was tall was slaving over a wok. Two, my saviour said, and two baskets of jerk pork were handed over at a ridiculously low price.
We wandered up to a bon fire that blazed high into the starry night.

She kissed a man there. He introduced himself. He was from Bonn.

“You know how to get back?” she asked. I stammered a little so she coached me. “Remember that Ska bar? Up that path beside it is the cabs.” She taught me how to haggle for the price. Settle it before you get in, she said. She told me what to pay. “No more,” she warned. “If he asks for more, walk away. He’ll drop his price.”

I must have seemed a little unsure of myself, because she said, “You need to navigate this on your own. Walk up and down the beach. There’s lots of clubs and bars and people having fun. You’ll do alright. Have fun. I’ll see you tomorrow.

Ska, reggae, rap. Disk jockeys and dance. I had the time of my life.

She left the next day, and I fell in with a group of New Yorkers. Yes, there were a lot of New Yorkers at that resort. I took them to that same beach that very night.

I’ve never been back to a resort since.

I can’t remember her name. I only knew her for a few days. But she changed the course of my life.

Trelawny

Once I began to travel, I didn’t want to stop. I just didn’t know what I wanted to do, or where to go. So, I went back to Jamaica. I had fun when there, met people, drank too much, stayed out too late, and got up too early, thinking a beach vacation was all about the tan. But I’d found two weeks in one place was too long. Entertainment and activities repeated on a weekly schedule. This time I would go to a different resort the second week, on a different part of the island.

I discussed this with my travel agent and she booked me into two resorts. The first was the Trelawny Beach Resort in Falmouth (the Royalton White Sands now) and another in Negril, a Jamaican owned resort (I think it was the Coral Beach Resort, but names change; it was certainly coral coloured when I was there, the trim painted either pink or blue).

I arrived to the same fanfare as before, Red Caps wrestling me for my luggage. I found my shuttle and was off. Trelawney was just past Falmouth, so the drive there was shorter than it had been to Negril.
Trelawney may have been larger than Hedonism. It was certainly taller, seven stories towering over the central pool its wings reached out to. It was windy, too, the wings funnelling the airflow in and through its central space. Guests were always chasing their towels, wrestling with their shifts and wraps. I watched as a bride flashed the resort when her dress flew up to her chin. She ought to have worn underwear, but she obviously wanted to be a little risqué on her special day. Her tan lines were a dead giveaway. Few people lounged on the beach. Sand coated those who did, the wind blowing in from the north picking it up and blowing it around, their sun-block flypaper to the gains.

I can’t say that I enjoyed myself. I did, but I didn’t. I was ill. I came down with the flu and spent my days freezing by the pool. I passed out on my lounge chair more than once, waking to find myself in a cold sweat, with my beach towel clutched tightly around me. I coughed when I spoke, despite the steady lubrication I inflicted on it.

I lie. I did not lubricate my throat anywhere near as I had the year before. If Hedonism had taught me one thing, it was that people can indulge too much. Becky had to administer to two fools who showed no restraint at all on their first full day. They drank too much over-proof, disdained sunblock, and paid the price. They both sprouted purple patches of second-degree burns and lolled in bed, shivering from their burn, delirious from alcohol poison. It’s quite a sight to see someone’s skin defying gravity, not fall back when pinched. I can’t say I felt any pity for them. They were stupid and their excess cost them their vacation. They spent days rehydrating and peeling off sheets of blistered skin, only to emerge on their final day, their skin blotchy, their legs weak and shaking. Memorable. A cautionary tale.
Their excess made me promise myself that I would not drink before 3 pm. That seemed reasonable. My Irish skin can only take so much sun before it dries out and flakes away, so I’d call it a day then, make my way up to the main bar and took my first Red Cap from the bartender who always had it ready for me when I sat down. Tipping a $20 bill on the first day expedites service in my experience. The bar smelled sickly sweet. Grenadine hovering in the air can do that. It can also attract flies, which were always in attendance.

3 pm seemed a good time to quit baking on the beach and get a seat before the masses poured in. The sun was not as strong by then, its light growing golden in its waning. The wind was cooling by then, too. But that was probably my fever. I’d stay there for an hour or so, chatting with whomever was at hand. Some were eager to see a new face. Some were not, taking their leave of me to join their groups quickly. Those who were sought me out later. Some asked me to join them for dinner. I always did. I was alone, after all.

I did not dive. I was too ill. I didn’t know I had the flu at first, but I suspected. I ought to have gone to my room to sleep it off, but I was youngish (30) and foolish and wanted to eke as much enjoyment out of my vacation as I could muster.

I barely joined in any fun and games. One of the activity directors, a Jamaican woman with jet black skin who I thought rather fetching, used to tease me, calling me “Mister No-Thank-You.” I surprised her later on in the week when I said, “Sure, I’ll do that,” when she asked if I’d like to compete for best tan. I was perking up by then, not energetic by any means, but I was also beginning to get bored of lazing about all day. She’d already begun to pass by, and had to do a double-take when I agreed. She smiled brightly then and told me to follow her. I took third place, rather surprisingly. It was a cloudy week, not continuously sunny by any stretch of the imagination, but I’d managed to brown a bit, nicely bronzed from all those hours sleeping in my lounge chair. There were only six of us, so I was happy to place, especially pleased to have beat out a new arrival who declared that he was using Red Cap as his SPF. He was drunk. He was giddy. He was the crowd favourite, hanging on by the tips of his personality to finish fourth.

Sadly, there was no romance that week, either. Suffering with the flu, I was lucky to remain upright, let alone make an effort at wooing some woman.

I can’t say that Trelawney was a disappointment, but my week there was. The resort was beautiful. The room was a little small, but I was alone, so it was cozy. The view from my balcony was fantastic. The food was great. The bar and activity staffs were friendly. So were many of the guests.
But I was eager to move on by then.

I had high hopes that the second week would be better.

It was.

It was life changing.