Caribbean

When you leave through Piarco International Airport in Trinidad, after you pass through Duty Free and are about to enter the gates, there's an old fashioned roller type advertisement on the top left that tells you the things that you can't bring into the country. When you're leaving. It's a bit late for that, isn't it? Here's a hint: There isn't one that's located where people come in.

And then there's the security to the gates. A swarm of security, numbering no less than 7, greets a traveller when entering the gates - and during all of the fun of pulling out one's laptop and assuring no metal is on you so that you can minimize contact with these people, they find reasons to make contact with you. Let's face it. Security at airports, as well as some airports dress them up, are still... not fun. Unattractive. But you have to deal with it, so you do. In this instance, I'd removed all metal from my person aside from some pins that would take a surgeon to take out. I pass through the imaginary doorway that security revolves around.

No beep. No surprise for me. But that simply wasn't enough for an enthusiastic wand wielding woman. "Are your pockets empty?"

"Yes, aside from my wallet."

"Take out your wallet!"

"OK", taking out the wallet and holding it away from my body.

I get a pat down which, under different circumstances, might have been fun. Nothing, which I knew. She seemed disappointed. In my out loud voice - my mistake - I said, "I don't understand why I needed to take out my wallet."

"Allyuh hear dat? He doh know why he have to take he wallet out!"

No, I really didn't. For one, it didn't set off the metal detector. In fact, I did not set off the metal detector. And the amusing part? The wand wielding woman... never used her wand. She patted me down by hand. No wand. Why?

When you give someone some power, they go nuts.

Tourists visit islands all the time; travel brochures show them as wonderful places that manufacture drinks served with umbrellas. Beaches with views. A place to escape to. For a slice of time, they plan to come and relax - indulge themselves.

The last time I shared that perspective, I was 9 years old in Dayton, Ohio with my father asking me about moving to Trinidad and Tobago. That was very exciting at the time. An Adventure. Little did I know that it would be a few years before I swore to get off the island. I did. Then I came back after traveling more than most people do in their lives - but this isn't about my traveling. It's about an island.

Take the Caribbean, an island chain made up of many islands. On these islands there are people that do not exist in tourist brochures; the vast majority may never see the inside of a tourist resort. The vast majority see the world through the looking glass of television - and if they can afford it, cable television piped in with all manner of advertising that is almost always designed to get people to buy things that are not available on the island. Newspapers echo Associated Press articles about the rest of the world; on an island the circulation of a newspaper does not support international reporting. Magazines cater to the people who can afford them and show what the demographic wants, thus catering for the upper class of the Caribbean - or blissfully showing off what the tourist demographic wants to see.

It seems like forever since I started the project, though it's only really been 3 weeks (you can read more about the start here). With the workshop's priorities shifting to emergency jobs and the priorities of Boya and myself shifting quite a bit during that time, it seemed like it would take forever. And that's not even touching the problems of vehicle juggling, pigeon dodging and taking advantage of time slots to do other necessary things in the same workspace. If we could distill out the time used in the final product, we spent about 3 solid work days on the bumper spread over a 3 week period.

Model inefficiency, maybe, but given what needed to be done I have to admit we did pretty good.

The finished product, above, doesn't even get a glance on the road. Why? The theory is that (1) It's black and (2) it fits the contours of the pickup. I'm calling it the Stealth Brush Shield at this point.

Prior to the rust removal, final bake and paint/undercoating, the then frankenbumper got many stares. It wasn't pretty but people knew well enough not to pull in front of me unless their tetanus shots were up to date. I got quite a few comments, mainly from taxi drivers, that they liked the bumper.

"Dat is bumper, boy!".
Why yes. Yes it is.

The Mazda B2500 Turbodiesel 4x4 I've been driving is great for the offroading I have to do out on the land - but it has it's peculiarities. One of these peculiarities is the turbo intercooler, which seems to have been an afterthought instead of a part of the design. The 2.5L engine does well with the turbo; there is some turbo lag but it isn't a large turbo so the lag is fairly easy to compensate for - though it takes some getting used to on curvy hillside roads if you're used to using compression braking with the manual transmission.

I am constantly reminded by people in front of me that there are people who don't understand compression braking.

Even so, when pounding through the brush at 5-15 km/hr, the intercooler is at risk because, for some reason, Mazda engineers didn't seem to think that a Mazda 2.5L turbodiesel 4x4 would... ever go out in the brush. And so it has the street bumper with the flimsy plastic undermount that may streamline the truck aerodynamically in an extremely minimal fashion. On the road, it works well. And to it's credit (and my own disbelief), it does work out fairly well in tall grass. It does not, however, do well in guava patches and against - as I recently found out - the remains of trees hidden by the tall grass. The clips pop off, the license plate (mounted on plastic to plastic) flies below, and the intercooler can get damaged.

Funny story. Sort of.