P.R. November 2005

Page 8 - Lisa’s Last Day

All good things must come to an end, and today is the day we drive Lisa back to San Juan, and see her off at the airport.

The waves seem to sense this and improve markedly over the day before, which was already pretty damn good to begin with.

We have time for a morning session, prior to departing for San Juan, and Lisa is all over it. For myself, I’ve surfed every day I’ve been here so far, and the thought of making that drive to San Juan and back, fatigued from a high intensity surf session, just doesn’t seem like the right thing to do. I have a responsibility to get Lisa on the plane and I’ve never driven from Rincon to San Juan in my life. With a hard deadline of a plane taking off, there’s really no room for mistakes and I decide to sit this one out, the better to be able to do the important things later on today.

The conditions are just unbelievably sweet. Brilliant sunshine. Dead glass. Head high to occasionally larger lines are pouring through, firing down the point. Thin crowd of a dozen or so, scattered along the lineup.

This will be the first, and last, day that Lisa is to paddle out at Maria’s without any help from me being there in the water with her.

Into the rich blue water she goes.

And works her way outside, drifting over toward the middle peak, which is not so well defined today with rights just winding and winding down the point, here there and everywhere.

I’m watching her closely from the beach, and as soon as she gets outside, I immediately sense that she’s having trouble finding her lineups and has started edging closer and closer toward the head of the point and the exposed rocks which lurk inside over there.

Lisa is headed toward trouble and I’m freaking out on the beach, unable to communicate with her or offer her any help or guidance to keep her back down the point where she needs to be.

Slowly, intermittently, but inexorably, Lisa continues paddling up point.

She’s obviously unaware of where she is, and seems to be looking for some kind of familiar landmark, or something, to set her aright.

But all of her familiar marks are behind her now, and something keeps drawing her closer and closer to the rocks up at the head of the point.

I’m completely in a dither by now, and have started walking up to the head of the point, shouting and waving my arms to her as I go, but she can’t seem to see me at all.

Eventually, the both of us arrive all the way to the head of the point together.

Up there, the wave doesn’t break very far out, and I finally get her attention, shouting and gesticulating.

I wave back downpoint, as she sits and considers me with puzzlement.

She’s talking to a couple of folks out surfing now, right over by the rock, and somebody seems to make a connection with me on the beach and she turns back, down point.

I walk and wave back down the point, hoping that I’m getting her back where she needs to be.

But it is not to be. She goes about half way down toward the middle peak, and then stops, once again looking puzzled. No matter how much I wave my arms, nothing seems to matter. Once again, she starts the dreaded drift up point.

Luckily, she catches a couple of waves while this happens, and the rides serve to keep her acceptably down point.

On the beach, I enlist the aid of a few surfers entering the water, to advise her not to drift any further toward the point, and instead head the other way. Lisa seems completely oblivious to me, there in the shade of the trees, but does interact with a couple of the people I’ve asked to help her as they paddle out and past her.

All in all, not much seems to work though, because she either remains where she is, or starts edging to the head of the point once again.

This sort of thing goes on for an hour and a half before she finally comes in.

My relief is palpable when she steps back on to dry ground.

I had a feeling that yesterday’s best session ever should have been left alone, as her last session on the island, and today’s events have confirmed that feeling.

Lisa is neither hurt nor scared, but merely less than happy with herself today.

We discuss her getting lost, and she tells me that she was staring directly into a low morning sun the whole time, and couldn’t see ANYTHING on the shore. Nothing.

Losing her bearings and not having anything to steer herself by, she became disoriented and lost her way.

And of course, it makes perfect sense, and further explains why she never responded to me except for when I was out on the head of the point, within shouting distance of her. She never saw me. Never heard me. Never even knew if I was there or not. Just the glare of a low, but very bright, sun, and shadows that cast an inky pall over everything within them, further washed out by a glare-like mist over the water.

No wonder she lost her way.

But she DID catch a couple of waves, and the rides were nice ones.

So we learned a little more about this place, even on Lisa’s last day here.

So ok then, it’s back to Rob’s, for the final toss of clothing into the bag and down the road we go.

This time at least, it’s daylight and I stand a fairly decent chance of staying on the right road.

The drive out through Aguada is slow, and I make a small, quickly rectified mistake in Agaudilla, but soon enough we’re on good old route 2, eastbound.

The day remains just as sunny and bright as it’s been, and Puerto Rico shows itself off for the tropical locale that it is.

Nice.

Onward we roll, and encounter the autopista and now we’re making excellent time, under a bright midafternoon sun.

Lotta pretty countryside to spy along the way, and in a couple of places I can get a look at the ocean. The light winds of this morning have remained so and the ocean is nice and smooth, with large rollers coming in to unknown spots that I’d never be able to drive to even if I had time. It’s for sure that the north coast of Puerto Rico has waves, and the bottoms to make them very rideable, but the near constant trade winds keep it choppy up here almost all the time. But not today.

Soon enough we start encountering the signs that tell us San Juan is drawing near.

And then we’re in it, eyeball deep.

Around we zoom, up curves and down slopes, entrained within the vast flow of expressway traffic. My sense of direction assists me in knowing at least the general trend of where I’m going, but eventually I become overamped and stupidly take an exit that I should not have taken.

Time is running out, Lisa has a plane to catch, and I’ve managed to drive us directly into the seething cauldron that is San Juan, without a clue as to where we are, or how we’re going to get the hell back on the right road.

GodDAMNit!!!

How did I do this to myself!!!

Lisa does her best to keep me calm, but I’m obsessed with time ticking away and am just about as wired as a meth head.

Around blocks, through intersections, and finally I discover that I’m in a busses only lane, with expressway ramps snaking overhead in all directions.

Arrrrggghhhh!

Ahead, on the far side of a traffic light, there sits a cop car waiting for green.

So I just pull directly in front of the guy, stop right there, and holler out the window that I’m looking for the aeropuerto. Bless his heart, he seems to give a care laden sigh, exits his cop van, and walks over and tells me how to get back on the right road, my old friend 22, eastbound.

The light changes, and I depart to the sound of his voice advising me to please enjoy my stay in Puerto Rico. Yet again, the people down here are just relentlessly NICE.

So off I go to get on 22, and manage to do so, but impossibly I’m now headed the WRONG WAY. Oeste, once again, but this time I want este not oeste. Dammit dammit dammit.

A mile of pavement unfurls itself underneath Lisa and me, and I just blindly stab into an exit, looking for a way to get this thing turned around and back the other way. More back streets and intersections. Complete disorientation. Finally I see a gated condominium tower with a guard in the guardshack out front, and I swerve across several lanes of traffic and pull in next to him. Miraculously, he speaks a little English and I get out of the car and point at the various roads in front of us and ask which one takes me to 22 eastbound.

As he is kindly explaining things to me, rich-guy cars are stacking up in the driveway, and the first one behind me contains an irate gentleman in a Mercedes, who has no time for long-haired surfer-gringos and their girlfriends, no matter how beautiful.

He screams a strongly-accented “what do you need to know” at me, sensing that I’m lost and looking for directions, just as my kindly guard wraps up his excellent description of how to get back on 22 eastbound. I tell him and he immediately sputters a DIFFERENT set of directions than the guard had just given me.

It takes me about a tenth of a second to decide that Mister Pissed Off Rich Guy’s directions are probably bogus, and the guard’s directions are probably spot on, so I thank the guard, and then thank my monied friend, get back in the car, and head off where the guard told me to go.

Sure enough, I’m promptly back on 22 and it’s headed the RIGHT WAY.

HALLELUJAH!!!

And the realization hits immediately thereafter that I’ve finally found my first truly unpleasant Puerto Rican.

The rich guy.

Who did his level best to send me off into an unknown city without a clue, just so he could finish rushing home to his fucked up rich guy condo a minute and a half sooner.

Rot in hell, motherfucker, your little ploy didn’t work.

My blood pressure comes back down from its stratospheric levels of just a few minutes before, and we complete our drive to the airport with no further adventures.

Lisa is somewhat concerned about getting lost in the depths of the airport, so while we’re there at the counter I ask the nice lady who’s handling our transaction if there was a way that this could be taken care of to Lisa’s satisfaction.

No problem, comes the reply, and she promptly asks me for my i.d. and then cranks out a special pass that permits me to walk with Lisa, through all the metal detectors and security and all the way out to the damned gate where the plane is sitting. The thoroughgoing niceness of the people down here has returned in full force and effect. Amazing.

And we arrive at the proper place, with twenty minutes to spare, my getting lost notwithstanding.

And I sit tight with my Beautiful Girl, until it’s time for her row to board the plane, and we give each other a last little hug right there in front of the door she walks through to enter the plane.

By damn we did it, and she’s on the plane!

Now all I have to do is negotiate the drive back to Rincon, once again in the dark.

Pray for me.