Still Alive!!

Where to start? First, it's all good. We're wet, but that's about it.

We left O'Hare Monday morning at 8:00 as scheduled and little did we know that the airport in San Juan wouldn't even open for 3 hours!!! The flight is a little over 4 hours, so they must have known or at least been pretty damn sure that the airport was going to open when we took off. The ride was smooth until we had to descend through the clouds for our landing when it got a little choppy until we cleared the clouds.

We met our driver for the week, James, who is as responsive a guy as you could hope for in a cabby. Unfortunately when we got to our hotel we found that there was no power in the rooms, just the common areas and one kitchen all of which was being supported by a generator. Then the kitchen closed until 6, still 3 hours a way, and we were starving. The only two restaurants with power in Old San Juan? Wendy's and Subway....and we LOVE Wendy's (I used to work there, but that's a story for another time).

Our cell phones had sporadic reception at best...mostly no reception actually, so we had to go to the end of the street over looking the bay to get even periodic coverage. It's kind of funny to picture: LL and I on the top of an old fort wall, holding an umbrella and our cell phones, either texting or emailing or talking and then the signal dropping and we would have to wait to pick it up again. Pretty crazy, but a little funny.

The night in a powerless room was fine for me because I had some booze, Benadryl and earplugs. LL didn't use either of the latter, so she had some trouble sleeping. Then the phone, which was a cordless but whose battery would get charged by the station, started running low on power and started beeping. I couldn't hear it but it was driving her crazy. She couldn't determine where the beeping was coming from so she tried to call the front desk and then realized it was the phone itself! She took it, wrapped it in a towel and put it in a closet. Ha! It worked though.

With the prospect of another warm night and not being in touch with civilization, we got credit for a night at our hotel and went to a Marriott not to far away (20 minutes) which has power. A/C, computers (which I'm on now), cell reception, and television....not to mention a casino. Very nice.

So that's my update. Our trip to get the license has been delayed until tomorrow because the demographics office is without power. Everything else will be alright though as long as the power comes back on in short order. We really just want it back on for our guests!!!