Diving and Flowriding

Melonie Clifton-Harvey flew in on Tuesday. She was here as our visiting curator in December and has come back for three weeks to assist with additional curatorial issues that we have. Mel is a conservation specialist from England that I met on the Attingham program. I have been trying to keep her informed about how much work we have to accomplish while she is here. But it has been a hard sell since Tuesday.

On Wednesday we had a staff appreciation party. Deborah, thanking everyone for their hard work while she was interim director, took everyone to lunch and then we went kayaking. This was very cool, because most of our staff had never been in a kayak or canoe before. It was super cool for me, because I saw my first live shark here. They were in fact two baby sharks who circled within inches of our kayak.

Today, Martin, Lucas, and I had our first confined water dive for our scuba certification. This was a total combination of very cool and very weird. I could talk at length about this, and maybe I will later, but for now I will sufice to say: it was so loud...I just did not expect that.

Late this afternoon, we got a call from our friend at the cruise center to come down and assist with staff training on the new Flowrider that has just been installed. This is a giant wave pool that you can surf and bodyboard on. We went down and took turns riding so that they could work out kinks before they open tomorrow.

Davis and I actually did this the other day as well. But tonight we rode for about two hours for free. Tomorrow, I think the free rides are over. But Davis is very good at it, and I think he will probably wind up going a lot.

This is the only Flowrider operated in a Carnival cruise port. It is very cool. It will probably make Grand Turk one of the best cruise ports in the Caribbean.

Deneen and the boys are excited about coming home. We bought the tickets and they fly out July 4th. They have tickets to the new water park in Columbus and can't wait to go. That sounds great. I like to remind them that here they live in the theme park and are some of the few dozen people that ride for free. I dont think they appreciate this yet.

Saturday is the Queen's Birthday. Lucas has been chosen to march in the Queen's parade and Saturday night we have to go to another party at the Governor's residence.

Such a hard place to live.