Moving on

This past weekend we moved, again. It gets easier and easier every time, as we shed things that we really don't need. It reminds me of the scene from Up in the Air when George Clooney talks about putting your life in a backpack and how all of your stuff weighs you down. Well, our backpack just got a little lighter.

Before leaving the house in Kenscoff, Ben and I went mountain biking around the area, through dirt roads and on some nice singletrack. We're scheming about making a movie about biking in Haiti and we're looking really great places to film, so we took the video camera along to see how these places looked on film...well, errr, digital film? Needless to say, the locals all have something to say and want you to give them "a little gift of your bike" as you pedal by.

The best part of the ride, though, was one particularly sketchy part of the trail. Ben went down it, and then got out the camera to shoot me coming down. I waited for a woman passing by, who stopped and told me "not to fall down into the rocky chasm to my right." I laughed, said I wouldn't, and thanked her for the advice. I threw my leg over the bike, and as my foot landed on the ground on the other side...there was no ground on the other side. All of my weight had been behind that foot landing on solid ground, and the "ground" I was aiming for turned out to be just a hole covered over by long grass. Ah, the aforementioned rocky chasm! I tumbled down the nasty rocky hole, and by some sheer stroke of luck, mostly landed on my feet some 8 feet or so below where I had been standing a half second earlier. I had cut open my hand earlier in the week, and of course the fall ripped off the scab and blood came pouring out, uck.

All who watched were amused by the white guy on a bike falling off a little cliff, which guaranteed they would watch us as much as they could. They started hiking ahead to the next semi-dangerous-looking section to sit down and wait for us to come by and fall again. It was sort of like NASCAR where the audience is there for the wreck, or hockey where everyone is there for the fight...well, in mountain biking in Haiti, everyone is there for the crash.

Anyhow, we disappointed them time and again since there were no more wrecks to speak of for the day - and we found some really amazing places to get on video. We went back on Sunday to search out a trail to another mountain we had spotted earlier, but when we arrived at the valley it was all fogged in and raining and the visibility was just about 0%. We followed a few trails, but since we couldn't see where we were going, we didn't make it to the correct mountain. We may try to scare up a spare GPS to use or scope it out more with Google Earth.

In other news, the caretaker of Bella made an appearance and left some food for her. The owner is away in Miami and had indeed arranged for someone to take care of the dog. So, no kidnapped dog for us, since she seems to be sufficiently looked after. That, and the fact that when she comes into the house she pees. There are like 12 million rural acres in Kenscoff, and she prefers peeing on the floor inside the house. Go figure. (Yes, I know, I could train it out of her, but along with the fact that she has not been abandoned, I'm not going to spend the time to train her, - also, as you may remember from way back in line 1, we have moved.)

So we're living in Petionville now, in Josh and Marylynn's/Pancha's/Kurt's old place. More on the "new" place later - it has a pretty cool flat roof that we can hang out on and an open sun room out front for plants. Maybe some pics to come - all this reading is probably driving everyone crazy...where are the photos?

Here's one to get you started...