Under the Bridge

Le Menagerie Wing on Wing under the Queen Isabella Memorial causeway

Wind on the Water

Bueno Bye and Night Magic. Le Menageire is still sliding under the causeway underpass....

Mileage on the Odometer, Water under the Keel

I woke up this morning staring 50 full in the face. I know it's a monument birthday, a milestone, but somehow it doesn't seem a whole lot different than turning over 50 miles on the odometer of my bike after I turn it back to zero....only this time I can' t turn it back to zero. So, I think it's more like 50 miles an hour, just a gentle cruise with the wind in your face....Or maybe it's like sailing my boat, just slipping along to familiar or unfamiliar places. Now it's just the journey that matters. When I was young(er) I always had in the back of my mind the notion that "when I'm young again.....", but in the past couple of years this notion has faded, replaced by a sense of just gliding over the water, trying to avoid the shallow and sandbars, but nonetheless learning for each and every one that you might get hung up on .

There was no revelation following the tolling of the bells of my birth hour, or enhancement of insight, I don't even think any of my hair went grey(er), or I acquired any new wrinkles.

No, today I don't feel maudlin or especially reflective, just thankful to be here. All the cliches, like, "if I'd have known I was gonna live this long, I would've taken better care of myself", just go out the window, and I keep riding down the path. Although I'm certainly not going to score highly on the list of "he who dies with the most toys wins" mentality, I do have friends and family who've made this trip more than worthwhile, so the material things take a distant back seat. And living here is like living in the pages of a Steinbeck novel. I think that's the way it is with most coastal communities, and I guess I'm just another character.

So what's next? Well, just because I turned fifty doesn't mean any dreams went out the window too. I still want to circumnavigate the Gulf and near Caribbean, I want to take a monumental road trip or two, maybe visit some places I've never been. But for right now, I plan on continuing sailing, surfing, riding, diving, fishing, flying kites, taking care of business, exploring the islands in my life, eating at D' Pizza Joint, drinking a little beer (maybe a little rum too....), enjoying days like today, when the air smells like the sea, and you can hear the waves crashing on the shoreline and all of the other things that make up this crazy patchwork collage that I call my life. Mostly I plan on enjoying the journey with my family and friends....

It's the end of the world, as We know it

It's the end of the world as we know it
(I wanna spend some time alone)
It's the end of the world as we know it
(I wanna spend some time alone)
It's the end of the world as we know it
(I wanna spend some time alone)
-And I feel fine
REM

The Vultures Will Attack Soon....

More Bitches with the Media

Damn. I thought yesterday when I was talking with Lily K. that I was off the record. I've know Lilly since she was a little kid, just starting off surfing. Now she's a wold class surfer, and a sponsored one at that. She also works for the Port Isabel free press as a journalist. I've talked to her a couple of times in the past, as a matter of good relations, but this is about the second or third time that she's blindsided me with commentary. In the above article, she quotes me as saying that "it probably was a shark"...what I actually said was "it might've, it could've been a shark", there's just no way to tell, but the chances are fairly decent, since they are one of the primary large fish which inhabit our nearshore waters. From now on I guess I'll have to refer her to the director on all matters. It was my fault anyway.

I learned of the alleged shark attack on Satrurday when my son alerted me to it through the coconut telegraph, and that Lilly had first hand information, so I told him to have her call me since we try and keep record here at the lab to furnish the International Shark Files, maybe we could get in touch with the guy and have him come in and fill out a report. So Lily called me yesterday, and I figured we were speaking off record. Dummy me.

This is the first documented shark attack here in lots of years, and I suspect that it was (and she quoted me OK on this one) a case of mistaken identity. I'm certainly no shark expert, but I have read enough concerning their behavior, (and I watch Discovery channel too) so I am guessing that his foot looked like a mullet, Judging from the bite radius, it certainly looks like a shark. However, my own area of expertise lies in Marine ecology, specifically micro-organisms, and mostly these days I am involved in things like seagrass surveys, algae culture and tunicates, a far cry from apex predators....

Hope that I can slide through this media faux-pas without stirring up too big a wave. I realize that the county wants to downplay an event like this (and I hope it is an isolated one), and I certainly don't want to heap any fuel on the reactionary fire.

Guess I'm goning to have to talk with Lily.

You Can't Reason With a Tunicate

Ive always hated the media. Goddam vultures. They belong in the same category as ambulance chasing lawyers, loan sharks and pawn shop owners. They all make their money off of other peoples misfortunes. The job I have requires some interaction with the media, and I have become hostile and uncooperative with the morons who populate media in the past several years. Let me explain why.

In 2003 we were living over in the bedroom community of Bayview, way out in the brushland. I loved it there. We were surrounded by a resaca on one side, and fields bordered by the wildlife refuge on the other. I had a lush vegetable garden, and life seemed idyllic. We had been living in our 36 foot motor home prior to that time, free as gypsys. We loved the "Queen Mary", and it was a grand experiment in mutual cooperation. Sash had a bunk above the drivers area, and the twins occupied the forward living area, D and I had a rear bedroom. We moved around the coast for three years, enjoying the lifestyle. In April of 2003 we decided to lease a house and go "shoreside" for awhile. The property owner said that we could keep the Queen Mary on shorepower alongside, but I opted not too for economic reasons, but we did keep her parked there, and our solar system kept things charged up. Every now and then I would escape to the solace of the 'home remembering all of the good times aboard. It smelled like us.

In July of 2003 we got our first hurricane warning as Tropical Storm Claudette bore down directly on the South Texas coast. Since the property we were leasing was in a low lying area, subject to flooding, we decided to pack up Queen Mary with all of our most valuable items and bug out west till after the storm passed by. So we spent several days cleaning, inspecting and gathering things up in preparation for the impending tropical storm. The winds increased all the while. As the storm approached ever closer, we finished our task and waited, shore power on, but only powering the 12 volt converter which ran QM's lights and fans. Then, the storm decided to make a northbound turn in the Gulf of Mexico. We were still getting pretty good winds, but no rain, being on the west side, so we decided to stay put. I began my job with the lab full time on that Monday, so we decided to leave things in the motorhome till after work, and we'd start unpacking, putting stuff away. We noticed that the power seemed to be surging in the house, the lights and television would go gray than snap back on, air conditioner would spool down, than suddenly up, but didn't think much else about it.

So off to work I went. D and the girls went to the island that day, and we didn't return till after dark, about 8:30 or 9 pm. When we got close to the place, up the tree lined road, I saw lights, lots of lights, and flashing lights too. I got the idea that maybe the grainfield behind our place had caught on fire, but pulling closer up, D suddenly said in a very scared voice; "Where's my motorhome?....Where's my motorhome? I got a sick feeling. Then I saw the fire trucks and ambulances, and the television crew truck broadcasting from the remnants of what were the things of our lives, still smoldering. Queen Mary totally consumed, house partially burned down. I headed over to them in a fog..."get the fuck off of this property!", "there's a special place in hell for people like you" I spewed at them, glaring them off of the property, but they promply set their shit back up on the caliche road, with the wreckage as background. All the while I could hear the kids crying, D sobbing quietly and Sashas look of disbelief. It was a night, a nightmare without an end, and we were rendered essentially homeless zombies in less than a couple of hours.

Over the course of the next several days, I had time to think about things like the lack of class and style that these media vultures showed. They could've easily turned a tragedy into a triumph, at the very least helped make things a bit better. So I decided to let the station manager, a guy named Ray Alexander (KRGTV 5 in Weslaco) know. I sent him an email. About a day later I got a phonecall from the guy, and he was a total asshole. Told me they had every right to be there, in fact it was their civil duty to do so. I reminded him that they had made assumptions regarding the cause of the fire, based on unsubstantiated observation (it turns out the fire was purely accidental, caused by power surging which produced arcing, causing the fire). It didn't make a difference, in fact this guy ended up yelling at me for coming down on his peoples lack of ethos. A truly admirable human, from a purely Herman Goerring perspective.

I ended up sending him one more email, explaining about our work with tunicates, and how closely related to higher organisms they are, organisms like humans. I told him, they have all of the basic systems, even a rudimentary chordate nervous system. Only thing is you can't reason with them, the have no ability to do so. Sort of like him.

In the two years since that fire we've prospered beyond belief. The community in general came out and showed us a spirit of small town compassion that I didn't think existed anymore. Of course the fucking media never picked up on something that wonderful and unique. Wasn't bloody or tragic.

Our family is truly blessed, and I always try hard and forgive the tunicates that have shown up in my life. But that doesn't mean that I have to cooperate with the buggers.

Rusty Old American Dream

Les' Station Wagon. The archetypical beach mobile

God Bless Les

It's 3:00pm and Les is out of hours. Les is the tech who works at the lab, mainly doing the Texas Beachwatch sampling. Every week this time of year he samples stretches of the beach for water quality, usually on the four-wheeler. Les is the type who can make almost anything work by using common items one might find on any moderately well stocked kitchen shelf or garage. He's a genius with things like PVC pipe, wire and hose clamps. His collection of homemade items scavenged from flotsom and jetsom on the beach is legendary. He's a locksmith too, able to open just about anything with a narrow assortment of tools.

A consumate islander, Les moved here long ago from the inland city of Edinburg. His primary residence is Kellys Irish Pub up on the north end of town, where he spends almost every evening and earned dollar, downing rum and cokes, a fixture there, as vital as the eight liner game machines or Guiness tap handles that dispense draughts in that place as smokey dark as the beer. No doubt he's earned a personalized barstool, and has probably achieved patron saint-of-the-bar status too.

Once, on the way out, late at night, he backed his ancient rusting station wagon into the wooden parking lot fence, taking out a whole section, and forever closing a passenger side door. Next day he was over there fixing the damage to the fence. That's how Les is. The station wagons door is still crushed shut.

He doesn't like kids. He was married once to a woman who had a real passion for tarantulas and cats, and he'll still help her out whenever she moves from place to place between the Island and Port Isabel. One requsite for being a true islander is the ability to recognize treasure from junk on the beach. He's always finding orphaned clothes, kids life jackets, swimming suits and flip flops and lots of times they'll appear over by the communal washing machine, earmarked for our twins. He doesn't like kids, but I guess he makes an exception for ours.

Last year Les brought in an object that looked like nothing more than a long piece of pipe. Turned out to be a recording sonde that some oil company contracted to have airdropped into the Gulf of Mexico. This particular instrument transmitted weather information back to some shore station, as it drifted along on ocean currents. It was worth a two hundred dollar reward to Les. He said it financed his Kellys tab for almost a week. For awhile he was collecting hard hats, blown off of oil rigs into the water during heavy offshore storms where they ride the same currents, and sometimes appear on the beach like so many plastic mushrooms, sprouting from the sand after the rain. He'd clean them up, and sell them over at the Port of Brownsville, at Amfels offshore construction where they manufacture the same oil rigs, in sort of a cosmic full tilt circle. I think he was getting about a buck apiece for them, but after awhile it turned into too much work, and was seriously cutting into his Kellys time.

Les doesn't like to work any more than is absolutely necesssary to sustain existence, which means pay his bar tab, and if enough is left over, the rent. I mean, who really does in an island environment, custom made for screwing away the day on the beach or in the bars? He makes a pretty decent salary and can clock in for forty hours each week but seldom does. Every day, just after lunch, his shoes get real tight, and I can hear the sound of the time clock go click! Then he'll stop by my office and casually mention, "I'm takin' off...outta time", and off to Kellys he rolls.

Botrylloides, tunicates. Not as glamorous or as controversial as stem cells, but a real potential exists with this organism in gaining a better understanding of inhibition of replicative diseases like cancer and AIDS. 

A tug churns the water of the Arroyo Colorado 

TCEQ's Dogshit Campaign

The infamous dogshit poster, from TCEQ's campaign to clean up the Arroyo Colorado. Remember, by shoving dogturds down the drain you're impacting the quality of the Arroyo. Never mind the tons of nitrogenous waste that municipalities and farmers shovel in there everyday....

The Arroyo Colorado

Yesterday the director and I went out on the Arroyo Colorado to gather water quality data with the Hydrolab instrument. We were looking at the effects of barges running up and down the stream which cause mixing with a consequent reduction in things like dissolved oxygen. Without boring you to death with a lecture on aquatic chemistry, just let me say that the Arroyo Colorado is the most quality compromised stream in Texas, and probably one of the most filthy in the United States. Every major city in the Rio Grande Delta uses it as a dumping source for their treated sewage effluent and storm drainage, and countless farm fields runoff into it. There's a long standing joke that the headwaters of the Arroyo Colorado are a sewer outfall. Chemicals like dieldrin, DDT, DDE and others are still lurking in the sediments of this stream.

And still people swim in it run jetskis, eat fish and generally treat this toxic watercourse like an honest-to-god river. It's hard not to be lulled into a sense of false security as you travel along it's miles of meandering tree lined banks, or perhaps view the houses built downstream around Arroyo City, huge houses with manicured lawns, lighted docks and palatial layouts. But the stream is what it is.

The mouth of the Arroyo Colorado empties into the Laguna Madre, depositing it's nitrogen rich waters in an otherwise hypersaline (super salty) environment. This rich soup is responsible for increased algae blooms, and probably contributes to the Brown tide. My friend Joe K. calls the Arroyo "the biggest open pit toilet in Texas".

Recently, the state has become quite aware of the quality problem and is addressing it in response to pressure from some citizens groups, like the Arroyo Colorado coalition. Personally, I find their efforts ludicrious. One of the funniest was an advertising campaign designed to get people to stop shoveling their dog shit down the storm sewers where it eventually will end up in the Arroyo. It won't make a bit of difference...not even a turd in a bucket...

Then the state (TCEQ), the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality decided they needed more outreach, and hired a woman from Austin to run the program. Smart move. In any event, substantive change to the quality of that watercourse probably won't occur in my lifetime. It would take a radical restructuring of the entire economic base here (agriculture) to significantly reduce the amount of fertilizer and pesticide runoff, as well as figuring out a solution to the seweage and drainage problems for each municipality that dumps into the Arroyo. A daunting, overwhelming task that will probably take generations to accomplish. And that's why it's so laughable to try and get people to quit shoveling dogshit down the drain.

One of the many storm/sewage/field runoff drains that empty into the Arroyo Colorado 

The Arroyo Colorado 03/25/2005. I wouldn't water my plants with this water, let alone get any on my body.... 

Shell Games

It never ceases to amaze me. The manners of our northern visitors. By and large they're the most self centered, cheapskate bastards that I can think of. This is a perfect example. For years, each winter they come in hoardes, like migrating shitbirds. One of their favorite pasttimes is rape, pillage and plunder the resources. Some of them fish every day in the surf keeping virtually everything (except stingrays which they drag up on the beach and leave to die in the sun..."them damn things are vicious Gerturde..." )They fish with fifteen foot long rods spooled with five hundred yards of thirty five pound test to catch fish that don't weigh half a pound. And the women....they walk up and down the beach and bay all morning every morning with walmart plastic bags in hand, eyes glued to the sand and mud, taking every hapless shell in the way. So much so in fact, that a whole area adjacent to their favorite trailer park has been almost wiped out. The other night there was a meeting with Texas Parks and Wildlife Department, and several of the viejitas showed up, bitching and complaining how the new law, designed to close that area was targeted specifically at winter Texans...well....no shit. They're the only ones who act in such a classless manner. There's even one guy who comes here in a motorhome from Florida every year, and takes tens of thousands of shells...doesn't make any difference to him if they're live, have hermit crabs or anything like that. My friends George and Scarlet have been on a crusade for a long time to limit the plunder of this area, I hope it succeeds....

Brown tide. A view of the normally gin clear Laguna Madre. In the distance you can see the separation between the brown tide and the normal Laguna Waters 

Jerkoffs Gone WIld

College jerks gone wild. They might like spring break...but for us it's a big pain in the ass. Some of the area merchants (especially restaurants and bars) make enough money off of spring break to keep going through the whole year, but the rest of us suffer. In typical old fart reflectionism, I remember when this island was just a strip of sand, dotted by a few fishing shacks and a mix of people as salty as the gulf waters. I had a friend who was the only tattoo artist around for a long time, and during one particularly rough streatch of my life, I decided to get a tattoo. At that time Barrys shop was located over in Port Isabel, and he really didn't know me. So anyway, I got the tatt, and afterwards we started talking surfing. I mentioned that I was not too comfortable with my current stick, and he told me he had a board that was perfect....showed me a seven two fun shape, which I immediately fell in love with. But as a college student, I had little money. He told me to "take the board, and bring the payment when I could". I managed to scrape up the money, and paid him the next week when I came to the island to surf. That was in the springtime too, when we usually get the best waves. Harpoon Barry and his wife were killed on the night of September 15th 2001 when the car they were driving plunged off of the broken Queen Isabella Causeway.

Spring break is a time to trash the island, a time when all of our future leaders can operate on their worst behavior.

Several years ago, we got caught on the causeway one night around midnight. While waiting in line, the car next two us, a white Lexus full of twenty-something little girls deposited a couple of empty fourpak winecooler bottles on the ground. D leaned over me an yelled: "pick up your bottles". One of the passangers shot the finger at her. On the dashboard of our old van there was a big old cold greasy onion blossom that my daughter had purchased at the livestock show and rodeo just hours before. I picked it up like a baseball, and hurled it at the pearly white Lexus with open windows. Part of it splattered on the windshield, and the rest showered the kiddies inside. The electric windows went up, and the passengers all sat bolt upright, frozen for the rest of the ride across.

Eat or be Eaten

It's getting to be that time of the season again. This big Mako shark was landed offshore last week. Not the best eating shark in the pond, I guess the folks who caught it decided to keep it anyhow. Back in 1995 I went fishing in the (in)famous "shark hole" near the Queen Isabella Memorial causeway. Instead of my intended prey, after a three hour fight, I ended up landing a 220 pound Atlantic Stingray. I kept the monster, only because I figured it probably would be a state record. As we transported it to the island, it discharged about 10 live pups in a huge gush over the side. Then the engine on the skiff overheated, and we had to be towed back to port. By time we reached the island, it was late and no certified scale large enough for the critter was available. So we put it in the environmental chamber at the lab, and waited till the next morning to transport the behemoth over to Port Isabel, at the Shrimp porcessing plant where a certified scale was available. Missed the state record by something like 18 pounds. It would've for sure been a 35 pound test class record though...but what a dubious honor. I decided to carve it up into steaks, and for months, everybody had their fill of blackened, grilled, fried, broiled stingray. No, it doesn't taste like chicken...more like scallops. As an afternote, the epic struggle between man and chondrichythid caused a completely torn extensor tendon in my right arm, which later had to be surgically reattached. The fight was like being attached to a livingroom rug with a 25 horsepower evidnrude turned up full throttle....

Chris' Canoe

My friend CB working on his perennial canoe. He's actually gotten to a point where fiberglass is being laid over the wooden strips. I do believe that it will one day float, but it might be a bit anticlimactic after all of the years of effort that this project required. Yes Chris, the devil's in the details.