Taxi amigo?

Here in lovely Grenada, public transportation is fairly easy to find. There are an abudant amount of taxis/buses in the form of vans covered with crazy stickers like "Jah Love" or "Me Kool Strength" and other random statements that are lost on me. On any given day as you walk down a street, hundreds of these pass by. As they approach from behind you they beep the horn twice to signal to you that they have room if you need a ride. They typically flash the high beams as well. If you signal to them they will stop right in the middle of the road, regardless of time of day or traffic flow and the door will slide open to reveal anywhere from 2 to 15 passengers already inside. It's a shared ride system, inexpensive and easy to use. Except for last night of course.



Down the street about two miles from the boatyard there is a small DVD rental shop. I have been jogging over there every other night and renting a movie. Movies are super cheap there and they have a good selection of new movies I haven't seen. I have been living on a boat since the beginning of November of last year (save for the five or so weeks I spent back home) so it's kind of cool to rent some new releases and sort of catch up a little on the crap Hollywood still puts out. Ok, so, last night my latest rentals were due so I filled my Camelbak backpack with water, strapped my Ipod on my arm and jogged on over to the store. I swapped out the movies for two new ones, put them in my pack and walked the couple hundred yards over to the Spiceland Mall. Now the mall isn't anywhere near the size of what you envision a mall to be but by Caribbean standards it is pretty big. The important thing is that they have a huge hardware store and adjacent to that a large grocery store. Well last night I made the wise choice to restock the fridge. This last weekend was a 3 day weekend here (every other day seems to be a holiday and everything will be closed) so I spent the last week eating out of a can. Normally, after I swap my movies, I jog the 2 miles back to the yard but my plan was to buy some essentials and then just grab one of the endless taxi buses that seem to follow my every move, and by the way if you see a guy RUNNING down the street with workout clothes and a headset on, why do you slow down and honk and stare at me offering a ride, I digress. So bags in hand I walked into the parking lot to find my ride. Hmmm, no drivers there. Ok. Let me go across the street. Five minutes, not one damn bus. Well, these bags aren't that bad, I thought, I'll just start walking back that direction and eventually one of these lunatics will come up flashing lights and honking. It might also be pertinent to mention that several times I have taken these the van was filled with the unmistakable smell of that special herb that is so popular down here and I'm not talking about nutmeg. Somehow I doubt that the drivers are "randomly" drug tested in this area. As you can probably tell, I walked the whole damn way back to the yard never seeing one van. This just baffled me. The good news and the reason I write this is that I woke up today and have been outside working for the last hour and my shoulders feel like they are on fire. I forgot to tell you that I carried chicken, beef, milk, eggs, 4 cans of chili, two two liters of soda and various vegetables back that whole way. I also forgot to tell you how the bag with the chili and sodas broke open and I had to do this funky cradle weirdo carrying technique to get all the crap back to the boat. My favorite part that I forgot to tell you was when I walked past the Texaco station and there were FIVE of these buses parked on the curb with all of the drivers sitting on the ground in front of one of them. I don't suppose you know what they told me when I asked for a ride back to the yard. Four of them stared at me with deeply bloodshot eyes while the fifth, obviously the spokesman for this particular union, instructed me to keep going mon, you find a ride soon. So as I work today on the boat, every movement is going to make me dislike the evil taxi drivers of Grenada who I am certain conspired against me last night just so they could laugh at the crazy white boy. Having no truck can suck sometimes.