No posts for almost a month? Such is life on the high seas.

 

I am in Male, in the Maldives right now, sitting at a little internet cafe/juice bar with Lionel Richie playing, and a bunch of Japanese tourists chattering behind me.

 

The Maldives sits 4 degrees north of the equator, just to the west of the southern tip of the Indian peninsula. It is a gorgeous atoll, and supposedly the diving around here is great. But the waters off Male, the main city, are dirty - dozens of dead fish and three-mile long diesel spills dirty.

 

But shoot, I haven't even talked about the 20 days at sea from Egypt to Salalah. I would've posted from Salalah, Oman, but internet there was hardly passable. Of the many internet cafes, only one shop had wifi, but the owner, from India, said he didn't want anyone using their own laptop because he didn't want a big crowd in his shop.

 

I am not sure how much free time I am going to get from here in the Maldives, because the boss got on board this morning, and we have to cater to his every whim. So I still have all these posts I want to do about my trip that I need to find time to do. So they may come in dribs and drabs throughout the start of next year.

 

And I want to comment on the so much that has happened in CT and Hartford - like Lou DeLuca resigning (finally), Stan McCauley was fired from HPATV (sadly - was it Eddie? who knows?), and Ralph Carpenter retired from the CT DOT, and refused to give an interview (time for a commissioner who understands mass transit and bicycling).

 

We left Salalah on Monday, Dec. 3, and crossed the Arabian Sea in about 8 days. We arrived in the Maldives Monday, Dec. 10, in the evening. Along the way, we caught a few fish - a couple of times we hooked two simultaneously. So when we call the bridge via radio from the fishing platform, I yelled "double fish on! double fish on!"

 

Fresh Mahi-mahi is hard to beat for dinner, unless it is the thai food I had last night. I ate a hot pepper that had me hiccuping instantly, tears rolling down my cheeks and fire coming out of my nostrils. Damn. What a curry!

 

I hope you'll forgive me for not saying more right now. The sun is starting to set, and it's my day off. I have had about 12 days off since August 6, and this will likely be the last one I have before I get off the good ship Maverick II Dec. 29. So I want to explore Male more.