Falling Up

The long awaited final friday bell rings.  School is out for the week.  Tyler, Ryan, and I all clomp upstairs and rip our shirts off.  I choose to open the freezer for no reason, just to feel the cold air on my body.

It is hot today.

Uncle Larry magically appears in our doorway, which is becoming a common theme for the locals here.  We are caught somewhat off guard as we are frying pancakes and piling bananas, ice cream, and the last of the peanut butter on them.  

"Ah, pancakes and ice cream and peanut butter!  Its like a Big Mac, yeah?" He proclaimed.  

"Uh, yeah!  Sort of I guess!"

After going through a whole box of pancake mix, we trundled over to Larry's place to pick some more the famous green tangerines.  We passed the pastor on our way.

"You climbing to get the tangerines?  Remember to fall up, not down!"

There was a communal chuckle.  Falling up is impossible. 

Uncle Larry was lounging on a tractor tire when we arrived.  "Take any tree!  I'll watch and catch you when you fall.  And remember to fall up, not down!

Déjà Vu.

Uncle Larry is a master tree climber.  Last time we got tangerines, I was expecting that we would maybe need to climb a few feet on the sturdy branches to reach them.  Turns out, the best tangerines reside on the top leaves of the tree, so an expedition must be made by climbing out precariously on the flimsy limbs while hanging on to a branch and faith itself.  I looked over a Larry.  He is hanging upside down by his legs, reaching out to pick tangerines below him.  

Three bags of plump, delicious tangerines later, we ran back to the apartment to get swimming gear.  It was time to fish!  Tyler and I swam out with our spears, and spent way to long trying to nail the quick fish.  It started to get hard, because for some reason I had noticed that we were being pulled by some kind of current.  I popped my head out of the water to look for Tyler, and found that we were in the middle of a big rain storm.  Sheets of rain and wind were blowing down, and we could hardly see the shore anymore.  Although we could still mostly touch the coral, the seas had gotten very rough and big waves were making it hard to stay steady in the water.  But fishing was fishing!  We moved a bit closer to shore and ended up both spearing our first fish.  

Lets just say that they look bigger under water.  "River, I got one!" I heard Tyler yell over the rain.  

"I got one too!"

We compared our fish, and they were about the same size.  About 4 inches.  A little sheepish, but stoked on our first hits, we fried them up to accompany our lentils and rice.  I think Tyler got half a bite out of his.  But soon we will be spearing Moby Dick!

Peace from the tropics,

-River