Eye of the Storm

So with the construction of the second floor of Casa Gracon ready to be completed in early November I thought it would be great to head off to Barra around Christmas.  After all it seems silly to have a beautiful place in paradise and only use it a couple weeks of the year.  Of course this thought striking me in September meant that our place was already booked through Christmas.  No problem, undeterred I set about convincing Marla that we should go the week before Christmas break and invite some friends for a kid free pre-holiday holiday.  Seriously, that just sounds good doesn't it!

Long Story Short, with varying degrees of convincing My wife and I, along with three other couples booked our flights and began dreaming of sun, sand and lots of margaritas.  Then came the text from my friend on the evening of October 22nd.

I must admit this raised my anxiety level a bit , however, after a bit of google searching, a glass of wine and an episode of Ray Donovan I went to bed secure in the knowledge that my "Ya, but what are the chances..."  approach would once again serve me well.  I mean have you seen the size of the Pacific Ocean and the miles and miles of coast line in Mexico.

Friday morning brought the renewed optimism that a good night sleep often does and I grabbed my iPad at breakfast secure in the knowledge that I would find out the storm had changed course and moved out to sea or had blown itself out.  Nice bowl of Corn Pops, a cup of coffee and ....

Now I am not sure if you can make it out but where the red shading meets the coastline, in the lower right corner, it say Barra de Navidad.  That is the village that our place is in and the red zone is referred to in the article that accompanied the picture as the "Destruction Zone".  Ya, not the words you want to hear when it refers to the location of your investment property!

I am not going to recap the entire event as it is all over the internet but suffice it to say I did a lot of storm tracking that day.  A interesting thing, however, I found myself a lot less concerned for our property and our investment than I was for the people, the town and the surrounding area.  After all, this was not our home and we were safe and secure thousands of miles away.  I found myself recounting conversations I had with locals during our last visit and how they seemed so happy that the tourists and development were returning to the area after Huricane Jova in 2011.  My overriding emotion was sadness for these people who have put so much work into rebuilding and were beginning to see progress only to be hit again.  I was afraid this may be a devastating blow for this village we love so much.

Over the next few days as we watched events unfold and witnessed the clean up and incredible spirit of the Mexican people we were truly thankful the damage was far less than was expected and it reminded us why we love the place so much.  The people are amazing!  They welcome you in, share what they have and pitch in when needed.  The speed of the cleanup and how quickly people returned to their daily lives was truly amazing.

The following link has some video and pictures of the Hurricane and the immediate aftermath.  There are some great shots of the storm and even better one's of shops cleaning up and open for the business the very next day.

Hurricane Patricia Hits Barra

As for our own situation, we were very lucky that our place was under construction and the workers took time to secure our property and board up windows.  This despite the fact that their own houses were under threat.  Construction, resumed a couple days after the storm and we feel truly fortunate to be able to go ahead with our holiday and spend a bit of the holiday season in this amazing place with very special people.  

Looking Back

As you will notice from the post dates, should you really be that bored, you will notice my contributions to this blog have pretty much dried up over the past couple years.  However, recently I was preparing to make a post about the Hurricane Patricia (Stay tuned it is coming shortly.  Hard to believe I may make two posts in a month but get ready it is happening.)  and I began checking my previous posts looking for a photo.  Now while blogs may be slightly less cool than facebook these days and about as good an indicator of your age as your clarisworks files (yes, I went there Norm) it is quite enlightening to take a minute and retrace your thoughts through your blog.

This blog came about when "Blogs" were still just hitting mainstream culture and being introduced as "cutting edge" technology in education.  Since Blogs came about in 1999 and I came online in 2004 that 5 years put me on the leading edge in education.  You have to remember that this is a system that is still trying to figure out in 2015 how to provide reliable wireless connections in schools so a blog in 2004 defiantly made a person an innovator.

When I started this blog my only purpose was to play with the technology and model it as I was working as the Technology Coordinator for my school district (told you having a blog carried weight back in the day).  As a result this space become a place for random thoughts, a lazy way to send holiday greetings, and a place to vent about something insignificant that caught my eye.  As a result it is quite (OK, maybe not quite but at least slightly) interesting to me to see where my mind was at over the years and what actually motivated me enough to put a little bit of effort into sharing my thoughts.  Not sure what they say about me but here are few of the posts that caught my eye as interesting.

Priorities - This was the first post I made.  The picture link has long been broken but the sentiment is stronger today than ever.  Nothing makes you feel bulletproof like your family and eleven years later I still caught myself asking myself daily "Man, how the hell did I ever get so lucky"? 

What are we doing in Education - This post is still interesting to me as it is now 9 years later and the BC Education system is now all over 21st Century learning however, as I mentioned above,  I still can't get a reliable wireless connection in my school.  Seriously people we just need to figure this out!  It is 2015 and I can get a better wireless signal in a Greyhound bus than I can in a BC Secondary school.   

Oh Ya, we're in good hands now - This is the post that caught my intention and made me write about this.  2006 and we had just elected Stephen Harper.  Now anyone who knows me will tell you I don't like to be a person who says I told you so but ....  The sad part is it took 9 years for Canada to get rid of him.

On to the sea - This was the first post I made from Mexico (more on this to come in my Hurricane Patricia post).  It was also my first spring break, warm weather vacation in my life. Six years to Mexico, three to Arizona, one property in Mesa and one in Barra de Navidad and I would say it made an impression on me.

The office memo that ate the world - It is crazy to me that we still haven't figured out a way to deal with email.  Instead of dealing with our communication issues we have simple abandoned email in favour of technologies such as text messaging, Twitter, Instagram and Snapchat so instead of having to read or worse compose an eloquent, thoughtful written passage we can communicate through winky faces, steaming piles of poo and selfies of scrunched up faces.  

Facebook Shmacebook - Still proud a proud holdout!

Boston Bound - Well, I never did make it to Boston.  The year I went to register the Boston Marathon filled up in 8 hours, the previous record was 4 months, ya no shit what is up with that.  The next year life just got really busy as my kids, and a result me, got way more into soccer and priorities shifted.  After that my qualifying time was no longer valid.  The great part is this is still on my bucket list and gives me a goal for the future.  I will run Boston before I  am 50, that's right you  read it here!

Raising Men - As my one son is in grade 11 and the other has started high school in grade 8 I can begin to see glimpses of the men they are becoming and I still think the thoughts I expressed in this post were some of my most important.

Unloading -  While this post came in 2010 it is the last one I will share here as it marked a point in my slowing down as a blogger and becoming a little more selfish with my time and thoughts.  This post came at a time of mental exhaustion with feeling like everything was an uphill battle and that unless you were willing to wade in unwanted changes would wash over you.  I am proud of the things I was involved in at this time but it teach me that if you don't take time to turn off the outside noise no one is going to do it for you.