Uncle Joe Visits Antigua - with a surprise

Once upon a time... In a wonderful chapter of my life I live in English Harbor Antigua.
Yes, it was great fun. and I suddenly there were a lot of people wanting to visit.

Uncle Joe and Carolyn rang mu up and wanted to come down for a visit. We had a great time sailing, beaching, exploring the island, and hanging out at the St James Club pool and having afternoon tea – how civilized.

One evening we found our self's in English Harbor at “Steve's Pizza”. Steve was a British studio musician when he was not tending bar and making great pizza. Think Caribbean beach bar and you got the picture.

Joe and I were at the bar drinking Red Stripe Beer and talking to Steve. At the other end of the bar was a rough pirate looking old English dude horsing around with a small group of people. As I recall, he was trying to flip out a switchblade knife all cool like, but kept throwing it across the room. Being the islands, no one was the least concerned about taking a ricocheting switchblade in the neck. No, we thought it was all just great fun..

Joe was not paying attention to the horseplay. He had finished his beer and was playing with the EC (Eastern Caribbean) bills and change on the bar. This caught the eye of the other gentleman and he came over to us and asked Joe, in a grovely voice, “You all right Man?”. Joe didn't seem to get what this guy was asking, and the man said again “You all right Man?”, then instructed Steve to get Joe another Red Stripe on him. He smiled and when back to his group and horsing around.

Joe looked so puzzled. Both at the guy and at me laughing my ass off trying to stay upright on the bar stool.


“What the hell was that all about”, Joe asked me, with a rather concerned expression.

I offered, “I think the gentlemen thought you were counting your change to see if you had enough to buy another beer, so he was nice enough to buy one for you”.

Joe seemed concerned that I was still grinning ear-to-ear about the whole deal.
Joe asked, “So, that guy famous or something?”.

I asked, “You ever hear of Keith Richards?”.
“Nope”, says.
“Do you know who the Rolling Stones are?”, I asked.
“Oh ya, I know the Stones”, Joe says.

“When you get home, tell you kids that the Rolling Stones bought you a beer in paradise”, I says.

One of the beauties and simplicity of life in the Caribbean.

David T. Mullins

Montserrat Volcano Eruption - Emergency Communications Build Out.

Montserrat Volcanic Eruption. - Built emergency cellular repeater on north side of the island to provide mobile phone service to the disaster relief operations covering Rendezvous Bay, Little Bay, Gerald's and surrounding areas.

The equipment was flown over via charter aircraft, the airport was still open to emergency traffic only. All the technical equipment required to build out a repeater site including the tower, batteries, and solar panels. I positioned the upper yagi antenna to point directly to the Boggy Peak Cell tower on Antigua. The lower panel antenna was aimed down toward the service area to best cover the disaster operations. Water, concrete. block and labor was locally supplied.

Had to stay in a hotel in the exclusion zone with rocks raining down on us with the eruptions. In the morning we would wait to leave our rooms to run to breakfast until the rocks stopped landing on the roof. Then, we would look out the door at the pool to see how big the rocks were that were still falling - then run like hell to the dinning room. My rental jeep was trashed from the rocks hitting it every night. Convertible roof torn to hell, windshield bashed out, and dints all over, but it ran; and we would jump in and drive at high speed until we were north enough and in safety.

Dangerous as hell, but a real blast - I loved it. Plymouth and the famous Emerald Cafe (Over the Gut and great Mountain Chicken) were now under 12 feet of volcanic ash. British Naval Ships were off the north end of the island evacuating people to Antigua.