We’ve posted some of it.
After M-11, we made a big Cirrus trip down to Haiti- OK, one Eclipse. We slogged through some weather to get to FXE June 30th.
Very early on July first, we bussed over:
Preflight dark and still a little sleepy.
Chip and John were across the way. We entertained ourselves taking pictures of each other, while Brad Pierce talked to Chuck Watson on the sat phone for inflight weather, and Barry Lerman told us how it looked from 39,000. We really had it going.
Way too long on the tarmac- I’m going to have to do that better if it ever comes up again. And then on to site soleil:
Almost everybody went home early the next AM.
But some of us had a little time.
Robin Turner, Mike Harris and Karen Buck, Luke and Helen, Dan Laughlin, and a crowd of local talent went down to see the city, much of it rebuilt, or at least cleaned up, the presidential palace leveled now, and to see the church Jim Corcoran is building adjacent to the ruined old cathedral, amputees in evidence:
Later we went down to Olafson’s, an old hotel made of wood. At the critical moment in 2010, it flexed, but didn’t fall.
Featured in Graham Greene’s “the Comedians”, it’s a storied old place- ginger bread and Queen Ann’s lace- with a great dance floor fronting big murals- somewhere between Diego Rivera and Basquiat:
And powerful rum punches.
When you give Karen a rum punch, she starts to giggle, pretty soon everybody’s cracking up. Here’s Norma Lopez, physical therapist, and my hero, on the near right:
It was a nice night- so normal you could forget the penury.
And then variously home, Luke shotgun, Wynn’s Dad to his right.
through the usual Florida summer stuff:
I don’t know how they stay dry:
It was a success. We took some stuff, sent some money, saw how things are, and came home with nothing bent or broken.
Other stories followed fast, but their telling is tougher; those are for another night.
Thanks to all who went and helped.
