Scarlett Ibises, Plots in Brooklyn and Back Home

Monday, 3-9 SF

Brooklyn Belly is lookin' beautiful and so are her parents, and so are The Great BZWZ and Ben. Plot and Duck arrived on Saturday afternoon during a heat wave -- temperatures were up into the 50s and NewYawkuhs were thronging the streets. Saturday night the six adults and Isabella waited in a line at Grimaldi's Pizza that -- no exaggeration here-- was easily 100 people long, all queuing up on the sidewalk, laughing, happy to be outside after what has been a long winter already. (And Belly waited too, for at least an hour on the street, without complaint -- whenever she started to squirm a bit, someone would say: Isabella, what's for dinner tonight? and she'd say "I'M having PIZZA!")




Actually, the pizza is not the attraction -- it is very good, but it's the huge crowds and the fun of being in the line and then inside the packed restaurant with so much pizza-theater going on, that draws people here. Plus, it's inexpensive -- maybe half the prize of Saint Plotniko for an equally-sized pizza and probably five times better. They've got that yuppie thin-crust disease, though, so it's not Chicago, but that home-made pepperoni is really a standout and it was even better the next morning. Before the bagels.



After dinner, everyone walked over to the water to see the view and remain outside a little longer. It really was a gorgeous night. When you drive from JFK through rough-and-tumble neighborhoods in Brooklyn, it feels like you're back in a third world country (with first world traffic. Kind of like Port of Spain). It's not a pretty sight. Then you go to DUMBO and stare out at Manhattan and there isn't anywhere more beautiful. This is NewYawk. Glorious. Hideous. And glorious again.



The two little girls with Belly are her upstairs neighbors.




Note The Great Ducinik's sun-bleached hair.






Plot has not written yet about his and Duck's last day on Trinidad, last Friday, which started snarled in an enormous traffic jam as they attempted to get into Port of Spain, the capital, where it also happened to be the big day of a five-day cricket test match between the West Indies and England, kind of like the World Series down there. Plot and Duck had met two guys in Grand Riviere who were as nutso about cricket as Plot is about Plotzer baseball -- after several beers, however, Plot still doesn't get it, except to say that being a fan bypasses your brain. Your sport is your sport.

After a long, hot morning drive, Plot and Duck arrived in Port of Spain, which --- well, let's just say the town may have had its heyday when Blackbeard lived there, but those days are over. The old pirate stronghold, then colonial headquarters, now nation capital, has a few tourist attractions, but -- ehh. There are seven huge houses bordering the Queen's Savannah, a park in the center of town, that were once the homes to merchant princes, but today they're mostly boarded up, plywood on the windows, paint peeled off.




Like everywhere else in the West Indies, you can get a good roti for lunch though. And the Trini equivalent of taco trucks are cold coconut trucks. Nothing is more refreshing in the heat. You can also get a bus-up shut.



In the afternoon, it was another slog through traffic to get out of Port of Spain, and then Plot drove right past Caroni Swamp, where he and Duck were planning to take a boat tour to see Trinidad's national bird, the scarlet ibis. Getting completely lost in the rain and traffic, they managed to turn a half hour drive into a two and a half hour slog, but they got there, with the help of a Muslim halal meats cart, whose owner patiently directed Plot to the swamp. And where they ever glad they got there.

Neither Duck nor Plot were able to take pictures that can even suggest to his faithful readers how magnificent these flocks of bright scarlet birds are, seen from a boat with twenty other tourists. Here is what one feather looks like, and following that are a few shots, from a distance, of the birds soaring in to nest for the night in the mangrove. Perhaps you can imagine v-formations of perhaps twenty birds at a time, shooting low across the horizon and heading for the trees, at the same time equal sized flocks of white egrets and blue herons are arriving in the opposite direction.



Let's put it this way: Plotnik saw nothing in Africa that could outmatch the elegance of these glorious birds. And Trinidad protects them fiercely. They should all be OK for a few more years.






The last night at Pax Guest House was a little anti-climactic. Everyone Plot and Duck had met during the week had already gone, and there were only a few guests that night and by 6:30am the Plotniks were up and already heading for the airport.

It turned out The Great FiveHead had been workiing in Stiletto City for two weeks, so she arrived at JFK only ten minutes after Plot and Duck did. PD and BellyBone picked everyone up, and by the time they got back to Brooklyn BZWZ and Ben were just driving up.

So now it's 10am and Plot is back at his desk. It's nice to be here. But this trip was so unique, so unimaginably much fun that it's not quite as good to be back as it usually is. But God, that cup of coffee this morning was good.

One more antecdote for NotThat and the other bustiers:

When Plotnik and Ducknik were in Grand Riviere, Ingrid White was making them dinner (they were her only guests that night) before they planned to head to the beach and spend the night awaiting the leatherback turtles (who never did show up). Dinner was served in a funky little outside dining room where there were a few linoleum tables and a small TV up on top of a cabinet. The TV was turned to CNN so the Plotniks watched the news for the first time in three weeks -- you know, the woman with the octuplets and some celebrity dating some other celebrity. Same-o-same-o drivel.

UNTIL: A talking head interrupted the news to make an announcement: "Dodger fans will be excited to know that Manny Ramirez has officially returned to the fold!" There was a photo of a smiling Manny in his Plotzer uniform.

Plotnik jumped up and screamed: YAAAAHHHH! HOO HOO YES YES YES!!!" He pumped his fist in the air. He turned to Ducknik...and Ingrid...who were staring at him pitieously -- and he saw his food on the plate and smelled the salty ocean and the coconut palms and banana trees next door, and the old dog with the purple foot and the funky abandoned church with tropical vines growing into the windows -- and, yes, he realized this baseball news was no more meaningful than OctoMom. But. Still. He hasn't stopped feeling good about it since. And now he's home.