I’ve been playing around with Google’s My Maps some more. Take a look at the route I drove to get Evelyn to the Observatory every night:

Route From Gonzalez Home To Arecibo Observatory

 On on bad day, I managed to do a Diddy Kong Racing move on part of this route. If I find it, I’ll mark it. Basically, I did a power-slide that scared the crap out of both of us.

Update: Did you know that you can download the KML file to Google Earth? It’s really cool. Download the KML for my Austin walk route and you can see the highlights of our walk, from south to north. Pretty neat! This is what the internet was for!

Since there are some natives who read this blog, I thought I’d list a couple routes to avoid. We travel around quite a bit, so this might be helpful. For everyone else, you can skip this (likely) boring section. This is all for the western part of the island, since that’s where we are at. At some point, I’ll put this info in a different part of the side (off the blog).

• Route 111 is still washed out between Lares on the west and 129 (the east-to-west section) on the east. Coming from Utuado, the detour is 129 south to 128 west to Lares. The detour is clearly marked and heavily traveled. 128 in Lares is a bit slow; lots of switchbacks. Route 111 between 134 on the west and 10 on the east is fine.
• Route 651 between 10 on the east and 651/635 on the west just plain sucks. We tried that route to shortcut between 10 and 129, but it’s very slow and goes through some really seedy areas. I would not drive it at night. I’ve never seen so much garbage around houses and along the roads in all my life. It’s really a shame, because the countryside (in parts) is beautiful. (Now I understand why all the telescope traffic routes further north at 652. Anything marked as a telescope route is safe and cleaned up, from what we’ve seen. The fastest route between 129 and 10 continues to be going all the way up to I-22.
• Route 119 south of San Sebastian to Mariaco is a mess. This is supposed to be a “major” road between the two towns, but is in really bad shape. On the bright side, they are working on huge sections of it. On the not-so-bright-side, the detours, while well marked, put you on very narrow roads. The area is pretty, but the heavily traveled route 2 south is still the fasted way to get to the Mayaguez area.
• The “missing link” between the north end of 10 (Utuado) and the south end (Adjuntas) is still missing. You have to run on old 123, and that road has seen better days. They are obviously not fixing it up at all. On the bright side, they are working on the overpass/bridge towers south of Utuado. So, in our lifetimes, we might actually see 10 connect between Arecibo and Ponce. Note that this missing link is sometimes labeled road 10, sometimes road 123. If you hare heading south toward Ponce, at Adjuntas, just follow the “Ponce” signs to get to where I-10 starts up again. It’s pretty well marked (I think it’s called 5518)–if you see a big plaza being constructed, you’re on the correct road. (It bypasses Adjuntas proper.) 
• Construction of the overpasses on Route 2 between Sabana Grande and Mayaguez and coming along really well, especially on the south end (near San German). These will be a godsend when they are done, since it means fewer stop lights on Route 2. I believe this is all part of the “turning 2 into 22″ plan. They already seem to be making a positive difference. Now if they could only do the same between Mayaguez and Aguadilla….

Things are finally starting to quiet down a bit. Many of the boxes are unpacked, and yesterday I cooked up my first meals in the house. Hurray! Believe me, after two weeks of eating out, then two weeks of nothing but boiled meat and rice, some good old Sloppy Joes are much savored.

The hard part about shopping down here is the lack of spices. You can finds tons of garlic, anise, and “poulty seasoning”, but not much else. Chili powder is hard to find for some reason, and forget about “weird” stuff like kosher salt and dried peppers. A lot of veggies are tough too, or really expensive. So, I’m going to shift some of my cooking to use more local ingredients…except that I won’t boil them to death. If someone could come up with *real* chinese food down here, they’d make a mint.

Speaking of food / money opportunities…there is a place right next door that is like a “horse bar” (for lack of a better term)…open on Thr/Fri/Sat. Basically, it’s a place where a bunch of people come to drink/dance/ride horses. It’s kinda cool, since a gazillion people on horses show up starting at around 7 PM. Music is a bit loud, but at least it’s decent music…and it quiets down at around midnight. Anyway, I’m not sure if they serve food down there or not, so this could be a good chance to open up a BBQ stand (we are right up the hill from the place…right at the top of their driveway). I’ll keep you posted–this could be my big start in cooking down here.

For all those lushes out there…rum is cheap down here. About $8 for a 750 ML bottle…and that’s for Barardi Select, not the rot-gut. I can see why there are so many drunks down here. On the bright side, even with the cheap booze, I’m not drinking very much…if I did I’d screw up my liver (with the meds that I’m taking). As for the health front, I think my blood pressure is getting too low, which is a really good sign. Maybe I need to start working again.

Yesterday (Thr) the movers arrived with all of the furniture and tons of boxes. The house is now starting to look like a home, instead of big empty rooms.

Spent the last couple of days installing a bunch (15) new light fixtures, switches, outlets, etc. We need to get someone in to swap out some circuits, since one is overloaded, and we need a 240 feed for the laundry room. So, right now, we are pretty much up and running, except for a kitchen that is a disaster (but workable) and no laundry.

Over the next couple of days Eve and I will be working on the remaining paperwork stuff (like insurance, drivers licenses, etc). Once that’s done we’ll hopefully be able to relax for a bit.

Well, we are getting the house into shape. Got most of both bathrooms working, electrical is shaky, but we can work on that as we go. Got the appliances, so we can actually start cooking there soon (hopefully today [Sat] when the propane gets delivered). Evelyn and I should move out of Arcibo to the house in the next day or so. (Her parents moved in two days ago.)

I’ve got some sort of cold, so I’m sick. I’ll write more when I’m feeling better.

On Monday we picked up the car. Not too bad of an experience. First had to drive from Arecibo to San Juan (about 2 hours). Once there, we went to Trailer Bridge (our shipper) and they gave us the paperwork to pay the taxes.

Went over to the tax place (over the worlds worst road…the minivan bottomed out several times) and stood in a couple of lines, paid $1400 in taxes (cash only, please) and got our papers stamped. For our car, it took a total of 45 minutes at the tax place, but Eve’s dad was there for over 5 hours since his older truck (89) was no longer on their tax books.

Back to Trailer Bridge with our stamped paper, paid another $1000 (the shipping cost), got more paper stamped, and then picked up the car. We got a LOT of strange looks while driving from San Juan to Arecibo (due to the Illinois plates).

Today (Tue) we got to stand in more lines to get our PR plates (once you get the car, you need a PR Title and Plates issued within 24 hours). Waited for about 45 minutes, filled out paperwork, paid $200 for the plates/insurance, got more papers stamped, and then got our plate and “city” sticker. Horray!

Next up, to get our PR drivers licenses.

Advice to anyone moving down here: Make sure to carry your Social Security card. They use it all the time. Also, be prepared to add on to your name…mine is now Ronald L. Nelson Williams. They are VERY confused by my name, since the only people with “Nelson” down here use it as a first name. For a while, I was being called Nelson Ronald Williams.

Okay, until I have more time this will have to do:

So far things have gone to plan. Stayed one night in TN, another in Jacksonville FL. Dropped off the cars last Friday–that went pretty good. Can you believe that TrailerBridge ships 700 new cars out to PR every Friday? Don’t know how they fit on that island.

Have spent the last couple of days at my sister in-laws house. Now we’re moving on to Orlando to meet some more family. Will be in the Orlando area over the next two days (Wed/Thr). Then we have our flight on Friday afternoon to PR. I’ll write more once we’re in PR (or in Orlando, if we can find a library).

Sorry I haven’t written in a while. Been without an internet connection. Here’s the quick update:

We’re planning on leaving Chicago on early Tuesday (10/26). Will spend a night in Chattanooga TN, then drop off the car in Jacksonville FL (spending another night there). After that, depending on hurricane damage, we’ll spend about a week in the Fort Meyers area. If the storm destroys that area, then we’ll just fly out to PR sooner.

Next Tuesday (10/25) is when the movers are scheduled to cart a bunch of our stuff out to Puerto Rico. So, we’ll likely be hitting the road to Florida (to drop off the car) on Wednesday the 26th. One of our concerns right now is whether Hurricane Wilma is going to hit Florida. The two tracks (as of today) say either Miami (where we fly out of) or Jacksonville (where we drop off the car). Depending on how bad it gets down there, we might need to drop the car off in New Jersey instead. We’ll see what happens.

Well, my last day of work was last Friday (10/14). Everyone seems to have had a good time at the party(sometimes a little too good). Once I get some pictures back, I’ll post them up. (BTW: I’m still working on getting the Coppermine images thing working on the site. Once it’s up I’ll let you know.)

I’m not kicking back and relaxing yet, since we need to get ready for the big move. We’ve got the car situation pretty well under control (driving down to Florida later this month), but there are a hundred other things we need to do. Mainly need to figure out what we going to ship, what the movers will take, etc.