Dee - Following a suggestion from Leadweight re
www.roatan.com (and, again, thanks Leadweight!), I just saw that there is a special out of Houston for air plus two weeks at CCV for $1,500. You could avoid all that unpacking and just go back for two weeks?!!?
I've found May to be a great time to go back down (of course, other than rainy season, I think anytime is a great time to go back to Roatan). Which reminds me, time to go start packing up my gear.
Curious re the SBE. In 15 years of visiting Roatan, I've never heard of anyone getting hit. Any sense as to whether this was the unfortunate luck of the draw or if there has been an infestation that suddenly popped up?
Re the confiscator, excuse me, I mean the inspector - notwithstanding the rules and regulations of US Customs Inspectors, are things like Honduran coffee now being treated by Honduras as prohibited "tourist exports?"
Leadweight - much as you joke re the inspector insisting on having you remove the batteries from your light, let me tell you a story from my last visit to Honduras. It's a bit long, but it contains a good lesson.
As some of you may know, in addition to running a medical rehabilitation center, I also have a company that produces specialty lights for the emergency management industry (think smoke jumpers, World Trade Center rescue workers, US Navy). No surprise, I dive with light weight, high performance custom lights. Just before the trip, a lead engineer from an unnamed leading dive light manufacturer stopped in for a visit (the lighting industry is a big, big business, but everybody knows everyone). We talked about a little (!!?) product liability problem his unnamed company had re a light that just happened to keep turning on and, because of the heat buildup, start to burn up. He showed us the workaround they were implementing (but, interestingly, no plans for a recall!). I showed him his next product liability problem on that same light, which was IMHO an even more severe risk. He was amazed that a non-lighting person like me would find the obvious problem that had eluded the detection of so many so-called design experts (hey, I'm a psychologist, I can see only obvious things!) and, mind you, said unnamed company has not remedied this other problem. We joked about it and he left the light for my R&D guy to play with. One of the staff suggested I take the light with me on my trip and see how it performed underwater.
Now, fast forward to Roatan International Airport as my daughter and I are returning from a dynamite vacation at Anthony's Key. The inspector asks that I open up my gear bag and starts rummaging. In the pocket of my BC, he pulls out the sample flashlight from unnamed company, SWITCHED ON AND BLAZING HOT! Apparently, I had left the turned-off light in my BC by mistake after the last dive 36 hours earlier and during transport to the airport, a jostling of the bags must have turned it on (the unit really only puts out a couple hours of usable light, so it's not some Hannukah story about a light burning longer than is otherwise thought possible, although that's what my company's product line is all about!) Had the inspector not done his job, that bad boy of a light would have started smoldering, met up with all the flammable materials in my dive bag and, oh, maybe somewhere over the Carribean, could have turned our 737 into a fireball. Equipment Lesson Number 1 that any lighting professional (except this boneheaded head of the company!) knows and religiously follows: take the batteries out of your light when traveling or packing it away.
I thanked the inspector, dissambled the flashlight, and watched as the inspector moved on to my next bag. He pointed to a rolled up towel. I explained that it was protective cushioning for another dive light. It was, in fact, a prototype light we are working on, placed into the shell and basic hardware of a popular dive light from different and also unnamed leading dive light manufacturer (mind you, my company does not make dive lights, I just can't accept my R&D guy's painfully sage advice to not bother with the dive light market!). In my best Spanish, I assured him that it would not be on because the switch lock from the second unnamed leading dive light manufacturer's unit was more reliable. Unmoved, he asked me to pull off the towel. To my chagrin, it was shining bright as all-get-out! While this particular design really could have burned for hours on end, the story is that I'd left the batteries in (STUPID, STUPID, STUPID me!) because I thought I could rely on the switch lock. I was wrong and again, I could have burn us up.
I profusly thanked the inspector, although he didn't seem to appreciate the disaster he had just prevented. Having spent several minutes with me, the inspector turned his attention to the next person in line.
Now having previously acknowledged to you all that I am not a lighting professional (said in one's best Star Trek doctor imitation voice: "I'm a doctor, Jim, not an electrical engineer"), I need to point out that my value to the operation is that when I try in earnest to understand and use our products, I have an uncanny ability to make them fail or break. Not because I can detect problems, but because I'm a mechanically inept klutz. Anyone who knows me has seen this many times and I graciously accept being the butt of many jokes in this regard. So, witnessing my true-to-form experience with the lights, my darling 12 year old daughter lovingly needled the daylights out of me. To which I replied, "ok big shot, so let's see if your light is on." She opened up her luggage, delicately pulled out her identical prototype dive light with the switch lock from the unnamed leading dive manufacturer and, my oh my, it too was shining brightly. Life Lesson Number 1: When you've already hit rock bottom in the self-effacing humiliation arena, the rare pay-off from successfully doubling down can be sweet.
Yes, a long story (Mark Twain is reputed to have said, "If you want me to talk for five minutes, give me a month to prepare. Talk for an hour, well I can do that in five minutes." Of course, quoting Abraham Lincoln, some of said about me "he can compress the most words into the smallest ideas of any man I ever met."). But the point is, all three of the lights could have easily created what the insurance industry euphemistically refers to as a "negative outcome." Don't just assume a switch lock will hold. PLEASE remember to take the batteries out of your lights before you fly home!
Ok, enough story. Dee - Thanks for the great trip report! Don't worry that you may bore folks with reports on Roatan. Some of us can't get enough.
Allen
Allen
