Category: K Man Life

We are slowly getting used to the outrageous costs of most everything on the island.  We are guessing that our electric bill will be around $600 U.S. per month.  A lunchable for the kids is $4 U.S.  The few times that the kids do eat lunch at school we have to shell out $5 each for lunch.  On top of that, the schools have a snack time in the morning which is $2.50 and on Fridays the kids can wear street clothes if they pay $2.50.  All of that adds up with two kids in school.  One thing that I refused to pay for was $35 (before tip) for a haircut.  We had anticipated this outrageous cost and Jennifer bought with her a clipper set for cutting my hair and Michael’s hair.  I’ve wanted her to cut my hair for years but she was never very keen on the idea.  She did a great job and I’m really excited about having free cuts for the rest of my life, even when we do move back to the States.  The only problem was we forgot to bring a hair cape.  Michael looked like he had the back hair of a 60 year old man when his trim was finished.  I found a garbage bag and draped it over my shoulders to keep some of the hair off.  Michael was very squirmy during his cut and immediately took a bath to get all of the hair off of him.

One of the big reasons I wanted to move here was the opportunity to experience radio contesting from a rare DX location.  I’ve been on the hunt for a contesting location for the past couple of weeks.  I’ve driven all over the island looking for a spot that is secluded and directly on the water with a shot towards the U.S., Japan, and Europe over salt water.  I asked our realtor if she knew of any place that might have a shelter and an electrical outlet on the beach.  Shouldn’t be that hard to find, right?  Only problem is everyone else in the world wants to be directly on the water as well.  Our realtor gave me the number of a friend of hers, some guy named Ronnie.  I called Ronnie and told him what I was looking for.  He gave me the name of a ham from the U.S. that lives in the northern part of the island.  I called and talked to Art, ZF1AA, for about 30 minutes and it sounded promising.  He invited all of us out to his place and told the kids to bring their swimming suits.  Art and his wife were very welcoming and quite entertaining.  We stayed at their house for several hours while the kids collected shells on the beach and swam in their pool.  It turns out Art used to be in T.V. and was the creator of one of my favorite shows as a kid – Air Wolf.  I started humming the theme song to Air Wolf which is quite impressive considering it was only on for a couple of seasons in the mid 80s.  I must have been 6 or 7 years old when it was on T.V.  So now I have a place to operate from.  It will be field day style, meaning I will put a couple of wire antennas up the day of the contest and will operate outside.  Not so bad considering the weather here and the view from Art’s back deck!  So Gigi from Bulgaria, gave me Ronnie’s number from Australia, who gave me Art’s number who is from the States.  Three people from three different continents quite a diverse mix of people here. These pictures are their back yard.

Friday night we drove to West Bay and stopped and ate at a nice restaurant on the water.  Well, the view was great but the food was so-so.  The restaurant had a large area around the water where Michael went exploring while we waited for our check.  A few minutes later Jennifer and I looked over where Michael was playing and didn’t see him anywhere.  I ran over to the area where the ocean was quite strong and couldn’t find him anywhere.  It was extremely scary and I was yelling for Michael and was about to jump into the water when he came darting out of the bathroom.

Every Tuesday I travel to Cayman Brac on a small puddle jumper.  It is a long day but is always interesting to start your day flying to work.  On the return trip to Grand Cayman the plane stops on Little Cayman, population 170.  I took a picture of the airport at Little Cayman.  Unfortunately you can’t see it in the picture but they have a sign hanging over the airport door that says Terminal A Gate 1.

Little Cayman Airport

Cruise Ship in port at Grand Cayman

Jennifer and Michael arrived safely on Thursday and we are all working on getting reacquainted with each other.  With their arrival and all of the stressful things out of the way, the urge to continue writing is starting to wane.  Hopefully I will make myself sit down and write about something at least once a week to keep everyone updated and so we can remind ourselves of what we did when we were all younger.A brief recap of the week.  My quest to get the kids into the Prospect school district has hit a dead end.  I finally met with Mr. X and he told me there was not any room in the Prospect school district.  He was rude and I was a pushy American and the meeting ended with me storming out of his office.  Hopefully he will place Michael in the same school district as Katie.  If not, then he will have a fight on his hands.  Redbay is a good school district and Katie is really starting to settle in and make some friends.  On Thursday, she went to Brownies after school and learned how to grill and boil hotdogs.  Her team won the award for the best hot dogs.  Katie claims that the Brownies also raise money to take trips to Orlando and even to Great Britain.

The kids are really enjoying the pool at our complex and have been at least a couple of times each day since Michael arrived.  I try and go out and swim for exercise in the morning or the evening.  My imagination gets the best of me at night with the crashing waves and the moon reflecting off the ocean.  I start to think that some sort of sea monster is in the pool with me.  At least it motivates me to swim faster.

On Saturday we went to the iguana reserve and to the Northern tip of the island named Rum Point.  We saw several blue iguanas, which are indigenous to the Cayman Islands.  In 2004 they were on the verge of extinction but have made a comeback and their numbers are around 700 in the wild.

Now for the exciting part and the title of this article.  In my quest to have a radio station from home I’ve constructed several wire antennas and placed them in the attic of our apartment.  Fortunately we are on the top floor of our complex and I have direct access to the attic from our bedroom.  I’ve made a dipole for 10 and 15 meters and might even be able to put up a piece of wire that could work for 40 meters (approximately 70 feet long).  There is an outlet and a light in the attic along with a small area of the floor that is boarded.  I was able to get on the air this afternoon and have a steady stream of loud callers from Europe with some U.S. stations mixed in.  It was nice to get a call from Erik, N5WR who was very loud from Missouri.  The attic was hot and I told Jennifer that instead of hot yoga, I was doing hot radio.  Within a couple of minutes I was sweating profusely and I told myself that it was good training for the WRTC competition in July.  I could get in my car and be on from a super station in 5 minutes, but there is something about having your own station.

Kevin

Hot Radio

Blue Iguana

Blue Iguana

My shtick when it comes to work, is I’m really tall, and I’m a male.  Not to many people have one of those attributes in the education system much less both of them.  Height and gender is usually enough to get the kids to buy into whatever I’m selling.  However, it appears that the students of the Cayman Islands have already been exposed to both a tall and male speech therapist in the form of a Canadian named Conrad Duncan.  Over and over again I had teachers comment on that I was just like Conrad.  I had a group of students yell out to me, “Mr. Duncan!” while I was walking across school.  Oh well, they did say I was a little taller than him so I’ve got that going for me.  Conrad is no longer on the island.

Daily living obligations such as a car, house, insurance, etc. are starting to be taken care of.  We are now the proud owners of a 2001 Honda Odyssey Van.  We thought that it would be great for picking people up from the airport, giving island day tours, and it is big enough for my parents to sleep in when they come and visit (they can use the courtesy pool shower to hose themselves off in the morning).  The van was recently imported from Japan.  There is a giant GPS navigation screen that appears to be working but it looks like the map is centered on Japan instead of Grand Cayman.  It also says something to us in Japanese every time we turn the car on.

I had my first real experience in a radio contest from outside of the U.S. Using big antennas from a little island was definitely worth the move.  Its quite an experience when 50 people are all sending their callsigns to you simultaneously in Morse Code.

Katie and I went to Spotts beach on Saturday between my short stints at the radio station.  It is a public beach that is 1/2 a mile from where our apartment complex is located.  It is very secluded and has some really nice snorkeling.  The highlight of the trip was getting to swim with turtles.  The area is a mixture of sand and sea grass and the turtles like to congregate around the grass in order to find food.  I saw half a dozen turtles in the hour or so that we stayed at the beach.  They didn’t really care that humans were around and I was able to get close enough to touch them (although we didn’t touch them).  During this time, Katie was on the beach under a tree reading a book.  She hasn’t acclimated to the ocean yet and going out past her knees  makes her uneasy.  I wasn’t going to let her miss this so I told her to jump on my back and I took her out to see the turtles.  After about 15 minutes of looking, I  finally spotted one with its head poked briefly above the water.  One of the nice features of Spotts beach is the water is very shallow.  Katie could actually touch the bottom where the turtle was located.  I swam at least a couple hundred of feet out from the shore and was still able to touch quite easily.  I need to take my Go Pro camera next time and get some pictures and video to share.

Our free stay at Rochelle’s house is over and we are back at Eldemire’s Bed (just bed, no breakfast).  Rochelle offered to let us stay with them for the next two nights, but I didn’t want to impose on them.  Thankfully we will be moving into our apartment on Tuesday and we can finally have a place to call home.  Jennifer and Michael are also set to join us on Thursday!

Katie’s Sand Mountain

On the pier at Spotts Beach