The Continuing Adventures of Dr Dzoe

And here’s my review of the Villa Montana, the resort where we stayed, in case anyone is thinking of a trip to Puerto Rico (or happens to stumble across this on Google).

The Villa Montana is a great place if you want a quiet vacation in a warm place.  The rooms were comfortable and amazingly spacious: we had two suites that were joined together, sharing a staircase and entrance.  The two-bedroom suite was surprisingly large, complete with a full kitchen and a vast dining/living room, two full bathrooms, and a large patio.  The one-bedroom suite had a nice sized living room and a kitchenette.  Both suites had washing machine and dryer.

The beach is lovely and quiet.  While there are several adjacent houses, there are no other resorts nearby.  The beach is on the north coast of the island and has waves active enough to attract local surfers.  But a short walk down the beach there’s some of the nicest snorkeling I’ve ever done with a complex coral reef system on a stretch of beach protected from the waves by an offshore reef.

The facilities at the resort are fairly sparse.  There are two small swimming pools and one restaurant, Eclipse.  The food there is good but not great, though the service is slow: even for lunch it was typically an hour after sitting down before we were served.  But while waiting you’re sitting overlooking the beach and enjoying the warm breezes, so it’s not exactly a hardship.

There isn’t a whole lot near the resort.  While Puerto Rico has many attractions, including Old San Juan, a rainforest, and bioluminescent bays, they are all at least an hour’s drive from the resort.  If you’re looking to do a lot of touring, this really isn’t a good home base.  Similarly, we never did find a really good restaurant nearby, though we tried several that were recommended by both the resort staff and other local people that we encountered.

The front desk staff were all helpful and had brochures and information about several of Puerto Rico’s attractions.  There is a stable a short walk from the resort if you are interested in horse rides up the beach ending in nearby cliffs complete with caves: Julie and the girls enjoyed a ride there.  And there are several local options for snorkeling, surfing, and scuba: I recommend Aquatica as a dive and surfing operator – you can get a brochure at the main desk.

All in all, a great place to stay if you want to spend some days enjoying the beach and the water, especially if you’d prefer to do your own cooking.  If you’re looking for a more active vacation, however, this is probably not the place for you.

Thursday evening the girls and I went snorkeling in a bioluminescent bay.  In this bay there is a sort of microorganism that, when you brush against it, lights up much like a glow-in-the-dark watch dial.  Swimming in the waters under a moonless sky was amazing: when you are still, the water is dark.  But make one move and you are covered in glowing glitter.

I would hold my hand still under the water, then move my fingers and watch them glow.  Or dive beneath the waves and watch the glitter stream past my mask.  Once the Unidentified Humanoid swam by me and I could see a large glowing object looking like a comet passing within a foot of my face.

I’ve read that there’s only around a dozen of these bays in the world and Puerto Rico has three of them.  All I can say is that I loved my time there – it was like swimming in a pool of stars.

Unfortunately it was all too dark to take pictures.  I tried with the underwater camera, but the glitter was too dim to be captured.  But here’s one of us on the boat on our way to the bay.

That was the last adventure of our trip.  Friday it rained much of the day, and we had a lazy day.  (Though I did get out for a last snorkel.  What, should I have been worried about getting wet?  I saw what looked to be a school of newborn fish, tiny little things the size of a fingernail with yellow and black stripes swimming beside a much larger fish of the same sort.)  And then Saturday was the usual scramble to get to the airport and home – the first sight of ice on the rivers seen from the plane was quite disheartening.

But we’re home now.  It’s nice to be home, but I do wish it was warmer!

On Tuesday, we drove into Old San Juan, a roughly two-hour drive from our resort.  Once there, we visited the Castillo de San Cristobal, an immense fort built over 150 years starting in 1634, first used by the Spanish to defend their gateway to the West Indies, but later used to watch for submarines during WWII.  An impressive place with incredible views.

Here’s one of the watch stations built during WWII, a strange thing to see grafted to the side of an old-style fort.

After that, we shopped for a while in the streets of Old San Juan, a place filled with shops catering to the cruise ships that often make this a port of call.  Then it was dinner at a nice Japanese place that Andy visited while on cruise last year, then a stroll back to the car passing by the decorated plaza.

And on Wednesday, we rested.  A little body surfing, a little snorkeling, a lot of sitting by the beach and reading.  Then we finished off the day by paying a visit to a local theater and watching “Sherlock Holmes” (in English, with Spanish subtitles).

A restful and delightful day.

I’m woefully behind on these posts.  That’s in part due to connectivity failures – internet isn’t great here.  Which is probably just as well – it forces me to spend more time resting, reading, and doing fun stuff – lack of connectivity can be a real blessing!

Another piece of bookkeeping: one of my fellow travelers has expressed a dislike for being mentioned in this blog.  I shall still recount tales of this person as they intersect with mine, but will no longer use the person’s name.  If you know the Dzikiewicz’s, it should rapidly become clear who it is.

And yet one more: thanks to Steph, whose travels in Latin America are much more extensive than my own, for the correction on the status of Puerto Rico.  Puerto Rico is apparently a commonwealth, complete with congressional representation, and not a territory.

Now, to catch up a little.  Monday was a fairly busy day, including several water activities aided by the fine folk at Aquatica (a local surf and dive shop).  Monday morning featured scuba diving with Andy.  Shore diving, which means that you carry your gear to the beach, wander into the water, and swim off.  We drove first to one dive site, then to a second that turned out to be about a hundred yards from our resort.

My impressions of the scuba were about the same as my impressions of the snorkeling: some nice fish life, though not as good as other places I’ve been.  (Highlights were a pair of spotted eagle rays swimming in formation and a couple of mid-sized turtles.)  But the coral formations are spectacular.  In fact, the second dive was pretty much all a bunch of coral tunnels that we swam through: we’d come through one tunnel, get to open water, then turn around and head through another, sometimes with the current behind us (which was marvelous), sometimes having to kick into the current (not as much fun).  Here’s a picture of Andy in one of those tunnels:

Then in the afternoon, I took a surfing lesson with Kate and Unidentified Humanoid.  Surfing turns out to be pretty darned vigorous, requiring agility and balance, two words that don’t describe me.  So I stayed out on the waves for a while, then sat on the beach with Julie and cheered on the girls (who took to it rather well).  Here’s some pictures from the day:

After that, we grabbed dinner, then I went for a night-time snorkel.  Nothing amazing in the waters, though I did see a spotted eel that was around four feet long, just slithering across the coral.  And the spiny sea urchins are a scary site illuminated only by flashlight: they come out from their nooks and crannies and sit on top of the coral, looking about ten times larger than they do by day – like a black softball with foot long spikes emerging from it.

Anyway, I may try to catch up with the last couple of days today.  It’s rainy here now, so I may have a chance to blog more.  Or I may not – I’ve found a good beach book (“Carter Beats the Devil” – details when I get around to writing it up in a “What I’ve been Reading” post), and the taste of lotus leaves is starting to grow on me…

Today Julie sat overlooking the sea

while the girls and I went snorkeling.

(The coral reefs off the beach are as good as any I’ve seen – great snorkeling.  And I saw an octopus – first time I’ve seen one by day.)

Later, they went horseback riding down the beach (I was too big for the Puerto Rican horses)…

while I went for a long walk, down to the cliffs at the end of the beach.

I’m not sure what Andy was doing all day, but he seemed to be happy when I ran into him.

Then we all got together for a nice Italian dinner, then it was off for the traditional family trip to Walmart.

G’night all!

Here we are in the warmth.  Starting the day with temperatures in the 20’s, ending it in the 80’s.  A boost of 60 degrees: definitely an improvement.

We’re in Puerto Rico for the week, all five of us.  Flew in this morning (and boy are our arms tired, nyuck nyuck nyuck), direct flight from Dulles to San Juan, then way too much time getting a rental car (but they gave us a 10% discount for our troubles, so all is forgiven), then an hour and a half drive to our resort.  A quick dip in the ocean (refreshing but not cold, fairly rough water, not too much sealife but a few fish, clownfish mostly but some others too).  Then dinner, and a brief adventure finding a grocery store.  (But more on that in a later post.)

My opinion on Puerto Rico, based on a full ten hours of mostly driving around in it: over the years we’ve visited several destinations in the Caribbean, including Mexico, Jamaica, the Turks and Caicos, and Grand Cayman.  Each has its own distinct feel, and often it seems that the only things they have in common are warmth and beaches (which is okay, because that’s what we keep coming here for).

Puerto Rico is similar in its uniqueness.  In the case of Puerto Rico, though, it’s an interesting mix of the US and a Spanish island.  It’s a US territory, of course, so US law and customs apply, and US corporations abound.  Everywhere you look there’s an American brand name, including McDonalds, KFC, Walmart, and even an outlet mall with brands you’d see throughout the US.  The post offices are US post offices, indistinguishable from the ones at home.  All prices are in dollars.  And the highway system feels an awful lot like the US highway system, largely because it is the US highway system.

But the signs are in Spanish, and some of the mileposts are actually kilometer-posts (though the speed limits are still in MPH, not KPH).  And there’s something about a lot of the houses and small shops that remind me a lot of Mexico, and I’m pretty sure that the free-range chicken on the menu is really free-range, given that we saw several roosters roaming around by the side of the highways.  (This place even reminds a little of India, which is strange.  Especially this resort, which is a wilderness resort similar to several that I stayed at in Rajiv Gandhi National Park far away in Nagarhole.)

No real conclusions on all of that yet.  But it’s always interesting to go somewhere else, because it’s always a bit different than you expect.  And a bit more similar too.

Anyway, we’re here now, and we’re tired (got up at 4:00 AM this morning, and it was an active week with too little sleep as it was).  So good night!

The show’s over now.  Time to reflect on the experience.

First off, being back on stage again was marvelous.  Over the five performances, we had around 400 people seeing the show, and I loved every minute of every performance.  And I loved the audiences as well, especially the woman sitting in the second row during the Sunday matinee who smiled through the whole show and the guy on Saturday night who gave us a standing ovation.  Taking a curtain call was everything I remembered it to be and it was a joy to have the pride-of-place, the last actor to take a solo bow.

One thing that surprised me was that I had absolutely no stage fright.  Back in the day I would always feel a bit nervous before stepping out on stage.  Nothing that stopped me, mind you, but definite butterflies in the stomach.  This time around I didn’t feel a bit nervous.  Excited, energized, and wired, to be sure, but not nervous.  I’m not entirely sure why that was: I’ll have to give it some thought.

And the positive review by the Washington Post gave me great joy.  (It’s here if you’re not one of the many to whom I sent it.)  I particularly enjoyed reading that “Joe Dzikiewicz shows formidable dramatic chops” – for days after if I started to feel a bit low, all I had to do was think “formidable dramatic chops.”  It sure beats the three words used to describe me the last time I was reviewed: “Moronic facial expressions.”  (Okay, so that was a complement – I was playing a simple comic character.  Still “formidable dramatic chops” beats “moronic facial expressions” any way you look at it.)

Taken altogether, I’m sure I won’t let another 25 years go past without going on stage again.  I had an absolutely marvelous time in every aspect of putting on this show, the rehearsals, the performances, puzzling through my character motivations, and mostly getting to know the other actors and the crew.

And therein lies the rub.

After all of that, coming back to earth again is a bit of a disappointment.  There is a hole where the show was, I cannot deny it.  I miss the adrenaline-filled evenings, diving into George Bailey’s emotions every night, the intensity of the experience.

But most of all, I regret what I expect is the inevitable fading of the friendships that I formed in the last two months.  Working on a play is an intense experience: there’s an incredible sense of camaraderie, a marvelous feeling of working together to make something special.  And theater people are fun to be with, the lively jokes, the energetic personalities, and the war stories of plays gone by.  I’ve come to truly like the rest of the cast and crew, and I’m sorry that I won’t be working with them any more.

Of course, that’s the way of life.  There have been many people who have passed through my life, people that I worked with, people that I played with, people that I’m related to.  So often, you’re lucky if you get the occasional note or run into them from time to time, people who once filled important places in your life.  These friendships, so intense, fade away.  It’s something that I deeply regret, and I expect I could fill pages with the lists of people who mattered so much to me, who matter still, and yet who I no longer keep in touch with.

Working on the play compressed this cycle into two short months.  A little more than two months ago, I never knew any of these people.  I wouldn’t be surprised if I never see any of them again.  And yet, for two months they were important to me, became close friends, became comrades in creation.

(To make it worse, the east coast snowpocalypse caused the last performance to be cancelled.  Not only that, but the cast party on closing night was cancelled (it’s been rescheduled, but I’ll be in Puerto Rico during the party), and the cast was going to go out for drinks on the last Friday but didn’t due to the snow.  So not only was this an ephemeral experience, but what there was of it was cut short.)

There’s irony in this.  The greatest gift that George Bailey has, the thing that learns to appreciate, is a place in his community.  George’s connection with the citizens of Bedford Falls is so rich that everyone’s life is diminished by his absence.  And his connection is so powerful that the whole town rallies around him in his time of need.

Yet here I am, coming off stage having acted out George Bailey’s connections, and feeling the loss of the connection that I formed to the rest of the cast.  So while I had an absolutely marvelous time doing this play and would not have missed it, and while I am grateful to have met and worked with the others who put the show together (Nancy and Bob and Diane and John and Shayne and Doug and Anna and Susan and all the rest), still the pleasure is not lacking in a certain melancholy.

But to all who have been my friends over the years, to the family members that I have not spent enough time with as the decades have passed, to those divided from me by time’s steady march, I send my greetings and my best wishes.  Thank you for your friendship, and know that I regret that I lack the gift of keeping in touch.

A postscript: I recently came in contact with a friend who I have not seen for several years, not since he got in his car one day and drove south out of Virginia.  Someone who once upon a time came to my house once a week as one of my gaming friends, but who for the last few years could have been anywhere or nowhere for all I knew.  But now I know that he’s still out there, and I’ve got a way to contact him.

So maybe George Bailey’s lesson applies to me as well, and it is a wonderful life after all.

Looking back, it’s been over six months since a WIBR post.  Hmm… admittedly, my reading has been a little off (I read almost nothing during Wonderful Life rehearsals, spending my time studying lines instead), but still.  Let’s see if I can remember everything I’ve read in that time.  I’m sure these aren’t in the right order: apologies for that.

– Generation Kill: Devil Dogs, Iceman, Captain America, and the New Face of American War, by Evan Wright.  Evan Wright is a reporter with “Rolling Stone” who was embedded with a unit of recon marines in the invasion of Iraq in 2003.  This is his report of the attack.  I read this after watching the excellent HBO miniseries based on it (said series being made by the guys behind “The Wire,” my choice of best TV series ever).  The series is excellent, so is the book.  Both are factual reports of the invasion and the soldiers who made the attack, the incredible professionalism of the men doing the fighting, the screw-ups by their commanders, and all with a slight anti-war tinge that doesn’t interfere with the reporting.  I strongly recommend both series and book.

– Band of Brothers by Stephen Ambrose.  Another case where I watched an HBO series and found it so fascinating that I had to read the book on which it was based.  This one is about one particular company of paratroopers in WWII who fought from Normandy through the end of the war.  Again, a fascinating and extremely well-done mini-series based on a fascinating and extremely well-done book.  Again, I strongly recommend both.

– Wellington by Gordon Corrigan.  A biography of the Duke of Wellington.  I’ve been wanting to read a bio of Wellington since reading the Sharpe’s Rifles novels in which he is prominently featured.  The man certainly led an interesting life, having been Britain’s preeminent general during the Napoleonic wars.  But I can’t really recommend this particular biography: it is a little too short and rushes past too much of the man’s life without giving any particular insight into him.  A good biography of a great leader should tell you something about his leadership style: this one doesn’t.

– The Trouble with Testosterone and Monkeyluv: And Other Essays on our Lives as Animals, by Robert Sapolsky.  Sapolsky is a biologist who writes essays of popularized science.  Over the last six months I read both of these collections of his essays and enjoyed both immensely.  Whether he is talking about particular scientific discoveries in the bio-sciences, or telling of his observations over many years doing field studies with African baboons, there’s plenty of interesting insights in these books.  I particularly enjoyed his takedown of the nature-vs-nurture argument: in Sapolsky’s telling, it’s a false dichotomy, as our genes moderate our responses to the environment, and thus nature and nurture work together.  Strongly recommended, and I’m sure I’ll read more of his essays in the future.

– Drood by Dan Simmons.  On June 9, 1865, Charles Dickens was in a terrible train wreck.  Although not injured himself, in helping the injured he saw terrible things that left a dark stain on his imagination.  He died exactly five years later, on June 9, 1870.

Drood is a historical fiction of those last five years of Dickens’s life.  They introduce the mysterious and horrible figure Drood, a sort of demon somewhat reminiscent of Dracula.  Dickens was a fascinating person, larger-than-life and quite complicated, and the book is a marvelous thriller centering on him.  And the depiction of the opium dens in the sewers of London is well worth the read.

– Cochrane: The Real Master and Commander, by David Cordingly.  Lord Thomas Cochrane was a British naval captain during the Napoleonic Wars.  His adventures and exploits were like something out of fiction.  In fact, he became the basis of Jack Aubrey, the hero of Patrick O’Brian’s Aubrey-Maturin series and the movie “Master and Commander.”  But after several years bedeviling the French, Cochrane was convicted of a stock swindle (though the book argues that he was wrongly convicted) and drummed out of the navy.  Needing an income, he became commander in turn of the navies that liberated Chile, Peru, and Brazil from their European overlords.

A marvelous read of a marvelous life.  Strongly recommended.

Last night, I was so excited I could practically bust.  It was our first night rehearsing in the actual theater, and what an absolute joy to be back on stage after all this time.

For the first several weeks of rehearsals, we don’t actually work on the stage itself.  In our case, most rehearsals were in various rooms at the McLean Community Center where the Alden Theater is, though we had one in the music room of a local elementary school.  You don’t get the actual stage until near the end of the rehearsal period, and in our case that meant last night.

But last night we were on stage with the set around us and the technical crew running the sounds and lights.  There was a fair amount of confusion, but then there always is at this stage.  That first rehearsal with the entire crew present is called the Tech Rehearsal, and it involves matching the light and sound cues to the scenes that we actors have been working on for the past two months.  It’s all a bit of a mess at this point, but I have no doubt that everything will come together smooth as silk by opening night.

But for me, just being on stage was an extreme joy.  Wandering around backstage, checking out the dressing rooms, and sharing war stories in the green room (or cast lounge) with the rest of the cast (actor’s do loving telling tales of past productions, all the wonderful things that can and do go wrong in live theater).  And just generally exploring: peeking my nose in all the nooks and crannies of the theater, looking at the light boards, climbing to the catwalks where they hang the lights, and feeling giddy at that sense of being behind the scenes as it the show comes together.

I feel confident that the show will be good.  The cast is solid, we have everything down nicely, and while the tech stuff needs work, the crew all know their stuff and are certain to pull it all together.

But really, I can hardly wait for that magical moment when the audience is seated and the play is about the begin.  Standing offstage waiting for my entrance, peeping through a hole in the curtain to count the crowd and look for familiar faces, the buzz of adrenaline as I get ready to go on.  Friday night can’t come soon enough!

And oh, a couple of useful links:

For details on the show, including a link to buy tickets, go here.

To read the preview from a local newspaper, go here.  They even spell my name right.  (Three out of four times, anyway.)

Last week, I was surfing through theater reviews in The Washington Post and came across a glowing review for a community theater production of The Importance of Being Earnest.  That’s a play I particularly like – I saw an amazing production of it in Dublin a couple years ago – so I decided to click through to the website of the McLean Community Players, who were putting it on.

Julie, Kate, and I went to see it last Friday, and it was quite good, but that’s not the point of this post.  You see, when I stopped by the McLean Community Players site, I noticed that there was a big link at the top for auditions.  So I clicked it.

I did a lot of theater back in high school and college.  In my last two years at UVA, I was in a total of nine plays.  That’s not counting all of the theater classes (I could almost have been a drama major, but couldn’t see how that would impress employers looking for computer programmers).  And I enjoyed being on stage.  A lot.

But life has a way of filling up.  I spent my twenties working full time and raising a family and going to grad school at night, and there really wasn’t time for rehearsals in there.  My thirties weren’t quite so busy, but the closest I got to acting was reading bedtime stories to the kids and telling campfire stories to Girl Scouts.  So adding it up, twenty-five years of my life have passed without a chance to take a bow to thunderous applause.  And I missed it.  A lot.

So when I clicked through and discovered that the McLean Community Players were holding auditions that very evening for the It’s a Wonderful Life Live Radio Play, I decided why not, I’ve got a little free time (don’t tell my boss that – he’ll find ways to fill it!), might as well give it a shot.

The concept of the show is that five voice actors are putting on a radio version of the movie It’s a Wonderful Life sometime in the 1950’s.  The experience for the audience is like watching a live broadcast in an NBC studio back in the heyday of radio, complete with live commercials, visible sound effects, and even an “Applause” sign.

Of course, the heart of the show is the story from the movie It’s a Wonderful Life. If you haven’t seen it go do so now.  I’ll wait.  Or look it up on Wikipedia.  Or something.  It is well worth watching – a Christmas classic.  (But there’s nothing particularly religious about it, except for a couple of angels that show up.  Strictly non-denominational angels.)

There are five actors in the play who join to voice all of the roles in the movies.  One actor plays George Bailey, the central character, and two play the various men of Bedford Falls.  One actress plays Mary, George’s wife, the other plays all the other women.  I figured that one of those multi-voice roles would be perfect.  I like doing the multiple personality thing, and I got quite used to it reading those bedtime stories.  Besides, they seem tailor-made for hamming it up.

To cut to the chase: I got a part.

But it wasn’t one of those multi-voice parts.

I’m going to be George Bailey.

Yup, the lead of the show.  (Well, not necessarily by lines, once you add up all the lines given to some of those voice actors.  But certainly the central character of the story.)

This is going to be loads of fun.

And oh – a link to the show’s site, because I just know you’re going to want to come see it: The McLean Community Players doing It’s a Wonderful Life: A Live Radio Play.