Puerto Rico Day 4: Last day of meetings, Deep Sea Fishing, and Dualing Pianos

Brad had meetings again in the morning.  I went out by the pool and read a book and met up with Brad for lunch.  Our excursion for the day was deep sea fishing.  Neither one of us cared about fishing, but it was something we would probably never do on a vacation we planned.  We foolishly signed up to go.  I don’t usually get motion sickness, and my sister Alyse had been deep sea fishing a ton in Florida and loved it and she can’t even go on rides at amusement parks without feeling sick.  I figured I could handle it without any problems, but I was still a little nervous about it because once you are out there you can’t just go running back to shore.  You are stuck!

A view of some boats.

Another boat that was going out.

Our boat.

Some supplies.

Brad on the boat.

The group of us that went deep sea fishing were divided up with 4 people to a boat.  Brad and I were with another couple from the Midwest.  We were told it was much calmer water than a couple days earlier when another group went fishing.  At first I was doing fine, but I was surprised by how small the boat was.  After about 10 minutes of being out in deeper water I started to feel sick.  I thought to my self “Oh dear we have 3.5 hours left of this, I can do it”  That didn’t last long.  I suddenly felt like I had to lay down.  I had heard that going under the deck to the area with the couches and bathroom was a bad idea, but I had to lay down.  I was doing really well not getting sick and just was down there actively telling myself it would be fine and that I was fine.  Basically I was lying to myself and I was ok with that.  Once we started heading back the waves got rougher and I couldn’t lie to myself anymore and had to make a run for the bathroom.  The captain sent Brad to check on me.  I spent a good portion of the trip back to the shore in the bathroom or laying on the floor of the boat.  I felt so hot and knew I should move to the top of the boat by Brad but I physically could not make myself go.  It was awful!  I have never felt so terrible before and embarrassed on top of all of it.  To make matters worse we didn’t even catch a fish and we stayed out 30 minutes longer than we were supposed to.  On the bright side I never once complained or begged to go back early.

One of the forts, I can't remember which one.

So pretty!

Last picture before I started getting sick.

It affected me big time.  Even several months later typing this is making me sick to my stomach.  The weekend we got back our Pastor gave a whole sermon about fishing and kept making analogies to actual fishing and I started feeling nauseous.  I told Brad “If he doesn’t stop talking about boats and fishing I will get sick.  He is unknowingly torturing me.”  Brad just laughed.

Dressed for a night out...still not feeling 100%

That night we had the closing dinner with a great dualing piano act.  They were absolutely amazing!  I got to sit next to the head of all Pioneer research at dinner and he was such an interesting man.  I had fun learning about how he met his wife, the traveling he does, etc.  At one point Brad walked to the back to get a drink and never returned.  Apparently the rest of our friends were seated in the back of the room and he decided to stay back there with them.  He sent me a text to tell me, but my phone was on silent, so it took me a little while to figure it out.  We spent the rest of the night spending time with all our new friends, exchanging information and laughing until we hurt.  It was so nice to meet such wonderful people and we fully intend on keeping in touch with all of them!

The Ladies!

The guys!

Puerto Rico Day 3: Seed company tour, plantains, dinner, laughs

On our third day in Puerto Rico we were given the opportunity to take a tour of Pioneer’s Salinas Research Facility.  I had never been to a place like that before, Brad has several times, and I wasn’t sure what to expect.  It may or may not be the same as at other seed companies, I have no idea, but the technology, effort and money that goes into developing a parent line.  The goal with the parent lines is to get 6 good plants and they start out with over 300 potential attempts.

We were able to visit their embryo recovery lab, the part of the lab that works with DNA markers, green houses, and field plots.  They even took us to a neighboring plantain farm and the farmer explained all about plantains to use.  Plantains look like a banana (not as tasty) and appear to grow on a tree with a banana, but they actually grow on a plant.  The tree looking plant is composed of about 42 leaves (kind of like a corn plant on steroids).  It takes 12 months to grow one to full maturity and they have about 1000 plants per acre.  Harvest is not mechanized and the work in these giants plants with a tractor and tillage equipment after harvest.  We had plantains cooked two different ways, my favorite way was when it was smashed and fried a couple times.  It was a little bit like eating a chip.

A picture of the countryside.

After the tour the treated us to a nice lunch in the yard of someone’s house with a band playing.  It was a very interesting tour and now that I have done that I don’t really feel like I need to go see any more.

For dinner we went to a restaurant with other people from our region.  It was a very old building that was very modern inside.  There was actually an art museum next to the restaurant.  It was a great time visiting with people.  It would have been better if the waitress didn’t forget to serve our table dinner for awhile, but it all worked out.  Consistent with the tradition we had going, we met up with a few people in the hotel bar afterwards for some laughs.

We weren't allowed to take pictures at the Pioneer facility, so all I have is this picture of the countryside.