Tropical Almendra Memories and Her Blue Watered Streets

Sunday, 14 May 2016
Amelia Earhart Park
Opa-Locka, FL
7 feet above sea level

Don’t laugh at my helmet. After riding more than 27,000 miles in my life, I bought a helmet because it was required by the park, aggressively.

I needed to aggressively blow off some steam. The advanced mountain bike trails of Amelia Earhart Park in Opa-Locka is a good look to do that.

(Random: Opa-Locka can be pretty hood, so it’s nice they have such a big park.)

Look closely to see that crazy iguana on the side of the trail at the top of the first hill.

After a couple hours of up and down and twisting miles of dirt and dust and sweat, where even the little bugs got stuck and perished in my shoulder sweat, I rode down into a hidden opening that struck me with all these memories and feelings.

I had to stop. I got off my bike. What was that?

It was a good feeling, but one of relationships past.

Memories of having gone through a lot with people I cared about.

A small patch of tropical Caribbean almond trees lined the bend. Next to a sprawl of sea grapes.

That was what it was. The tropical almendras. Different from what people normally know as almonds in the temperate world, but what I personally know.

Puerto Rico. The tropical almond trees are scattered throughout the northeast coast of Puerto Rico.

I realized these almendras, with their big green leaves – a few turning red like they do – were reminding me of the people I had known in my novel Her Blue Watered Streets. And all the things they felt and went through.

The book is set in Puerto Rico, and I spent 3 years on and off there learning and “living with” Prescient, Afrodite, Dallas, Malcolm, Jolene, Miss Ninda, the Stingray, the giant leatherback sea turtles, the wild coast of La Selva “The Jungle” …

In addition to 4 years of thinking, crafting and writing.

In real life, they were “just” characters in my book.

Relationships are really what the center of life is about.

They were all in the past. People I had known.

Soon, when Her Blue Watered Streets is published, many other people will get to know them as well.

That picked up my spirits and I kept riding.

South Florida is flat. All the mountain bike hills and twists and turns that beat us up and challenge us in Opa-Locka’s Amelia Earhart Park are constructed by people.