Fri Jan 10, 2025
Hi Folks! Well today was a “wash, rinse repeat” day. In other words it was another sea day of sunshine, blue skies, education and good food! (Sorry to my family and friends in NC and PA that may be getting ice, snow and cold temps! Wish I could send you some of this heat!).
We started the day with another lecture topic and this one on the game of Cricket which I know nothing about! The speaker was really funny and started by saying “Cricket is a game that can go on for 5 days and you still don’t know who won!” Lol. He said in India it’s pretty much a religion.
He told a funny story of a man named John Derrick in Guilford who played cricket in 1550 and used it as an excuse to get out of a misdemeanor. The judge said, if he was playing cricket he must be a good man and let him go!
He went thru the rules of the game: Two teams of eleven; Two sets of stumps; The wicket (also called a pitch or track which is 22 yards long); Two balls; A bat or two; A ball made of cork with leather sewed on; Two team captains; The fielding team and one specialist called a wicket keeper; A bowler (pitcher) who will bowl (throw) 6 balls (deliveries) some of which can get close to 100 mph!
The speaker and five of the crew who were all from India then put on a live demonstration of a game of Cricket on the stage. Too funny! He ended by saying that the Lord’s Cricket Ground is the most hallowed ground to play on. Now I know a lot more about Cricket!
We then got some lunch as well as sunned by the pool for a few hours. Afterwards we went to listen to the next speaker who spoke on the topic of the history of the Bermuda Triangle. The triangle goes from Bermuda in the north, Puerto Rico in the south and Miami in the west. The magazine called Argosy named it. Charles Berlitz was one of the early authors of books on the topic.
He shared examples of the crazy things that happened in the Bermuda Triangle. Charles Lindbergh experienced it on the Spirit Of St. Louis when his instruments went haywire but he survived. Columbus saw an unusual light on his way to the New World. Flight 19 in 1945 (5 US bombers on a training run) lost their compass functions and got disoriented and went the wrong way, and ran out of gas and were never heard from again.
The USS Cyclops refueling ship in 1918 went south from Virginia to Brazil to drop off coal. Then stopped in Salvador (where we’ll stop in a few days) to pick up manganese to be used to make weapons. The ship and 360 crew were never heard from again.
Star Tiger in 1948 was a British commercial airline from London to Havana, Cuba and was lost and never found. Great Isaac Lighthouse near the Bahamas was built and manned by two men but in 1969 the two men were never heard from again.
Nowadays with advanced technologies of satellites, GPS and communications that can track things thru the Bermuda Triangle the whole concept may soon be an urban legend. But ya gotta love a conspiracy theory!
We went back to the room, ordered our afternoon snack of popcorn and chilled. I’ll post another update tonight. TGIF to all!
The Wandering Italian 