May I recommend a watch, sir?

Much to the chagrin of my knees, I've signed up to train for a short distance triathlon here in Guadeloupe. I can do it. It's not really far: swim=.47 mi, bike=12.4mi, run=3.1mi. Seriously, I know I can do it.
Thing is, the first two training sessions were a bit of a disappointment, and I'm chalking it up to island time. Night number one. I call in the afternoon to confirm the time and place. All good. I show up at designated place five minutes early. I wait.

For. Forty. Five. Minutes.

During the minutes, I asked around. Everyone in the other groups was very nice, saying they had never really seen my group at the track. Ok. I called the guy, who said he was coming in ten minutes. He arrives, asks if it's me who's waiting for him, I say yes, and off we go. No' sorry', no 'how long have you been waiting', no 'this is a better time for you to come since I can't get here before now'...Okay. I went with the flow and had an okay workout.

Next day: today. Again, I call ahead and confirm the time, place, and person to look for. I arrive on time. I search the beach. I call the guy, no answer. I call the organization. No answer. I swim alone.

Now, I'm just saying, I could be wrong, but generally speaking, if you hand out a printed pamphlet including a schedule of events and meetings, shouldn't some of them actually happen, and could they possibly happen on time if I gifted the organization some free Timex watches? And if the meetings won't happen, shouldn't there be some sort of, oh I don't know, system, to let people know?
Consider email, perhaps, a lovely invention which allows entire lists of people (aka listserves) to be notified instantly and all at once of any news you'd like to send them.
Additionally- though a bit less advanced- is group texting. Straight to the mobile phone, same concept. I know this works because I watch people here in Guadeloupe texting while driving around the roundabouts allll the time! I'm fairly certain this would be the best method of communication.

All in all, I can't say I haven't started training. I ran. I swam. Plus, the exercise allows me to rationalize this ti-punch I'm about to have with The Pirate, alongside the vegetarian pizza(read:entirely overloaed, half a pound per slice, three cheeses also). So that's nice.
Now, I'll try again tomorrow and get some information from the other running group that seemed much more interesting, and interested.