Day 0.5- Up at 6, at my desk before 7. As the day progresses, my interest in all things work begins to wane, then dissipate, and finally disappear when I log out a little after 4. It's then time to get all the last minute stuff done and head to the airport. Our flight leaves about 11:00 PM. I'm already wishing that one of the last minute things that I'd done was take a shower, but I'll survive. In the meantime, it is a red-eye flight into Fort Lauderdale. We fly out on Spirit, which offers Big Front Seats for many of their flights. We forgo them- its only 3 1/2 hours, right? We get on the plane and get to our seats which are reminiscent of those found on military aircraft. I have just enough lateral movement to shift from cheek to cheek and my legs aren't hitting the seatback in front of me though, so I'll be fine. It's not like I sleep on planes anyway, right? As midnight comes and goes, I've tried dozing a little, given up, and started watching a movie. I've been awake for 18 hours now and I've walked about 6 1/2 miles- gotta love the concourses at DIA for getting your steps in!
Day One- We stumble off of the plane at 5:30 in the morning in Fort Lauderdale with nary a plan of what to do next. Andrea will insist that this is my fault, that somehow my "I want a vacation where we have no activities planned and we can do what we want" mantra has extended to what to do with an 8 hour layover. I in turn will deny that that was my intent, but nonetheless, there we stood. Our options basically came down to Find A Hotel or Do Something Else. We opted to start with Do Something Else, but eventually turned to Find A Hotel, a turn that proved fruitless as none of the hotels we went to were keen on giving us a room at 6 in the morning for a few hours. Something Else then morphed into walking the Boardwalk at Hollywood Beach, eating breakfast as the sun rose, drinking Yuengling at 9 in the morning, and watching the waves.
 |
| Watching the sunrise at Hollywood Beach, Florida |
While drinking the aforementioned Yuengling, I observed four twenty-something girls in swim wraps sit at a table in front of us. From the looks of them, they'd been out pretty late the night before, and may have been in varying stages of hangover recovery, a theory somewhat substantiated by their ordering of mimosas. This was evidently a new experience for one of the girls who upon receiving her drink, lifted the fruit garnish, looked at it quizzically, actually uttered the statement, "is this an orange?", and then smelled and licked it as if attempting to prove her burgeoning hypothesis. In the meantime, Andrea had called Spirit and arranged Big Front Seats for the next leg of our journey as after we'd landed we entered into a spirited debate over whose back was more sore after sitting on the bus seats we had for the first leg. I contend that my inability to do anything more than shift from cheek to cheek and maybe loll my neck back on occasion resulted in more stiffness than her sleeping head down on her plane pillow but in the end we called it a draw.
 |
| This is Yuengling, the nectar of the Gods |
We head to the airport with sufficient time to allow for the security lines at FTL only to be pleasantly surprised that there is no line. With a surplus of time we mosey over to a Cuban restaurant in Terminal 4 for some congri. We sat next to a couple that was headed to Paradise with us but were in a loud, animated state of distress fueled by a healthy consumption of strong drinks. I'll save you the gory details save for one snippet prefaced by a bit of back story. In a nutshell, dude had just discovered that he had cancer. He was assured that survival was probable, but he needed to balance the need for chemotherapy with the need to get to St. Thomas and was trying to manage the stress of the news, the potential impact to his vacation, and his increasingly hysterical companion. At one point, he told her, "I just want to go to St. Thomas, spend some time in the sun, drink, and get laid before I have to deal with all of this". Her response was somewhat discouraging. "You are a dental hygienist, and you are at risk for having AIDS. I need you to get tested before we do anything". His response, if any, is unfortunately lost for the ages, and I hope that he had an OK vacation and is now on the road to recovery, even if it is with a bad case of blue balls.
We fly to St. Thomas in relative comfort, find our bags, get our car, buy three bottles of rum at the airport- "all the stores will be closed by the time we get there", and make our way to our condo just as it is starting to get dark without forgetting to drive on the left. Although it smells a little musty from having been closed up for awhile, an odor reminiscent to me of a set of Lincoln Logs I has as a kid, the condo is as advertised- clean, open, and bright with the ocean literally feet away from the balcony. We drop our bags and head out in search of sustenance. We make our way to the Ritz resort right next door but in a fit of confusion decide it isn't the place for us- this stemmed from me gasping at the $40 pasta that I saw on the menu evidently. We head out, looking for another resort, and drive right past it. Another resort, same result. We finally say fuck it and head out for Margaritaville, which we promptly drive right past. At least this road is wide enough to permit course correction, and we finally arrive to find a fairly empty restaurant with a fairly fancy menu for a place owned by Jimmy Buffet.
Notably, there is nary a cheeseburger to be found, so I settle on a $30 plate of pasta. We're duly informed by our server in a sing-song Caribbean accent that it is happy hour, and if we buy one round, the second round is free. But! If we order two rounds then the next rounds are free as well! While in hindsight, this seems quite obvious, at the time, it was bewildering, perhaps because of the way she explained it, perhaps because by this point I'd been awake for something close to 38 hours straight, likely a combination therein. Actually, come to think of it, it confused the hell out of the server as well. I had 3 beers and should have had one more coming (buy 2, get 2 free). It took her a good ten minutes to arrive at the same conclusion.
As we eat, I see platter after platter of cheeseburgers heading into the bar. This turns into a bit of an obsession that drives many of our meal decisions for the remainder of the trip.
Bellies full, we head back to the condo, and proceed to be thoroughly unable to find the correct turn to get where we need to go. On the island, street signs are rare at best; this combined with an absence of street lamps and a dead cell phone can make finding where you are going a challenge. After making a few passes, Andrea finally spots a sign for advertising Tootsies, the strip club in the town closest to where we are staying. "I remember that sign! We're close!" Sure enough, maybe 200 feet later, there's our turn. Thank you Tootsies, your sign became our landmark for the remainder of the trip.
We get back to the condo, do a little unpacking, and exhausted, collapse into bed. Showers can wait until the morning; I've now been awake for about 40 hours straight, I've walked almost 18 miles since I have last slept, and its time to.....
zzzzzzzzzzz
Being on Island Time is different. It is plugging in the name of a place that you want to go into the GPS, waiting for the 3G signal to catch up, seeing that your desired destination is 7 miles away and will take you 35 minutes to get there, and saying, "cool".
We fly to St. Thomas in relative comfort, find our bags, get our car, buy three bottles of rum at the airport- "all the stores will be closed by the time we get there", and make our way to our condo just as it is starting to get dark without forgetting to drive on the left. Although it smells a little musty from having been closed up for awhile, an odor reminiscent to me of a set of Lincoln Logs I has as a kid, the condo is as advertised- clean, open, and bright with the ocean literally feet away from the balcony. We drop our bags and head out in search of sustenance. We make our way to the Ritz resort right next door but in a fit of confusion decide it isn't the place for us- this stemmed from me gasping at the $40 pasta that I saw on the menu evidently. We head out, looking for another resort, and drive right past it. Another resort, same result. We finally say fuck it and head out for Margaritaville, which we promptly drive right past. At least this road is wide enough to permit course correction, and we finally arrive to find a fairly empty restaurant with a fairly fancy menu for a place owned by Jimmy Buffet.
Notably, there is nary a cheeseburger to be found, so I settle on a $30 plate of pasta. We're duly informed by our server in a sing-song Caribbean accent that it is happy hour, and if we buy one round, the second round is free. But! If we order two rounds then the next rounds are free as well! While in hindsight, this seems quite obvious, at the time, it was bewildering, perhaps because of the way she explained it, perhaps because by this point I'd been awake for something close to 38 hours straight, likely a combination therein. Actually, come to think of it, it confused the hell out of the server as well. I had 3 beers and should have had one more coming (buy 2, get 2 free). It took her a good ten minutes to arrive at the same conclusion.
As we eat, I see platter after platter of cheeseburgers heading into the bar. This turns into a bit of an obsession that drives many of our meal decisions for the remainder of the trip.
Bellies full, we head back to the condo, and proceed to be thoroughly unable to find the correct turn to get where we need to go. On the island, street signs are rare at best; this combined with an absence of street lamps and a dead cell phone can make finding where you are going a challenge. After making a few passes, Andrea finally spots a sign for advertising Tootsies, the strip club in the town closest to where we are staying. "I remember that sign! We're close!" Sure enough, maybe 200 feet later, there's our turn. Thank you Tootsies, your sign became our landmark for the remainder of the trip.
We get back to the condo, do a little unpacking, and exhausted, collapse into bed. Showers can wait until the morning; I've now been awake for about 40 hours straight, I've walked almost 18 miles since I have last slept, and its time to.....
zzzzzzzzzzz
Being on Island Time is different. It is plugging in the name of a place that you want to go into the GPS, waiting for the 3G signal to catch up, seeing that your desired destination is 7 miles away and will take you 35 minutes to get there, and saying, "cool".
No comments:
Post a Comment