On Island Time, Part Three

In February 2017, we traveled from Denver to Saint Thomas for a much needed and well deserved vacation.  Facebook has been thoroughly saturated with photos chronicling the beauty, joy, and fun we had.   This is an alternate look at our time on the island- the smelly, the wet, the creepy, the funny, the bizarre, broken into several parts.

Days 0.5 and 1 can be found here, Days 2 and 3 here.

Day Four- After a conservative estimate of 96 hours since my last shower, I hop in and lather up. What should be a truly glorious occasion is tempered by two things.  First, I remain unconvinced that any temporary repairs have been tested, and as a Project Manager on an App Dev project I am fully in the camp that sufficient QA is critical to success.  Second, despite repeated sunscreen applications I have managed to scorch my shoulders and upper chest in a fascinating zebra stripe pattern that while mostly not painful is nonetheless a bit sensitive.  That said, I am clean for the first time in days, and ready to face the day.

Which kicks off about 30 minutes later with a visit from the local Property Manager informing us that there is in fact still a leak. This time, he goes with the silicone the living shit out of the the entire shower pan and hope for the best approach.  We leave shortly thereafter to escape the fumes of curing silicone applied atop a soaking wet shower pan and hope for the best.

We head to Mountain Top; which at 1500 feet above sea level is the highest point of the island and boasts the best banana daiquiri in the world, or something.  It is a twisting, turning trip up the hill (it's not a mountain, St. Thomas, sorry to disappoint), but we make it up with nary an issue.  Andrea's first response upon seeing the sweeping views from the observation deck?  "Oh.  This isn't where I thought we were going."  Now, there are a number of responses to this, chiefly something akin to, "um, how many places like this are there here", but I went with the more casual, "oh really?"  Come to find out there is another spot along the bay area that has cable cars that take you to the top of another, lesser hill, which is where she thought we were going.  That said, we dutifully drank a shared banana daiquiri (it was OK I guess, but nothing that I felt like made it The Best), looked around a bit, took a few pics, and headed out.

Straight into a torrential rain shower that shook our driver Andrea pretty good by the time we made it down the "mountain".

A quick stop at a bar for some liquid courage and tepid canned nachos, and we were off to Water Island, the last American Virgin Island that we had not visited via a ferry.   I talk Andrea out of renting a golf cart for the absurd price of $50 and we instead take a shuttle to the beach and bar.

We get off, look around, say, "yep" followed immediately by, "the next ferry leaves in an hour, right"? We go to the bar for a drink and wait patiently for the opportunity to go back.

There's nothing wrong with Water Island, to be clear. It's definitely not my scene though. The beach is about the size of what you'd see on a resort, with a ton of boats parked close in.  The bar is a bar. You go there once, you'll be there twice.  On the way back, someone passed a flower down to the end of the ferry where Andrea sat.  Something about everyone having to touch it and then tossing the flower into the water signifying that we'd return to the island one day.  Andrea, in a fit of brilliance, passed the flower along to the guy next to her so that he'd toss it in, spoiling the ceremony, but also assuring that we'd not feel obligated to go back to Water Island.

Best Thing about Water Island...

Lunch had been on the docket for Water Island, a task that had gone unfulfilled, and while great quantities of Corona were preventing the onset of Hangry, it was nonetheless imminent.

So off we went to Margaritaville, if nothing else to confirm that they do in fact sell cheeseburgers,

Not only to they sell cheeseburgers, they sell Painkillers.  Strong ones.  Very very strong ones.  We met the most awesome bartender Lindsay, Andrea enjoyed two Painkillers and the BEST CHEESEBURGER SHE EVER ATE (a sentiment that I am sure had nothing whatsoever to do with drinking two Painkillers), and a great time was had by all.

They do exist!

All in all, a great day.  I got clean, Andrea got Painkillers, and Cheeseburgers were enjoyed by all.

Day Five-  I think we were feeling a bit of fatigue (and possibly some slight hangovers by certain members of our party)  We headed out to the Ritz, which has two sides- the Rental and the Resort side.  We started at the Rental side, enjoying some hair of the dog with a great bartender and felt pretty chill.

The Resort side had none of the vibe and mild crankiness set in.  We departed and headed to Secret Cove, which was crowded and had less of a vibe than the Resort.

A brief aside.  For Christmas, I bought (amongst other items) Andrea two Lego Angry Kitty characters- one full on Angry, the other kinda Sad.  I'm not sure why Happy Kitty didn't make it; I might have saved myself some trouble had she been bought as well.  We've joked since that they are sort of semaphore flags for Andrea- if Angry Kitty is on the counter, look out.

At Secret Cove, even though we were literally thousands of miles away, I have little doubt that Angry Kitty levitated out of the bowl she normally sits in and placed herself firmly on the counter.  I took one look at Andrea, said, "let's pack it up" and off we went to Sapphire Beach again.

I need to work on my flexibility evidently.

Spiccoli was still there, but this time he was joined by Charles Manson who I first observed looking waaaaaayyyyy too closely at our backpack, then saw one of the resort staff offer a hamburger, then watched another guest give a beer.  He was a bit creepy, but also sad, a weird combination of Manson:

The Caddie from Happy Gilmore:

And Alan:

Charlie, as he shall henceforth be known, was probably homeless, but was well taken care of by the folks on the Beach, and that in the end was pretty cool.

Angry Kitty made it back off the counter, Charlie left us alone, and all was well in the universe once again as we wiled away the afternoon floating in the waves.

Island Time is different.  It's feeling the vibe of a beach in your soul, searching, seeking, until you feel just the right resonation and all is right in the world.