Re~re~re~rewind it's Vacation Time, Getting There.

Yesterday a coworker asked where I went for vacation and after I told her she asked me why I wasn't tan. I hate that question, it's right up there with 'Hows that flossing going on?', HATES IT. Why? Well it's so high school, I remember when spring break would come and all the cool kids who went on vacation would run off to the Virgin Islands, Outerbanks, Aruba, Jamaica, Florida, California, etc etc. You know wherever the sun may be because God, Christ and all of his heavenly host know quite well that it ain't in Ohio land of eternal fucking grey. Seriously it's the middle of fucking May and we still, still have lows in the 50's and highs in the 60's. Granted I may be grumpy because I just got back from an environment where even when it was overcast there was still sun and water temperatures hovered around 81 degrees. For those keeping track I'm saying the OCEAN was twenty degrees warmer than the air is here. Ohio is thesuck. Anyway I hate the 'Why aren't you tan' question because I'd think one look at me would would tell them that I don't tan. Please oh please Mommy could I lay on the beach for hours and hours and crisp my pasty translucent skin to a reddened blistering mess and then lay awake at night in a non air conditioned tent cabin trying to sleep as the heat from my sunburn causes me to sweat profusely. B'sides if I'm somewhere nice enough to lay out on a beach all day I'd rather be snorkeling, body surfing, boogie boarding, scuba diving or doing ANYTHING then laying on a towel on a sandy beach. I love the blue blue ocean, I hate the sandy sand sand and I still don't know how to deal with this love and hate thing.

So vacation, since there was no Tivo I had a lot of time to read, play video games (until my Gameboy battery died 1 1/2 days into vacation) and do the old school personal blogging that lowtekkers like to call journaling. So re~re~re~rewind it's vacation time.

-- Saturday, May 6th --

SG and I choose to stay at a Eco-resort on St. John called Maho Bay. I'm pretty sure I now know what eco-resort means: interns as staff, new linens only when necessary and cold showers all hours of the day. Let me get this off my chest before I get any further, regardless of what I say here I HAD A REALLY GOOD TIME DAMN IT. It was a lot of fun, I just like to rant and now that I said that I can continue. Maho Bay is by no means luxurious it's more like a camp ground nestled placed right between some national park land with some of the best beaches in the world. Gorgeous sparsely used white sand beaches and aqua marine picture perfect water with sailboats added in as a nice touch. I really don't have much to compare Maho too as my family was never much into the car camping. I to this day aren't much into car camping, I figure if I'm going to camp I'm going to backpack screw this sissified camping. So when I say it was like a campground I have to go on what SG says and what little bit that I saw of the KOA's out west. So Maho has these things they call "tent cabins" which are elevated framed in structures with water resistant plastic/rubber canvas forming the walls and roof. Inside they have two beds, a sleeper coach thingy with all weather pleather foam cushions, propane stove, cooler to store food, a little porch, lots of screen windows, electricity for lights and a box fan to keep you cool at night. If this doesn't sound intriguing to you that's ok go do a fucking cruise, I wanted cheap and for $75 a night I got cheap. There aren't that many resorts on St. John and what there is is expensive. How expensive? Like $2400 a week expensive. Your other option is to rent a house which I'm sure for two people isn't all that practical.

Enough of this back story and descriptions onwards to the flight. The flight to St. John wasn't that bad, exhausting but not that bad. The reason why the flight was exhausting was that neither SG or I like to pack and so Friday we found ourselves still packing at 12:30am. 12:30am is by no means passed my bed time, it just proves to be more of a problem when you are planning on getting up at 4am for a 6:30am flight. Not seeing the point of trying to fall asleep for four hours of sleep I hunkered down in front of the Tivo for one last hurrah. The goal as I said was to stay up till 4am however I only made it to 2am before I had to beat a quick retreat to the bed which left me with a little bit more than two hours of sleep when I woke up again at 4:15am. We flew United which has "economy plus" which means your leg room is much more analogous to sitting in the front seat of a compact car instead of the back seat. It may not sound like much but it was enough that SG and I couldn't figure out for the longest time why we felt so less cramped than normal. Along the lines of airplane seating here's an article about Airbus's proposed plan to turn the cattle class on their airplanes to standing room only. I realize that most people have already read about it but the idea doesn't stop becoming any less repulsive as time goes on. We landed in St Thomas airport at around 3pm and after some musical airplanes deboarded. I call it musical airplanes only because after we landed and taxied it appeared like the traffic controller was using his magic 8-ball to determine what gate each plane should use. Have you ever seen a 737 attempt to maneuver around on the tarmac? It looks like a semi trying to maneuver around a Taco Bell parking lot to position itself for de-fooding. Getting the bags took a little bit as it seems St. Thomas airport does it's receiving and sending off of planes in batches. So when we landed there were two other planes of baggage that were also coming out for the masses to sort through. To kill the time and the heat we guzzled rum punch and SG's new favorite fruity drink the Pain Killer. SG loves Pain Killer's because they have a sprinkle of nutmeg on top. Nutmeg to her is like honey to Winnie the Pooh. Along the same line of reasoning she loves eggnog not so much because she likes eggnog but because she likes nutmeg. I can't blame her her love for nutmeg is kind of like my love for ketchup, I eat fries only to use them as a spoon to get ketchup to my mouth, then when I'm out of fries I suck the ketchup out of those little ketchup cups to the disgust of all around me.

Once we got the bags we went to the taxi cue and jumped into a giant van-taxi thing with six other strangers and started our slow journey to the ferry at Red Hook. Our fare for two people, 28 bucks, his accidental tip pushed the whole deal too $40. How does one get a $12 tip? Well it surely wasn't for services rendered. Let me layout the story here, we finally roll up to the ferry unbeknownst to us as the ferry didn't look so much like a ferry as a little area with wire fences and a wire gate slightly opened and people milling around like cattle attempting to get their tickets and bags onto the next ferry. Right as we pulled up a ferry was getting ready to leave so there was chaos as other equally weary travels fresh off the plan were attempting to buy tickets. Right as we pulled up a guy grabbed our bags and put them on a little cart thing and then rolled them 15 feet inside the ferry area by the ticket counter while I was paying the cab driver. I gave him $40 and then he gave me $5 back as he was continued to make change. I expecting to get more change back had the five in my hand ready to give him as a tip. SG not knowing what was going on told him to keep the change right as he was getting ready to hand the rest of my change back which just happened to be at the same time I handed him a $5 for the tip. SHIIIIIIT. Wallet sucking experience numero uno. SG wasn't to blame even though I was plenty grumpy, she didn't know what was going on and was as equally flustered as I was, saw a leaving ferry, masses of confused people and our bags being rolled away. So for future reference if you are ever staying on St. John go to the Charlotte Amalie ferry which is in downtown St. Thomas. The cab ride is like $18 and takes 10 minutes to get there. The ferry is then $28 and takes 45 minutes compared to the ferry from Red Hook which costs $16 and takes 20 minutes. Believe me though the ferry is much more relaxing than the taxi, you can stretch out, watch the scenery go by and not worry about breakneck speed on windy little roads with cars on either side. By the time we get to Cruz Bay on St. John we find ourselves in ball sweating, crotch rot, swamp ass heaven weather waiting for Frett's Taxi (aka: Maho Shuttle) which while we know is supposed to come we aren't all that sure what his taxi looks like which could make it hard to pick it out amongst the other 20 taxi trucks parked by the ferry.

While waiting for the taxi I ask a police woman if we can use the public buss (Vitran) however apparently it just goes from Cruz Bay to Coral Bay (other major town on St. John) and back, I did however find out that Frett drives a green taxi and should show up around 5:20. Around 5:30 Frett comes rolling in right on island time and we haul all our gear over to his taxi and procure ourselves a ride to Maho Bay. Remember how I said this was not a resort, more like camping? Well it turned out that Frett has a bad back so he can't put your bags on the taxi for you. Instead what happens is that he attempts to tell you how to do it in a very thick island accent which ended up meaning that it took a few minutes to cross the communication barrier and finally put the bags on correctly. I don't hold it against Frett that he can't lift the bags, the guys getting kind of old, I just wasn't in the mood at that point to deal with any of that. The drive to Maho Bay resembled a rollercoaster ride due the steep grades of the roads, winding roads and the open air element of the taxi. The cabs on St. John are all converted pickups of varying sizes with benches put in the pickup beds. They have rails along the sides and between the seats but if they were to add a little bar that would drop across your legs it really wouldn't feel out of place.

When we arrive Maho Bay, check in and get to the tent I am completely and totally underwhelmed. The first time I stayed at Maho Bay we were living it large in these studio house things called "Harmony Studios". Sure they might be a 20 minute walk from the beach when going up the hill but the did have private bathrooms with solar heated water four walls and a roof that resembled techniques used for houses. The tents while not bad have none these things as already mentioned at the top. On top of that I had been reading reviews of other people's experiences who stayed in the tent cabins off of a website called trip advisor. The negative ratings people gave Maho Bay almost always had to do with relentless mosquito's that left them with copious amounts of bug bites. Upon entering the tent the first thing I notice is that the tent had subsided a little over time and now the doors weren't plumb. So while the windows and doors had screens in them all the nefarious viet-mosquito-army had to do was to enter through the gap under our door, wipe it's little feet off on our welcome mat and come in for a quick snack. Even if the doors were plumb the floor was made up of boards with inch sized gaps between them. Handy if you have sweating coolers or you want to sweep up the sand as all you do is sweep the sand to a crack and there ya go, not so handy if there is a potential mosquito problem. For whatever reason though mosquito's weren't an issue and even if they were you just take your bug repellent and spray it along the edge of the bed and the sheets and it forms a bug barrier that stops most of the mosquito's. And if that doesn't work you through caution to the wind and slather on some 100% Deet bug repellent, I mean so what if they say you shouldn't leave it on your skin for more than two hours.

After I took a nice cold shower, cold not because I was sexually frustrated for any reason just because that's the only game in town, I felt much better. Cold showers sound really bad, and they are the first 10 seconds or so when the water hits you and your breath leaves you from shock. After that though it's quite refreshing and I'd say necessary when you don't have AC to keep you cool at night. The toilets on the other hand caused my psychological constipation to go on red terror alert. Not "Transporting" dirty just public and me and public toilets aren't friends. There was the added bonus that the urinals weren't working which meant that everyone and their brother would be pissing all over the toilet in heathen caveman like abandon leaving a nice layer of bacteria for me to sit on. Ick, ick, ick. In case you think I'm neurotic apparently David Sedaris also had the same issue when he was younger... hmmm not really sure if that really helps my case or not. The story I'm talking about is in "Naked" where he wrote about one summer when he went to summer camp for a month or so. At the time he was used to having his own private bathroom that no one else used and when faced with using a public toilet his intestines seized up like I-95 at rush hour. His analogy of a month of not crapping while eating large hearty Greek meals was that it was much like packing a musket, an intestinal musket. Now mull that one over for awhile. Think about it? Good. I'm sure while David Sedaris has gotten past his public toilet phobia, mine however is still alive and well. As for the mosquito's they didn't seem to bother us that night or till about Thursday or so but I'll bet getting to that in due time.

On returning to the tent my outlook had greatly improved, it was still a little rough but the sound of the ocean along with tree frogs was really satisfying at many different levels after a day of travel and I found myself asleep by 9pm.