Warning: Lots of detail and drivel follow. If you don't like reading that, stop now.

June 28, 2006 12:30 PM

It’s time to go. The bags are packed. The check with AA confirms the flight should be on time. We had a fairly relaxing morning after lots of preparation and are ready to escape to the tranquility of the Caribbean. We drive to the airport and our son takes the car back home. One cell phone call from work to request support on a technical issue while standing in the short line to check in for our flight.

Off to the TSA line. Take off our shoes and put our laptop in the basket with my shoes only to be told they have to be separate. I passed through the metal detector with no alarms but Gretchen got caught with something innocuous with metal content in one of the cargo pockets of her pants (Wet One’s wipes in a metal packet). My carry on, however, raised an alarm because they did not recognize my CPAP machine but after inspection declared it “one of the old ones.” A little like me, I guess.

The airplane is on time but full. American Airlines starts the round of announcements that we can have only two carry on items and only one of them is allowed in the overhead bins. The second must go under the seat in front of you. Oh crap! My long legs do not allow anything under the seat in front of me and my second carry on is a collapsible cooler that will not fit under the seat anyway. What to do? What to do? Uhhh, ignore the rules and put two items in the overhead. To top it off, the overhead on this plane is shallower than the other flights we are on and the roll-on carryon bags will only fit sideways, exacerbating the space problem.

Furthermore, I swear that they have taken leg room out of these airplanes along with hip room. Now I know that I have not gotten taller, though I cannot argue that I may be a bit wider, but it was a very tight fit all around. I started reading Dale Brown’s “Act of War” on this flight, listened to some Jimmy Buffet to get in the mood on my MP3 cell phone and took a few cat naps.

Touchdown in Dallas. Our friends were at the airport to meet us in Baggage Claim when the plane arrived at 9:30 PM local time and we drove to their house for a wonderful visit and a nice dinner before catching a little bit of sleep.

June 29 3:15 AM

Ouch! The alarm on my cell phone is really annoying after three hours of sleep. We struggle out of bed to be greeted by a breakfast of croissants, Jam and fresh Orange Juice and head to the Dallas-Forth Worth airport for our flight to Miami. Unfortunately, we thought the flight left from Terminal D and our friends dropped us there for our six o’clock flight. We found everything closed at four thirty in the morning with only one security check point open clear at the other end of the terminal. There we learned that our flight was really at the C gate, so we had to jump on the Sky Tram to get to the other terminal. We got there in plenty of time…ignored the warning about one bag per person in the overhead bins and boarded our flight for an on-time departure. Again, we had a nearly full airplane. In fact, we saw only one empty seat on the plane. To our amazement it was in our row. Ahhhh, room to breathe at last. I read a little more Dale Brown and got a few more cat naps before an uneventful landing at Miami International.

We raced, as fast as our arthritic legs will race, from the D concourse to the E concourse and settled in to check email on the cell phone, make some final calls home while in domestic cell phone range and enjoy a Pizza Hut mini-pizza for lunch. We watched carefully for our friends Bruce and Sheila but they never arrived. We feared that they had missed their connection from Chicago.

There were a few more empty seats on this plane. We had barely started a conversation with a young lady in window seat who was headed for St. Barth’s when the Flight Attendant, noting that we were a bit crowded for space, graciously told us that the row two rows ahead of us was empty and we could move up there. That must have been Bruce and Sheila’s seats. We moved and enjoyed the extra space. And, to top it off, this turned out to be a meal flight. They gave us pretzels with our free soft drinks.

After about two hours and 30 minutes, we looked out the window as we descended and recognized the island of Anguilla in the distance with the distinctive resort of Cape Juluca on the beach.


And then…Baie Prune and Baie Longue and Cupecoy as we swept in toward a touchdown at Princess Julianna airport. There were sure a lot of white caps on the sea, I wonder what that means? We also noted major changes in the road up the hill into the Lowlands from Cupecoy. It looks like that is a real improvement. From the left side of the plane, we watch Mullet bay race by and then Maho and then “touch down.” We approach the runway with the plane banked a little to the right. We flare out, the wheels make contact with the runway and then……the pilot hits the throttle instead of the brakes and we ascend back into the Caribbean sky to pull up, bank to the right over Pelican Resort and head back out to sea. Well, this is certainly the shortest visit we have ever made to St. Martin. The pilot now comes on the loudspeaker to announce that we hit a little wind shear as we were landing and air speed dropped too fast, so we are going around again!

Replay the last paragraph except that the landing is quite smooth for the conditions. The roll down the runway is greeted with a big round of applause from the passengers. We taxi up directly to the terminal as the apron to the left of the terminal building is full of big jets already, and so we get to walk directly into the terminal without the shuttle bus. We were apparently the last of three planes to arrive, so the lines at immigration were among the longest that we have seen. The wait was fairly short though, we found our one checked bag fairly quickly and walked out of the airport to find Arlene from St. Louis Car Rental waiting for us with a Kia Optima and we’re off to Club Orient.

Check in at Club Orient is quick and courteous and we find that Jim Ruos has managed to get us into the Deluxe Mini Suite of your dreams. This unit is right behind Papagayos and is the building closest to Water Sports. I mean, it’s less than 50 feet from the water and you can sit on your deck and watch the sun rise, enjoy the sound of the surf, a view of Green Cay and totally relax!

We stopped at L’Orientique on our way to the room and stocked up on French Bread, Jam, cheeses, bottled water, sodas and Etna Ice Cream, went to our room and put everything away in the refridgerator. Then we walked out of our patio door, down to the sandy beach, and into the warm Caribbean water for our first dip in the ocean of this trip. The wind has died down a little, there is not too much chop in the water and it’s a relaxing end to a busy travel day.

We did drag ourselves over to Papagayo’s for happy hour and enjoyed a BBC and a Guavaberry Colada along with a piece of birthday cake for one of the the regular folks that we see most every year at this time. We greeted a few more regulars, went back to our room for some bread and cheese and crashed. I fell asleep quickly only to be aroused by Gretchen calling on me to look at the beautiful sunset. What a beautiful end to the day It was, but I didn’t get my camera out fast enough to get any good pictures of it. I also dragged out the computer and tried out the internet connection in the room. We had not asked at the desk, but I found an unplugged power line modem with a Cat5 network connector. I had “just happened” to bring along a cable for that kind of connection and plugged them both in. The network card on my laptop showed a connection and a quick IPCONFIG showed that we had an IP address and there was the Internet. It was a pretty fast connection, too.. I was awake again now, so I finished reading “Act of War” before succumbing to a relaxing night of sleep with the surf calling outside our door.

Friday morning, June 30 7:37 AM

No alarm clock this morning. It’s too late for the sunrise. But I do get an admonishment to get down to the beach and put our chair tags on some chairs near The Perch. But that’s way at the other end of the beach, so some morning exercise is in order. After a nice walk down the beach, I found two chairs nearly in front of the perch which were not previously tagged and attached our tags.

Back to the room. Check eMail. Off to Papagayo’s for breakfast. We each had a Western Omelet and fresh orange juice. The tasty Omelet was accompanied by deep fried balls of mashed potato, toast and French bread. $23. It was a beautiful morning and from Papagayo’s we proceeded directly to our beach chairs. We did not pass go and we did not collect $200. At the beach, we met Bruce and Sheila. They had indeed missed their connection in Miami by ten minutes and after rerouting through San Juan, got into St. Martin at 11 o’clock last night. We also met Bill and Laurie and a lot of other regulars from prior trips. It’s great to be back home at our home away from home.

There was supposed to be a TravelTalk informal get together at Pedro’s at ll. We confused the time and went at 12. But we were the only ones there. Bruce had gone earlier and reported no one there at the appointed time either. So, we headed over to Baywatch for a warm greeting from Andy…”It must be the Fourth of July, Larry is here.” Gretchen had a Garlic Shrimp Salad and I had the Fisherman’s Platter (Beer battered) with fresh Scallops, Shrimp and Cod Fish. I had a BBC followed by a Diet Coke but they were out of Guavaberry so Gretchen had to settle for a virgin Pina Colada.

Back to the beach, some time in the water and a visit with Willie at the Perch for another BBC and a Guavaberry Colada. Gretchen deems Willie’s the best. And then the clouds rolled in and the rain began, light but cool, and the wind picked up a little. It was after three o’clock so we headed back to the room and then to the office to trade beach towels and to L’Orientique to refresh our supply of soft drinks, cheese and sunscreen.

Check eMail, relax on the lounger on the deck listening to the surf and starting another book followed by some cheese and crackers.
And now we’re sitting in the room, writing our trip report with the windows and doors open to allow in the sound of soft jazz from the live music at Papagayo’s.

How can life get any better than this? Well, I could have brought a longer network cable so I could connect to the Internet from the couch where I am writing this rather than the hard wooden chairs at the dining room table where the Internet connection is located, but hey, if that’s my biggest complaint, you have a valid license to tell me to “get a life”.