MM goes on holiday

The sun and the beach were fabulous. But that's all I'm going to say about that for now (how much should I try to convince you how great the sand and ocean and bright blue sunny sky was during my tropical island escape?)

Surprise seemed to be the thematic element throughout the Jamaica trip. Not always for the best, but on occasion there were happy turns, if not interesting ones. I couldn't try to cover them all, and yet I feel like I'm about to anyway, however insufficiently.

My man Murphy was on board from the get-go as we left a tad later than planned for BWI and encountered most possible obstacles that were moderately likely at 7am on a Friday but not too likely to occur all together, i.e. lateness and low on gas and traffic and getting the shuffle-around at check-in...we were told that our connecting flight along with all other south-bound flights from ATL were canceled due to impending snow, then that actually we might make it so why not scoot on over to security, where there was a winding line of people and an unsympathetic officer checking ID who, when told we may miss our flight, replies that we'll need to ask each person in line if we could get in front of them if we wanted to get through faster. After meekly asking a few we were comforted by a young woman catching our same flight; she was a self-proclaimed seasoned traveler who assured us we'd make it, and when we finally got through my friend and I hit the terminal running, shoes barely back on both feet, and turned to see that the young woman who calmed us had been selected to have her laptop searched. We sprinted the entire way to the terminal, then for 10 minutes watched from our seats in back as standby passengers boarded. That nice woman who went out of her way to reassure us didn't make it. I told a flight attendant, "She's here, she's coming." The attendant offers a concerned look and watched the door too, but didn't do anything. Sad.

We almost lost our flight out of Atlanta because it was going to snow a couple of inches (notice, "it's going to snow" is reason enough in Atlanta to cancel flights, versus "it's snowed a foot already and we're thinking of shutting down some runways.") Ours was the last that made it out. I didn't see a flake.

Also, while in ATL's glorious kill-the-time-and-all-your-money shops, I found a beetle in the airport's version of a spinach calzone. Well, just the beetle's shell. Black with 3 red dots. (Or was it red with 3 black dots?) Starving, I decided to stick it out. I put it aside, and after my friend and I ate a few more bites we couldn't find it anymore. This was after I used every ounce of willpower to overcome my initial urge for a queso burrito from Qdoba.
Something about airports and flying makes me really, really hungry. I will eat at every chance I get when en route. This turned out to be bad, because going and returning each took at least 1o hours. That's a lot of eating opportunities.

Is it odd that I have the desire to take instruments with me when I travel? As if there's some chance, some reason, that wherever I'm going people might spontaneously break out into song, as though because it's my vacation I must be entering a place where life is lived like a musical? I can't even play the instruments I wanted to bring this time. So apparently, when this magical place does come alive with music, I plan to either just as magically know how to play or otherwise ruin the moment with my hawing and dumb, unmelodic strumming. I didn't bring any with me, much to my travel buddy's relief. But I did have some shakers and a harmonica and a ukulele that would have traveled quite nicely. Looking back, I don't think there was an occasion for them. Maybe on my next trip there will be, and I will be prepared. But this has nothing to do with Murphy...

I also forgot every charger I needed, my camera's being the most crucial (it was new, too, bought for the trip, and I am a picture-taking freak when traveling so it killed me) and my ipod shuffle, which was only slightly annoying. However I did remember my phone charger, which was practically useless because I was roaming. So thanks to my fully charged cell phone I was able to send some bad decision text messages. I'm afraid to see the next phone bill.

The hotel concierge detested us. But she managed to greet us by name each time we had to go see her. A pointed, "Oh hello my friend, Beth, and what can I do for you today?" It made me want to apologize for something, though we never asked for anything unreasonable. A towel here, a room key there, a safe with a lock that worked, a room located where it didn't sound like people were walking in on us all night (I had earplugs, as usual; my travel buddy did not.) And we did have to go see the concierge for everything as there were no phones in the rooms.

Everything we were dying to try on their menu was out, too. For days. At several restaurants, in fact, but most comically at our hotel's. We were almost ashamed to seek out a Margaritaville on our 3rd day, so desperate were we for a predictable meal that was bigger than a side salad. You would have done the same. But at the moment we delightfully rolled up our sleeves in preparation of chowing down, we were approached by an attractive group of people who purported themselves to be swingers and who wanted to sit with us. Now, while we had no intention of swinging, we didn't want to inhale our food in front of them either. Isn't that funny? Vanity is a funny thing. As we politely declined to dine with them, one of their greedy little paws, in an attempt to be flirty and cute, took the 2nd to last piece of our calamari! Oohh. You have not seen fire in a woman's eyes like that of the ravenous tourists we were that night. But, since that was just our first appetizer, we let the thief live.

I felt very uncomfortably "American" to have to sigh in dismay every time a food order arrived and I could tell immediately that it wasn't going to satisfy the voracious beast that is my appetite. Yet everyone was trying to sell us weed. Everywhere. It doesn't make much sense to me, how that would be desirable; what on earth would we have done in such a place with the munchies?!? (I mean, from what I've heard people get hungry, but how would I know.)

Unrelated to our experiences over the past several days-- while sitting in the Montego Bay airport over our $10 airport Wendy's breakfast, waiting to depart, my friend asked me what I want to do with writing, what my plans are and all. (I've had the same answer to this for the past couple years, at least, but it still comes up.) She commented that travel writing would be a very cool job. I agreed entirely, that would be a cool job.
We left Montego discussing the benefits of giving small children Tylenol p.m. and going over the reasons why sitting next to a stranger on an airplane is just the pits. I ordered a Bloody Mary on the plane, one last morsel of vacation.