Living Spontaneously

A mini Stadium reunion occurred this past weekend on the beautiful islands of St. Thomas and St. John in the Caribbean. This was an impromptu reunion, an exercise in living spontaneously, what with Saturday morning flights purchased two days prior. Let me just say: live spontaneously, we did. Elliot and his friend Nick ("Nasty Nick"), who turns out to be a pretty cool dude, came down for a visit. These are [our] stories (I hope someone gets that reference):

Day 1:

Elliot and Nick woke up at 4:00am to begin their journey to the Caribbean. Arriving at 11:40am, I met them outside Cyril E. King International Airport and we had hugs all around. Elliot and Nick were the first people to visit me on The Rock and so I was, admittedly, rather excited to show outsiders around the crazy place (unofficial motto of the island: Welcome to St. Thomas, You Can't Make This Shit Up.)

From the airport, we drove immediately to my one room bungalow to drop some shit off. Here are pictures of Elliot on my patio:



After we were done, we hopped into the trusty Ford Fiesta and drove the windy roads across the island to Red Hook on the east end of the island where we planned to catch the ferry to St. John. We hopped on the 1 o'clock ferry and took the twenty minute ride to St. John. Here's a picture from the ferry:




Once we got to St. John, we rented some snorkel equipment and made the twenty minute walk to Honeymoon Beach. Honeymoon Beach is in the middle of Virgin Islands National Park, and is located such that it's remote enough that it's never crowded, but close enough that it's not a problem to get to. At Honeymoon Beach, we snorkeled, chilled, walked the sand, and generally did "the beach thing". This is what I'm talking about:





Honeymoon Beach is gorgeous. Unfortunately, I don't have any pics of the cool sea-life we saw, but I will tell you we saw sea turtles, two types of rays, lots of fish and coral, and there were rumors on the beach of a nurse shark (but we didn't get to peep it).

So, we left Honeymoon beach and we went to an aweosme bar called Iguana Grill. Iguana grill opened right across from Wet Woody's, which is a St. John institution famous for it's excellent happy hour deals, awesome atmosphere, sweet name, and strong pours. Iguana Grill opened a few months back, made their happy hour an hour longer, had the same deals, and offered more seating. Excellent business plan. Excellent way to piss off the other bar. Here's a picture of Woody's (you can't beat the ambience):



And here are some pics of us at Iguana Grill:





I'm not going to mince words: we're equal opportunity drinkers, and we're going where we can drink the longest, for the cheapest, and actually be able to sit down. So we went to Iguana. We still grabbed a brew from Woody's Express Window to drink on the street, just so we could tell our grandchildren about it.

After Iguana (18 beers, 18 bucks, bitches!), we loitered for a bit:



And then we went to Rhumb Lines. Rhumb Lines is a fantastic place. They serve Asian/Caribbean fusion and awesome drinks. They have fabulous servers that act like they like me, and they have begun to give me free drinks as a result. The bar at Rhumb Lines has swings for seats (if you want them), serves Fernet-Branca (delicious), and has a live guitarist who puts up with my drunken requests. I can't ask for more. Here's a picture of us at Rhumb Lines:



And one with our bartender:



After Rhumb Lines, we hung out on the beach for a while, had a pretty strange experience with some strung out locals (ask Elliot), met a man named Whisky (!), and then took the ferry back to St. Thomas.

I have no more pictures from Saturday, but just because I know you're all so curious to hear what we did, we went back to Red Hook, met up with some friends of mine at an Irish bar (St. Patrick's Day, after all), and then went home to sleep.

Day 2:

We woke up (early!), and ventured back to Molly Malone's for brunch. Highlights of our hungover morning were the pancake wraps (sausage, egg, cheese, wrapped in pancake) and grilled cheese with egg (Nasty Nick's a vegetarian - what a bitch).

After breakfast, we had made plans with a friend of mine to go back to St. John and rent a dinghy for the day! This meant that we got to take a little Zodiac with a 15hp motor and cruise around the north shore of the island, stopping as we pleased to go to beaches, snorkel, etc. And this, my friends, is where the pictures get EPIC!

Nasty Nick drivin' the yacht:



And Elliot straddling the boat:



But wait, what's that I spot? A jolly roger on the high seas? Where real pirates like Captain Kidd and Blackbeard actually roamed?







And lastly, Pajo and Nasty Nick posing with the flag:



While this only brings us through Sunday afternoon, I have no more pictures to share. I can assure you all, however, that the rest of Elliot and Nasty Nick's visit involved pools, beaches, beer, urchin spines in the foot, and Elliot passing a fart so smelly it made me vomit.

Yes, that actually happened.