Honeymoon Adventures. Day 3.

Ahh…day 3.  The sun is rising.  A fresh rain just passed over head and is dropping from the trees.  The local birds and other animals are out and singing.  It’s a great morning for a walk.  Instead, we slept in.  And it was GREAT!  This is really only the second full day that we’ve been here, and we were both pretty tired still.  So sleeping in wasn’t too bad.  Plus, I don’t know if any of those things I said were true.  When we woke up, it was cloudy and raining.  When did we get back home to Seattle?

So we go have some breakfast.  There is a little home style diner that has crepes for breakfast.  So we give that try.  I had the peach and KT had banana.  They were okay.  Not the best crepes I’ve had, but not the worst either.

We decided to finally go have some lunch.  There is a little beach side restaurant that had some good food.  Plus they had nachos.  They weren’t any sort of delux monster nachos or anything, but whatever.  I’ll take ’em.  Mmmmm….nachos.

I found this cocnut drink.  It is literally a cocnut that they open up and pour liquor into.  It was good.  But after a while…too much fresh coconut juice made me not feel well.  Or maybe it was too much liquor.  Whatever it was, I didn’t finish it.

That evening they had a local celebration.  They had guests that performed some local music and dancing.  There were also some fire dancers.  They had some tourches and did some dancing with them.  They were also fire breathers.  Which really caught me off gaurd because I wasn’t expecting it…and when I started to smell gas I got a little worried.  Yah, I am pretty convinced that they were using gasoline.  At least use liquor or something!  It works just as good, doesn’t smell bad, and if you accidentally drink some then you’ll probably still be okay.

We went back into the hot tub and relaxed some more before finally turning in.  Tomorrow we had a big day ahead of us anyway.  For some reason, I was willingly strapping myslef into a harness and travelling down a wire from one tree to another…30 feet in the air.  Some places were much higher than that!

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Bag of candy.

While writing the story below, I had forgotten about this and I had meant to apologize to everyone sooner.

Kaitlyn and I had both thought that the candy buffet was a good idea.  We wanted to have some nice little containers or bags or something that everyone could put their candy in.  Then we thought, well…we need something to seal them.  Enter stickers.

You’ll recall my story about the envelopes and my mighty extra strength glue stick.  Apparently, I have a problem with purchasing things that bind things together.  Forever!

If you were one of the guests who decided that they would save some for later and used one of the provided stickers to seal your bag, then you will know the intense struggle that came when you decided to enjoy said candy.

Apparently the stickers we got were made for construction purposes or for holding dams together in Holland.  Being scissor-less in St. Lucia posed a problem for me when I tried to open the bag.  The bag did not really survive.  But alas, I was able to enjoy the candy.

So again, let me apologize for my misjudgment in purchasing binding materials.

Honeymoon Adventures. Day 2.

We finally made it to day 2!  As the days grew more and more relaxing, we didn’t do as much craziness.  A lot more calm.  So we wake up at some point and decide to head to the pool.  There’s a decent crowd out there.  We grabbed a seat and head in for breakfast.  They have a buffet setup in one of the restaurants by the pool.  Perfect!  We get some food and as were sitting there eating, a couple gets up to get some more food.

It was like ringing the dinner bell at 5th grade camp.  Except for birds.  You can tell that this is a problem that they have been facing for some time.  They had nets up to try to keep the birds out, but ultimately they will find their way in.  As soon as they got up, there was about 6 or 7 birds taking food off the plates.  And they were ambitious too…taking full slices of bread or sausage.  And these weren’t like hawks or anything, just the size of robins.

After breakfast, we are lounging by the pool and they say that they are going to start with some games.  If you’ve never been to an all-inclusive resort before, there is a team of staff members that are in charge of providing activities during the day.  First up was the ring toss.  Simple, yes?  Consists of two round.  The board is about 12″ by 12″ and has 9 pegs on it, all representing a different number of points.  We have 6 rings.  A few people go before me so I get an idea of how hard to toss it.  I miss a few, but I get lucky and hit a few high numbers. The second round is the same thing, except now our eyes have to be closed.  Somehow, I manage to get a couple 9’s and a couple other high numbers.  Woohoo!  I win.  Now I get an arbitrary number that they assigned at the start of the game.  If you get a certain amount of points by the end of your stay, you win some prizes.

We did some more sitting by the pool and some more drinking.  The next game came up.  It was only Kaitlyn and myself.  So we automatically win.  Oh, and since we were the only ones, they gave us double points.  =)  This game was called learn the local language.  I’d love to tell you what I learned, but the combination of me drinking and not really caring…and drinking made it so that I don’t remember now.

We still had much of the day left.  However we spent it by the pool.  I had heard that the Caribbean has weird weather.  I’ve never been somewhere where there is such spontaneous rain.  It will be absolutely beautiful outside and within an instant it will be raining.  It’s very temperamental that weather is.  I’m sure we had dinner somewhere that night, but since I didn’t write it down, I don’t remember.  Instead, we went swimming that night.  A late night swim is nice.  Oh wait.  More spontaneous rain.  Serious?  I just saw 1,736,074 stars and I look away for a second and now rain.  Not wanting to be “that tourist” we stayed out in the pool.  The rain wasn’t really that cold.  And the pool was somewhat heated…although I think they relyed on the heat to warm the pools instead of electricity.

When we finally got tired of the rain, we went inside.  We had yet to actually eat any of the candy from our candy buffet.  Which brings me to another story that I will put in a different entry.  Let me just say…sorry.

Honeymoon Adventures. The end of day 1.

I didn’t realize that writing about the first day was going to take so long.  Sheesh!  I guess I had to set the mood or something.  haha.

So as we are sitting in the outdoor lobby…I am hot.  It’s about 92° outside and the humidity is at about 90%.  It’s that sticky hot feeling.  But I’ve got a glass of champagne and a cool towel.  After we finish the paperwork, they take us to our room.  It’s a nice room, bottom floor that looks right out the beach.  There is a little outdoor patio that we can go sit on.  I had thought that we might do that.  Later in the trip though, we decided not to.

It’s now 6 or 7 in the evening.  We missed the welcoming party…primarily because we didn’t know there was going to be one.  And after Death Ride 2008, I was kind of ready to just relax.  But we decided to go walk around a bit and check out the place.  We found out that the pools are open 24 hours, but there is no bartender at the swim up bar.  Kinda cool if we want to take a late night swim.

Oh!  St. Lucia has the weirdest crickets.  We walked outside and there is an infestation of crickets there.  However, these aren’t like your typical American crickets.  These crickets sound like little emergency beacons that you might have on your life vest if you’re some NAVY Seal or something and you’re stranded at sea.  And there has to be millions of them.  This is partially the reason we didn’t sit out on the patio.  At least not at night.  The last thing I need is one of these things somewhere in the room.

The weather isn’t bad at night.  Stays around mid to upper 80’s.  But the humidity drops down so it is kinda bearable.  Still hot though.  We decided to go back to the room for the night and take it easy.  We started to watch some movie…something with Denzel Washington I think.  Anyway, I start really getting into it.  And BAM! Cable goes out.  It’s 1am.  Granted, I could go to sleep.  But I don’t want to.  So I call the front desk and they send someone down.  Turns out something happened and everyone’s cable was out.  Fine.  We end up watching the hotel channel and fall asleep.  haha.

Finally…day one is over.  Now the real fun can begin…

Perhaps Honda should stick to automobiles

I’m all for helping out people that have disabilities.  Hell, I can barely walk sometimes myself.  But this just doesn’t seem like something that would COMFOTRABLY help me walk around.

http://world.honda.com/news/2008/c081107Walking-Assist-Device/

I wonder when the VTEC kicks in.

Honeymoon Adventures, Day 1 Con’t. The Car ride.

First, if you haven’t read the previous stories then please do so here.  You’ve gotta be caught up on everything.

http://brian-stevens.blogspot.com/

Alright.  Lets continue.  This car ride was one of the craziest rides I have ever been on.  Think about your scariest time in a taxi cab.  Where it seems like the cab driver is attempting to set a personal record for taking you 40 miles in rush hour traffic…in 15 minutes.  That kind of ride.  That is what we experienced.  Only, here was the difference.  There was no rush hour traffic.  It isn’t quite as bad when you’re weaving around cars when you’re only going 12 mph…and so is everyone else.  Imagine doing this at 45 mph.

So lets start from the beginning.  We depart the airport and the first thing he says is…”Everyone buckled up?”  I take this as a safety measure and am appreciative of it.  As we get closer to the actual road, he tells us that they drive on the other side of the road here, so not to be too nervous about that.  Sure enough, we start down on the left side of the road.  Not a big deal, but it is a little odd when you see cars coming at you and you realize you are on the ‘wrong’ side of the road.

I see I street sign with the number 30 on it.  I assume that it is a speed limit.  I do a quick calculation and determine that it is probably mph.  However, I quickly began to doubt myself because it didn’t seem like the driver thought is was a speed limit sign.  Now, from where I was sitting I was unable to see the speedometer.  However, I have been in enough cars to know that we were going faster that 30mph.  If I were to guess, I would put us at 40 or 45.   So here we are cruising along this VERY bumpy road.  More about the roads in a minute.

We are rapidly coming up on a car and I am quickly beginning to ask myself if he is just going to make a run for it and pass this guy in one fale swoop.  Instead, he puts on the brakes.  I had guessed that it was because there was an oncoming vehicle.  I think I was wrong.  A car suddenly passes us and I’m not kidding…this was the closest I have ever seen to an accident without a crash actually happening.  And the other driver didn’t even seem to care.  They just went along on their way like it was no big deal.  Scared the hell out of all of us.  I swear…it’s all a tourist thing.  haha.  They are all working together to scare everyone off.

Alright, that kind of gives you an idea of the driving.  This is all the time, btw.  In a barely two lane road, drivers are somehow making it 3 cars wide.  Around corners.  It’s insane.  Anyway, the roads.  I would say about half of the road(s) that we travelled on had a divider line.  And most of those were in the actual city part.  In the back roads, it’s just a paved area.  And not a very well paved area.  Huge pot holes.  Like…blow a tire pot holes.  And where there isn’t pot holes, it is just uneven pavement.  So the road is VERY bumpy.  And to top it off, this van rode like it didn’t even have struts or shocks.  Or any sort of dampening device.

So as we are riding along in the taxi roller coaster, I am trying to take in some of the sights of the island.  Banana plantations…EVERYWHERE.  I’ve never seen so many banana trees.  Then again…I’ve never actually seen 1 banana tree.  Anyway, bananas.  Lots of ’em.  The majority of the cars there are RHD (right hand drive), and seeing this brings out the car tuner in me and starts to wonder if there is an untapped market down here.  I quickly throw that idea away.  While the cars ar RHD, that doesn’t make them nice.  This is like the junkyard for old cars.

You know that recycling plant that you have to go to when you want to get rid of your old monitor?  Well…St. Lucia is like that…but for cars.  Don’t get me wrong, there are some nice ones.  But there are a lot of not nice ones.  There was one in particular that stood out, and I don’t know why.  It was a white truck and there was one guy (a mechanic) looking into the engine.  He had a beer in one hand and a reserve in his back pocket.  Next to him was either the customer or a helper mechanic.  He too was sporting the beer +1 reserve.

We finally arrive at our resort, Sandals Grande St. Lucian.  We get up to the front.  After an hour of sitting in a nice AC cooled van, you forget how hot it is outside.  We quickly remembered.  They unload out luggage and set it aside.  We follow a hotel greeter and sit on a couch in the lobby.  The lobby is outdoors, btw.  As she brings us a towel and a glass of champagne, I start to finally relax.

Until next time.

New cell phone

To those of you who have made fun of my cell phone, you will be happy to hear that I have a new cell phone now.  It took a while to figure out what I wanted to do.  I was initially leaning towards the Blackberry Bold.  But due to it’s not being available from T-Mobile…and…well…it sucking…I decided against it.  Then there was the Blackberry Pearl Flip.  It was escentially a Blackberry Pearl, but they turned it into a flip phone.  I was initially against it because it looked really bulky.  But as I looked it over more, it kind of grew on me.  It wasn’t as big as I had expected.  Finally, there was the G1 from T-mobile and Google.  It’s an HTC phone.  I wasn’t quite sure about this one.  I really didn’t want to go with a tuoch screen, and I didn’t know how I would like the screen flipping out.

Alright, first the BB Flip.  All in all, a decent phone.  Has a nice little clock on the front of the flip, which is nice because since for whatever reason I don’t have a watch, I am constently checking my phone.  However, after about 10 seconds it turns off, so that doesn’t really help me.  But otherwise, it is a typical BB phone.  The one thing that I did not like at all was the keyboard.  It was in a QWERTY layout (like a computer keyboard), but they put two letters on one button.  QW on one, ER, TY, etc.  They also incorporated other symbols and numbers onto the keys.  For texting, it is rather smart in figuring out what you are trying to type.  That’s not the issue.  It was just weird trying to figure it out.

As for the G1, the biggest downside for me really was the touch screen.  I didn’t really want to get one like that.  I’m not sure why though.  Probably because I hate finger prints on my stuff.  But it did have a regular QWERTY keyboard.  Otherwise, it’s a nice phone.  The built in gmail feature is nice.  I get all my emails right away.  And the google maps feature is fantastic.  I have heard it has GPS, but I have yet to try that out.  The web browser is nice as well.

So after standing in the show room for a while, I decided to go with the G1.  Aside from the keyboard thing on the BB and the touchscreen on the G1 (which kind of cancelled each other out), the real deal breaker for me was the email.  I don’t need to connect to an exchange server.  Which essentially make the BB useless to me.  My primary email is my gmail account.  So it made sense to go with one that had that email service already build in.

This phone is really nice.  The touch screen is growing on me, but I’m not gonna start comparing it to other touch screen phones.  Primarily because I don’t really care that they can do stuff different that this one.  If I cared, I would have got them.  I liked this one.  Anyway, built in google maps.  Awesome.  I love that part.  Build in web.  Makes it easy to find stuff.  The camera in it is pretty nice too.  Has an auto focus thing in it.  Kinda cool.  It’s pretty much like all your other media phones.  Music, movies, pictures can all be shown.  Games can be downloaded.  IM through AIM, Yahoo, MSN and gmail.

The Andriod platform…I haven’t really read up on this.  I know that it is an open-source thing.  So there are a lot of people out there developing stuff for it.  There is one program that allows you to use your camera to scan a barcode of an item at a store, then it will tell you where it is cheapest to find it.  I think with a little tuning, that program will be very nice.

Anyway, thats all for now.  I’m still messing with the phone right, so I’m sure there will be a lot more things coming down the way.

Timbaland and Chris Cornell

Chris Cornell has a new album coming out.  He is working in collaboration with Timbaland.  I first heard their new song on my friend Matt’s Myspace page.  I hadn’t heard that there was a new album coming or anything.  So I did some looking around.  Turns out they were doing a release party at the Verizon store in Tukwilla.

So we went down there and checked it out.  It said 3:00, so we got down there at 2 to try to avoid any lines.  No one was there.  They gave us a wrist band and said that we could just come back at 3 because that is when they will start lining up.  And then we should get in around 4.  Alright, fine.  So we go to Best Buy to get a couple CD’s and then to Starbucks to kill some time.

As it gets closer to 3, we head back over.  There is a crowd now, but nothing to be concerned about.  There are about 7 people in an impromptu line so I go ahead and jump in it.  Turns out it really isn’t going to matter because the people with the VIP badges will get to go in front of us anyway.  More about that in a minute.  So 4:00 rolls around and they say they are going to start lining people up.  VIP badge people get to go in first.  Fine, there are about 40 people.  Not a big deal.  Some DJ guy who I didn’t recognize was outside entertaining everyone.  He must have somehow been connected to them, because he seemed to know them.

So he’s handing out tickets to the show later that night.  I didn’t win any, but then again I wasn’t really trying.  I look at the time.  What the heck?  It’s already 5:00.  Lets get moving!  Remember those VIP passes?  Yah.  Turns out that if you just go inside and buy an accessory, you get a badge.  Which I’m all fine with, but I don’t think that should get you to the front right away.  So now, a bunch of people go inside and buy a phone charge and get to move up to the front.  Kinda stupid.  Finally they let us in.  I think it was 5:30 or so that we got to go in.  They made us drop off all of our stuff at the door on a giant table.  I mean…ALL our stuff.  No cameras, wallets, phones, bags.  Nothing.  Only your autograph material.  Good thing Kaitlyn was there with her purse.  I just put all my stuff in there.  And some of Tukwilla’s finest were on guard.

As we get closer, they tell us one item per artist.  Here’s a guy in front of me with about 4 records, 18 album inserts, a hand full of pictures.  I don’t know what he’s gonna do.  This lady behind me brought her own guitar.  We get up there and Timbaland looked bored out of his mind.  Chris was a little more open.  He had his little girls there with him too.

The lady behind me didn’t have anything for Timbaland to sign.  And when he went to sign her guitar, she kinda moved it away and said…oh no, sorry.  haha.  I thought that was kinda funny.  And then we were done.  I am looking forward to getting the new album though.  I’ve always been a fan of Soundgarden and Audioslave.  I think this will be a different sound.  I think it’ll work for those who like both artists.  We’ll see.

Continuing Honeymoon stories

I was unhappy with the previous website that I was blogging on.  There was something about it.  It didn’t feel personal enough.  And short of setting up my own website, this is a better move.

So I will be finishing the stories here.  If you haven’t read any of the other stories, they are still available to read here:

http://brian-stevens.blogspot.com/

I’ll get the rest of the stories written up.

If you look over to the right, you’ll see a category list.  Since i’ll be writing other stories here too, some of the honeymoon ones may get lost in the mix.  They will all be in the Honeymoon category.  So if you click on that one, it will only display the honeymoon stories.  Of course, you are welcome to read all the stories if you would like.