My favorite vacation spot (LBC topic)

If ever a topic could render me speechless, or nearly so, oddly enough it is this one. In my 64 years, I have been on a grand total of 3 real vacations. The kind wherein you pack your bags and head off to a destination for a week or two of fun and frivolity, hiking, camping - whatever.

To celebrate our collective 40th birthdays my core group of HS friends celebrated by taking a cruise to the Caribbean.  It was a one week tour of the southern Caribbean via NCL. Our cruise ship was smallish - less than 1000 cruisers - and we quickly made ourselves known as "The Old Gang".  We set sail from San Juan Puerto Rico on a Sunday and returned there the following Saturday, after visiting Barbados, Martinique, Antigua, St Maarten, St Thomas and again San Juan. That's a lot of island hopping in a relatively;y short period of time, [packed with the obligatory sight seeing, scuba diving, shopping, drinking, more shopping, more drinking, and other on board festivities. It was on these shore based excursions that we became widely known as The Old Gang  and we were having off-the -charts fun, especially on the booze cruise in Antigua. You know the type - unlimited quantities of rum punch freely available.  Rope swinging off the boat into the water.  More drinking.  Upon our return to the cruise ship, all 9 of us descended upon Lynn and my cabin and began ordering rounds of  Corona.  We'd call room service for each successive round until we had a 10-ft. row of empty bottles in the hall against the wall..  Oh - and that was formal dinner night  too.

Upon exiting the room heading to the aforementioned formal dinner with tie askew, eyes glazed over and squinted tight and barely able to stand straight our porter - a tooth challenged Jamaican gent named Bailey - looked at me, grinned and said with his thick accent "I see we had a good time today sir". to which I replied his powers of observation were most astute. I'd been purchasing local rum from each island and upon taste-testing them, if not pleased I presented Bailey with the bottle. (we got excellent service BTW) I handed him his Antigua bottle - interestingly enough apparently my drinking history was so focused on Bacardi all others paled in comparison. I only later discovered the pleasures of Capt Morgan.  Ahem.  And the entire week we heard this song played over and over....

At any rate, the next day marked our return to San Juan and the end of the adventure.  Our flight home deposited us at SF airport Sunday and I was at work at 8AM on Monday.  Big mistake.

Other than that rip, my vacation time is usually taken over holiday weekends, giving myself -4 day weekends and travel has not been possible.  The last trip was to College Station Texas to meet the family and watch my niece Sammy play in a national softball tournament at which she blew away college teams (Sammy was a high school sophomore at the time).  Incidentally she graduates from college in a few weeks - leaving as her teams MVP and the school's female athlete of the year.  She got the pitching genes so coveted by guys like Fos and I. Those of you on Facebook can see Sammy and pics ofthat trip in my photos / And, perhaps not evident is the fact that Sammy is 6-ft. tall and drop-dead gorgeous.  She got my brothers size and her mom's looks - LOL

I do recall the typical driving vacations when I was a kid in Colorado and my fave of those had to be the one that took us to the spectacular views of Bryce Canyon/

And I now see that my natural propensity to extensive verbosity has generated  a long post about very little - LOL.  I will close by saying that I now vacation vicariously  with friends, a prime example being my great and good friends Dave & Pat Hitchcock.  Please check out my last vicarious trip via Patty's blog about the adventures on the MV Lillian Belle - it's listed over there under blogs I follow.  And while you're a it please check how my LBC pals spend their vacation time.  And I have 5 weeks of vacation yet to take this year.  Sigh.  If it's not one thing it's another.