Its a bleary day here in Southern New England- rainy and mid thirties and bleak so I decided to book a stay in May at White Sands which leads me to a couple of questions
One of my favorite travel stories is the time 10 years ago I decided to take a juicer to Jamaica so I could have delicious fresh fruit smoothies for breakfast.
I packed my sturdy Nutri-Bullet in my checked luggage and went through security, only to pulled out of line several times to have my paperwork inspected and re-checked. I was puzzled and when I arrived at my hotel hours later and opened my suitcase found a little note from TSA saying Hi there traveller, we touched your things. I am no munitions expert but I guess going through the x-ray screening the bullet shaped juicer looked a whole lot like something you would see in the Hurt Locker.
I proceeded to enjoy daily yummy smoothies- with mangos bananas papaya pineapple -and at the end of my stay I gifted the suspicious looking device to a friendly staffer at my hotel in order to avoid the security hassle on the return flight. Hah no such luck. When checked in at Delta, the man at the counter said oh I see that you are flying to North Korea today and proceeded to smirk as he drew all sorts of marks on my boarding pass. I thought that was a strange attempt at humor but when going through security they took my passport and told me I was selected for extra screening, taken to a small room and proceeded to swab my feet and ukulele bag. Finding nothing more dangerous than my ukulele- which to be fair, can be quite painful when I play it- they released me and I wandered over to the departure area. I then was paged to come to the gate where I was informed there would be a second inspection just before I got on the plane. They swabbed my bag again and this time found I failed. This led to a thorough search of my person and ukulele and another swabbing of my feet with a reagent. Finding nothing again I was allowed to board. They hinted that perhaps it was blood pressure meds that caused the false positive result. If that is the case then every old fat guy in the US is a potential threat and subject to random multiple swabbing.
Once again I am on a clean living kick- and wishing to enjoy again smoothies from fresh fruit purchased on the beach- I was going to get another juicer that I have heard a lot of ads for- a Blendjet. But I saw that they were being recalled for causing fires and lacerations- neither of which is something I am looking for on vacation. So I am going to go with a less threatening looking immersion blender - and here is my first question:
I enjoy a scoop of protein powder in my smoothies and would imagine a half kilo bag of white powder in my luggage would once again raise some questions going through security, so is protein powder sold at Hi-Lo or some other health food market?
Question 2- I usually stay around the Travelers end the beach road but as I said I am staying at White Sands this time. At Travelers I enjoyed hanging out at Rusty's next door - a dive perfectly suited for a smoke and coffee in the morning and cold Red Stripes in the afternoon. Is there a similar establishment within stumbling distance of White Sands that you would recommend?
And finally- speaking of coffee, I bought coffee from Thunder a couple of years ago but couldn't find him on my last trip- is he still around, if not where is a good place to get coffee/ preferably dark roast/preferably whole beans?
Thanks in advance for your assistance- this site has been a wonderful resource for my visits over the years.
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Originally Posted by Sand gravity
