Friday was an incredibly slow and difficult day of work. Meetings about projects I’ll need to be working on when I return followed by meetings on the politics of the projects I’ll be working on followed by grousing about the politics of the projects. The longest days of the year are the last work days before vacation. I print out the travel documents, The newbie list for Sweetie Pie to peruse and the poetry I will be reading to her. Love poems referencing the sea are plentiful and easy to find, it’s such a great metaphor in so many ways.
We meet at Sweetie Pies to change and load the car. Dogs are walked and we head over to Coolbook and Heavy Hand’s (Sweetie Pie’s sisters well deserved nickname) for a farewell dinner and drink. We joke about opening a bar in Negril and naming it the Heavy Hand. We decide HH can’t bartend there, she’d be a liability. Coolbook and HH are seriously bumming as we walk out the door.
We head to Detroit Metro to do the stay and park. $85 at the Clarion for a nights stay, breakfast and 8 days of parking. The room is ridiculously hot even though the thermostat is set at 65. We take this as a good sign but sleep restlessly with just the sheet. We are awake, showered and dressed before the wakeup call. The cattle call that is air travel these days goes about as smoothly as we could hope.
We sit with Robin on the flight. She has just turned fifty, lost her husband 2 years ago to a long term illness and is headed to Jamaica to get “Back in the game”. Her and Sweetie Pie hit it off and have several long chats. While I’m trying to nap with Robins pillow pet I hear her say something to Sweetie Pie that is one of the nicest compliments I’ve ever received. The whole week would be a little strange that way, a lot of very nice things said by some lovely people. I long ago learned the value of effective flattery as an interpersonal skill tool – just a little, just the right thing at just the right time. Well, Robin was loaded for bear and hit dead center with precision timing. I felt like I was in the clouds…
We pass over Cuba and I’m starting to get antsy. “We’ll be in Jamaica in less than half an hour Sweetie!” I begin to scan the horizon for the first sign of the island. Big cloud heads are the first give away, then a small bit of green. As we turn to land I tell Sweetie Pie to watch out the window and it will seem like we’re going to land in the ocean. She is amazed how close we land to the sea. We’re early and have to wait for a gate to open for us. This worries me a little, it means congestion at the terminal. It is well founded as we wait an hour and twenty minutes to get through immigration. We’re not going to let it get us down though.We keep crisscrossing the line with some folks we’d met at Detroit waiting to get on the plane, they’re headed to Treasure Beach for a week then a week at the Rockhouse with a group that’s referred to as the Old-Timers, Rockhouse guests for 20+ years I think. We joke at each pass and try to point out the grumpiest people in line.
