We bring friends every year when we come to Negril. Last year, for my wife's 40th, we had a big crowd. About 20 people showed up, family, friends, big party on the beach, all that. This year was more chill. We were in Negril for two weeks. Another married couple joined us for the first week, and we had two singles with us on the second. One newbie. A nice way to spend the vacation, finding new things for the veterans to get into, and seeing all of the must-do's as well with the newbie.

Most of the first week was just general "chill on the beach" type days. We brought a couple of floats with us, and with another float we found at the resort, established what we called the "Beer Barge." We saw another couple do this last year, set off with a float and a cooler, only to return hours later with a whole lotta empties. What a great idea! We brought a soft-sided cooler in our luggage, filled it up with beer, rum, and ice. Put that on one float, and the women got the other two floats, nice chair-like floats I bought from amazon for about 6 bucks each. The two guys were the anchors, to keep from drifting too far. We barged several of the days, a floating happy hour, watching the sunset from our own little barge. Next year, two more floats, and we taxi up to the end of the beach, and simply drift back to White Sands. Maybe even one of those fancy Canoe floating coolers. It was a steady barge this year, but next year, the beer barge will sail!

Obviously, if you spend an afternoon on a beer barge, or a bar crawl, which we did again that Wednesday, it's not going to be a real late night. And really, there weren't a lot of late nights at all the rest of the trip, although we usually closed down White Sands or Sun Beach, so it wasn't exactly early nights either. And just because we didn't make it out to Alfred's or Roots Bamboo, didn't mean we didn't get a little crazy. But no more encounter's with late night chicken guys. Well, mostly. White Sands was closing at 10 one night, we were close to done, but wanted one more round. Went across the street to Best in the West. Had a few more, until they were ready to close. Got a quarter chicken to go, and wend back to the room. Woke up the next morning, and the chicken was sitting right there on the dresser. I was drunk, and had forgotten to eat the chicken I just bought. Doh!