Having acquired my mandatory "White Guy On Vacation" sun burn, I now had to sleep with it. Usually I have enough sense to burn only the top of my head and face. I'm concerned that there may be a corrolation between pattern baldness and how many times you have burned your scalp to a crisp. I've done that more times than I would like to admit, so the future is not looking so good.
Having assured my short, but quick, trip to male pattern baldness, I decided that I would prevent those areas from sun burn but instead direct attention to burning my torso. The worst sun burn I ever had was induced by my over indulgence in alcohol in Mazatlan. I regrettably passed out on that griddle of a beach the next morning. What I should have learned is that drinking and passing out on a beach is bad for you. It earned me a trip to see the medic on the ship and a near threat to report me to the captain for not being ready to stand watch. Go Navy!
No, an an unrepetent sense, I'm going to state that isn't what I should have learned. What I learned is that drinking is fun, and passing out is an unfortunate by-product of fun. What I should have learned is that the equatorial sun is brighter, hotter and has a lot more of that UV ray roasting power. I didn't learn this lesson, so I earned another trip on the "You Should Learn From This" buggy ride on this vacation.
Burning my chest and stomache was like putting on a shirt made of wasps. Kind of like this ...
Oh wait ... sorry about that. That is a shirt with the crappy metal band "Wasp" on it. One of the first bands to lie that they are Satanists so kids would buy their bad records. Ah me, I never bit on that one. There are much easier ways to shock and offend your parents. Why kill your dignity in the process? I've done that in several other ways, many of which my family can attest. If you ever had so much to drink that your five year old son asks your wife if "Daddy is going to die" then you have also learned a lesson in bad parenting and humility all at the same time.
Moment of self-realization: I've made myself sound like a drunk in this blog. A point of clarification ... I'm only an occasional drunk?
As for the shirt made of wasps, I had something more like this this in mind.
Let me get myself together here ... pause .... pause ... ok, I felt a bit like this girl looks except every one of those bees was stinging the sh*t out of me. Welcome, bees, to my bed so that every time I roll over you may sting me!
And now we pause for a moment for a segment I like to call "When Art Meets Stupid".
Let's just start this segment by agreeing that this picture is stupid. The girl in the picture is likewise stupid and let's throw in the photographer and "artistic" director as well. I'm guessing the artistic director of this shot felt that what was really lacking in the art world was a proper understanding of "bee wearing". I must admit I've never understood it.
"Look at me! I'm wearing bees!"
Maybe this bad photo will focus my obvious lack of artistic comprehension. I'm going to make an unsuccessful attempt at understanding, and will put myself inside the head of the artistic director. I need to get a grasp of this earth shaking development in the art world.
1st Principle: Proper bee wearing requires a nude female model.
Most things are improved with a little bit of nudity. I'll illustrate by example. Let's say I've known you for years, and we are hanging out together eating some bowls of cereal. Well, the cereal is good but it is pretty boring listening to you slurp while cereal falls from your open mouth to the table. I take a spoonful and stare at you. Slurp, slurp. You take a spoonful and stare at me. Slurp, slurp. Not much there, really.
However, if you were to eat those Cheerios buck naked, now you have my interest. By the introduction of a bit of nudity, we've now turned the mundane into something interesting if not a bit creepy. By the way, if you are male you are not invited to eat Cheerios at my house. Everyone should eat their cereal in the privacy of their own home.
By this one small example I've managed to convince myself that art demands that, if we are truly trying to bring an artistic flourish to bee wearing, the bee wearing model should ... nay ... must ... be naked. Moving on ...
OK, so the nudity suggestively covered by a billion bees captures my interest, but what does it all mean? Art should convey some sense of meaning. Otherwise, its just stuff. If I'm the artistic director, I'm basically going to tell you something artsy, fartsy like:
"The nakedness of the model evokes feelings of isolation. In her nakedness ... she's alone ... even when surrounded by thousands of our bee friends. She sits upon a chair that resembles a torture device in an unapportioned room while rays of sun create a halo effect to high light her isolation. The (pardon the pun) naked austerity of the photo shows how alone and isolated in society we are. I'm so lonely ... help me."
Stepping outside the mind of the artistic director (because I can't stand it), I'll be me again:
"Or ... it could mean that bees aren't people so naturally she feels alone. Bees aren't good company. Have you ever had a conversation with a bee? Discussed politics, religion? No. You haven't. I suppose we enjoy the social construct of eating with bees if you count their efforts to pile on to your steak while you are trying to eat it. If I stood on your steak and threatened to slap you if you got near it, you would not think me good company. You may feel alone and isolated because you take pictures of naked girls wearing bees! You, sir, are strange, and you owe that poor dumb girl an apology."
I'm going to move on from the the "When Art Meets Stupid" segment. I feel like I've done my bit to reconcile art with the bee wearing community. Besides, I spent my whole childhood having conversations with myself. I should not indulge that any further as an adult. Back to the vacation.
On this fine morning, we went to Loterie Farm (http://loteriefarm.com) which is nestled near the summit of Pic Paradis, the highest point on St. Martin. The "Flight Zone" is the part of the Loterie Farm experience where you go to the top of Pic Paradis and then zip line (is that a verb?) all the way down. If you are actually reading this because you think I might pass on something useful to a potential traveler to Sint Maarten/St. Martin, then here it is. Go to Loterie Farm. Nuff said.
And now for a segment I call "Weird Signs I Saw While Traveling", here is one from the grounds at Loterie Farm:
The sign is in French, naturally, and it requires that "Le ramassage des fruits est interdit." Now, I'm not sure why people go around massaging fruit in St. Martin. Is that French thing? If so, keep them away from bananas. That is just unnatural. I wonder why it is only the re-massage of fruit that is forbidden ... um.. interdit. Can I massage your fruit once, but not twice? I know the French are an odd group, but massaging fruit once (acceptable) is perfectly normal for them. Go for a second fruit massage, and they land you in jail. Is it possible I've misinterpreted the language? I don't care.
At the start of the zip line experience, one of the guides convinced a guy from New Jersey in our group that you had to pass a strength test to zip line. Made him military press a weighted bar bell four times over his addled head. I guess nice guys from New Jersey are totally clueless because that dude went to work right away. Idiot!
Think of the money, man! They wouldn't be able to make much money if you had to qualify by pressing 150 lbs over your head four times. Duh. Ana Cortez couldn't do it. She was too cool to try. Likewise, I ran the economics of it and acted cool with the guide. Nothing like two bros looking at some other schlep getting suckered and thinking to one another ...
"That guy is a total dumb ass."
I'm not sure why men enjoy witnessing the humiliation of other men ... we just do. I don't share culture or skin color with the guide, but we both knew that was funny. And there you have it, my cure for racism and cultural mistrust. Just find some clueless dude to humiliate. Let the boundaries fall and the male bonding begin.
The drive in the pick-up bed up to the top is worth the price if you are into paying to be scared. Every time the driver pulled the clutch to catch a lower gear, I was pretty sure we were just going to stall out and commence the screaming and dying all the way to the bottom. Always having a contingency plan in mind, I was just going to bail out of the pick-up to the side of the road if it did that. Probably should have shared that plan with the wife and kids. Ah, maybe next time.
In any event, after a quick five minute speech about "if you do this, you die, if you do that you die" we were off and zip lining. I went first followed by the ever lovely and dangerous Ana Cortez. Our guide, Robert, let us go so he could handle the screaming group of girls above us. Pretty much we had the run of the place all the way to the bottom. I must admit that flying 100 feet above the rain forest while gazing to the bottom of the island and the azure ocean below is very charming. Here's a picture I took from the top of the zip line:
After this adventure, we returned to the hotel to enjoy some of that "swim up to the bar" stuff. By the way, no one tells you that to swim up to the bar you have to flog hordes of children splashing, screaming and near drowning in the pool. That does not appear in the pictures.
One thing I must convey about our hotel area. The air along the whole street is permeated with the smell of grilled meat. Vegetarians, you would vomit in disgust. For me, I was thinking that for heaven to be proper (and it must be, right?), it must have the smell of grilled meat. I'm a proper Catholic, so I get to go to Catholic heaven which is just downstairs from protestant heaven. If I were a buddhist and were to reincarnate, I suppose the ever present smell of grilled meat would make me look more like this:
And, yes, due to my bad karma, I'm sure I would reincarnate into something like this hideous, drooling Komodo Dragon. Maybe I should stop making fun of people in this blog, so I can avoid this near certain fait as a reptile? Nah.
In any event, sometimes the smell of grilled meat is just a stumbling block for the unwary. I ate some jerk baby back ribs that night (I will not post a picture!), and I think it sucked what remaining moisture I had in my body right out of me. Must ... replenish ... with ... beer. Recover, rest, and prepare for the next day of shopping. You didn't think I would avoid that, did you?
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