November 2001 just a few months after 9/11.
Talk about a scary time to be on a plane. Everyone cheered as we landed safe in San Juan before our short prop plane flight to the island of St. Thomas. We had to run to our transfer because we were delayed leaving chicago. They were calling our names when we finally made it to the gate. And on top of that, the prop plane flight, the smallest plane we were ever on, had to fly in dark stormy weather…fun!
J&B advised us to pack a carryon because from their experience your luggage was often times delayed when flying between islands. Sure enough our main luggage didn’t make it but fortunately we packed some necessary items; i.e. our swimsuits.
I think vegas was our first vacation, but this was the first of many outside the states. Although I went to Valpo with B we didn’t become friends until we were out of school and we even missed their wedding because we didn’t really start hanging out until shortly thereafter. If I remember correctly, they pretty much just threw out an open invite to the vacation and we were like hey, we’ll go. It turned out to be just them and us, an odd pairing at the time, but nearly 10 years later the friendship is still very much intact. In fact we each have two kids. They had a boy first and then a girl…us the opposite…and 4 months, almost exactly, separate each pair of kids. To this day we still talk about some of our times there.
We went sailing and took in some snorkeling. B rented a car and we drove around st. thomas and st. john islands, nearly hitting a pig or two along the way. We also snorkeled at that beach on st. john … amazingly clear water and equally amazing scenery. We drank those volcano drinks at that random restaurant we happened to stop at for dinner. Wasn’t it an all-u-can-drink event at the hotel that made it an early night for at least one of us after that same person got up off the chair and made a halfass effort at diving into the pool? Good thing someone was there to catch her:) I believe what followed was a cold shower and some microwave mac & cheese in the hotel room.
(The first of MANY self portraits … we’ve gotten pretty good at this) And oh yeah, and didn’t we almost buy a timeshare?? It sounded awesome at the time and we had the paperwork sitting there right in front of us. I can’t remember which one of us balked or if it was something else that got us out of there, but thankfully we didn’t go through with it. Although I think we got a bottle or two of rum for sitting down with them.
On our way home, half our luggage was liquor…6 bottles a piece I believe. Passoa (I think that’s how you spell it … I can’t believe I still remember the name) was top on the list of favorites.
And then there was shopping … where we bought our first digital camera. For some reason we felt that we each needed to buy one. Maybe that’s because we were early on in the relationship and weren’t quite sure where things were headed. Is this the camera that one of us eventually lost? I think so. Needless-to-say, this was the beginning of many great things to come.