My Excellent Jamaican Cycling Adventure.....

Having spent a great deal of time and energy in last night's post grousing about how our trip to Jamaica ended, I would like to use tonight's blog post to tell about a wonderful experience I had on the trip. On several of our trips I have wanted to ride a bicycle, and I was excited to read that the resort offered a bicycle tour as one of its daily activities.

I wanted Hubby to do it with me, and I really thought I might be able to guilt him into it. What kind of man allows his wife to go off cycling alone in a foreign country? (Okay, there were 17 of us, but still.) He expressed some doubts about his ability to do a long ride. I think that was his pride speaking. He was probably picturing a ride of 20 miles or more, and he's never done a ride of that length. He had rather stay at the resort than take off on a bicycle ride he was afraid he couldn't finish, when he KNEW I would be able to do it. Male ego. What a nuisance.

When I figured out that he really didn't intend to go, I almost didn't go myself. But how do you like THIS logic? I knew if I didn't go, I would blame it on him, and I didn't want to waste part of my vacation being mad about not getting to do something I really wanted to do. So I went without him.

And I enjoyed it thoroughly.

I feel compelled to admit something, though, that reveals something mildly disturbing about my personality. I had the bicycle GPS in the laptop case, but I wasn't absolutely certain it would work outside the continental United States. If it hadn't worked..... I wouldn't have gone. Because if you can't PROVE the miles you rode on a bike, they don't count. At least in my mind.

The route wound up being only 5.91 miles, and at least a half mile of that was achieved by riding round and round a parking lot at the Mega Mart.





Please do not be alarmed that the ride appears to begin and end in the middle of Montego Bay. I can't explain that. I didn't say the GPS worked WELL.

The first part of the "adventure" stems from the fact that in Jamaica they drive on the wrong side of the road. Well, as they put it, "Left is right, and right is suicide." I'm accustomed to having cars whiz by me on the road. Just not on the right side.

We had two employees of the resort accompanying us on the ride, one at the front of the pack and one at the back. Every now and then we had to go through an intersection (many with round-abouts, which I'm not accustomed to), and one of the guys would ride his bike into the intersection and stop, holding up his hand to stop the cars. No one blew the horn, and no one seemed to mind waiting for all 17 of us to get through the intersection. Not even the time we weren't actually AT an intersection but were crossing a 4-lane highway.

The picture above was at the Mega Mart. I didn't go in, because I didn't like the idea of being in there alone, and I didn't want to tag along with anyone else and be a nuisance.

I wanted to get a good picture of this guy and tell Hubby he looked like a Jamaican version of my ex. But short of going up to him and putting the camera in his face, I didn't know how to accomplish it.

The picture above doesn't show it very well, but this was actually a very nice sports complex. The roughness of it comes from the fact that they are doing construction, adding additional spectator areas. Our guide was very proud of this stadium, where they play "futbol" and cricket.

We rode a little bit more and stopped at a little place called "Jerkey's." Just like everywhere else we went, the people were very nice. I had no idea about the relationship of Jamaican dollars to American ones. I ordered a Red Stripe beer and a bottle of water, and the cute little waitress (pictured below) said, "Four dollars." I gave her a ten, and she said she would have to give me change in Jamaican dollars.

I got back $480 in Jamaican dollars. If you click on the picture above (and you may have to enlarge it as well), you can see that 6 chicken wings cost $300. I later saw the exchange rate posted in the casino. Each American dollar is worth $83 Jamaican. I brought back $450 in Jamaican bills, and it looks like a lot of money. Hubby is going to use it to trick his golfing buddies into believing he won so much money in the casino that he didn't even cash in $450. I doubt they'll fall for it.

The picture below was taken at our final stop, one of the ubiquitous souvenir shops. Prices are outrageous and you are expected to bargain (I don't do that very well), but I suspect that tourism is the major industry all over the island, so I played along.  Some of the tactics might be classified as aggressive, but you just had to be firm. Or tell them, as I did on a couple of occasions, that I just spent my very last dollar, and they were pretty quick at that point to leave me alone.

Several people left as soon as they had completed their purchases and headed on back to the resort. I was aghast, not only at the idea of riding unescorted in a foreign country, but at the fact that they KNEW where the resort was. (Have I mentioned lately that I'm directionally challenged?) I had the GPS with me, but still. I was willing to wait patiently until everyone else was finished. We weren't far from the resort as it turned out, but what if I lost my mind and forgot to ride ON THE LEFT?

I was pleased that not only did they have helmets for us to wear, they also provided the attractive (**ahem**) safety vests. 

I was very glad that I went along on the ride. The 5.91 miles didn't put a dent in my December cycling goal, and it looks now like I won't make my overall goal of 2010 miles in 2010. I have reconciled myself to missing the goal, and I have reminded myself numerous times that if I wait until October to make a dedicated effort to reach the goal, the likelihood of reaching it is slim. Still, I'm only missing it by 192 miles, and I may be able to log some more miles if the temperatures ever get back above 50 in the next 7 days. 

Or I could just go back to Jamaica. Now there's a thought.

Merry Christmas!

We're Back........

Just a quick blog post to let you know we made it home from Jamaica. The trip was wonderful, and I'll have lots to blog about in coming days, including my Jamaican bicycle adventure.

When I wrote my blog entries ahead of time and scheduled them to post while we were gone, I didn't plan one for tonight. I thought with a flight that landed at 7:00 PM, and living only an hour away from the airport, that I would have plenty of time to write a coherent (if not fraught with witty reflections on our trip) blog post at my regular time tonight.

I forgot all about going through Customs and the nightmare that is airport security. My experiences with security on both ends of the return flight home will be an entire blog post all by themselves.

I also hope to have some decent pictures from the trip. I read a few blogs on the plane (Delta was offering free wi-fi for the holidays - yay!), but it will take me a few days to get caught up completely.

It's always good to come home, but I seriously wish I were still in a place where the low temperature for the night was 72 degrees.

Sigh.

Returning to the Scene of the Crime......

Hubby and I have planned a trip to Jamaica the week before Christmas. We have reached the point where we'd much rather spend money on something we can both enjoy rather than buy each other more STUFF. We've got just about all the stuff we can handle in our basement right now. We are also both pretty bad about buying whatever we want for ourselves, so there's nothing left for the other to buy as a gift.

Hubby has never been to Jamaica before. I went with my ex on a trip that I lovingly (**ahem**) refer to as the trip from hell. Sweet Girl went too, and I wish I could just erase the whole trip from her past.

To start with, I brilliantly scheduled this vacation to fly out of Atlanta on an August Sunday in 1996. Specifically, the day after the FREAKIN' OLYMPICS ended. You know, the ones that will always be remembered for the bomb going off in Centennial Park? Yeah, those. It is therefore no exaggeration to say that we were in the airport with just about everybody else in the entire world.

Secondly, it is never good advice to travel with a drunk. Because a drunk just cannot NOT be a drunk at an all-inclusive resort. We got to Jamaica on Sunday; the drunk threatened to kill me and Sweet Girl on Monday. I will forever wish I had taken all our documents and left him there. Better yet, I should have had him arrested and let him rot in a Jamaican jail. I just wish Sweet Girl hadn't had to be there to witness that debacle.

We're not going to the same resort, or even the same city in Jamaica. I want to give the island another chance; it wasn't the island's fault I made the mistake of taking a trip with an alcoholic, abusive, evil, scumbag of a person. Perhaps he did me a favor when he shot up the house a month after this trip.

I wish I had a delete key for that whole marriage. Instead I just continue to carry life insurance on his sorry ass.

The Trip from Hell.....

The worst vacation I ever had was to Jamaica. It wasn't because of the place, mind you, it was because of my traveling partner.

It was at the very tail end of my marriage to my second ex, and I knew the marriage was destined to fail. Why I agreed to go on that trip is beyond me, and why I subjected Sweet Girl to it is even more of a mystery. I don't know if I went because I had some misguided notion that it might save the relationship (fat chance) or if it was because in 9 years of marriage he had never taken us ANYWHERE, and I felt like he owed it to us (more likely).

Either way, it was a disaster.

First of all, the timing was awful. I didn't realize when we booked the trip that we would be flying out of the Atlanta airport the day after the Olympics ended. You know, the ones in Atlanta? What a nightmare. We were advised to get to the airport at least three hours in advance of our flight, which we did, only the Air Jamaica counter didn't actually open for two hours after we got there. I was kind of wishing I still smoked; at least it would have given me something to do.

I won't go into all the horrid details, mainly because I've tried to block them out. This is one of those times it would be nice to have a "delete" key in my brain. Suffice it to say that the ex did not play well with others, and a month later I would come home to find the front door of our house shot up with a shotgun, and I never spent another night in that house. The film from that trip wasn't developed for a couple of years, by which time I had married Hubby. I shoved the package of pictures away, only saving the ones of Sweet Girl and the rare one of me. I found the stack of pictures one day, and Sweet Girl had cut or torn the ex out of every single picture he appeared in. (Keep in mind that he was NOT her father.) I thought that was so funny, how much trouble she went to to tear him out of the pictures.

If only it were legal in real life.

Hubby and I have talked about going to Jamaica. I'd like to give the island another chance, since it wasn't its fault that I had a miserable time. Maybe we should take Sweet Girl, too. She didn't get much of a vacation that time around.