A new game... Post pics from your cel phone V.1.0

[BruceK]

So... Pontiac (We Build Excitement!)  went out of business a decade ago, but I just figured out where all the old over-the-top Pontiac designers went to work.

[MiniDave]

Oh, I thought maybe they raided Lexus' styling division.......the kings of ugly front ends these days.  ::)

[gr8kornholio]

Yea, Honda's been proudly carrying the ugly torch lately.  Seen the Crosstour?   Can you say Aztec offspring. Lol.

[Jims5543]

Our goodbye to themeparks weekend.  Our Universal passes expire in a couple of weeks, we decided Wednesday to go Saturday to the parks maybe hit a couple of rides as we will not be doing any theme Orlando Theme parks for a couple of years now.  There is a new hotel on Universal property and it is the cheapest, which perplexed me as it is one of the nicest they have. Well, I take that back, Hard rock still rules, this one is ultra modern and minimalist, we loved it.



We were only on the 7th floor, I think there were 17 floors and a rooftop bar which I never go to, I want to go back just to go to the bar. You can see and walk to the theme parks from the hotel, it was about a 1 mile walk.



The entire room, HVAC, Lighting, TV, hotel room service, check out, etc.. was all controlled by a tablet in the room.



It was a good spontaneous weekend.

[94touring]

Looks like a fun time.  Why the break for a few years?

[Jims5543]

Looks like a fun time.  Why the break for a few years?

Burn out.  Been too many times to count, I mean in the long run it is a good cheap way to have fun. We are just looking to do other things and not feel obligated to go there to get our moneys worth.

[gr8kornholio]

The wife got her first tattoo. She's been thinking about it for 5 years.

[MiniDave]

Pretty - are the initials for the kids?  Should have Stan do the next one, his work is off the charts amazing....

[gr8kornholio]

Yea they are. Guessing his shop is in KC?

[MiniDave]

Lawrence, due west of KC about 40 miles

[Jims5543]

Yea they are. Guessing his shop is in KC?

That looks really cool!! 

My wife has a couple, I have none, I am not interested.  She has a cool one on her tummy to hide the scar from plastic surgery to fix the hack job the c-section doc did.

It is symbolic of our kids, she will be in a bikini over the next few days in the Caribbean with me I will see if she will let me snap a pic. 

She also ruined a fantastic tattoo she had behind her ear, it was a tiny rose and it looked so cute she went and got a larger rose, I do not like it I loved the tiny little cute one, she really likes it so I guess that makes it good.

[MiniDave]

His Instagram page....  https://www.instagram.com/red5tattoo/?hl=en&fbclid=IwAR2ODQxWMEwW2coWxKLPFi_qfvksB4FSQMODwB6uDx0qysrlNKILlJzyp_U

[gr8kornholio]

Yea they are. Guessing his shop is in KC?

That looks really cool!! 

Thanks.  Yea those are the first letters of our boys.  The artist did a really good job of modifying the poorly drawn original version and putting the letters in a better spot.

Didn't notice the mailbox at first due to the color of the house.  The wife's grandma had something similar until it got browned by UPS.

[Jims5543]

Yea they are. Guessing his shop is in KC?

That looks really cool!! 

Thanks.  Yea those are the first letters of our boys.  The artist did a really good job of modifying the poorly drawn original version and putting the letters in a better spot.

Didn't notice the mailbox at first due to the color of the house.  The wife's grandma had something similar until it got browned by UPS.

You named the boys Black and White?   ;D



Dinner view Saturday night.



My psycho wife. Notice the beach toys behind her we were sitting on a deck there is a sandy area behind me with picnic tables and you are encouraged to play in the sand.



This is a dive joint literally under a bridge which works out great at dinner time in the summer as it is in the shade from the bridge.



As we walk back to our car along the dock system, there is a super low tide exposes the muscle beds.

[MiniDave]

So Florida also has a mussel beach?

;D

[Jims5543]

Mrs5543 and I spent 6 days in St. Lucia at a resort she found.

This is our room.



What is interesting about this resort is that there is no TV and no AC anywhere on property.  I suspect Frank Lloyd Wright would be impressed with this place. They seemed to really embrace the surroundings and try to bring the outside in.

This is our front door, once you go through these wood doors you can lock them behind you and no one can get in.



As you can see once inside the wood doors you can see almost the entire bedroom. Plus you can also see the showers in the bathroom off to the left and not in the picture.



This is the view from our room. Notice the slats in the windows which are screened.  If you are down below you cannot see in.  So, while you can see out perfectly, no one can see you. Clothing was very much optional in the room and not worn very much. ;D



View from the bed each morning, the sounds of the jungle at night were crazy, frogs crickets started off strong early in the evening, by morning the birds took over. Daylight started around 5 am and it was dark by 6:30 pm there.

We found ourselves in bed at 9-10 most nights and awake at 5, taking morning walks each morning.



View of the Pitons from our balcony. We would climb the one on the right on Saturday. I will get to that later. Now I have to get back to work.

[Jims5543]

This is the resort from the water. Our room is in the middle of the light colored units at the bottom because we are the poors. We walked up to the sister resort at the top one morning to look at it.  Wow!




We we first walked into Jade Mountain (the resort above us) it was almost too much to comprehend, the last time I felt like this was peering over into the grand canyon for the first time. This place was huge and so over the top it was hard to take it all in. I honestly felt like I was on a movie set or implanted into a video game, it just did not look real.



There were all these bridges that ran from the buildings on the North side, which were the restaurants, reception lobby etc. to the South side (left in pic) where the rooms were. This resort also has no TV and no AC everything is open air. BUT much less private than Anse Chastinet where we were staying.





This is a bridge going over to one of the rooms this is a top floor room with their own infinity pool. Look to the right side of the picture.  I think these ran about 3K a night. We met a couple staying in one, they were from Michigan and were transferring between the airport and resort by helicopter.  Mind blown!


This was the bridge over to a 2 level bar with a pretty nice view.





We were staying down below somewhere in the middle of those roofs. See the pointy roof top down at the bottom?  that is a beach front bar.



My wife doing her best instagram pose. ;D  I call it the Ace Venture pose.



Honestly, not a bad place to sit and have a drink.  The breeze was constant and hard so you never felt hot, sometimes after swimming and sitting in the shade the breeze would actually make you feel cold.




Next post I will get into the local scene which we love to tap into and the climb of the piton.

[Jims5543]

Climbing the Gross Piton.

The resort we were staying at had a meal plan you could pay a little extra for, it would then include breakfast and dinner. We decided to sign up for that and were glad we did, we had 3 restaurants to choose from and found ourselves returning to the onel closest to our room because the food was insane. Every night the dinner menu changed completely, we never had a bad meal.

The morning we were leaving to hike breakfast starts at 0700 we were leaving at 0630.  The hotel, unsolicited, sent 2 care packages to our room the night before with hard boiled eggs, bananas, pastries and some tropical fruit in them. We were impressed.

We were up at 0500 I was already inside my head, I was not sure I was fit enough for the hike up, I had heard conflicting stories from people about how hard it was.  I suffered silently inside my head over this trying not to be a downer.

We met our driver who would take us to the base village where you are paired up with a guide (which is a rule for the park) sign some release forms and off you go.

We carried 2 liters of water in our backpack, which was a PITA and heavy, by the time we hit the 1/2 way point going up we killed one, which prompted our guide to worryingly ask if we had any more water. We laughed and told her yes we had another liter that we just wanted to lighten up the pack and make sure we were hydrated. 80% humidity will make you sweat, we were already pretty soaked.

The village we left from is called Freemans village, it is not on the map, there are 40 houses and about 120 people, all related in one way or another. The town was named in the 1800's as it was the first settlement for the freed slaves. All the kids that grow up in that town end up working as a guide, some work several days a week, our guide works 2 days a week.

The girl who was our guide was very bashful and quiet, we asked a lot of questions and learned a lot from her. She was really nice and what was really funny was she never ever seemed to be working hard on the climb while we were huffing and puffing. 2,000 feet of vertical in around 1.8 miles of trail in 1hr 50 minutes was a challenge for us. For her it was just another day. When we got back to the bottom we laughed she had a bead of sweat on her face. We teased her about that. We were soaked through.

Before we left to go up Mrs5543 made friends with a local scruffy dog. We would learn from our guide there are a bunch of them that belong to different family members, the dog will pick a guide and follow them up. We did not get a dog on our trip. We would see a few coming up as we were going down, all of the dogs will climb up once a day.



A typical house in the village.


As we started off, I am thinking, OK this is not so bad. Even whipping out my phone to snap a pic here and there.



Then it got steeper and we were still in the 1st half of the climb up.


No pics were taken during the second half, I was trying not to die.

This was the 1/2 way point, the backpack you see fading off to the right, that was another couple, they were in their 30's geared up in hiking boots and looking serious. They left the bottom about 10 minutes before us, we caught up to them at the 1/2 way point which made me feel better about myself.  As I am over 20 years older than they were.



We made it to the top, look how dirty my shorts are from wiping my hands off after doing hand over hand climbing. I think I saw my guide put her hands down once or twice, she was like a billy goat. That is as far as I could lift my arm, I was pretty much stroking out at this point.  ;D



Going back down, the same way you came up, you just cannot appreciate how steep this is.





Once back down we headed back to the resort, the driver who took us to the Piton was there to pick us back up. He congratulated us on our achievement then told us that 7 out of 10 people from the resort tap out. He said he typically gets a call to come back about 30 minutes after he drops people off.

We were dreaming of this little Jungle bar area on our resort where they serve up some tasty burgers that are cooked on a repurposed molasses cooker from the 1700's.

I enjoyed some aptly named beers.


The repurposed 1700's era kettle. Shut down for the afternoon.




A couple of grounds shots the place was surreal in its beauty.





The beaches, while they look sort of white sand, are actually black sand due to be volcanic beaches.


When ever I travel somewhere I read up a lot on the place and try to get a grip on the local scene, issues, culture, food etc... St. Lucia was no exception. I will get to that later when I have some time again. I am supposed to be working right now, I have a monster day tomorrow.

[BruceK]

I'm walking into Home Depot and just saw this custom cargo loading.  What? Me worry?

[gr8kornholio]

Be curious to know whats holding the ends of those boards down.  And don't hit a bump cause  :-\ especially if that's the south Plano Home Depot, the roads around there are bad.

[MPlayle]

That is just an accident waiting to happen.  It does not look like there is anything holding them down in the truck bed.  He will either lose some/all or break some/all if he travels far and has any bouncing occur.

[Jims5543]

He drives a Z71 guise, that cat is going to be fine.   ;D

Customers pool. Yes it is an actual boat sunk into the ground.

[MiniDave]

Jim, that resort you stayed at is absolutely amazing!

[gr8kornholio]

That's actually a pretty genius idea. Especially if it's mostly for lounging.

[Jims5543]

This cat is really cool and crazy. He is from Canada, he told me a story once. He saw a guy that ripped him off walking down the side of the road so he swerved and ran him over.

Guy ended up in the hospital.


He would have gotten away with it except he back over him after he hit him.


So I learned to never borrow money from this cat and never piss him off.


He used to own a boat in the Florida Keys, that was a Hamburger and Beer barge. He would drive it out to the sandbar off of Islamorada every Friday afternoon and sell beer / hot dogs and burgers to the party people.

He owns a landscaping company in town here, and would drive down to the Keys every Thurs PM to take the bout out all weekend then drive back up here on Sunday night.

Se sold the boat and business to a guy that ripped him off in the long run. I suspect he did not fare well.  ;D


Yes the resort was on another level, my wife found it.  Some day I will finish that story, it was not all rose colored glasses.  Well it was if you stayed on the resort, that is not our style we like to go mix it up with the locals.