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While waiting at baggage claim today I was wondering why I haven’t experienced the traveling consultant version of hitting the lottery: having your bag come off the conveyor *first*. First out of baggage claim means first in the taxi line and less time at the airport, score!

I do a fair amount of travel (more lately) but I still haven’t had the baggage claim rock star experience. So, according to Wikipedia, the 3 class layout of the venerable 747 has a passenger capacity of 416 cattle. Say about .75 bag per person? (I figure we consultants travel light and make up for the family of four going to Disney) That makes it a measly %0.32 chance each flight. Better than PowerBall I guess and I didn’t even need to dig out my old TI-85.

Sorry for the math post, but I was really bored as you might be able to tell.

Average temp in St Thomas 82, tonight’s temp: 77.I realized that you may have spent too much time on a Caribbean island
if everyone around you is in hoodies and you’re complaining that it’s
“a little chilly” when it’s 77 degrees out.

Also, I just wanted to complain about the signal to noise ratio of
certain mailing lists. It irks me that while some of us are busy
grinding it out others are involved in long threads on the correct
location to have another conversation.

And yes I do realize the irony of complaining about hard work on an
island. Either way my email filters are much more robust now.

Today was a vey rough day of snorkeling and relaxing at Lameshur Bay beach. At this point our whole group has gone native and converted to island time. Even the beach is tiring.

Luckily we had our trusty Jeep Patriot to navigate the washed out dirt roads. I have to say that I wasn’t really a big fan of the Patriot at first, it’s boxy, tiny on the inside, and sucks gas, but today it earned it’s keep on the hilly roads on St John.
We also stopped off at Woody’s afterward and had some great fried grouper. Next I need to get a speargun to start catching my own dinner.Very rough.

While the DJ from the Offshore bar rocked it with a sick set of
electronic music we enjoyed the view…

The Rising Sun spotted in port in St. Thomas, it makes the others huge yachts look like toys.

After being on the island of St. Thomas for about three weeks I’ve
determined that I heart KMart. Why would I enjoy a low rate
department store so much? It’s the only place on the island where you
can pretend you’re back in civilization, if only for a few minutes.
While there are the normal upscale tourist diamond, jewelry, and
clothing shops, that’s really about all that’s available for shopping
except for KMart. Need shorts? sandals or any other beach neccesity?
KMart. They even have a bake sale out front most times.As an aside so far the only sunscreen I’ve found is ‘Panama Jack’
ehich only comes in a spray can that spits out dubious sunscreen at 10
degrees below zero.

I recently had to make my escape to St. Thomas (for a week). After a quick stop in San Juan to pick up some rum a colleague and I waited for our plane to St. Thomas. After waiting for our plane for a bit, I joked to the attendant “are we the only ones on the flight today”.. ha-ha. Joke was on me, witness our puddle jumper:

Luckily my laptop fit in the wing

Here’s my seat– no, I didn’t help fly

But the hotel made up for it