travel

May 11, 2007

Planning a vacation in a foreign land can really be a pain, what with finding lost passports, figuring out currency exchange rates, and overcoming language problems (ours). Frankly, it sometimes makes sense to not even bother. That's how we ended up spending a week in the not-so-exotic—but still technically foreign— Commonwealth of Puerto Rico.

Ever since I was an art student in college, I'd really only wanted to visit four exotic places: Egypt, Athens, Rome and the Playboy Mansion. (In recent years, I managed to cross two of those places off my 'to-do' list; Rome and the Mansion).

Naturally, I was psyched when some friends of ours invited us to go along on their trip to visit relatives in Greece. This was an especially rare opportunity since one of them actually spoke Greek. In hindsight, had we gone to Rome with someone who spoke Italian, we might still be welcome there today.

The first thing we noticed as we pulled into Ontario Airport (outside Los Angeles, and calling it an "airport" is being generous) was the temperature. Sixty-seven degrees F. Nearly the identical temperature we had left back in SF. A bad start since we had chosen Palm Springs for it's warm, desert climate.

Okay, we got back from Jamaica and things went along as usual. Then, around March '97, I get a call from my friend Jeff. It is "the call". For some reason, he wants to give me a job at OWN&P. I disregard this obvious lapse of judgment and accept. Amy gives her two weeks notice.

We flew out of Miami directly over Communist Cuba--playground of that fashion-plate, Fidel "Fatigues are always in style" Castro. Evidently there's a strip of air space that commercial airlines are allowed to fly through without being shot out of the sky by overzealous anti-arcraft gunners.

Miami isn't nearly as dangerous as most people had led me to believe. Oh, sure, on a recent trip I took a wrong turn and ended up in an area that would've given Chuck Norris bad dreams. But the South Beach area with its Art Deco architecture was inspiring. I felt like Michael J. Fox in one of those Back To The Future sequels.

Around here, fish are really big. It seems like they grow a lot bigger in the ocean than in freshwater lakes up north. There's 3-feet long fish with huge teeth swimming around in little inlets and canals. Fish with teeth. And people wonder why I don't scuba dive. What did I just tell you? Fish with teeth. It's kind of scary. And the fish aren't even what I worry about.