The trip to STJ this year began when I started researching villas, which was in January. When I picked a villa and made the deposit I starting picking up speed! Before I found the boards I was driving the girl at the villa rental agency nuts e-mailing her with questions. Staying in a villa and not at Caneel for the first time made this a whole new experience for me. I went and bought my 4th copy of FF&FWD, (the others had been "loaned" to friends.) STJ Off the Beaten Track (2nd copy) and my National Geographic Map of STJ (also 2nd) . I began a Quixotic quest for a thing called a "Neat Sheet" I bought a surprisingly sophisticated telescope for $150 at Wal Mart. I was going to try to keep this trip a secret from the kids, but Hippolita flushed me out by wanting to go to Mexico on a missions trip with our church, during the dates I had picked. I didn't feel it was fair for her to know and Hippolittle not, so I told him on the way to go snow skiing. We had introduced them to the islands starting with the Caymans 5 years ago, followed by the Bitter End Yacht Club on Virgin Gorda the following year, and Caneel Bay two years ago. The idea of having our own house, pool excited them no end. Now if I had not found the message boards, I might have driven Hippolotta crazy between February and July. In fact the jury may still be out on that one. She thinks that if there were indeed, second lives I should come back as a travel agent. When we would go to Caneel, taking their boat from CA to Caneel Bay, invariably some young couple would be sitting near us, and one of them would say "I wonder if...."? Hippolotta would give me a stern look that implied "Don't you dare!" I would ignore her, and she would roll her eyes and in a 25 minute boat ride I would tell my victims everything I knew about Caneel Bay. Now I must confess my dear wife is somewhat computer illiterate having gone into the child rearing business right when the computer revolution took off. It doesn't bother her or me, and even if she were a computer genius you would never hear me say "Oh honey, say it to me in hyper text mark-up language, or cobal". It's just not what I love and value her for. Anyway after I found the message boards, she got curious about the amount of time I was spending in front of the computer. One day as I was happily typing away in my study, she asked me "what are you doing?" Me: "I'm posting on a message board" Her: "What's a message board" Me: "A web site that allows users to share information about a common interest" Her: "what's this one about?" Me: "The Virgin Islands" After a pregnant pause as she processed this information... she then ran from the room shrieking! She gradually got over this and actually started enjoying the boards as well. It seemed to take forever for July to arrive, but suffice it to say I was more prepared for this trip than any of the previous ones. I have never taken a two week vacation before, because the pain of catching up would be too harsh a payback. Basically what I do as profession is manage equity portfolios for wealthy people and small institutions. Most of my clients only require a tangenental contact, But my expectation of myself is to be there when they call. (BTW this is in no way a solicitation, in fact you could say "My cup runneth over!") When I sit at my desk I have no fewer than 8 and as many as 12 programs running at the same time. I don't own a blackberry or a lap top, (a badge of honor), and I wasn't taking my cell phone. One of the main reasons I love STJ so much is it is one of the only places I have ever been that I totally, completely relax. My job is very information centric. In fact it's sorta like drinking water from a firehose! So when I first get there, the absence of information is like sensory depravation! It was almost uncomfortable the first time I did it. (I have since learned to decompress quickly). Now knowing that I was traveling with a 16 year old daughter and 11 year old son, I was not going to achieve this level of relaxation, but with two weeks....? Anyway what made two weeks possible was a tiny technological advance the size of a key fob. One of the truly wonderful things my company did was to develop a terrific remote computing platform. From anywhere in the world I can now go to a web site, log in with a permanent user name and password followed by a six digit numeric password from the key fob thingie (it changes every 30 seconds), and after a "malware" scan and a minute or so, my entire desktop with all of my programs running pops up! This may be old stuff to you more computer savvy Geeks but it's pretty hot stuff to me. My kids don't normally get up before 10 AM and the internet café "Surf da Web" opens at 9, Viola!! I get together with my assistant before I leave, and I tell her our goal is that my clients and co-workers won't even know I'm on vacation. She is to tell anyone that calls I’m away, but will be calling in. I do have to travel some, so it's not unusual for my colleagues to see my office empty. She can e-mail me (or call if it's really important) and I'll get it the following day. This worked incredibly well. One client who only uses a cell phone noticed the 340 area code, and surmised that it must be a special one for AT&T calling cards! The day finally arrived, father in law drove us to the airport for our 7:50 flight. the longest leg of our flight was from Charlotte NC to STT. I had used miles for all 4 tickets, so in Charlotte I inquired about 1st class availability. I learned on this board that if 1st class is available within two hours, USAir will sell them for $50 per 500 miles. It's 1500 miles between Charlotte and STT so this worked out to $150 per ticket. Since I didn’t take a limo like FlaGeorge, I splurged. This was my surprise to the kids. When they got on the plane and began to trudge towards "medieval" class I sat down in seat 1A and said "where are you going"? They were in hog heaven! I guess it's the airplane air that makes it feel so hot when you first step off the plane, but what's amazing is how quickly you adjust to it. Another "splurge" I opted for, and learned from this board, was Chris' Taxi and Dohm's Water Taxi. Chris has a very nice 15 passenger van is waiting for you at baggage claim, holding a sign to identify him by. We loaded up and off to Red Hook we go, (no stops). Ten minutes away he calls the water taxi and he's there when we arrive. The water taxi is that weird looking boat with elogenated semi-submerged pontoons. It was designed by a transplanted Swede (I think) named Per Dohm, who sadly died 3 days before our arrival. I figure that I spent $50 more to do this, but it made things painless, and on our return we got to stay on island about three hours longer. (Thats gotta be worth $50!) This would be a great function of the message board(s), a post with the subject line "Share Chris/Water Taxi arriving on (date & time)" It could be a great deal if two or three families shared! We were met at the National Park dock by our greeter Judy (it was Sunday and the villa agency was closed) She is a retired school teacher from Utah or New Mexico, nice as she could be, (but like a lot of transplants down there you sense there is an un-told story, but it's best not to pry!) She takes me to Conrad Sutton's for our Vitara, and I go back and pick up the wife and kids. On the way out of CB She is pointing at things from her car, all pretty obvious, "here's where you take the trash...this is the last road before your driveway...etc. We climb one of the famous STJ hills and then down a steep driveway, with 3 switchbacks and a final driveway and we're here!!!! I have read a number of trip reports where people said "it was even better than it looked on the internet", Folks... I was breathless! Judy stayed until we had familiarized ourselves. She was from Coral Bay and left us her little cheat sheet about that area. Hippolittle was in the pool in about a minute and a half. We were all in, in less than 30 minutes. My daughter and I went to Pine Peace for some bas
ics, rum, mixers, chips etc.. That night we decide to just get a pizza from Roma's. If you like gooey and good their three cheese pizza is it. I also got a calamari/shrimp appetizer , that was really good! (Secret recipe: Shrimp, calamari, a lot of melted butter, a lot of garlic and white wine) Then it's cigar time frangelica (more on this later) (my last indulgences) the deck, the IPod, my island music the lights of STT across the water. Heaven! More later
Sorry if there is a double post!