Anguilla
Slamming through high seas between St. Maarten and Anguilla in a high-powered speedboat, catching air on the breaking crests of swells before crashing with a bone-jarring thud into the troughs, and the model sitting across from me looks ready to die. Seriously. Her expensive milk-toned skin has gone an even whiter shade of pale; a perfectly formed hand grips the seat as yet another wave crashes into the bow and over our heads.
"It's okay!" I yell to her, but over the sounds of the sea it's probably about as comprehensible as baying wolves.
What do you do when your assignment is to partake in the activities of a tropical island, the vast majority of which are sea-based, just as a tropical storm off Puerto Rico sends gale-force winds powerful enough to keep you land-locked for three days? What do you do when you're stuck on a bluff-top five-bedroom villa with a private pool on the terrace and an open bar in the marble-lined kitchen?
I must be getting old, because the answer to that question rapidly became: Sit on the kitchen counter in the sunlight, like a cat. Answer e-mail. Drink Ting, the curiously addictive Jamaican grapefruit soda. Jog on the beach at nine, swim in the pool at three, sit in the Jacuzzi with a glass of red wine as late-afternoon storms pour cold rain from scuttling clouds. Stop by the golf course and contemplate slipping a fuck-you note into a certain popular author's locker. Sure, there was drinking after a certain point -- no journalistic trip is really complete without a trip to the local road-house, where the locals can give you stink-eye as you sit at the bar listening to live reggae and wondering how many seconds it would take you to reach the door if those drunk Brits over by the bathrooms really decided to start some shit. But then again, I never really tore it up when I was younger, so why start now?
Off to Vegas this week, for a day; staring down the barrels of a 6:45am flight there, a 3:30pm flight back, five hours on the ground. Unhappy at the prospect, to say the least. Time will tell if a combination of lack-of-sleep and inability-to-tolerate-bullshit will result in me slamming a meat-fork through a certain celebrity chef's hand (hopefully we wouldn't be on-camera at the time). And to think, I used to be such a nice guy -- or at least more of a pushover.
"It's okay!" I yell to her, but over the sounds of the sea it's probably about as comprehensible as baying wolves.
What do you do when your assignment is to partake in the activities of a tropical island, the vast majority of which are sea-based, just as a tropical storm off Puerto Rico sends gale-force winds powerful enough to keep you land-locked for three days? What do you do when you're stuck on a bluff-top five-bedroom villa with a private pool on the terrace and an open bar in the marble-lined kitchen?
I must be getting old, because the answer to that question rapidly became: Sit on the kitchen counter in the sunlight, like a cat. Answer e-mail. Drink Ting, the curiously addictive Jamaican grapefruit soda. Jog on the beach at nine, swim in the pool at three, sit in the Jacuzzi with a glass of red wine as late-afternoon storms pour cold rain from scuttling clouds. Stop by the golf course and contemplate slipping a fuck-you note into a certain popular author's locker. Sure, there was drinking after a certain point -- no journalistic trip is really complete without a trip to the local road-house, where the locals can give you stink-eye as you sit at the bar listening to live reggae and wondering how many seconds it would take you to reach the door if those drunk Brits over by the bathrooms really decided to start some shit. But then again, I never really tore it up when I was younger, so why start now?
Off to Vegas this week, for a day; staring down the barrels of a 6:45am flight there, a 3:30pm flight back, five hours on the ground. Unhappy at the prospect, to say the least. Time will tell if a combination of lack-of-sleep and inability-to-tolerate-bullshit will result in me slamming a meat-fork through a certain celebrity chef's hand (hopefully we wouldn't be on-camera at the time). And to think, I used to be such a nice guy -- or at least more of a pushover.
posted by NiK @ 10:49 PM
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