So my sister e-mailed looking for pics from my trip to Jamaica on my blog....... so now that my recovery is sorta complete, guess I'll try and talk about it.
My dad always talked about taking his kids and grandkids to Hawaii together someday. The closest he ever got to completing that dream was gathering them all up in his RV on a hot day back in August of 1992 and heading south down to Valley Fair, as his life was cut short just a few short months after that. I can still remember him lining us all up in the VF parking lot outside his RV and handing us each $15 for snacks during the day, telling us there was more if we needed it.....he'd be waiting at the nearest park bench people watching since his bum leg didn't allow him the ability to walk all day around Valley Fair and he wasn't the kind of older man to let us push in him a wheel chair around the park. I also remember him saying "what the hell" as he made the decision to board the Cork Screw ride... much to our surprise. When he got off he'd lost his glasses from the pocket of his shirt when the ride went upside down...even though, he seemed so happy that day to have us all together... enjoying the day watching his grandkids go from ride to ride. I never quite understood why until I had grandkids of my own, and have always had that same desire to take them on a trip all together as he did.
So, way back last January when the Ishaug family called me up to say they thought of me as one of the family and were booking their trip to Jamaica, and would I please go along....I decided to say yes, partly to honor my father in doing something with their family he never got to do with his. DeLyle and Marlene were only children and had 3 daughters of their own, so rather than have the usual 50th wedding anniversary gathering at their local church, their dream was for their entire family to take a trip to the Carribean together. Hence, my Thanksgiving was spent trying to eat goat & ox tail rather than turkey and mashed potatos and paddling in the ocean watching the Macy's Day parade on the big screen of the cruise ship docked across the bay rather than watching football in Ria's living room.
I knew I was in trouble the minute the plane landed... and the runway was as close to the ocean as Jim's house is to Lake Lida....the waves from the jet skier that cruised by pretty much splashed right up on my window of the plane. I was uncomfortable. Well actually, I knew I was in trouble at Hector when they put that label on my bag and said it was already "overweight". It only got worse. The first stop of the bus on the ride to Ocho Rios was supposed to be at what they called a cute little roadside diner...I was hoping to get a Coke... instead what I got was several offers to buy some fresh mary jane and a first hand view of the plant it came from. The sun never came out the entire 7 days...I never took a dip under the water in the pool and the ocean had such creepy, crawly things in it everyone who went swimming there ended up in the nurse's station. The humidity in the rooms never got below 90%, the room had the most minature collection of ants I've ever seen, and the food? well...let's just say I ate alot of fruit. There were 29 of us who went....ages 3 to 76. and every single one of us hopped on that sailboat, headed out to the deep sea and consumed alot of rum. It took me almost a week to feel the the floors beneath my feet weren't still moving as I walked. It was an 18 hr. day to get back home.. I sat in row 15 from Montego Bay to Memphis and due to the stormy weather, the entire plane from row 17 back barfed on the way back... they had to borrow our barf bags...you can imagine how fun the plane smelled.. they closed down the bathrooms. Wally, the oldest of the group, cut his hand and the emergency fire dept had to show up at the Mpls. airport, firetrucks, sirens and all to stitch him up. Wally is also the person in the pic below who the lifeguard is rescuing as he's drowning from going off the water slide .....while we all just stand and watch .....yes, Wally who's 76, has one lung, a stent in his main heart artery, and skin cancer decided for some fun he'd try out the water slide...yup, that pretty much sums up the entire trip. I think taking the grandkids all to Valley Fair next summer sounds like a better idea :-)
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