Jeff Billimek’s Journal

My alarm woke me up at 7am and I lazily tossed and turned for about thirty minutes until getting up and taking a shower.

I wrote yesterday’s journal entry, got dressed and packed. I left for the airport around 8:30. When I arrived at the airport I checked in and headed to the international concourse, gate E02.

While I was walking to the gate I saw James walking towards me. He announced that Casey was already at the gate. James was on his way to the central international lobby to see about some breakfast. I went on to the gate and saw Casey waiting there. So it looked like the three of us would be going to “St. Maarten”:http://www.st-maarten.com/ - the more the better. This was especially good since James and I had no real plan. We didn’t even have lodging arrangements. Since Casey has been here before, we were counting on him to direct us on where to stay and where to go.

Casey was slightly concerned that it was 9:45 and we still didn’t have a plane at the gate. It looked as if we were going to be delayed leaving. I went back to the lobby area to get some more cash since I only had about $25 dollars on me. This has got to be the most un-planned and un-organized trip I’ve ever taken. It’s certainly a new experience for me.

After getting $100 out of the ATM I headed back and intercepted James again. I went with him to the food court and we each bought a light breakfast. We went back to the gate and didn’t see Casey. The plane still wasn’t at the gate. There was heavy fog this morning and apparently this was the cause for the delay.

We eventually saw Casey who was with another guy named Tony. Tony works in middleware dealing with mainframes. I wasn’t aware middleware did anything with mainframes.

Casey and Tony got assigned seats in the very back of coach. James and I (with our earlier seniority dates) managed to get first-class. We, of course, gloated to Casey and Tony who were grumbling about being in the rear of the aircraft.

We ended up leaving an hour late. The flight is actually three hours long, so being in first class was quite a treat. I noticed that there were still two empty seats which I found interesting since Casey and Tony were in the back. Sure enough, a few minutes later both Casey and Tony came sauntering up into first-class. It looked as if they were given the last two first class seats.

The in-flight movie was “Die Another Day”:http://us.imdb.com/Title?0246460, the most recent James bond flick. I had about four or five drinks, and a pepperoni pizza lunch.

Casey was really working the flight. Between chatting with James and the woman in the seat next to him; as well as chatting with the flight attendants in the galley, Casey was hardly ever in his seat.

It turns out that the woman sitting next to me works for Delta in their Mexico City office. She’s on a three-week assignment in St. Maarten to supervise the station there.

When we finally began the final approach into St. Maarten, I could see the island out of my window on the left-hand side. Casey shouted for me to look for the tiki-bar as we landed. Sure enough, just as we were about to touch-down I saw it on the beach adjacent to the runway.

We rushed through customs and got a taxi to the hotel where we needed to wait in line to check in. While we were checking in we asked for the airline employee’s rate. They told us that they would see what they could do but they assured us they would get us a special rate. I wonder why it was so mysterious.

The hotel was very nice. To compare, I thought it was nicer than the place Craig and I stayed in Jamaica.

As soon as we got to our rooms (Casey and Tony got a room while James and I got another room), we changed out of our flying clothes and into shorts and t-shirts.

We headed down to the beach and made a b-line to the tiki-bar. Once there we spent the next few hours drinking and watching the planes. There were a lot of cute girls near the bar. From what I’m told, Casey and James were talking to two girls at the bar and after a while, they left. Casey complained that James scared them off but James denied this. At another point there were two other good looking girls at the bar. One had what I assumed was her boyfriend and the other girl with them looked alone. Casey decided to seize the moment and took a drink to her. Unfortunately she was a snooty French girl and just said ‘no’ to him. He tried to explain that it was a free drink and then she said, ‘go away’.

It was pretty cool watching the planes land and it was also cool watching them take off. They would usually taxi and take off away from the water. This meant that they would blast their engines out to the beach. We had a sporting time running to the airport fence when a jet was about to depart. The pilot would keep the brakes on while throttling the engines. As a result of this, those standing behind the plane bore the full force of the jet-wash. I did this too. It was the sensation of an incredible hot wind blowing so hard that you couldn’t even stay standing.

Of course doing this was dangerous and there were signs warning people that they can get seriously injured. In fact, from the sand and rocks being kicked up Casey had a rock strike him in the leg, drawing blood. When an American Airlines 757 was taking off, James got blown out to the water.

It was great fun and I’m looking forward to doing it again tomorrow.

We stayed at the tiki-bar until way past sunset. When it was dark we started to get hungry and headed back towards the hotel. On the way to the hotel we stopped at this small ‘boat bar’ which was simply an old boat hull sitting in a parking-lot. By this time both Casey and James had a lot to drink and weren’t exactly sober. They struck up a conversation with the 18-year old local bartender girl which lasted about an hour.

We went back to our rooms, got changed (including putting on shoes), and headed out for dinner. Casey knew a nice place next-door to the hotel. The waitress at the restaurant was a young girl from Holland. When I found this out, all I could think of was Brian quoting “Austin Powers 3″:http://us.imdb.com/Title?0295178.

I don’t know if it was because she didn’t like Americans, or if Casey and James were being too loud and obnoxious (they were drunk after all), but the waitress wasn’t very nice to us. At the end of the meal Casey and she got into an argument about the restaurant not taking “American Express”:http://www.americanexpress.com/. It seems that Casey has been to that same restaurant a couple of times in the past and was able to pay with American Express. Tonight though, she waitress said that the restaurant does not and never did take that card. This went back and fourth a few times and bottom line is that we didn’t leave a tip.

After the slightly uncomfortable dinner, we went to the casino across the street. It was pretty nice inside. Of course it was tiny compared to the places I went to in “Las Vegas”:/jeff/archives/2002/12/28/wild_animal_park_sin_city.php. Tony wasn’t too happy with the atmosphere complaining that the crowd was pretty old, so we walked down to another casino near the tiki-bar. While we were walking down there we got caught in a freak rainstorm that lasted a few minutes. It also turns out that James tripped over some rocks (he was still inebriated) and lacerated his legs.

The second casino wasn’t very exciting either. By this time it was around 11pm and both Casey and I were getting tired. We decided that we were going to head back to the hotel. James and Tony wanted to walk around some more so we split ways. I went back to my room and sat out on the porch taking in the Caribbean night air listening to the waves. It reminded me a lot of the very first time I went to visit Larry and Amy in San Diego when they were living in the beach condo.

After about an hour of this, I went to bed but was woken up shortly after that by James returning. He wasn’t in a good mood because he didn’t have his glasses with him and got lost. He forgot to take the room key too and just had a really bad time finding his way back to the room. I asked him if he was with Tony and he said that Tony took off, so I was really confused. Then James was digging around all of his things looking for his passport. He declared that he had taken it with him and lost it. I told him that I don’t recall seeing him take it. He looked around some more and found it in his bag. I think he may have had too much to drink and it wasn’t sitting well with him.