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The wife talked me into going to Jamaica when I left my last job...leveraging on how we can never really get a good chunk of time off at the same time. Jamaica was beautiful, the water is a nice almost Aqua Velva blue in some spots, turquoise and blue-green in others...and I guess the weather matters too. Besides being able to lounge at the beach and the pool with friends and family and sip on pina's and cappuccino all day (and the coffee and rum is awesome) I really liked swimming with the dolphins, something I never thought I'd get to do. That is one impressive mammal such speed and grace, heck coordination and so many other things. They have to be nature's true athlete. It is unbelievable how a 7 foot creature can jump out of the water and twice its body length into the air. But the real amazing thing is to see them on reentry and how incredibly short the time span is for them to go like 50 or 60 feet and come back out into the air (doing a circle, half the cycle the water and the other half under water). The television doesn't let you absorb and quantify the distance they cover. And they seem to be just full of joy and energy...it is like they get to grow up and be 3 year olds! Not a bad gig!

Snorkeling, something I have always wanted to do, is awesome! So peaceful, so much color, like an aquarium or a big tank of fish, it is just very sedating. Like laying in a big comfy bed with silk sheets and a smooth woman with great big old soft and firm...err, uh, never mind. I highly recommend it...the snorkeling. And the weather is awesome but you don't get that cool of the morning you might associate with a day time high around 85, it ain't bad, but it ain't the Appy's and it doesn't last long. I was lucky enough to watch a couple of big storm fronts come in, to see those huge clouds roll in around sunset is just awe inspiring! I don't know if it is the equatorial effect or the ocean or both but the sky really shows it 3 dimensions, low swooping clouds with just gray bottoms and then round off and climb getting whiter and whiter and billowy...it is a different look. The colors the sun and sky interchange to form quite the color palette. You see the purplish gray on your left hand and red horizon to the right , with golds and oranges in tow. These things and our own bed room and the wife being unwound from her routine was the really good part we did a whole of "communicating."

The rest of the trip you can keep. I couldn't take in real Jamaica, to veer off the tourist scene a bit puts you in the arms of ultimate bumming and beggary...or right in line for a "great deal." Much past that and the locals skip the fraud and go right into extortion and armed robbery. Flight is beautiful, almost heavenly...but a commercial airplane with 9.5 inch wide seats, and airports, and TSA, and..."Oh Lord help me!", International "Check In" is just a fresh slice of Satan's own!

The whole caribbean is like that. Stay inside the tourist confines and it is beautiful. Venture out and take your life in your hands. It is a shame.

I can tell you a story about going off the track in Jamaica.

After lounging around the Rose Hall resort for a few days, we rented a car and toured the North Coast....through Falmouth, Dunn's River Falls, Ocho Rios. The next day, we thought we'd drive up into the non tourist mountains near Maroontown. As we were winding back down a mountain road, there were six men in the road with automatic weapons. Non uniformed.

My wife said "drive through them"....I said, "those are assault rifles, afraid they'll think I am running them down." They got us out of the car, searched the trunk, my wife's purse and then insisted that I buy two tickets to the "Law Enforcement Ball". I said that we were leaving the island in two days...I got a grin and was handed the tickets...no dates on them, no price. I got it. Pay 'em or something got dropped in the trunk. They were law enforcement and thought that we were up in the hills purchasing drugs.

We had rented a car...before going...but they didn't have it when we got there. We were glad after watching them drive! Some people just putting around in cars that were on their last leg 10 years ago and others burning up the highway. And they all practice something I have always joked about here, those lines in the road are just suggestions!

Dunn's River was a nice area. I was really impressed with that property Mick Jagger used to own there. There aren't too many people who have a water fall pouring into the ocean. (He sold it and now lives up in the Mountain. I believe this helps him get fresher crops.) We went to the White River to raft...I was cracking up, all the tourist thought the "town roads" were bad on the way up and were plain scared by the mountain roads. No big step for a stepper, standard hillbilly travel. The locals noted that I was not overly excited one way or the other about the roads or the river. I really wish I had pictures from back home to show them. (The White River is the kind of entertainment a hillbilly wasn't allowed to take in alone until he or she was like 11 or 12.) I even asked the boys to take a good look and mentally remove the palm trees from the picture and tell me what the place looked like, they replied, "West Virginia."

While we were up in the mountains we also went zip-lining. And let me be up front, as I have gotten older and seemingly continually so, I am no fan of heights. The worse my sinuses are the more I do not like them...I think it has something to do with it taking me longer to adjust...my perception???? But my oldest does NOT like height at all, nary, not even a little bit. A fact that had failed to cross our minds in all the preceding events. Well as we got closer to our turns on the line my son was fighting off hyperventilating. I was preparing to say that I had changed my mind and would walk back down to the base of the hill and give him an out to just go with his scared father. (This would have been wounding to me but worth it. We have not done enough with our children and they will be gone soon with my oldest graduating in May. And he had been very adult and had talked and interacted well with us the entire time. I was not about to let that get ripped from his hands!) All I knew to say as we got closer was engineering speak on how overly designed that cable and the other equipment was. When I saw how that cable gave a few glimpses to the ground through the canopy but did not disclose the next landing, I thought no way he will go! No way! (And I had a thought or 2 of hitting the egress button myself.) When he got on that line and took a breath that took his entire soul and being to mask the full level of adrenaline coursing through his body my heart was racing as much as his. I looked into his eyes and new the last time his hear beat that fast was when he was passing through the birth canal, or lack there of, and scared everyone in the room to death. As they hooked him up and checked his grip on the hook I noted he was tense but was not in full muscle lock. And off he went! He disappeared through the canopy at about 15mph. I was never so proud, I have never witnessed that level of bravery from another person first hand! I knew that next fall he will round that turn on our street and disappear out of my sight again yet again. And in about 8 seconds, the point moments of his life flashed before my eyes. From that moment where the doctor had a hold of his head and had his neck cranked past 90 degrees to help get his shoulders into this world. The first morning of school (I missed first hand, but quickly got the picture the wife had captured) with his back pack and lunch box in hand and those shiny eyes, then him in his basketball, football, and ROTC uniform. All of those boys went through those green leaves and out of my sight that day, on a humid summer day in a place far away.

Of course I took my turn. If for no other reason than we had 2 more legs on this cable to get to the bottom and I wanted to see him do it again. And most of all so I could hurry up and tell him how proud I was and wanted to be sure he knew what bravery was. "It is not defined by someone not having fear in the face of danger...bravery is someone fighting through their fear in the face of danger." You know people have demonstrated bravery in events that effect other people's lives over and over again and some of those events have played a role in shaping our world. But true bravery will always change the life of the one who exhibits and it will always change their world. I will never forget that moment and it was the highlight of the trip, my year, and in many ways...the last 18 years.

Let me give a little advice. If you have a kid and the day comes when your child has his or her first day of school...be their! Work can wait an hour or so, it won't change things at work as much as that event will change your life! If I had it to do over, I can't say I'd have quit to be there, but I'd have disappeared for about 45 minutes and dealt with the consequences at work.