Vacation '07: Parting is such sweet sorrow

DISCLAIMER: The nerd in me would like to note that this is but part 1 in an X part series, where X is an integer greater than 1 and possibly approaching infinity depending on how many random moments I recall until the next vacation. Gotta mix some educated talk in there with my ghetto banter, right?

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"We used to use umbrellas to face the bad weather/Now we travel [coach] class to change the forecast"...

Talk about starting off your year on the right note! Miami for New Year's...Hop on a Carnival cruise ship on New Year's Day...Head to Key West, then to Calica, Mexico...All while in the company of great people who know how to have a good time...Truly PRICELESS way to start off any year. And speaking of price, well, I'll get to that later in one of these vacation posts, LOL.

First and foremost, I have to note how amazing it is to simply sit back and think about how lucky/blessed I am to have been able to travel to some of the places I've been to and experience the things I've experienced while traveling. God has definitely been good to me. Thank you!



Now I'll begin my recap, highlights, etc...

Dane, Randy (Woo), and I started off the trip in Miami (well, really Fort Lauderdale). The plan was to stay in Fort Lauderdale near the airport and use a rental car to commute back-and-forth between Miami and Fort Lauderdale for the two day's we'd be in Florida. For the most part, this plan worked well. That is, until it was time to drive home from Miami to Fort Lauderdale at 5am every night.

On our first night of vacationing, we had reservations for Club BED in South Beach (SoBe). So we waited in line at the airport (well Dane did while Woo and I stood around talking) for what seemed like an hour, got the rental car, drove to and checked in to our hotel in Fort Lauderdale. Upon our arrival we ran into a wedding party on their way to either the wedding reception or to the actual wedding ceremony. But judging by the guy in the tuxedo who came out of the hotel door with the Heineken in his hand, I'd bet that they were going to the reception. Now that I think of it, wedding parties were sort of recurring theme on this trip (ask Dane about that, LOL). Anyway, after we checked into our hotel room and joked about how much fun we were going to have, we got spruced up a bit (you know the boys clean up well from our vacation-white-T's and tennis shoes), and made our way to Miami to make our BED reservation.

We made it to BED just in time for our reservation and ate. Club BED! What can I say? That is, other than the food was GREAT! Filet mignon, DELICIOUS! Sea Bass, DELICIOUS! We've been talking about that dinner more than the dinners on the cruise ship (LOL)! We knew that we'd have a beautiful group of young ladies coming through to hang out with us later on in the evening so after we ate, we laid back, relaxed, and just soaked up some of that SoBe poshness that floats around in clubs like BED. Meaning, the women, the waitresses, and the WOW!

And naturally, since we had Dane, the "professional conversationalist" and Woo, the "socialite" with us, we made a new friend. There are two sides to this friend though. The first is that he started off really cool. Dude introduced himself and his friends (he was with a few ladies and another guy) to Dane and eventually bought Dane a drink (no Sugar Ray Murphy). But you know how some folks get when they're drunk (or just drinking) in the club. They'll offer complete strangers "a round", so that's not really saying much, but that's our new friend's "good side". The bad side was about an hour later when this guy's 3 drinks into the evening and he starts wanting to be aggressive with the women vicariously through me, Dane, and Woo. What I mean by this is that this guy sees two girls sitting across from us and every five minutes he says:

"Why the F*CK are those two girls sitting by themselves! You guys should be over there!"

You have to have heard how adamant he said this to really understand how annoying that gets after he says it more than twice. So this dude kept pestering us about two random girls that were sitting alone. So much so that I started to feel like he had some subconscious notion that all black men are immeasurably sexually aggressive and must consume all poontang women that is/are in a 20 foot radius. On top of that, he even sent his "girlfriend" over there at one point to speak to them. I have no idea what it was that she said, but I can only imagine. It was a this point that I realized that I had to get away from this guy before I said something to him I truly did mean. So that's the "bad side".

Oh yeah, there was another "good side" to this guy depending on how you feel about the following: He and his buddy were porno movie producers! No bull! And the girls that were with him (3 to be exact), especially the Asian girl he claimed as his "girlfriend", were pornactresses (one word). Once a *certain person* found this out, he was pretty d@mn pumped about the invitation Mr. Good-Side-Bad-Side gave us to a New Year's party the next night at Nikki Beach on SoBe. Me, I wasn't too excited because this guy had really gotten on my nerves with the whole "go talk to those girls" stuff. It's a matter of principle people, not porn!

Once the lovely ladies we'd been waiting on arrived at BED to join us, Mr. Good-Side-Bad-Side continued his antics and pulled a straight disrespectful move. He started trying to flirt with (and I assume rap to) our company for the evening. LOL. Now I can only laugh about this because he was harmless and none of the ladies joining us was my girlfriend or a girl I was courting (what ya'll know 'bout 'dat?). If either had been the case I might have had to get my azz whooped off GP (LOL). But it was also hilarious when you consider that: 1) he said the Asian girl was his girlfriend, and 2) he had absolutely no chance whatsoever at being successful with the young ladies show below (Dane and Woo just so happen to be in this picture):



Yet and still though, it was pretty entertaining to see this guy ignore his pretty attractive girlfriend to come over and waste his time talking to Kace, TC, JAC, and Jessie. And by waste time I mean see him put so much vain effort into being flirtatious and inquisitive when his "girlfriend" was within 10 feet of him. This picture of Mr. Good-Side-Bad-Side pretty much sums up his scheming-azz tendencies for the night (LOL). It's crazy how people flip the script on you once they're about 3 shots into their night. Do I seem humored by all this? I hope so.

Overall though, we had a ball in BED. It was a little pricey as far as the food was concerned but it was worth it. I won't even go into the bottle service we had to get in order to keep our bed for the evening. Let's just say that while I was ready to dish out the dough initially (I believe the words were: "We're in Miami! Fuggit!"), I was not that happy of a camper after we got the check. DANE, they need to add gratuity and tax onto the price listed on the d@mn bottle service menu. Wouldn't you agree?

Here are a couple more pics from BED:


Kace enjoying herself.


Once that champiggity started flowing, everybody was ready to dance!


You know I was throwed!


Notice three things: 1) Dane (on the right in striped shirt) is not paying me any mind, 2) Woo, "the socialite" is nowhere to be found because he's getting his Paris Hilton on, and 3) Your boy is losing hair at about the same rate that the divorced Britney Spears is losing her self-respect. D@mn you father! D@mn you! Freaking genes! LOL. Mom dukes still calls the kid handsome though, so I'm str8888888888! ;-)

Before I continue though, I must say this. I honestly cannot complain about the money I spent during the course of this vacation. When you're hanging with good people who are having a good time, are generous in their own right, and are very appreciative, it's worth every penny! The conversations and laughter alone were worth the cost of everything we spent. And boy were there some conversations...

Like the one we had at 4am after leaving BED and hitting some no-name club where we snuck (is this even a word?) into the VIP area, and had another round of drinks (LOL). I believe this conversation began with:

"Have you ever had sex or contemplated having relations with a man?"

Isn't that right, JAC? This question was posed to none other than the 3-drunken-amigos: Me, Woo, and Dane. The context of the conversation however, was how a woman nowadays must protect herself when dating and questions like this may be necessary to ask as a part of protecting herself. Now those of you that know all three of us know where this conversation went. But you probably don't know that the ladies had just a strong opinions as we did. Needless to say, the conversation went on for a minute, got a lil heated at a couple points while pretty jovial at others. It's one of those conversations taht prior to the trip I promised I wouldn't have on vacation but inevitably happened because you have several young, intelligent, passionate, and forward-thinking people all hanging out. It was a great discussion though and Black men and women need to have these types of open discussions anyway.

Our night ended when the ladies headed back to their hotels (I wonder how many of you guys reading this are sighing or laughing at us right now, LOL) and we stayed outside at the table where we had our discussion and talked for a few minutes before deciding to head back to Fort Lauderdale. From that point until I woke up the next morning, everything's a blur. Dane was driving and I had one eye awake and the other eye asleep the entire ride home. No lie! I would call myself one-eyed Willie but that'd either mean one of two things. Neither of which am I comfortable with, but I digressed... And the entire ride back to the hotel I was listening to Woo snore like he had a deviated septum and sleep apnea. Between him and Dane I don't know who needs that d@mn mask more.

Dag ya'll! That was just the 1st night! "We're not even on the boat yet!"