Travels Unravel

Wednesday July 21st, 2010 - Grand Cayman/Miami, FL/Chicago, IL

Long day today, mostly travel. I had to report to where I checked in on the ship at 11am and get my paperwork filled out before being taken to the airport in Grand Cayman with a van load of other entertainers including Jim Brick, a pair of jugglers and Christopher Alan Graves. He’s the Sinatra/Sammy Davis Jr. tribute singer we saw perform live last night.

What a life he has. He has that big production show running on two different ships, and he alternates doing it once each week. He flies in the night before, does the show and flies out the next morning. He lives in Ft. Lauderdale, and flies to wherever the particular ship is that might have his show, which he told me has been running for ten solid years now.

That seems like a lot of flying, but he didn’t seem to mind. He’s got two separate sets of costumes he keeps on each ship and works with two separate ten piece bands. None of the stress I have as a pissy little standup can come close to what he must go through but that’s part of the deal. He accepts it and deals with it. I totally respect the guy. He’s a true pro.

Jim Brick was also a consummate professional the whole trip. He really was nice about showing me around and giving me tips, and I know management likes him and I was told he said some very nice things about me to a few of the higher ups already. I help as many people as I can, so when it comes back I’m very flattered and grateful. Jim’s been super.

There were no mean people on this whole trip at all to speak of. Not one. No supervisor head case types, no boozed up hecklers babbling incoherently, nothing like that. I know if I did enough of these that kind of stuff would pop up, but ever so rarely. This isn’t a club.

Jim and I were talking about that in the Grand Cayman airport, which really isn’t grand at all. It looks like a mini beat up version of the Grand Forks airport, but what do I know? I do know I got a snack of potato chips and a Pepsi and it cost me $5.70 American. Ouch.

I know, I had a Pepsi, but I didn’t have one all week on the ship and in fact I thought my diet was very good despite the constant temptation. I ate a lot of salads, fruits, vegetables, and grain bread while staying away from massive amounts of sweets or red meat. I had an occasional naughty nosh but by far not out of control. Plus, I did walk every day as well.

What a hassle it was to get off the ship though. They put us all on a tiny ferry boat kind of thing and that took us to the main Grand Cayman Island so we could give our passports to some government woman who had an American accent suspiciously. She clogged up a time toilet for all of us as we had to wait and get our paperwork as a group before leaving.

The good thing is, that Latino babe from the ship came with us to help make sure it was all done correctly. She smelled like a cross between coconut cream pie and sexy perfume and I wanted to dive on her in the boat, but that might have gotten me some prison time in Grand Cayman and that would have pissed everyone else off because we were all in a big rush to make our plane at the airport. She did ask when I was coming back, so that’s nice.

It probably would have been easier had I just stayed. By the time we cleared everything with customs and passports, we had to hurry to get to the airport. We were only in Grand Cayman for about an hour, but they still made us go through all that anyway. Go figure.

The flight to Miami was only about an hour too - but then they made us go through it all AGAIN. I was pretty frustrated but I’ve learned not to cop an attitude with anyone who is a border patrol agent for any country. I shut my mouth, gave up my documents and waited along with everyone else. It was totally stupid to do it once much less twice, but we did.

The flight from Miami to Chicago was a total nightmare. First, the plane was late about an hour because of a mechanical delay. There was no air conditioning as we waited and it was like a sauna until they fixed whatever needed fixing. There were a pair of babies with the lung capacity and stamina of Pavarotti who were hitting solos left and right and also a yelping dog that everyone wanted to toss off the back of the plane. We were all on edge.

I had a window seat this time and in the middle seat was a very attractive woman with a stuck up snooty attitude I really wasn’t into after hearing two screaming waterheads and a pissed off pooch for a solid hour. She was dressed business sexy though, and looked very good all dolled up in her corporate monkey suit. She had a computer, blackberry and ipod and wouldn’t stop fidgeting with any of them to the point of being extremely annoying.

At first I tried flirting a little because she was good looking, but she made it very clear I was not on her radar, and her sour attitude erased any surface sex appeal there might have been so I took it upon myself to try to annoy her as much as she annoyed me. I know how badly I snore, so I happily nodded off knowing I’d buzz saw her until her eyelids rattled.

I noticed she had her ipod in when I woke up, so I made it a point to go to the bathroom three times just to piss her off. She tried to go to sleep after that and I took out my laptop and started pecking on my ‘Schlitz Happened!’ press release. I know my typing kept her awake, and there was something selfishly satisfying about needling such an uppity bitch.

Here I just spent a week on a cruise ship with HUNDREDS of hot women of all colors, races, social status and income levels, and here’s one with a perpetual period on a packed plane that fate had to put next to me, not to mention the bellowing babies and loud pooch.
Sorry, not today. I just wasn’t up for it, and it actually gave me something to fill my time.

The plane landed and I knew she wanted to get away from me as quickly as possible but she couldn’t pry her bag out of the top compartment so I helped her with a smile in front of the other passengers, which really pissed her off. She grabbed her bag without saying a word and I blew her a kiss in front of everyone and said “You’re welcome, sweetie pie!”

A few of the people on the plane laughed, and that’s good enough for me. Maybe she’d had a bad day, blah blah blah. The older I get, the more I realize there’s really nothing that serious anymore. I’d rather be ugly and comfortable in my own skin than a hottie with her piss poor demeanor. This was a long week, and travel makes it longer. I earned my pay.