Day Seven – D Day

St. Lucia. And the day I disembark. Which means, the day I get on a plane. Yes, this also means the day I get to Trinidad, but that is incidental. Well, at least it was trying to be incidental, but my spirit was actually putting up a good fight against my anxiety this day. So I guess the Trinidad thing and the plane thing were pretty much neck and neck all day. Believe it or not, this is an impressive thing.

So I took my time packing up the Piece of Shit Piece of Luggage – oh wait, did I tell you about this? The piece of luggage whose left wheel melted off as I was trucking it all around Ft. Lauderdale, and specifically while I was making the thirty-five hundred mile trek from the Port Everglades security checkpoint to the actual Carnival port? You know, the trek I arrogantly thought I could make? The trek I had to stop halfway through to take a Dew and Donut break because I was on the verge of passing out? The trek that, when I noticed the bag seeming to get heavier and heavier, and before I realized this was because the wheel had been obliterated, made me think I was having a stroke? The trek I finally bailed on ¾ of the way through, allowing a passing taxi to take me the rest of the way, while still paying the flat $10 fare I would have even if he’d picked me up three thousand miles back? Yeah, that trek.

Now, lest you feel bad for this poor, maligned, over-burdened piece of luggage, that literally burned my hand when I touched the mangled mess where the wheel should have been, let me also say that this was the piece of luggage that kept flipping the f*** over every time I let go of the frigging handle. Poor engineering, not poor packing, damn it. That’s my story.

At any rate. Took my time packing up the P.o.S.P.o.L., getting cleaned up, eating my last cruise meal, then, with the hour I had left, decided to take a walk around the island. Which, I soon discovered, was not nearly as “friendly” a place as St. Maarten. Almost immediately regretted leaving my mace back in the room. The “Naïve Tourista Gets Mugged” headlines running through my brain were not at all mollified when I was accosted by a couple of taxi drivers looking to get a fare out of my lazy American ass.

As an aside, one of the drivers told me I looked “special”. Which was fine, until he followed it up with the statement that I looked like I was “from the moon”. From the moon, the man said. The man said I looked like I was from the moon. Anybody who can tell me what the hell that means, please do feel free to share.

Then – it started to rain. Initially I thought, “Oh look, a delightful mid-afternoon island drizzle”. “Isn’t this all so native and quaint”, I thought. A half hour later, however, when the drizzle had turned into a downpour, and the rain had started to threaten the integrity of the last meclizine and xanax I had tucked in my pocket, the ones that were going to get me through The Dreaded Flight, this was no longer a quaint island rain. This was now Lucifer’s Spit.

Trying not to lose my shit, I hurried back to the ship, where I was forced to change out of my now-soaked clothing. This, of course, meant I had to re-open the P.o.S.P.o.L., destroy the delicate packing balance I’d created, and then re-Tetris the entire thing with the soaked clothing on top.

Fast forward to the airport, where I discovered, after five months of planning and research, that I’d overlooked one crucial detail: apparently you can’t enter Trinidad with a one-way ticket without having a work visa. Or, if you say you’re going there to study drumming, a student visa. Or even a letter from your drum instructor. And apparently offering to call your instructor right there on the spot won’t quite do it. So you suddenly find yourself having to either buy a return ticket or remain stuck in St. Lucia for all eternity. Goddamnit. So the guy asks, When do you wanna return? You respond, I dunno, uh, three months from now. You seem to remember something about your passport being good for 90 days with no worries. February 8, 2010, it is, then.

And with that ticket goes your spending money.

F**********************************CK.

Now. Despite this abysmal setback, the plane rides, shockingly, went quickly and smoothly, apart from the fifteen seconds of terror I had right as the plane started to warm up and I seriously considered jumping out the door and finding a charter boat to take me the rest of the way.

But – the meclizine, the xanax, the meditation, the self-talk, they all managed to get me through. The rum and coke I stupidly splurged on during the 2^nd leg of the flight (the ‘long’ leg, the forty minute one), from St. Vincent to Trinidad? That was just icing.

By the way – including that rum and coke, in the past five days I’d spent exactly $8.54, a fact for which I was exceedingly proud, especially with the severe chocolate jones I was suffering from during the duration of the cruise. And $4.54 of that was for the 1.5 liter bottle of water I accidentally bought when I found it in my cabin and assumed it was complimentary. That’s the only time those Carnival buggers got me.

And then da da da daaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa … suddenly I’m in Trinidad, and feeling profoundly triumphant because I did it, damnit. Got picked up by a driver who was initially told by my drum instructor to hold up a sign so we could identify each other, until I suggested that all I had to do was hold up my right forearm. Sure enough, the driver saw me before I saw him.

Turns out he’s a historian, and I got an amazing history lesson about Trinidad on the way to my new home. Too bad I was too doped up at that point to remember it clearly.

Got in, met my new roommate, got a cursory tour of the house, went to my bedroom, plopped down on the bed, opened my trusty laptop … and passed out. To yet another episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm. That show has defined this trip.

What does that say about this trip?