Our summer vacation is memorialized thusly:

• St. Croix is a lot larger than I thought it would be. Although perhaps it only seems bigger than it really is because of the total lack of anything we would call a highway.
• If you’re planning to play golf on your vacation, try not to break your ribs the week before. You’ll be sorely disappointed — literally. The Carambola golf course looks like it would have been very nice, though, and quite a bargain in the off-season at $34 walking.
• Whatever that thing is up ahead on the side of the road, don’t look too carefully as you pass it. You probably don’t want to know what it is (or was).
• To the owners of the “Wright Home” wireless network at the condo complex, thanks for leaving it unsecured. It saved us a lot of time driving to a real Wi-Fi hotspot.
• $7.99 for a quart of Starbucks ice cream????
• We sampled the following beaches: Carambola (at the beach resort), Cane Bay, Buck Island, and Sand Castle. If I had to go back to any of them, it would be Carambola. It was the only one that had a nice place to sit AND a little bit of snorkeling AND a place to eat AND a place to go to the bathroom. Buck Island would have been great if it hadn’t cost $50 per person to get to. All of the beaches were nearly deserted on weekdays in August, which was nice.
• If you think the street signs in Massachusetts are bad ….
• I tried the raspberry flavored Cruzan rum and I liked it. Does that make me less of a man?
• First thing to do when arriving at your room in St. Croix: find out what kind of flashlights they have provided. Second thing: get more batteries for them, just in case. The power may go out even when you don’t have a tropical storm nearby.
• That being said, our brush with Hurricane Dean could have been much, much worse.
• We didn’t go to any restaurants worth writing about, but I would recommend going to the places actually mentioned in the guide books rather than any place you happen to stumble upon.
• The movie theater itself is about as far away from the movie theater sign in the mall parking lot as it could possibly be. It’s way back in the corner. Keep going. Further. Further. Trust me, it’s back there. We don’t need no stinkin’ signs.
• Rhoda poses for photos a lot more demurely than I do.
• 

On the whole … nothing really wrong with St. Croix (it certainly beats working), but we’re unlikely to be back real soon. There are other Caribbean destinations that have more of whatever it is that you looking for, whether that’s pretty beaches, peace and quiet, water sports, nightlife, good food, historical sites, or even a combination of all of the above. Maybe I’d feel differently if we were scuba divers; that seems to be one of the major attractions.

I knew when I planned a Memorial Day weekend trip to New Orleans for a small business information technology conference that I would still be recovering from my knee surgery earlier in the month. So I splurged and cashed in a boatload of frequent flier miles to get an aisle seat in first class on each of the four flight segments (Boston - Philadelphia - New Orleans, New Orleans - Charlotte - Boston). This was only the third or fourth time I’ve flown first class, and I was expecting a real treat.

My primary mission was accomplished. I did in fact have plenty of leg room, even without sticking my right leg into the aisle. I did get special treatment from the flight attendants, who helped me store my crutch and carry-on bags. I was able to board and depart the aircrafts first, which minimized the amount of time I had to spend standing in line. Other than that … feh.

My memories of first class included cloth napkins, real china and glassware, food worth eating, and whatever luxury items the plane could physically accommodate. What I got on each of the + / - 2 hour flights was:

• a free drink in a plastic cup on a paper napkin
• as much food as I wanted, as long as I all I wanted was potato chips, pretzels, granola bars, cashews and sesame sticks, or biscuits (two of the flights coincided with regular meal times; on the flight from Philadelphia to New Orleans, at least the bums in coach had the opportunity to buy some fruit, cheese, and crackers)
• a blanket and pillow
• access to the first class bathroom

No hot food, no free headset, no special magazines, no deck of cards, no visit to the cockpit (OK, I wasn’t really expecting that). I’m just happy I didn’t pay cash for these seats. If I had, a copy of this would have gone directly to the CEO of US Airways. Flyer beware.