Beauty unscathed

I was talking with a colleague the other day and as journalists do, we were having a conversation about what we're doing or what we'd like to do after our job at the VI Daily News.

It's a natural vibe to talk about the future and what we can offer. My co-worker is very skilled and he had big plans. As do I. He's a good guy and for a good reason, I feel utterly comfortable to open up to him about what is happening in the journalism world and what we can bring to the table. But later in the day while driving, I reflected on what we said and I pulled over for an impromptu and seemingly brief moment of clarity.

I realized -- well not not exactly -- but came to a stumbling conclusion that I need to soak up this moment and appreciate that I was (am) in this particular part of the world at this time in my life.

I feel that at times, people around me and that associate with me really don't value what we have and the extreme pleasure we have in just making a living on this island.

When I look back on college, high school, taking the JOBO test in elementary school (sidenote: I literally asked my teacher what a disc jockey was because that was the No. 1 profession that matched up with my "test" results back in 1989) -- I never even assumed, predicted, even associated the U.S. Virgin Islands with my future, much less a stepping stone to my transgression through professional life.

I (we) live in one of the most beautiful places in the world and no matter how many times my water doesn't work, I sit in remedial traffic on a two-lane road or talk to sun-burned tourists, it shouldn't get old. It just keeps getting amazing. And I (should) appreciate every single moment of it.

Sorry for being preachy but I had to lay this down. I love living here and for the rest of my days, I will always look back on my time here in the Caribbean as a time I did not take for granted.

This is what it looks like when it rains when the sun is shining in paradise:

Peace be with you and good night.

No horseplay

I covered the local horse races last Sunday on St. Thomas and after I finally got back to my house later that night, I caught the new HBO series Luck. Which, coincidentally, is all about horse racing.

In the show, there are what appears to be polite, well-spoken jockeys who race million-dollar horses down a track surrounded by beautiful landscapes and big-money gamblers.

On St. Thomas, it's a little different but I'm not complaining.

First of all, every race day snarls traffic on the nearby road and I usually have to park a half a mile away in a muddy, sideways ditch. After I walk to the ticket window, the event staff criticizes me because I never produce the right media credentials, yet I'm holding a huge camera because, you know, I just like carrying a huge camera around with me.

"What, is there actually other media here?" I routinely ask.

They never give me the race card for free and usually shake their heads when they look over my race day attire: faded V-neck shirt, cargo shorts and flip flops.

In Rock City, everyone puts on their Sunday best for race day. The fashion is so majestic that it drowns out the smell of horse feces near winner's circle.

Trying to grab an interview with the winning owner or trainer after a big race is comical. You have to burn the first two questions because all these guys want to do is talk shit about the other owners and trainers. Question 3 is usually when the real interview begins.

Because I don't care much, I ask the same questions every time with a fake smile, soak up what I can and get the hell out of there...

Wow, what a race? How did you guys pull it off?
Talk about your jockey, he sure did a fantastic job?
What was the game plan: start out fast or close hard?

Most of the answers are filled with ridiculous cliches and that's if I can make out what they're saying at all. When I go back to listen to the recordings, I always hear idiots in the background yelling shit. For some reason, they always mistake a voice recorder for a video camera. And if I did work for the TV station, do you think your chances of getting on TV improve when you act like a jackass?

Somewhere in this photo is a winning horse, the jockey who rode him to glory and a bunch of random people.

On Luck, they have colorful flowers around the perimeter of the track and nicely-designed walkways. On St. Thomas, the island's waste dump can be seen on the horizon and muddy trails blend into, well, a muddy standing area.

The worst part is the horses that run here were usually purchased cheap out of the States because they are already washed up. The horsemen here just pump them full of drugs and try to squeeze two or three races out of them before they break a leg. Then they are executed while lying on the track in agony.

In Luck, the same thing happened this past episode, but a doctor calmly administered a lethal needle shot and they brought out a tarp to shield the audience from the horse's demise. Come to think of it, it looked like the same tarp the roadside workers on St. Thomas use. Interesting connection.

A lot of people on island love horse racing. I guess that's why I cover it. So I hope they don't read my blog. And if they do, come by and say hello during the next day of races. I'll be the only white guy there so I'm easy to spot out. Plus, I'll be wearing flip flops in the mud.

I'm sleeping on a boat

At about the same time when passengers from the doomed Costa Concordia cruise ship were jumping into the Mediterranean Sea and swimming for land, I was invited to spend the night on my friend's 100-foot charter sail boat off the coast of St. John.

He overheard me telling a friend on the phone that I was spending the night on a 'luxury sail boat' and I think it bothered him but I didn't care. It was luxurious as hell and that's how I roll.

Bill is the captain of the Tilly Mint and his girlfriend Nathlaie is the ship's amazing cook. She also keeps my man honest and will humor his slight addiction to Southern-style grits. Check out their blog.

Moments before I met Bill in the Yacht Haven Grande parking lot, he sent me a text:

"Forgot to remind you, don't bring anything illegal on board..."

Who does he think I am? Some kind of Caribbean drug pusher? The only thing I brought with me was a case of beer, two bags of ice, a couple dramamine tablets and my sobriety.

After we hauled a new sail for the boat and maneuvered our way past the cruise ships in the Charlotte Amalie Harbor, we were out to the open sea and the conditions were rough. I started to get that seasick feeling where my body breaks down and I just want to take a nap.

That shit passed. And then the sobriety thing I talked about earlier was my next victim.

Bill and Nathalie had to start a charter in St. Maartin the next day so this was more of a celebration of freedom. And when you're dealing with freedom, a little rum is always involved.

The bar voyage started at Joe's Rum Hut in Cruz Bay, shifted toward the Mexican restaurant behind Beach Bar (Bill thought he could eat more happy hour tacos than me but he was sorely mistaken) and then we got sidetracked at Woody's.

Getting sidetracked at Woody's? Like that's ever happened...

Before we knew it, we were inside a sophisticated establishment called Castaway's Tavern. This is the same place Scottie H. and I literally pulled the soda gun out from behind the bar and started to spray random people. And they still didn't kick us out.

This is also where a mysterious photo was taken on my cell phone. Not sure the story behind it or its origin but it did scare me. Nothing but head scratches the next day.

So we rode the dingy back to the Tilly Mint and I was asked to go to sleep peacefully inside a charter guest room. I had never slept on a boat before (intentionally) so it was a unique experience for me.

I woke up the next morning feeling great and just before Capt. Bill served me up some grits, I started to look through the photos taken the night before.

The painted finger nails exhibited such beauty, such glamor. Whoever this girl was, she must have been something special. Something magnificent.

"Nah dude, she was a dumpy prostitute," Bill remembered. "When I saw you talking to her, I didn't know what the hell you were doing. Then you pulled out your camera! Later on, we saw her talking to the cops outside. You don't remember? Either she was about to get arrested or she was about to turn tricks for the pigs."

I guess that's what happens when you mix dramamine with rum and Mexican food.

Luxury and lunacy

I passed the Coach and Gucci high-end stores on my way to join a few friends on a luxury yacht docked in Yacht Haven Grande last night.

We sat together, sipped red wine and nibbled on delicious pasta. We were about to play a game of backgammon but settled on casual conversation about U.S. politics and why some residents on St. Thomas still haven't had clean water since early December.

Just before the expensive Italian ice cream was served for dessert, about four gun shots were heard in the distance.

I knew exactly where they came from but everyone else questioned whether they were even gun shots at all. We finished our ice cream and continued to chat while a slight breeze came in off the harbor.


Then five more gun shots sounded from the same direction.

Ahh, only on St. Thomas. I really can't make this shit up.

While I texted the news reporter in the office to let him know about the multiple shots fired in the Paul M. Pearson Gardens Public Housing Project, it just struck me how adverse some parts of the island are.

If you drive down the road closest to the dock where all the cruise ship yuppies flourish, one side of the road is the housing project and the other has gaudy merchandise stores and millionaire yacht owners. In the middle -- or concrete median in this case -- the USVI Government dropped serious coin and decided to plant 40-foot palm trees to disguise the obvious.

Last week, our paper published a story about how there were 48 homicides in the territory last year (which was a 3-year low).

In reaction, I overheard tourism puppets ask questions like, "How could they publish that story with six boats in port?" and "Oh, they're just trying to sell papers."

Some people just ignore the truth. It's pretty sad.

And the truth is that St. Thomas is very safe. I have, at no time since I've lived here, feared for my life or felt like I was in direct danger.

Yes, those 48 homicides ranked us No. 8 in the world (below El Salvador and Iraq) in deaths per 100,000 people. But how many of them were tourists? Very few, if any.

I'm not going to say that all the homicides were acceptable or explainable. Of course, they are not. But if you read the article written by my colleague, Danny Shea, that is linked right above, you will learn that a majority of the deaths are retaliatory.

Once again, there are no condolences here. Killing people is not right. But I hate when people think that St. Thomas is just a gang-affiliated, bullet hole-riddled crime scene.

It is so not. It is very beautiful and the people I have met are sincere.

But just like any place on this planet, there are some seedy neighborhoods. In those areas, people have guns. And sometimes, those people like to shoot them off.

No murders or confirmed shot victims were reported last night. So next time you hear gun shots in the middle of the night, do not fear the world is going to end. And please, cut the island some slack. After all, two cop cars reported to the scene about 20 minutes later -- not a bad response time on an island that is 11 miles long.

When I walked into the newsroom today, the reporter I texted the night before thanked me for the information.

"Anything come of it?" I asked.

"Nah, there were three other 'shots fired' reports on other parts of the island last night," he said. "But I went surfing this morning. There was a killer swell."

Killer surf, bro

I have two or three friends that ask me the same question every weekend:

"Good surf this weekend, why don't you come out?"

Maybe it's because I live on a tropical island or perhaps I just attract surfer types as friends. They are good people. Every one of them. But I'm more of a poser.

Instead, I like to go to rocky beaches, takes pictures of the crazy surf and show them the photos later on like, "Oh dude, you should have been there..."

Then they're like, "Oh dude, where is that? Crazy. That's like 4-5 feet..."

And then I'm like, "I know, bro. It was nasty."

Then the conversation starts to shift and I come off as a cool, surfer dude.

Nah, in all seriousness, I am definitely going to get out there soon. I have a feeling I would be good at surfing. So if any of you bros are reading, keep asking. One of these days I will surprise you.

The waves were killer on Friday at East Carrot Bay (above photo). I snapped the below photos at the tip of Peterborg. We had some first-time-to-the-island Brits with us (notice the white socks with colored stripes) and they were pretty impressed by our narly waves.

Got back in time for work so it was an epic morning. Peace out, dude.

Gender confusion at the symphony

So I had a few day-time beers.

Yeah, that's it. I'll blame it on the day-time beers.

I was in Fort Myers, Fla. and was visiting with my girlfriend's parents. My lovely girlfriend, Brianna, surprised her parents with tickets to the symphony that night so she closely monitored my day-time beer intake.

I still had to wait on the outcome of two boxing matches in Las Vegas and then decide if I could get something into my paper before deadline. Ahh, the life of a traveling sports hack.

USVI professional boxers Samuel Rogers and John Jackson were fighting for minor WBC titles that night and instead of sitting ring side in Sin City, I was rubbing elbows with silver-haired snow birds from all across the land.

Yes, they came from far and wide to take in the soothing tunes of the local symphony. What's the difference between a symphony and a orchestra you ask? Good question. I googled it during the first intermission and learned they are basically the same thing. So I did take something away from this valuable night of culture.

Then my cell phone buzzed because I had a text message. Then it buzzed again. And then a third time.

Not only did I have two local boxers fighting over a thousand miles away but a high school all-star football game was being held back on St. Croix. It was a game I helped organize but since it was postponed twice (due to confusion), I was in Florida and not on the sidelines.

Turns out, there were no sidelines. No one mowed the grass and the referees did not show up. So they had 50 angry football players getting screwed over once again and about five different coaches texted to tell me how pissed they were because another commissioner dropped the ball entirely.

Welcome to the Virgin Islands.

I quietly slipped out of the theater and didn't make a sound. As I briskly walked into the foyer, my phone started to ring. It was one of the boxers calling from Vegas. I knew this was my only chance at the interview so without thinking, I walked into a nearby bathroom.

I walked into a stall, pulled out my voice recorder and interviewed Samuel Rogers about knocking some chump out in the 10th round. While I listened to his descriptions of divine perseverance and Mohammad Ali cliches, I quickly noticed that I was standing in the cleanest bathroom stall I had ever seen.

I talked loudly because I had to hold the recorder close to the speaker on my phone. My heightened voice did not deter an older woman in a prom dress from entering the main bathroom area.

“What the hell?” I asked myself out loud.

“No, no … I said I wanted to thank God,” Rogers said back on the phone.

I looked around for a second and then immediate shock consumed me. Why are there no urinals in this bathroom? Oh shit...

I put my phone call with Rogers on hold without telling him, walked past grandma who was now washing her hands and didn't really acknowledge my presence. I can only hope she was hearing-impaired.

I exited the woman's bathroom just as a group of teenagers stood near the candy/coffee counter gawking at me. As if they had waited for this moment. To my right, a few women sat in chairs and gave me the stink eye from hell. The teenagers started to point and snicker.

My utter embarrassment hit a new plateau because I started to stutter, “I, I, I, I thought...wait a second...I, I, I...”

The teenage snickers elevated to full-blown laughter as a result of my bumbling banter. I looked to my left as an elderly male usher stood near the theater door and just looked down toward his feet, closed his eyes and shook his head slightly.

A few superiors in my day had given me that same look before and I think my dad had thrown it at me once or twice while growing up. It was the look of pure disgrace and unnerving disappointment.

I literally ran down the hall to escape but the teenage laughter echoed behind me. The whole time, Rogers was still on the phone and I had digitally recorded the entire fiasco.

“Aaron, are you still there?” Rogers asked.

I didn't know what to do. I bolted into the men's room (I triple-checked before I entered), walked past a row of filthy urinals and slowly put the phone back to my ear.

“Oh my God,” I said faintly.

“That's what I'm saying,” Rogers said. “I put all my faith in God and he helped me in the ring tonight.”

From San Juan, With Love

I usually want to choke myself when I hear the regular joes in my newsroom sling mindless banter around. My usual style is ear phones in, zone out.

But last week, I heard something that sounded like, “20 bucks round-trip to San Juan?”

I quickly investigated and before you could say, “Please shut the hell up – no one cares,” I booked two tickets to the gem of Puerto Rico.

Jet Blue just started non-stop flights to the Rock from Boston and some other East Coast spots so to celebrate, they offered extremely cheap airfares in between San Juan and St. Thomas for only 10 days and this guy (two thumbs pointed directly at me) jumped right on it.

My next stop naturally was priceline.com. Mama Gray swears by the whole bidding strategy for cheap-ass hotels and it works like magic in Vegas. Puerto Rico, not so much. Don't get me wrong, I still got a smoking cheap room just a 10-minute walk from the beach but many people don't operate like that.

“Dude, do not get one of those cheap rooms in Syracuse, trust me,” Michael Rothstein, a former colleague of mine from Virginia, told me when I was planning out my trip up north.

“Why the hell not?” I barked back.

“Prostitutes, dude. Plus, they rarely clean the sheets.”

Since my travel partner was my lovely girlfriend, the prostitutes posed little problems. The sheets, well, what can you do? I can't tip the cleaning ladies in advance. We were booked for only one day.

As we embarked on the 16-minute flight from the Rock to San Juan, I told Brianna that I would pay more for dinner that night than both our round-trip flights and hotel room combined. Then I told her we had reservations at Burger King. She was not amused.

I know we live near the beach but guess where we hung out during the day in PR? The beach.

Even though most of the pink and yellow hotels in Condado were under construction and the subsequent beaches were swallowed whole by the Atlantic, it was a nice change of pace from Limetree, Magens, and Brewer's Bay.

I ordered a Cubano sandwich from a coffee shop, stayed clear of the casino, took a long day-time nap and even ordered a little entertainment for that evening.

It was dinner and a show. He was drunk, slurred the words to many classic Christmas carols and wouldn't leave our table until I greased him. Now Brianna can't say I never serenaded her.

The morale of the story is that San Juan is great. Charlotte Amalie ain't got nothing on Old Town San Juan. If I could go back every week, I would. As we made our final walk around town, Brianna said, “This is nice. I could work here full-time, what do you think?”

Ear phones in, zone out. And then I stepped into a Jet Blue plane.