Scummy Caribbean
The path down to the beach area, and the actual beach area itself told me enough about what I was in for. It was like the Spanish Riviera coast I'd been to as a kid, so many visitors for so many years that the underbrush was a web of interconnecting trails, around big bushes and trees, all headed more or less to and from the beach. Lots of trash around, old and new, big and small. And move to far into the woods in any direction and you're knee-deep in the urine and excrement of 200 years of bathers. I was not impressed with this opening salvo of the vacation experience.
So it was down the dusty/sandy trail, and a little rancid lagoon of water filtering through the sand, maybe 100 yards from the actual beach. Little open patch of sunlight streaming down, highlighting the discarded plastic. Not a total dump, but more than enough trash to ruin the image completely. A small rock outcropping, with the standard international grafitti, more reasons to be depressed.
And through the woods to the old red brick building. The windows and doors gone years and years ago, sand moving in and out with the tide. The placid sea lapping right up to the threshold at the far double-door opening. And inside, a huge open room, wide and long, with no columns inside. The guys were in some kind of small cars, zooming around on what looked like an amazingly smooth and preserved wood floor. Impossible, sure, given the conditions, but there it was.
Out through the door and into the warm, ankle-deep water. Across the bay we could see the drunken motorcycle soccer match going on. The locals on big powerful bikes, street bikes, scooters, dirt bikes, all with one hand on the gas and the other gripping huge magnums of pink champagne. I could see the pink froth and mist as they struck at the ball, as they spilled their drinks down their fronts, onto their already filthy t-shirts. The sound was overwhelming, amazingly loud for being a few hundreds yards away. To our front, coral and sandstone rock outcroppings as far as we could see, making it all picturesque; all I could think of was how much of a hazard to navigation all of the rocks would be.
And there was Art McWinkle. I knew the guy, and knew this to be a pseudonym. I had no idea whether I was to call him Thom (the name I originally knew him by) or Alexander DeLarge (a past pseudo I'd heard him use), or Art, the apparent current moniker. So I just sat and watched, looking for a cue.
Art hopped on a bike and sped around the inside of the room. He was nuts, out of control, knocking into people low and hard, like a soccer slide-tackler, going in to take the person out. I could see legs buckling and hear the bones breaking. Lots of screams of pain, and I just got out of his way. No one made a move to stop him, only hushed complaints of how they wished he wouldn't do what he was doing. No confrontation, no direct action against him, all of it instead subdued and quiet, respectful and indirect.
I didn't like the whole setup, and was ready to end this sunny climate holiday right now. I turned for the trashy walk back up to the road.
So it was down the dusty/sandy trail, and a little rancid lagoon of water filtering through the sand, maybe 100 yards from the actual beach. Little open patch of sunlight streaming down, highlighting the discarded plastic. Not a total dump, but more than enough trash to ruin the image completely. A small rock outcropping, with the standard international grafitti, more reasons to be depressed.
And through the woods to the old red brick building. The windows and doors gone years and years ago, sand moving in and out with the tide. The placid sea lapping right up to the threshold at the far double-door opening. And inside, a huge open room, wide and long, with no columns inside. The guys were in some kind of small cars, zooming around on what looked like an amazingly smooth and preserved wood floor. Impossible, sure, given the conditions, but there it was.
Out through the door and into the warm, ankle-deep water. Across the bay we could see the drunken motorcycle soccer match going on. The locals on big powerful bikes, street bikes, scooters, dirt bikes, all with one hand on the gas and the other gripping huge magnums of pink champagne. I could see the pink froth and mist as they struck at the ball, as they spilled their drinks down their fronts, onto their already filthy t-shirts. The sound was overwhelming, amazingly loud for being a few hundreds yards away. To our front, coral and sandstone rock outcroppings as far as we could see, making it all picturesque; all I could think of was how much of a hazard to navigation all of the rocks would be.
And there was Art McWinkle. I knew the guy, and knew this to be a pseudonym. I had no idea whether I was to call him Thom (the name I originally knew him by) or Alexander DeLarge (a past pseudo I'd heard him use), or Art, the apparent current moniker. So I just sat and watched, looking for a cue.
Art hopped on a bike and sped around the inside of the room. He was nuts, out of control, knocking into people low and hard, like a soccer slide-tackler, going in to take the person out. I could see legs buckling and hear the bones breaking. Lots of screams of pain, and I just got out of his way. No one made a move to stop him, only hushed complaints of how they wished he wouldn't do what he was doing. No confrontation, no direct action against him, all of it instead subdued and quiet, respectful and indirect.
I didn't like the whole setup, and was ready to end this sunny climate holiday right now. I turned for the trashy walk back up to the road.
posted by Scrumpox at 10:56 AM
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