New Logo.....

Rob is excited, at the Pirate party my buddy bbdJohn presented me with the logo above to use on our websites.

Happenings......

It’s been two weeks since I have added to my BLOG and there have been plenty of happenings. We hosted our annual Pirates and Wenches party and it was a blast. There will be more about that on my webpage soon along with pictures to incriminate some.

Newest and best is a friend of mine and I are working on a combined website. WWW.Beachjunkie.com and he presented me with a logo for use with beachjunkie and my AXARob site as well. I will post it in the next few days. This is an initial view of the logo as there will be a few tweaks to it before we make it ours to keep.

I have another friend here in the Kansas City area that is getting together a business of his own and we have been talking of ways to link our pages in and interweave some of what we have. I am learning from him and helping him in some other areas. Is fun that we are both from Kansas City and so love the Caribbean that we are willing to spend most of our free time focusing on the islands mon!

As I posted some time ago, we have purchased our tickets for our April trip to the island. I check on them regularly to make sure AA hasn’t changed flights on us. We land early enough to grab a cab to Marigot and catch a ferry over to Anguilla for a few days of rest on Upper Shoal Bay. Have contacted Shoal Bay diving about taking a couple of dives with them too.

I booked our flights using the cheap tickets website www.cheaptickets.com . We found a great fare but cheap tickets but as in my last post we were not able to book all seats thru them. I got back on AA’s site and had no problems booking seats for all flights. We want to sit on the left side of the plane coming into the island for pix during landing and on the right side on the way out so we can snag some pix of the island as we leave….
I also want to sit in front of the wing and to have a window seat coming and going to the island. Aisle seating for me the other 4 flights.

If you see this logo while on island, come by and say hi. We may have a small gift for you ....if we get enough items printed.

Ramblings about American Air and a party

American is already at it!

We just booked flights last week and already a change to my itinerary. This one isn’t too bas as our first flight is KC to Dallas with an overnight. The change was that the flight is an hour later and we will get into Dallas at around 9:15 PM Will have to be back at the airport at about 4:30 so we can check in for a 6AM flight so not much sleep but some is better than none by all means!!! Best part of this SNAFU is that I was going thru Cheaptickets.com to book my flights and seats. They only let me book seating for 3 of the 6 flights. I then got on American’s site and with my conformation code pulled up my flights….was able to book seating on all flights….that is as long as they don’t change yet again!!

Pirates dead ahead!!

This week is ratchet up time for our second annual Pirates and Wenches party which is this Saturday night. Spent all weekend either buying stuff for the party or getting the house ready…which is kind of funny as it now looks like the set of the movie Twister after the storm. We moved all of our furniture to our hardwood floors and cleaned all the carpets yesterday…tonight no Monday Night Football for Rob as I will be moving all of the furniture back to where it belongs. No problem at all. We have all the rum we need for the party and now will need to pick up a bit more Grand Marnier. All three kinds of juice are in our possession so now it is just a matter of food and dressing the part. Oops forgot that we still have to get a couple pumpkins and carve them too….

Update to pre-trip planning

DISCLAIMER: This covers where I am in the planning stage Since we are now a few days shy of being 6 months before we get on island. This covers the list that I posted on August 29th so if you dont want to see the update...You may wish to skip this one.

All tier I planning completed.
A. Dates are set. We will be on island(s) from 16-26 April….woo hoo, first three days will be in Anguilla and the rest at our timeshare.

B. We have invited some friends along, unfortunately one couple said that they would be unable to make it ….they have a son that is a senior in HS and I can fully understand that they don’t want to miss any of that. The other person we have invited is a friend we will call BBDJohn….long story that I may or may not explain here.

C. Timeshare is booked for 19-26 April. I will have to add a room fairly soon to get BBDJohn a place but that should be no problem at all.

D. Anguilla. We are booked at the Allamanda on Upper Shoal Bay for the evenings of the 16-18th of April with a checkout on Saturday returning to ST Maarten to finish our vacation. Just CB and I will be on the AXA leg of this trip. We are soooo looking forward to this! Will rent a car for one of the days here to explore a bit but don’t know who from just yet. Maybe we will get ahold of our old friend Dennis Mussington and see if he will give us the guided tour and maybe just drop us off at a few places for a while.

E. Have airline booked….$600 each from KC. We do overnight in Dallas on the first evening but that is no problem as we will be in the islands before 2PM the next day.

F. Have made arrangements with AAA car rental for a Corolla for the week we are on island….it is $150 a week and no we don’t need a car that size but Rob is a big guy and would like to have a bit more room and is willing to pay for the extra space. I am bigger than some of those little cars on island…LOL

Tier II
1. Laptop is working but needs a new battery. No sweat we still have the holiday coming up. It is an older laptop so is pretty heavy but I will be taking it with us so I can blog and post pix while there.

2. Still in market for the DSLR. May stick with what we have but really really want a new camera.

3. Dive Equipment. Dunno how much we will need I have full set of dive underwear and wife has mask, may get her a snorkel and fins and be done with it or may rent fins there so all can still be done with carry on like we like it to be.

Tier III
Activities while on island.
These we have discussed and are continuing to discuss.
#1&2 I think we will either do Prickly Pear trip or dive but most likely not both, this will be CB’s decision.

#3 Jet ski out to Caye Verte…this is a Rob decision and I really want to do this one so my guess is we will. For those that don’t know this is the little island in front of Club O.

#4 Beaches. We have added 2 must do’s to our list one being Pinel Island and the other the jet ski trip above. List of other beaches is Cupecoy, Long , Plum, Rouge ( that covers the lowlands) Would like to obviously go to Orient as well as Friar’s and even a little hike over the hill from there to Happy. With timeline some of these will be partial day visits for us.

#5 Dinner in Grand Case area….will do but not too sure where yet.

#6 We are still in need of rousting up a photographer for some photos.

#7 Meet with some TTOL friends for a dinner out or at least a few drinks

Well there is the trip plan update…we are truly most of the way done…now I can sit back and think about things like…a new camera and activities to do for our 25th anniversary on island.

“I love it when a plan comes together” -Col. John "Hannibal" Smith from The A-Team.

Yesterday I booked my airfare….have had our timeshare room for months.
Since then have booked our room in Anguilla at the Allamanda

http://www.wiol.com/anguilla/Allamanda/default.html?ref=google&gclid=CKGxn7GVgo8CFQ6CPAodeXKM2A

This is a very small hotel on beautiful Upper Shoal bay. The hotel has 3 floors and 20 rooms. Our room will be on the second floor. We are very excited. This stretch of beach is our favorite place to hang out and just lime the day away. We are only staying 3 days on island then going back to SXM for a week. This will be an easy 3 days for us...we will beach it and maybe take one day to dive.

Have also booked our rental car on SXM we will once again go with our friends at AAA. triplea@domaccess.com The car is a fair price and Alain has been so good for us to work with in the past. There are several good rental car companies on island, AAA was recommended to us by some friends and we are sticking with them. Is $150 a week for a Toyota Corolla + insurance and taxes….fair price for a decent car. AAA uses license plates from the French side of the island. The rental cars on the Dutch side all use plates that start with an R. this has been rumored to make them targets for break-ins as they know that the folks are rental and transient and the follow up with the local police isn’t much as even with an arrest it is very unlikely that a tourist will fly back to the island for a court date for petty crimes.

So as of today…rooms booked, flights taken care of, to include seat assignments. Most important there for us is to be on left side of the plane in front of the wing on the flight into SXM so I can take pictures of the island as we are coming in for landing.

Flights are KC to Dallas for an overnight stay then Dallas to Miami and Miami to SXM arriving at 1:55 PM. We will then grab a cab to Marigot for a ferry ride to Anguilla.

Three fantastic days on Anguilla and then ferry back to SXM for a week at our timeshare.

Return flights are an early morning flight out of SXM to San Juan. San Juan to Dallas and Dallas to KC arriving home at about 4PM. This is important to me as I will be leaving the next day to host a conference in Las Vegas. By then I will be pretty sick of travel for a couple of weeks any way.

Now am waiting to see if our buddy BBD John will be joining us in SXM with a guest.....John I am sure you will but we still need to make plans for you to stay....

Flight booked!!!!

I’ve been watching airfare prices since about March and today pulled the trigger.
Found flights on AA running about $150 less than they were recently and well within the price range I had set so, out came the plastic…a puff of smoke a few minutes later and we had our tickets/seats and actual flight times that were decent. ST Maarten here we come.

Have also made initial contact with the rental car company we use while on island.
Will also be trying to book a hotel room on Anguilla for 3 nights. Rob is getting excited....only 190 more days LOL!!

As you may have noticed if you have been following my blog…probably not many out there. I have not posted for some time now. I was pretty sick and spend a couple of weeks in the hospital after an emergency surgery. I am on the mend obviously and will have a nice scar on my foot …works well with my pirate costume…LOL


Nothing much else to add today but there will be more to come.