Howdy…we’re back from a week of vacation so I can now update you on what happened.

After our trip up to see the human kids, Nick our financial guy, and Cynthia our old eating buddy that Connie worked with back in the day…we were pretty busy that 2 weeks and needed an actual vacation…so we decided to head on over to St. Croix in the US Virgin Islands…we’ve been there several times before, most recently for their 35th wedding anniversary where they ate over at the Beachside Cafe at the Sand Castle on the Beach resort on the west end of the island south of Frederiksted. We scheduled a dinner there again to recreate/relive that anniversary and the only other thing on our list was to go see the beer drinking pigs on the island…Neil saw them 40something years ago and Connie finally found out how to go see them.

After some thought before we left we scheduled our flight out of Tampa rather than Miami since you can’t fly direct from here to the island…which made it a little more complicated than it needed to be. Flying out of Tampa meant that it would be a slightly longer flight since the Tampa to Miami portion connects to the same flight we would have taken out of Miami…but it was cheaper than going to Miami by the time we included the parking and overnight hotel since the flight left early from Miami.

So…off we went to Tampa and got a hotel near the airport because it was an early flight no matter what…and once again the DLETC picked an outstanding place for dinner…Whiskey Joe’s Bar and Grill right on the water, here’s a snot from our position at the end of the bar. We scored a parking spot at the beachside parking for a whopping $1.65 for 2 hours which was a lot cheaper than we expected.

Note…all the shots in this post are from Neil’s iPhone…he was originally not going to take a real camera at all because this is vacation and not a photo oriented trip…but he relented and took a single small body and a single zoom lens for the pigs…but never actually ended up taking it out of the bag for reasons as discussed below. 

We had cocktails and then moved on to dinner…Oysters Rockefeller and Coconut Mahi Bites…all was excellent…and of course we got a couple of nice sunset shots over the water…Neil took them from the edge of the outside seating area to the right side of the shot above. These were taken a few minutes apart obviously but he went back and forth to get them.

We were up early the next morning and arrived on the island in mid afternoon, picked up our rental car, and got checked into the Sugar Apple B&B and for most of the 5 nights we were there we were the only people in the 12 or so room establishment. On arrival…we found out that the breakfast was vegan…so no pork fat…and Connie was seriously unhappy because she wanted real breakfast and would not have picked the place if she knew that. It said vegan menu was available but not that it was the only one available. As it turned out…we had pastries every day and they were good despite having no butter and only coconut oil and various other vegan ingredients. Not the best pastries ever…but better than average actually. Dinner was pizza and cocktails at The Mill on the boardwalk…with leftover pizza for lunch the next day. There are chickens…a lot of chickens…running loose on the island and this sign was on the bar at The Mill.

Turning 90 degrees to the left sitting t the bar…the reason for the sign.

Wednesday…we did nothing all day except head out to our dinner at the west end…Beachside Cafe was as good as it was last time and we even had the same table we sat at 12 years ago…carefully selecting our reservation time so that dinner would include sunset.

Wine for her…Myers Rum for him. Strangely enough, despite there being excellent Blackstrap Rum made on the island…only 2 places of the 8 or so we ate at actually had it on the menu.

Sunset was kind of a bust…the cloud out on the western horizon obscured most of it…too bad, we were hoping for the green flash but alas, didn’t happen.

Dinner was excellent though…seared but mostly raw tuna for Connie and tangy fried shrimp for Neil…then they followed that up and split a rum bread pudding with caramel sauce for afters (as the brits would call it). 

Thursday…we planned to have lunch out at the beer drinking pig place…yes, beer drinking pigs…and ya know…see the pigs.

A little background on the pigs…back in the late 70s when Neil was here on his first submarine the pigs were a well known island thing to do. The problem was finding them as they were wild feral pigs and had no fixed address…so they drove around in the jungle rainforest awhile after talking to some locals and finally found them. You would stay in the car…remember, wild feral pigs with big tusks…and toss them full cans of beer they would catch, puncture with their tusks, and drink the beer. 

Well…naturally those pigs died out because pigs don’t live 40something years…but apparently some enterprising soul decided to open an establishment with captive pigs to recreate the experience and make himself some money…hence the Mount Pellier Hut Domino Club. We drove out there after checking their website. Turns out that using captive vice wild feral pigs entails all sorts of requirements on them…vet care to keep them healthy and non alcoholic beer only because the health people don’t want any pigs going on benders. So we get there…only to discover that they were closed for the week for a kitchen remodel before the high season in the islands starts in November. So…no pigs for Connie and she was turrible disappointed…turrible I say (or actually as Charles Barkley pronounces that word). Neil said that it wouldn’t be the same anyway…but that was small consolation for her. So…we headed back out of the rainforest to the hotel…only to arrive just in time for the power outage caused by working on a line that needed fixing nearby. We headed down to the boardwalk, passed up Nate’s Boathouse because they had no power and ate at the next place down the boardwalk because it was in a hotel and had a generator. Neil had some Blackstrap Rum (this was the second and final place we found any), Connie a gin and tonic (ehh…yeah, it was lunch but we were on vacation in the islands)…and split an order of fried calamari and one of fish tacos.

Friday we had lunch at Rum Runners…really good hot dogs and a couple of Red Stripe beers…ya gotta have at least a couple of those if you’re in the islands…it’s the law. Then Friday evening we went to Nate’s Boathouse…dinner was pretty decent appetizers but cocktails were pretty terrible and the bartender was a crotchety old lady…she basically refused to make Neil the cocktail he ordered (nothing fancy, just a regular Old Fashioned which is essentially bourbon on the rocks with a muddled cherry and a bit of sugar syrup in it)…her surliness was duly reflected in her teensy tip. There were a couple of decent signs in the place…the second one seemed like it was almost sexual harassment to us but the crotchety old lady bartender amazingly didn’t care about it. Besides being old and crotchety…she was seriously tattooed and most of them had little old lady wrinkles all through them…not a good look at all.

Other things happening on Friday…Neil ordered a new lens and cancelled the backordered one…deciding that the lighter weight of the prime outweighed the much heavier zoom he had ordered…and he’s got a shorter zoom already to ensure adequate focal length coverage. And we decided to spend an extra 2 nights in Tampa on arrival back for a couple of reasons. First…we were landing about 2000 so it would be getting on to 2100 by the time we got out of the airport…our initial plan was to drive home Saturday night…and then make another round trip to Tampa on Monday really early for her 0900 appointment at the Air Force base to get her spouse ID renewed. Staying overnight Saturday night on further review was a no brainer as we were tuckered out when we got out of the airport and would not have relished the 2 hour drive home and by staying we eliminated the extra round trip driving.

Sunday we went to Mass then lazed around the hotel room doing nothing…and headed out to Salt Shack on the Bay for Happy Hour and dinner…luckily Neil told her we needed Plan B just in case. We had the two worst cocktails we’ve ever had and decided the food wouldn’t be any better…so jumped into Plan B which was to drive a mile down the beach to the American Legion…which turned out to be decently crowded, made much better cocktails, and had really good pizza for us to eat. Friendly people, better booze, better food, and cheaper…yeah, we’re on that.

Monday we headed over to the base for her 0900 appointment…she got her new ID and now that she’s older than 65 (missed it by less than 30 day last renewal) she gets one without an expiration date. The airman also redid Neil’s ID with the new credit card style ones since he would need a new one by 2025 anyway and we were already there. Once that was done we headed home and all was well.

Interesting things found on the net.

We have a new owner of the “Largest Star in the Known Universe”…it’s named Stephenson 2-18 and it’s diameter is 2,150 times the diameter of the sun which makes the star about 20 astronomical units in diameter…an astronomical unit is defined as the distance from the earth to the sun so 20 times that in diameter. To get a sense of the actual scale…
go here…which shows Jupiter, our sun, and Stephenson 2-18. Despite being the largest star in the known universe…it’s invisible to the naked eye because it’s around 20,000 lightyears away.

This is the world’s smallest image sensor…it’s a 40 megapixel backside illuminated sensor named OmniVision OV6948.

Up in the Gulf of Alaska…there’s a fish named the Rock Greenling which despite the name…is not green at all. It’s actually blue, black, and orange…and the flesh inside the fish is…blue.

Weird, huh?

Then there’s the old wive’s tale…well, actually it isn’t an old wive’s tale at all since it’s true…that nuclear reactors glow. You’ve probably seen many movies, TV shows, and whatnot where there’s a pulsating usually green glow from the reactor. In actuality…most of the time the reactor is inside a pressure vessel and you can’t really see the reactor at al. However…there is a type of reactor known as a swimming pool reactor that operates in research facilities at atmospheric pressure…they’re shielded by a big water tank, hence the name. Anyways…the core actually does glow…although it’s really the water next to the car…with blue light known as Cherenkov Radiation. This radiation is obviously supersonic and as it interacts with the molecules in the water it makes noise. So…take a look
here…there are several examples of reactors achieving criticality (i.e., self sustaining chain reaction in the core producing power)…make sure you have your sound turned up for it.

Nothing to do with Russia other than the location…but the central bank in Tatarstan there recently introduced a new 1,000 ruble bill…it features two famous churches in the majority Muslim Tatarstan Republic…one is a Russian Orthodox Church and the other is a Muslim minaret. 

However…just days after introducing this new bill…the government there withdrew it from circulation because…the church dome (building to the let with the onion dome on top) does not have a cross on top of it. Orthodox priests complained that there is not a cross on top of the dome…despite the fact that the actual church…does not have a cross on top of it. There used to be one but it was removed back in 1917…but since both buildings have been modified since then the bill used the actual current configuration…but unfortunately the celebrity Orthodox priest Pavel Ostrovsky objected…and because he has 174,000 followers on Telegram it was taken down.

Weird.

Cyas.