Travelogue Filler, Part Deux: Planes, Ferries, and Catamarans

In a span of 24 hours last weekend, Petite Pump Room Bar & Restaurant in Charlotte Amalie, St. Thomas, USVI hosted two different Gheorghies and their parties. Whit and his group of salty dogs were on their way back to the airport on Saturday, while my wife and I were just beginning our journey on Sunday, grabbing lunch and a couple of Painkillers at the Charlotte Amalie ferry terminal while waiting for our ride to St. John. 

The ownership has ordered the plaque commemorating the historical moment. Look for it next time you're there.

In the spirit of Whit's travelogue chronicling the Caribbean portion of his recent globe-trotting, here's my contribution as a first-timer to the region.

The view from breakfast at Estate Lindholm

Homebase: Cruz Bay, St. John

In particular, Estate Lindholm, a family-run inn with spectacular views of the bay, and exceptional hospitality. The innkeeper, Brion Morissette, was born and raised on the island before going to Woodberry Forest for boarding school, graduating from the University of Colorado and then getting a J.D. at Ole Miss. He returned to the islands to practice law while building the inn on property owned by his parents. We know all these things because he made a practice of joining his guests at breakfast and is exactly the kid of people-loving raconteur you might find in a Hemingway tale. Just a lovely dude, with more stories than we had time.

Where Else: Honeymoon Bay, Hansen Bay, Trunk Bay, Maho Bay, The Beach Bar

I could kill a ton of pixels waxing rhapsodic about the beauty of St. John's beaches, but that'd be like dancing about architecture - you kinda have to see it for yourself. I did learn to snorkel passably, and saw some squid at Hansen Bay that Dave would've enjoyed. Followed a juvenile turtle at Maho Bay for a while, too. 

Also noteworthy, and unknown to me until we got there, drivers in St. John operate on the left side of the road. And the road from Cruz Bay on the island's westernmost point to Hansen Bay nearly all the way east is all kinds of treacherous - switchbacks and hills and blind corners and donkeys, oh my. Didn't hit a single thing in my maiden wrong-sided driving experience.

The Beach Bar is aptly named

Trunk Bay

What:

The aforementioned snorkeling, for sure. I started an early-morning hike up the Caneel Spur to see the views, but a rare island thunderstorm chased me back to the inn, wetter than squirrel caught in a rainstorm. A fun meal at Skinny Legs in Coral Bay - exactly the kind of ramshackle beachside bar one would hope to find in the islands. Multiple trips to Cruz Bay's legendary Beach Bar. Killer meals at ZoZo's, Morgan's Mango, and Lime Inn, all of which were pricey and all of which we'd do again in a hot minute. Got some reading in, as well - finished Colson Whitehead's Nickel Boys (the plot twist at the end blew my damn mind), Philip K Dick's The Man in the High Castle, and Elizabeth Kolbert's The Sixth Extinction (rarely, in my experience, do ostensibly science books use the phrase "handjobs for crows", but this one does).

My favorite afternoon of the trip was spent aboard the Kekoa, a catamaran charter run by the Witbeck family. Theirs is a particularly cool and unique story. The Cliff's Notes version: two brothers built a boat to sell, the buyer ditched her in a storm, the brothers salvaged her, then nearly lost her in another storm, and now sail her around the islands with their kids and crew. Yeti did a really excellent video on the operation:

We got to sail with Jamison Witbeck (his teenaged son Sully was a more than capable first-mate), and the winds were up just enough to allow us some serious giddyup. We snorkeled at Mingo Island, where we saw a shipwreck, and at Little St. James, where the reef had recovered really nicely from recent trauma. Free rum drinks and beers, a perfect island soundtrack, a fun group of fellow passengers all served to blunt the momentary pain I experienced when I lost my favorite 17th Street Surf Shop hat in the breeze on the return back to Cruz Bay. Rookie mistake. Bygones.

Takeaways:

• Time spent with the people you love is a blessing. That time spent in a place of immense natural beauty is so much the more so.
• St. John is a brilliant place. Literally didn't hear anyone utter a cross word to anyone else. I'm sure it happens, 'cause humans, but the vibe on the island did nothing to dispel the popular perception of the place.
• Make sure you read your itinerary before you head on vacation. We booked our trip in December, and I didn't remember until we got to the airport in St. Thomas on our way home that we were flying home to a different airport (DCA) than the one we flew out of (IAD). Little hiccup, that.
• If you're gonna get the tasting menu at Lime Inn, wear your big boy pants, and maybe let out the waist a bit.
• Donkeys do not understand the concept of right of way.
• I'd love to do that trip again with a group of Gheorghies, so if anyone's got any ideas...

Roger Goodell is Still a Donkey

Almost seven years ago I wrote a post about Tom Brady's affection for tender balls (and Aaron Rodgers's preference for turgid balls) and the Deflategate fiasco.  I followed that up with another post comparing the NFL to Chotchkie's.  As an aside, I think I did a better job summarizing the situation than most other media outlets.  

You may recall that Roger Goodell suspended Tom Brady for four games by analogizing deflating balls to taking steroids.  The trial court judge scoffed at that comparison, writing that Goodell's punishment:

offers no scientific, empirical, or historical evidence of any comparability between Brady's alleged offense and steroid use.  Often, steroid use has to do with critical issues of health, injury, addiction, and peer pressure, among other factors.  See Steroid Policy at 1-2 (listing several factors related to the use of "Prohibited Substances," including "a number of physiological, psychological, orthopedic, reproductive, and other serious health problems, [such as] heart disease, liver cancer, musculoskeletal growth defects, strokes, and infertility"). None of these factors is (remotely) present here.

You know what is associated with serious health problems?  Covid-19.  So if a player violates the NFL's covid-19 policy, I would expect them to be suspended for at least one game because it's analogous to the league's steroid policy.

Predictably, Roger Goodell doesn't see it that way.  He fined Rodgers $14,650 for attending a Halloween party without being vaccinated.  The fact that Rodgers lied about his vaccination status didn't factor into the fine amount.  Rodgers makes $22,364,706 this year so the fine represents 0.0655% of his salary.

This makes perfect sense.  You let a little air out of a football, or "it is more probable than not" that you were "at least generally aware" that two baciagaloops let the air out of a football, and the league takes 25% of your pay.  If you help perpetuate a global plague that has killed over 750,000 Americans by refusing to take a free, safe, and effective vaccine or to wear a mask and avoid crowds, the league takes about seven hundredths of a percent of your salary.  

Player safety!  America's game!  Nice job Goodell.

via Gfycat

Allllllllllllllll Aboard...THE DONKEY RAILROAD

Sometimes my work-related google alerts serve up gems, such as this:

Bygone Muncie: History of local mass transit, from the 'Donkey Railroad' to MITS buses

To alleviate the growing distances for workers, the city chartered the Muncie City Railway Company in 1887 to build a trolley system. Two years later, MCRC built a few lines connecting nearby suburbs to downtown Muncie. This first system was pejoratively called a Donkey Railroad, so named because the trolleys were powered by inefficient and very loud "donkey" steam engines. Munsonians were quick to reject it. The Muncie Daily News even joked in 1890 that when the steam streetcar made its way up the tracks, “people fled in all directions. Many of our oldest citizens thought the courthouse was coming up the street on wheels.”

zman has already called shotgun...er, conductor...on The Jackass Express

Not the actual donkey railroad in question

Don't Sue Your Customers, Alternatively Titled "Jeffrey Loria is the Least Gheorghe Man Alive This Week"

Law school provides almost zero practical knowledge. I gleaned the most useful nugget, in terms of real-world utility, in my trademarks course: Don't sue your customers. If you sue your customers they won't like you, and if they don't like you they won't be your customers anymore, in which case you'll have no sales and you'll go out of business.

My favorite example of this rule in application is the drug store. Go into any big chain pharmacy and you'll see stuff like this:

On the left are Gillette Venus Tropical ladies' razors. On the right are CVS ladies' razors. Both razors are pink and feature tropical packaging. Gillette, of course, came up with this marketing angle first and CVS knocked it off. They did the same to Schick:

Why do Gillette and Schick tolerate this blatant trade dress infringement? Because CVS buys shitloads of their razors, and if they antagonize CVS then they won't sell as many shitloads of their razors. Here's another egregious example:

Things get pretty brazen in the OTC pharmaceutical space. Not only are the CVS generic products presented in almost identical packaging to the branded product, the CVS boxes say stuff like "Compare to the active ingredient in Prilosec OTC" or "Compare to the active ingredients in Vicks DayQuil."

Not even vaporizers are immune from these shenanigans. Check out this bootleg device:

Why does Procter & Gamble let this slide? Because just about everything P&G makes is purchased at pharmacies, and CVS is a really really big pharmacy chain. If P&G isn't down with CVS then someone else will put their heartburn pills and daytime cold dranks and cheap humidifiers on CVS's shelves.

Remarkably, Jeffrey Loria and the rest of the Miami Marlins ownership group don't seem to understand this basic business principle. I say this because, as rob noted previously, the Marlins sued season ticket holders who backed out of their ticket packages. Some backed out because, at least in part, the Marlins stopped giving them special amenities like private entrances and pole-position parking, amenities that were not included in the season ticket contract but that were promised during the verbal sales pitch.

Now I understand that a contract means what it says, that people put things in writing because they intend for both parties to live up to their promises, and that there have to be repercussions when people breach. So I get why the Marlins want to be made whole when a corporation bails on a luxury box. That said, what type of donkey-brained moron goes after individuals who buy two-seat packages? Especially when the team starts pulling back promised perks in order to save money. Not even Dan Snyder would be so stupid as to ... oh wait ... scratch that. Well, at least Snyder dropped the suit.

This is a remarkably short-sighted move by the Marlins. Fifty inch smart HD TVs cost less than $750 and they can be used to stream any live baseball game being played anywhere in the world. No one has to leave the comfort of their home to watch a game. There are also other things to do in Miami beyond watching baseball, like watching the Panthers/Dolphins/Heat, or actually playing sports in the year-round awesome weather, or boating/surfing/swimming/fishing in the ocean, or enjoying Miami's fantastic night life, or doing other things that you can do anywhere like read a book, go to the movies, Netflix and chill, etc. Why the hell should anyone give tens of thousands of dollars to some wealthy jackass who might very well sue you if you lose your job and don't have the disposable income to pay for baseball tickets?

So screw you Jeffrey Loria. You are the least Gheorghe man alive this week.