Crispy's Corner

Sunday night, we all get together to cut up our Blue Devils T-shirts for J’ouvert. When they say J’ouvert morning, they weren’t kidding. It’s starts at 4am on Monday morning. I can’t believe I woke up at 3am to get ready for a party.

I was told that it was customary to have blue paint thrown on you at this party so the girls covered their hair but when I tried to tie the rag on my head, it was not working for me. So I decided to go with vanity and hope that I wouldn’t get any blue paint in my hair. It was a road march and I’m telling you, there is something liberating about dancing in the street, covered in blue paint in the wee hours of the morning! It was funny though, I would be minding my own business and I’d feel a “splat!” on my back, arm, cheek and be left with the remnants of someone’s blue hand print.

As dusk turned to morning, we marched on. I was getting pretty hot so I bent over to roll my pant legs up only to be made the target of some teenager’s water gun, with my butt as the bullseye. I retaliated by dashing my water bottle at him and the girls joined in and we got him back good. But that little splash of water was nothing compared to the water hose.

After that, a lot of my blue paint got washed off, that left me open to get more random paintings from those that thought that I looked too clean. Since Mas was the same day as well, later that afternoon, we decided to leave around 9am so we could go home and get ready. Just as we were leaving, this guy ran up to me with a handful of paint and SPLAT! Right into my hair! I was hoping to take a quick shower so I could try to catch a nap before we went down to the mas camp. But with the blue paint in my hair (and all over my back, arms, and chest), I think I managed to only get about an hour of sleep in.

We got up, put our costumes on and headed over to a friend’s house to put on makeup, take some pictures and head on down. It was funny, all of us girls were feeling a little self-conscious about prancing around on the street with our little costumes on until we all saw Ms. White Stockings. She was wearing white fishnet stockings which she pulled halfway up her stomach, despite the fact that the costume only goes up to the belly button. She had her big belly out, stockings pulled up, not a care in the world. We all looked at each other and thought… what are we so worried about? This was the mas troupe I was in:

Where I found the energy, I don’t know, but there was more dancing on the street with the route ending with each mas troupe taking turns dancing on the stage. We got home around 9pm that night and after a full day of dancing on the street, I was asleep by 11pm. The second day was much of the same thing. The road march and ending back on the stage, the same stage that Lord Satelite and his pink leggings performed on, by the way. I found a youtube of him since my last post.

OK Papi – Lord Satelite

With Carnival now officially over, Wednesday and Thursday was pretty low key. I went on a boat cruise and got seasick. I asked one of the crew members if he had any medicine for nausea and he gave me a cup of ice and a bucket. The bucket came in handy though because I tossed my cookies a few times. The island we visited was nice though. It was so relaxing to chat with my girlfriends while splashing around in clear blue-green water and white sand. *Sigh*

Good times, good times.

Here’s another youtube video which pretty much summarizes my trip.

The story doesn’t end there though. There’s still the ordeal of getting back home to Toronto.

Exactly one week ago, I was stuck in an airport in St. Maarten trying to get back home to Toronto. But I’ll get to that part later…

In the interest of saving money, the girls and I decided to fly out of Buffalo instead of Toronto. Plus we had two connecting flights as well so we knew it was going to be a looooong day. I didn’t mind so much because I usually travel alone so it was nice to have someone with me on the plane for a change. First, we had to catch the Greyhound to Buffalo and ended up riding with Stinky Foot. I never figured out the exact source of the smell but I had to endure the smell of sweaty feet the whole way. Don’t people shower before they leave their homes?

We get to the Buffalo airport and find a nice little corner to try to take a nap since we had a couple hours to kill before our flight. I’d never been much of a coffee drinker but one of my co-workers got me hooked on it but luring me with free Starbucks. I’m not one to turn down free food so I eagerly accepted and now I’m hooked! Plus there’s a Tim Horton’s across the street so I even end up drinking coffee outside of work. I was hungry and sleepy at the airport and I saw a couple crew members walk by with TIM HORTONS. She must have seen it in my eyes because as soon as I said “Excuse me!” she said “We got this outside of the airport.” They have Tim Horton’s in the US?

Anyway, we eventually get our flight. First stop was in Charlotte. During the whole layover I couldn’t stop singing, “North Carolina! C’mon and raise up. Take your shirt off, twist it around your hand like a helicopter!” Petey Pablo …that’s about all I know about Charlotte, North Carolina. Oh yeah and that Ray Carruth guy….

Back to the story. Next stop was St. Maarten. We were flying LIAT on some little ass plane to Antigua. Let’s just say LIAT is a little more “casual” than some of the other airlines. The check in girl seemed a bit flustered. After issuing our boarding passes, she told us to rush to the gate since our flight was leaving soon. I don’t know why she told us to rush because by the time we get ready to check onto the flight, the same girl issuing the boarding pass was the same girl boarding us onto the plane! She must have taken some secret passageway cause somehow she managed to get there before us despite the fact that people we still getting their boarding passes after us. We had to wait in this stairway behind a locked door to an airport shuttle to take us to the plane. We wait and wait and wonder why they just don’t let us sit on the bus while we wait instead of leaving us locked behind a glass door looking at the shuttle. Surprise, surprise, we had to wait for Check In Girl to take all the boarding passes before she came down and unlocked the door.

People started cracking jokes about how she’s probably going to fly the plane too. We get to our plane and who do we see? Check In Girl, out by the plane. I say “Look! There’s that girl again, she really is flying the plane too!” Everybody laughed but she ended up just ushering us into the plane. Much to my dismay, Check In Girl was not our pilot. St. Maarten was just a 40 minute flight to Antigua so soon enough we finally reached our destination. Our trip wasn’t over yet since our baggage was delayed and wouldn’t be arriving for another couple hours. After travelling for an entire day, all I wanted was a shower and fresh underwear. The friend who came and picked us up couldn’t stay around for much longer so we got some food (Antiguan KFC tastes soooooo much better than Canadian KFC) and checked in to our place. We rented an apartment for our trip so we were just outside of town. After we settled and ate, we went back to the airport to get our luggage. We were supposed to go out that night but we were so tired by that point, we just showered and went to bed.

The next day we didn’t do much either. Just did some errands, grocery store, bank, pickup car. Went with my friends to visit family. Then we met up for dinner with the rest of the crew. I drove in Antigua! I was kind of scared since they drive on the left side of the road but it was okay. I actually find it harder to drive in downtown Toronto than Antigua. We also went to the beach somewhere in between of course, since Antigua is known for their 365 beaches!

Friday night. Going to my first party, Lions which was supposed to go til 7am. One of the “big tunes” out there right now is called Kick up Duss/Dust. The hook goes, “Kick up dust… kick up dust… more dust..” and your supposed to run on the spot to well, kick up the dust! (the party was outdoors) Some friends hooked us up with dust masks…but it wasn’t needed because they wet the grounds for Friday night’s party to avoid excessive dust kicking. Apparently, some people were going overboard with the dust thing, stories were told of the huge dust cloud from a previous party and some people had took the next step by throwing cement and some guy messed himself up by breathing it in. So my dust mask hung on are my arm the entire night, neglected. I didn’t mind though since I wear contacts so that last thing I wanted was to get dirt in my eye. Around 4am I started to get really tired. I was like, damn! 3 more hours? How am I going to make it through Carnival? At 5am the power went out. HA HA! Lions was cut short and we headed home.

The next night we went to another show, I think it was called either Party Monarchs or Soca Monarchs. Basically it was a competition between different soca artists. It was easy to see who the crowd favorites were because when artists came out that the crowd wasn’t feeling, there was complete silence. I’ve never seen a whole stadium so quite before. The obvious front runners were Claudette Peters (Go Claudette!) and Lord Satellite, singing “OK Papi” and came out wearing pink leggings and a crop top?? I couldn’t find a picture or video of him but here’s one of Claudette from the show.

After another late night, we spend Sunday getting ready for J’ouvert and Mas. I’ll have to leave that for Part 2.

So, I got in late last night after having my flight cancelled while we were connecting flights in St. Maarten. The good part was the airline put up in a hotel so I got a mini vacation during my vacation. However, I lost a whole day travelling as well as still waiting for my luggage to be found and running here and there because of all the delayed flights. OH DRAMA. Overall the vacation was good but I am tired and I have to rest up for work tommorrow

Will be back soon with more trip details. Hopefully I’ll have my luggage by then!