When I went to book a flight to the U.S. Virgin Islands from Cleveland, I didn’t put a lot of thought into it. The lowest cost option was on American Airlines with two stops: Cleveland to Miami, Miami to San Juan, Puerto Rico and then a very short flight from San Juan to the island of Saint Thomas.
I put in a last minute vacation request with Leer Industries, telling them that Brooks and I were heading off on a much needed kid-free vacation in the Caribbean. It was late August and plans were fully in motion for the relocation back to Cincinnati, in my new role as the IT Manager for the Material Handling Group. That was the official story, anyway. Secretly, Brooks and I were very much hoping that the unknown job on an unknown Caribbean island would end up becoming our reality.
On Monday, August 30th, 2010, we departed for the airport before dawn, not bothering to check the weather forecast. Our first flight to Miami was uneventful. As we approached San Juan, we encountered some rain showers and thunderstorm activity on the descent. Never having been in the Caribbean (save a cruise through the Western Caribbean two years prior), I thought it a bit unusual to be greeted by bad weather. Wasn’t it nothing but sunshine and tropical breezes every day? As we deplaned into an airport that seemed especially crowded, I found the nearest departures TV display, and my heart sank. The flight to St. Thomas was marked CANCELLED. As I looked across the board, I quickly noticed that ALL flights to St. Thomas were in fact CANCELLED. This was not good.
Noticing a group of travelers crowded around a TV tuned to The Weather Channel, it quickly dawned on me that the weather we had flown through was actually some outer bands of a Hurricane named Earl that had passed over the Virgin Islands earlier in the day. How stupid of me! It never even crossed my mind that travel plans into the Caribbean in late August can easily be disrupted at a moment’s notice. At this point, it was approaching 4:00 pm and I joined a long line of people waiting to speak to the American Airlines Gate Agent. When I finally made my way to the front, the Gate Agent tiredly explained that there were a lot of travelers in the same situation as me, and that the St. Thomas airport had temporarily closed until the storm passed. American Eagle commuter flights would resume just as soon as the airport was cleared to re-open.
Not having any alternative plan, Brooks and I decided that we would wait it out. No one bothered to explain to us that the bustling Cyril E. King International Airport in St. Thomas was unlikely to accept flights that evening. Hours and hours passed, and finally around 8:00 pm, a beleaguered Gate Agent announced that all flights were rescheduled for the next morning, and promptly left her station, presumably heading for home. Wait, was American Airlines going to just strand all these passengers in the airport? Weren’t they supposed to help book hotel rooms and provide meal vouchers? A number of angry travelers were on cell phones, presumably trying to plead their case with outsourced American Airlines call center agents that cared even less than the apathetic Gate Agents. Brooks and I decided that is wasn’t worth the fight, and that we would just try to get some sleep in the airport, and be ready for the 7:00 am flight that we had been rebooked on. The biggest problem with this plan was that all our clothes and toiletries were packed away in checked baggage that we had no access to. That and the San Juan airport prides itself on maintaining a climate the same temperature as an ice box.
A long and oddly frigid first night in the Caribbean later, we groggily made our way through the boarding line and onto the jet bridge… oh wait, there was no jet bridge! Instead, we found ourselves descending a flight of stairs with the other passengers and walking out over the tarmac towards a row of twin propeller planes that looked thoroughly weathered by the heat, humidity and salt air. This tired fleet of planes had clearly done decades of hard time in the Caribbean and candidly seemed in questionable state to be capable of taking to the air at all. A musty smell greeted us as we climbed the stairs, and ducked down to enter the plane. The engines roared to life, drowning out all ideas of having any in flight conversation. We rolled down the runway and lifted into the cloudy Caribbean sky. We were finally on our way to Saint Thomas.
About 20 minutes later, we made our final descent into what seemed to be the open ocean. A few minutes earlier, I could make out first the silhouettes and then the green and rocky shapes of several offshore cays, rising magically from the turquoise blue Caribbean Sea… or was it the Atlantic Ocean? I wasn’t really sure. A larger island loomed off to our left, and a beautiful white sand beach came into sight out the plane window. Just as I thought we were attempting an unannounced emergency water landing, the runway appeared as if out of nowhere below us. We had arrived!
The job interview was scheduled for 9:00 am, so there was no time to go to the hotel first (I certainly wasn’t going to be late for the most important meeting of my life). After our bags came out, I hurried to the airport bathroom to freshen up, shave and put on my suit and tie. We exited the baggage claim area and were greeted by a long row of taxi vans. Several presumed drivers were loafing about, looking very uninterested in trying to work hard to get any business. I approached a gentleman leaning up against the wall and asked him if he could take me to the Relic Communications Corporate Office, then after take my wife to the Marriott Frenchman’s Reef Hotel and Resort. After several speechless seconds spent carefully eyeing me up and down, (as I stood there in my black suit and red tie, already breaking into a sweat) he motioned to the van and told us to get in. He grabbed our bags and off we went.
As we drove in light rain into town along the waterfront, I noticed several overturned boats in the harbor. The waves were still churned up from the storm the day before and the harbor was very choppy. I couldn’t help but notice that some of the buildings seemed very old and dilapidated, and it wasn’t immediately clear if some of the structures were damaged by Hurricane Earl, or perhaps by hurricanes of years gone by. As we made our way up a winding hill out of town, we had to swerve a few times to avoid some downed trees and brush in the road. We eventually pulled into a K-Mart parking lot and the driver stopped. As he opened the door for me, I noticed the Relic Communications logo on a steel framed building across the lot from the K-Mart. I paid the driver, thanked him, kissed my wife and ascended the concrete stairs into the Relic lobby. Upon entering, a security guard approached, and I told him that I was here to see Angie Black, the Senior Vice President of IT Operations, for a job interview. He looked me over (in a way very similar to the taxi driver) and told me that nobody was in the office yet, and to wait in a chair by the wall.
Anxious minutes rolled by, and I couldn’t help but notice that nobody was entering the building. The security guard had taken up his post across from me, and silence engulfed the room. Over an hour passed, and finally a short thin woman entered the building. She was sharply dressed with dark brown pixie-bob hair, a determined look and even more determined gait. She blew past me without a glance in my direction, and bolted through double doors into the building’s interior. About 15 additional minutes of waiting passed, and I decided to call the phone number that the HR Department had provided. After a few rings, a lady picked up and I explained that I had been on time for a job interview, but had been waiting in the lobby for nearly 90 minutes. She asked me to be patient and said that she would check for me.
A few brief minutes later, the double doors exploded open, the same petite woman from earlier approached me, apologizing profusely. She ushered me through the doors, into a large room filled with random mismatched office desks and through another door in the back left of the room into a corner office. As I took a seat, she apologized, explaining that she was late to work because her car could not make it up the driveway at her house when it is raining. She had had to walk to a neighbor’s house and ask for a ride.
Angie paused, looked me over, then stated “you must want this job really bad”. Before I could respond, she continued “I mean, you came down here in the middle of a hurricane for Pete’s sake! Anyone determined enough to make it all this way in a hurricane is good enough for me. You’re hired! Oh and take off that damn tie… nobody dresses like that around here.”
(to be continued)
This channel will share our story from 2010 to present. In addition to our personal story, I will be sharing a collection of ‘truth is stranger than fiction’ tales from the islands. In St. Thomas, there is a popular bumper sticker found on the back of many cars: “Welcome to Saint Thomas, you can’t make this shit up”. Truer words have never been spoken. Read on and I invite you to live life through our eyes and find out what Island Living is really all about. Perhaps you too dream of one day moving to a tropical island and if so, this channel can serve to educate, inform and perhaps you can even learn from some of our mistakes. Even if you don’t share this dream, I promise you the stories will at least be entertaining.
Love it, I can’t wait to read the next one.
I am enjoying your story so much! Looking forward to reading the next chapter. 😍