Trip Report Friday 21 March 2008

As expected, Freddy, Gumbo, and I woke at the crack of dawn for the drive to Corpus Christi. On the way to the beach, we stopped to drop Gumbo off at the hotel. Hilarity ensued.

The previous weekend, Freddy had left his cellphone charger in the hotel room wall socket. He called the hotel the very next day to ask them to look for it. They agreed to investigate.

We now asked the front desk about it in person. Did they find the charger? Nobody knew. But they did have "hundreds" of chargers for us to look at. None of them matched Freddy's phone.

The desk attendant agreed to contact housekeeping about the charger. What was the brand of the phone? Kyocera. What? Kyocera. Not Nokia? K-y-o-c-e-r-a. Okay...

In the mean time, Freddy and I decided to get Lunch at the Hooters on the way to Worldwinds. This time I got the "Three Mile Island" sauce on my buffalo chicken sandwich. Much better -- this sauce had flavor!

At the beach, the wind was gusty. I managed to get on plane a few times, and I pulled off a few water starts. Freddy practiced using his harness and performing tacks.

After a day of sailing, we cleaned up and paid Havana another visit. We ordered Mojitos and a bunch of tapas: an "El Infidel!" sandwich, Ropas Viejas, and roasted plantains. I enjoyed all of it, especially El Infidel.

We asked Stephanie the waitress about the sauce for "El Infidel!". She read the menu and told us it was cilantro aioli. Somehow the word aioli struck our funny bones. It became the official word of the trip.

Over Mojitos, Freddy and I devised a fantastic prank. You see, at a particular company, all the executives get Starbucks coffee in their break room. The engineers get coffee that nobody could even be bothered to name: Brand coffee. I'm told that Brand approximates the flavor of dried, recycled Folgers grounds combined with a hint of paint thinner.

We came up with a plan that combines princess and the pea and the Folgers taste test. Our hero would sneak into the executive break room and refill a sack of Starbucks with Brand. Ideally, a nice fresh pot of Brand could be made too.

Do you think the big-shots would pretend to like it if the bag was labeled Kopi Luwak?