Senior Trip, Day 2 (part 1)

I was half expecting to wake up to a soccer ball slamming against my hallway window, but I woke up before most of the kids. I know some of them were up early, but some of them were not up in time to make the 12:30 check-in. Teenagers are funny things.

First I'll write about what I did, though that's not really the point of this. My roommate and I went for a walk and rented bicycles for a few minutes. Then we had lunch and everybody set out for their afternoon activities. I spent most of the time at the beach. I kayaked out to the middle of the lake and just sat for a while, then met up with a couple of students and paddled around with them and finally back to the beach. I really should have napped, but I can say that almost anytime. I also probably should have gotten work done, but what the hey, finals, shminals.

Evening was dinner and Phillies game on TV and a pool party and karaoke and ice cream and finally more hanging out in the gigantic hallway. Sounds like your basic resort day. And so it was.

So a few words about the resort. Nothing terribly surprising. The bicycles we rented were a mess. Mine had no air in the tires and my colleague's had the chain off and stuck in 2 different places. The person renting the bike was mostly in charge of mini golf. She knew enough to point us to the bicycles, say"they're in here" and hand me an air pump. In general the staff isn't exactly surly, but they're not exactly bubbling over with the "what can I do to make your stay as good as it possibly could be" spirit. I don't think there are all that many other people staying in this place (and it's huge) and you'd think they might like to take care of the guests, just to give them something to do. Then again, one employee told me he gets paid $7 an hour and at that rate, who really cares?

The bathrooms require a couple of comments. First of all, I always appreciate it when bathrooms are labeled "Ladies" and "Mens." Life already has far too may apostrophes. Second, they have these high powered hand dryers in some of the bathrooms that all but peel the skin off your hands. Much more entertaining than drying your hand ought to be and completely underutilized as toys.

The resort has the usual complement of snack bar, coffee shop, pizza place at the beach and nice restaurant, although the nice restaurant may be mythical. The snack bar is very dark and looks closed even when it's open. The pizza place looks open even when it's closed, which seems to be almost all the time. The coffee shop has decent food and what may be the slowest service I've ever experienced. I guess I'm used to business hotels where the management figures that time is important to the patrons and staffs accordingly. The average wait time for breakfast, 30 minutes. For lunch, 40 minutes. This does not factor in the people who were there for shorter periods but left because nobody came to take their order. I had a sandwich called an SOB. This stands for "South of the Border," but it's odd in that there is nothing else in the hotel that even hints at a sense of humor.