What good timing for taking a vacation before I quit my job. I get to go to Carnival. Usually when I am working, the job comes first. Two hurricanes, Office Max stays open. I mean what is going to happen when a Hurricane comes. People are going to need pencils. Don’t ask me why, but they do. My dedication usually involves me missing any important event because I always believed that as a leader you should be the first one to make sacrifices. Well as thoughtful as it sounds, (Old Steve talking,) it allowed me to hang that over my associates head for the other 364 days of the year. “What do you mean you need to have your Kidney removed, don’t you remember that time I let you and everyone off to go to the parade!” What a bastard I was (the new Steve.)

There are actually three carnivals for the VI. St. John (June), St. Croix (January), and St. Thomas (April.) The Carnival actually runs the entire month of April starting with the nominations of Ms. VI, and the Prince and Princess. In the middle are a ton of musical and dance events. This cumulates into the big finales of the Cultural Fair, Jouvert, and a Parade, Children’s and Adults. The Cultural fair consisted of a bunch of Booths serving native cuisine including, Vienna Cake, tropical fruit juices, fried Johnny Cakes, salt fish patties, and neighboring foods from the Dominican Republic.

I stopped by the market place and grabbed some food. I got a late start but it turned out better since they had a live band. I hung around until 11 pm thinking that it would shut down but it was still rockin when I left. 11 o’clock and your whining? Okay, let me move forward a bit. The next big activity is Jouvert. Now Jouvert is basically a parade with a lot of dancing and partying. The kicker is that it STARTS at 4:00 a.m. Thats right smart asses 4:00 a.m. Yes, I am old and I did not do an all nighter, but come on, even some heavy duty party goers would have thought twice about that. So at the weak hour of 11 pm, I went home to grab some shut eye.