(NOTE - BLOGS read from most recent to oldest so, to read this story in a correct time line, you might want to go to Part I and read up from there.)

The gig was awesome! The Casino was beautiful and the resort was a 5 star Island dream. The question I have had to answer 100 times is, "What happened to your flights?"

This part of the story will be based on the information I had, or as I understood it to be.

We were supposed to leave the Island on Friday, Jan. 2nd. I heard that American Airlines bumped us from our frights that we had booked from Barbados to Miami and one of the guys in the band called it to the band leaders, Alec Milstein's attention. We had a 9 1/2 hour stop over in Miami that did not exist when we got our information the first time.

Alec decided to cancel these flights and have the hotel help rebook them without such a stupid lay over. At some point, flights were canceled and new flights were not made, I think. I had heard that he had booked flights or thought we were going to book flights out of Puerto Rico but American had suspended service to there. I'm not sure really what happened, but do believe we had flights booked from Puerto Rico to Miami and ended up with no way to get to Puerto Rico.

The way this little Island works is, being very small, only private and very small Island planes go to Canouan. So Alec spent just about every waking moment trying to get us off this Island and we had one after another option break down. We ended up missing our connecting flights to Miami by not being able to get off of Canouan.

We had our first extra night on the road on January 2nd, staying at the Villa Ferrari and making arrangements to leave first thing in the morning, flying thru Grenada and back to Miami.

We had a wonderful day on the beach and night of movies and adventure. At one point I took my flashlight and we explored thru the house doing a Blairs Witch kinda thing. It was very fun and I can;t even tell much more about our explorations but to say, we are musicians and always find a way to have too much fun. We even waited for the maid to come in and had a watch guy so we could explore the areas locked to us during the night. What fun we had!

January 3rd, the band made their way to the airport early in the morning to fly to Grenada. We were all a lot more on time than usual since we were all getting worried about adding to the scheduling problems.

We had a van pick us up and went to the airport, pretty excited to see the locals area of the Island as we drove. You see, the resort was giant and a few of the guys had already been caught and yelled at for attempting to get to the civilian side of the Island. It was very different from the resort! Every yard had a goat tied on it for grass cutting, and I mean every yard! There was a huge difference in the wealth on this side of the Island with locals said to live on 500-600 dollars a month. Small, oddly painted buildings with bad roads and goats in the yards were an interesting balance to the high class resort we had just left.

We arrived at the airport, exactly when we had planned on being there and found out our plane was not there yet. They told us it was stuck in Barbados unable to refuel due to storm conditions. Now, we had no rain in Canouan and it is really hard to imagine they had never had rain in Barbados so had never figured out fueling in rain conditions.

The issue we had begun running into was the A list guest vibe. I am convinced that the plane serviced some rich family and then got to us because we were not paying nearly as much as the rich people were. hen the plane did arrive, it was over 2 hours late and we arrived in Grenada watching our American Airlines connection board. A footnote - the flight was the scariest flight of the trip with the plane being thrown around like a bug in the sky, but we made it safe and no one hurled.

We rushed out and ran to Grenadian Immigration to find this very unfriendly and evil woman in an American Airlines uniform tell us that they would not hold the plane and we would have to reschedule. Wendell Kelly went into papa bear mode and demanded she ask if the would. She walked away and came back and said they would not. I don't think she asked anyone. I don't know if they had over booked and didn't have 11 seats or what, but she totally screwed us, shut the door and sent us to Immigration with all our bags. In the 15 minutes she argued with us, we would have been on the flight, probably not holding anything up at all. It totally sucked that she was such a B with a capitol itch.

Missing this flight cost us missed flights from Miami to LAX again and now a new beach day and hotel expense in Grenada. The real pisser was we flew further South to get to Grenada but only because it was the only flights to Miami available from any Island down there.

Well, we are survivors. The Hotel was called and they made reservations for us at a totally lame and way too expensive hotel. When Alec arrived they didn't even have the 3 rooms we had been told they reserved for us. Thank god the cab driver new a good deal that had enough rooms and got us hooked up. This little hotel was funky. No elevators. Really old, foreign and adventure prevailed.

We were exhausted and all looked for some sleep, UNTIL we arrived at the hotel in Grenada. We all jumped into swim suits and hit the beach. This was a beautiful beach, just 10 minutes by foot from the hotel, and was the real deal with locals, run down shops, and dudes trying to sell all kinds of stuff as we walked around. We had a great time playing on the beach, shopping in a locals mall, buying food and snacks at a locals market and then getting cleaned up for a great dinner at a local restaurant. Amazing food! A big table and in our own area; another amazing night of food, stories, and goofing around was had by all.

A little foot note - all but one of us seemed to pack the cloths needed for the trip. Gary Gould packed "options" and I thought that was pretty metro until we ended up gone for longer that planned. I was now rotating dirty clothes and was not happy with the "off" smell that wreaked from everything in my suitcase, but I digress.

It started to rain pretty hard and we ran back up to the hotel and went to our rooms. This time Gary Gould and I roomed together. We had a great time talking about music, saxophones and other finger winds, photography, web, photoshop, websites and optimization. This to say, it was another really late night but so cool!

We had another early morning to make sure we got out of Grenada and we arrived way ahead of schedule to the airport all to find out the American Airlines flight had been delayed 1/2 hours! Now this was a rage moment. This was the same flight number we had scheduled the day before that the B with a capitol itch would not hold 15 minutes for us. It was delayed by them for almost 4 hours!

Because we had come into Grenada we now had to do Immigration again with exit tax from Grenada again too. It started to feel like a scam to get more out of travelers than an issue of holding a plane for a few minutes. This part of the world doesn't even run by the evil, dishonest rules we do in America. Kinda makes you glad to be an American, even when it is so easy to think everything is so screwed up there.

Getting off Grenada to Miami??

The good news was they didn't screw up another set of flights by making us miss our connection in Miami. Truth of the matter was, there were NO flights available from Miami to LAX and we had decided we would figure it out from the US rather than trying to from these crazy foreign countries.

We arrived in Miami on the Sunday the 4th, with great expectations of applying our musician suave and finding flights and getting home.

Check Part IV - New Years on the Island - for Miami and LA - the story continues........