Cozumel, Here we come!

I gave a peak preview in a post a while ago about going on a ten day vacation in March. We will be flying from Arcata to San Francisco on the little wind-up prop plane. I shouldn’t make fun of the plane because it is one of the most dependable workhorses in the small airline industry. It is a turboprop Brasilia. But, it has a lot of prop noise that gets right inside your head and rattles around. Anyway, it will take us to San Francisco, where we will board its big brother for a direct flight to Chicago. When we arrive in Chicago, we will be about as far away from our destination as we were in San Francisco. So, then we will board a plane for Fort Lauderdale Florida. The flights are all as cheap as we can get, so the accommodations are crowded and the seats are hard a concrete, the good thing is it is all free… more later.

Then, we will rest in Fort Lauderdale for a day, then board a cruise ship to Belize, a small country just south of the Yucatan peninsula.  From Belize we will cruise to Cozumel Mexico. Then back to Florida. The cruise ship accommodations will be the lap of luxury, we will almost be able to forget the airplane rides.

Now the great part, the trip is all paid for by Radio Shack. My wife is a Radio Shack dealer, and she earned an “Incentive Trip”. That is where, if you meet certain goals, you earn points toward the trip. It’s kind of like a class average grading system, but it’s based mostly on sales. We look good because our sales were within the goal standards, and the other Radio Shack stores didn’t do as well, so we came out on top of the heap. It’s more than just a little humbling to be winning a trip. When we bought the Sears Catalogue Store in 1974, Sears was the number-one retailer in the United States and had been for a few years. Sears started their steady decline through mismanagement, and we got to enjoy the agony of the steady slide downhill. A man by the name of Sam Walton (Wal-Mart) helped Sears with their fall from grace. It was difficult to be a part of the decline. All of the managers that we dealt with were inflexible, and were quick to point out that they were the number-one retailers, and they knew what they were doing, so, the problem with sales must surely be you!

We struggled with sales the whole time that we owned the store. We actually did fairly well, and we were one of their better stores. We even won a set of luggage one year as an incentive prize. But, Sears continued to bottom-out until one morning we came to work and turned on the television display just are they were announcing that all of the Sears Catalogue stores were closed. We had leases, bills and NO business. We were able to hold on long enough to open a Radio Shack. I won’t bore you with the many sad details of moving from a Sears Store to a Radio Shack. We made way less for a while but we won a trip to Hawaii the first year. Eventually the store started making money and we have traveled most all over the near world on Incentive trips. London, Switzerland, Ireland, Bermuda, Hawaii, Alaska and more. This year, Cozumel and Belize.

The trips that we take, we could actually leave our money at home. All travel, accommodations, luggage handling and meals are provided. They pick you up at your door and take you back to your door. In our particular case “Our Door” is Arcata. Like in, “You live where???” Garberville??? Is that really a place??

I wanted to study a little bit about the culture of the places that we would be visiting, so I would know what to look for. The first place that I started to research was Fort Lauderdale. There were three Fort Lauderdales. One up river at the forks, until it was destroyed. Then one at half way between the forks and the ocean. Then the last Fort was at the ocean. Something about three different Seminole Indian wars. The Seminole Indians were never defeated by the white guys. I also found out that some of the Seminole Indians were actually blacks. They had slavery in the southern states of the Mississippi delta hundreds of years before the California Gold Rush. When a slave would escape they would head deep into the swamps to avoid being recaptured. They eventually formed alliances with the Seminole Indians. Some of them even formed marriages, and made babies. So I have a jumping off point to study the history and culture. It sounds interesting.

By the time I get to Belize, I’m sure that I will know what I want to study there. Spyrock already gave me some tips. Thanks Spy! I know that In Cozumel, back in the 1500s you could buy a wife for 200 coco beans. Coco is still the way to my wife’s heart. Maybe I will go on a coco bean trading expedition!