Help Chie Blumenthal: Vacation At Last

GALVESTON VACATION

We did finally get to take a little bit of a vacation. Chie was longing for the beach and so was I. Aunt Pammy had a few days open for us to stay at the beach house so we took 'em. Fortunately for us, Beautiful Bobby was already down there and agreed to stay to help me out with Chie. It can be a bit, just a bit tedious managing Chie along with everything else going on. We are ever greatful for you both.

We somehow made it to the beach house in right around 4 hours, and we stopped twice! I guess we were just both excited to get back to the beach and the ocean water. Everybody needs that. A quick stop by the beach house to put on suits and pick up some fishing poles and right to the beach. We had a nice suprise when we got there and saw Keithly, like a big brother to me, making an appearance to celebrate his birthday.

When we got there it was just a bit cloudy, which is great seeings how it has been so hot these days. The water was unusually cool due to the cloud cover, yeah! I know some people think it unimaginable that we could take Chie swimming in the ocean, but I think the ocean water is some sort of cure all, it makes you feel alive, and heals mind body and soul. Nobody should be denied that and we havent had it a very long time.

We drove out onto the beach, unloaded the wheelchair, strapped on Chie's life jacket, rolled her right out into the water until it got to deep for the chair, stood her up walked her right out into the waves!!! Like it ain't no thing, Piece of cake.

As you all know, we are not too big on people telling Chie she cannot do something. We played in the waves for a couple of hours trying to body surf Chie in the waves on her back with the life jacket. It was fun and she was so excited, repeatedly saying "FEELS GOOD!!! FEELS GOOD!!!" We we would tell her "Go Find Balance Danielsan" like Mr. Miagi in Karate Kid. Then we got a little shallower so she could get on her hands and knees and balance against the littler waves. Nobody wanted to get out, except for more beer, but it was getting dark already so we had to call it a day. It turned out to be a pretty good day of therapy for Chie as she was working quite a bit out in the water. She also got a little work out climbing up and down the stairs of the beach house.

The next day the weather was turning so we only went to the beach for a little while and then down to the strand to see what was shakin'. We visited the stores and then went to get a little dinner and relax. It gets a little blurry after that, haha, but at some point, we weathered hurricane Eduard, which should have been called "light wind Eduard." It turned out to be nothing despite the hype of the news stations. Unable to take anymore news coverage of the "rain" and "no injuries, no calls to police or fire departments" we decided to head down the beach for a drive and see what was going on. Its hard to believe they could fill up 8 hours of constant broadcasting with so little to work with. Down on the strand, we saw the news reporters asking people what the thought about the weather and when we got home, we saw Chie on TV four times!! That was pretty cool.

We went out that night to our Mardi Gras watering hole, Slices. Didnt take long to make friends there,, I think it was all of about 15 seconds before Chie had two drunken pachanguerras at our table, Roslyn and Heather. They were both very kind to us and it was nice to meet them as the made the night fun and exciting. Found our hook Freddy in no time as well and also really great to have made his aquaintance, appreciate the hospitality (thank you Jason). It was probably one of the best nights we have had in a long time.

There were just a couple of things left that Chie wanted to do for it to be a perfect vacation; Stay at a hotel, Catch a Shark! Seemed easy enough, and probably would have been, but apparantly its the standard business practice of the hotel COMMODORE ON THE BEACH to cancel all reservations without letting any of there cusotmers know, when there is a hurricane or tropical deppression. I called to check our reservation and the lady informs me that they are closed??!!???!! How weird is that? I cant imagine if we had just driven 1,000 miles to get there and then the hotel says " oh sorry we are closed, we cancelled all reservations" Where would we go stay? What kind of hillbilly business practice is that? The lady said they made every attempt to contact all customers to let them know,,But "every attempt" does not include dialing all 10 digits of a phone number, as I held my phone up showing the call log asking "how hard did you try to contact me? Did you pick up the phone but forget to dial? or like maybe forget that there are 3 numbers prior to the seven of a phone number known as an area code that you need to dial as well?" I dont even think she could understand me as she stood there twirling her tongue around her only front tooth and asking me if we wanted to stay that night. I asked her if that was a rhetorical question to which she responded "what?" I just said "never mind" and walked out. Surely she didnt think I was gonna spend any money there. I want to take this moment to encourage all the kids on the island to stay in school.

We booked a room on the flagship over the water and it was great! We had a balcony and could watch the dolphins and surfers and feed our Honeycomb cereal to the seagulls. It was a lot of fun and made for a change of scenery appeasing Chie, who got to have a long hot bath like she wanted. They also had a great pool for us to swi m in.

Now we only had to catch a shark. We catch sharks all the time in the surf by Aunt Pammy's but this time we wanted to go BIGGER! Though we were all on vacation, it is sometimes work trying to manage Chie all the time and we all needed a break, so I figured if you gonna do somethin, do it right! I felt like my father as I looked at Chie and said "What say old Dabito blow a little coin on a kick ass drag boat? eh Chie, a little "eat my wake" sharkin trip? I rememberred Dan Akroyd saying that in the Great Outdoors. Chie was clueless. Never the less, We would like to thank Captain Chad and First Mate Brad of Extreme Island AdventureThanks for cutting us a deal on a SHARKIN' TRIP!!! I called Aunt Pammy just to let her know that if they got a wild hair, that we had chartered a 32' scarab to go shark fishin in the morning just in case Mr. McCrea wanted to go. She called back about 20 minutes later saying 'David, Mr. McCrea is coming." and so they did. Right ON! I knew he wouldnt get soft on me. It was a blast! We caught 7 Sharks in under 3 hours and all the sharks were 5 feet or bigger!! How great is that!!! After the seventh one the captain looked at me and said "you wanna catch another?" to which I replied "Nope, its hot as hades out here, I think we are all good. Lets get out of here." 7sharks in 3 hours, its like a dream . I dont want sit out there all day trying to chase that, it doesnt get any better! Thank for a great trip guys. We will see you next time down, and for anyone reading this who may want to go get on some sharks in Galveston , its;