Some tourists get off the cruise boat at Costa Maya and shop at the port. Some find a beach nearby or do a touristy excursion. My grand-daughter Shelby hires a couple of guys and their boat to take us to Bacalar with some fine stops along the way. I've put together an eight minute video that captures the feel, please drop on in!

My cabin on the Carnival Magic was huge by most standards. Here's the video:

We departed the ship around 0900 yesterday and Ubered to the Orlando airport. We wanted to check our luggage into the Spirit Flight From Hell (another post...) at around 1900, early, but they wouldn't let us. Then Shelby had a great idea to rent a cheap car, put the luggage in the trunk, and go play in Orlando. Brilliant, so she booked one online from her phone and rented a car.

Had a fun time in Orlando, survived a Spirit flight to Pensacola and I hit the road north in my truck around 8pm. Layed over in a rest area south of Mongomerery and made it home alive and on time the next day.

Here's the last set of photos, from a variety of sources, for the cruise. Click on the chick in pajamas to see them.

Man it's been an interesting few days leading up to today, Christmas. I was sitting out by the pool with a drink in hand trying to see either Florida or Cuba and all I saw were big tits and fine asses.

So, I decided to go to my room and get a post up, and here we are.

My new mantra has been get home alive and on time due to the fact that some shit going around knocked me on my butt. I ain't sayin it's the C because there's no way I'm going to get tested here on this boat and go into lockdown. Sorry folks ain't happenin.

In the meantime I've continued to have a great time and this evening only promises more, so hang on! Meeting Shelbs at the tubs shortly (even though I've been there and done that today :-) and who the hell knows what tonight will bring before we get kicked off the boat tomorrow...

You know the drill, click the photo below to see the set.

Have I mentioned that I really love my grand daughter Shelby? If not, consider it noted. She took Andy and I on an amazing Mexican adventure day before yesterday, cab ride out in the country, private boat, amazing water, and I swan with the catfish, goggles on. Damn... Simple words on this blog can not define it.

And then of course I proceeded to get drunk at the bar on deck ten. Thankfully a stranger hoisted my sorry ass off a deck chair and got me back to my cabin. Thank you sir!

So what's in store for today? Oh yea, my favorite place on the planet Earth, Roatan! God I love life...

Update: I have some photos, sitting on a sim card inside Shelby's gopro, I'll put them up later. Here's what I got from Roatan yesterday, and we are currently docked off Belize. Staying on board today, sore throat and hot. Click the photo below to see the set.

Carnival's one device at a time internet access is a royal caribbean pain in the ass. Do I need airplane mode on or off, VPN active or not, internet on or off while I try to connect via login.com. I spent half the day yesterday out of touch with Shelby and Andy because of this but they finally found me in the hottub.

It was a great fun day at sea, discovered a new cocktail called an XO something and don't quite remember getting back to my cabin, but here I am.

And I've managed to combine all of the new photos from my camera and phone into a new album, clickable below.

Riding towards the coast from a landing in Orlando in a Uber, I noticed cars pulling off to the side of the freeway and getting out. WTF? All of a sudden Andy and the driver remarked about the streak in the sky from their side.

Turns out it was a Falcon X launch carrying satellites into space. This is rocket country after all!

The hotel was fun, had a nice breakfast, rode bikes to the beach and then ubered over to the boat. Boarding was crazy and didn't settle down until we slid into a hottub on the upper deck with a cocktail in hand.

People are running around masked but we've pretty much said fuck that. It's a vaccinated cruise and you need a negative test to get on board, so kick us off on some island if you got an issue Carnival!

The evening was pure decadence between lots of great food and booze. I got more video then photos but I can't process them untill I get home, so here's what I got, promise to do better on Day 2. Click the photo below to see them.

There came a moment at 5am this morning, rolling through Montgomery AL in my sweet running little truck, full tank of gas, coffee in the holder, window down with warm southern air rushing in from the dark, hiphop blasting from the radio, when I thrust my fist in the air and yelled at the top of my lungs I'm alive! Fuck the past!

Good morning America.

I was sailing down I-65 this afternoon, running cruise drink options through my old brain, when I decided I wanted a cocktail at the rest area. I haven't had a drink in five days but I always drink at R/A's, so I called Daniel.

I asked him to find me a liquor store off the highway around Birmingham, AL. and within minutes my text beeper was beeping. It turned out perfect, on and off the highway quickly, and then proceeded to run into a Birmingham traffic nightmare due to a wreck down the road.

Daniel and I have a great friendship, he don't judge me when i fall off the wagon and I don't judge him when he drops by and drinks while I don't.

I've got a great spot, ate a sandwich, and cheers to my friend back in Tennessee. At Shelby and Andy's tomorrow morning!

I'm going to get an early jump on my Pensacola run, where I'm hooking up with Shelby and Andy for a flight over to Orlando Saturday afternoon. As soon as I get the results back from a Covid test at my local clinic Friday afternoon, I'm hitting the road.

Molly has agreed to start cat sitting Saturday morning so the spoiled old cat named Piper will be just fine. I'm anxious to hit the road and get on down it, so here I go.

I've selected a Rest Area mid state Alabama to layover at, called the Chilton R/A. Looks nice and roomy and it's halfway to Pensacola.

Maybe one day I'll monetize my YouTube channel...

The new cruise to the Caribbean is days away, so here's the itinerary:

 • Sun, Dec 19 - Depart Port Canaveral, FL. My previous southern adventures have been out of Miami, so this is new.

 • Mon, Dec 20 - At sea.

 • Tue, Dec 21 - Costa Maya, Mexico. Second time here, Shelby is making plans.

 • Wed, Dec 22 - Roatan, Honduras. Second time here, maybe just head out to the West End and hang.

 • Thu, Dec 23 - Belize City, Belize. Third time here, second time this year. Sheesh, I need to get a life!

 • Fri, Dec 24 - Cozumel, Mexico. Been here before also. At least I wasn't onboard when the ships collided!

 • Sat, Dec 25 - Christmas at sea, thank god.

 • Sun, Dec 26 - Return to mainland.

The red stuff (possible tornados) missed the blue dot (my house) by just a bit to the East this morning. The rain was whipping down the street and the creek filled up fast. I was in my safe spot (the living room chair) watching the weather channel mention Lawrenceburg, TN.

A couple of days ago I finished up a great workout at the gym and decided to get a walk around the path before dinner. As I approached my parking spot I noticed a woman sitting alone on the bench there. I didn't want to make her feel uncomfortable so I headed straight to the path and started my walk. As I came around after doing a full loop I noticed she was still there so I walked by her to make sure she was ok. The sun was going down and a cold night was coming up fast.

She was wearing a thin jacket and plastic sandals, with an old guitar at her feet. I asked her if she was ok and she told me she was homeless. I didn't hesitate a second and asked her if she would like to come back to my home. No idea what I was getting myself into, but I had no choice, as one human being to another, who has been homeless in life, I had to step up. She said yes.

I fed her some of Daniels great homemade chili he dropped by the other day and let her take a shower. Then we just sat around as her story unfolded in front of me. She was 31, born and raised in a troubled home right here in Lawrenceburg, an outcast to her family, struggling with drugs, no ID and with about five bucks on her and a pack of smokes.

Gena told me she really wanted to get into a shelter and I told her we would work on it tomorrow. Daniel got home and came over as usual only to find his chair taken up by this woman. At that point we sprang into action. We pulled the bed from the back of my truck and put it on the floor in front of my big TV. Daniel went to his house and got a bunch of warm clothes he had, and brought them over. I pulled down my brand new backpack I bought for the Summer Belize trip that I never used and she stuffed them all inside. I asked what size shoe she wore and she said 10, which is my size, and I hooked her up with some good shoes. Daniel drove her up to the Dollar Store and bought her a bunch of essentials a woman needs.

The next day (yesterday) we started calling the local shelters, which were full. She had no phone so we used mine. She made several calls to her mom and from the screaming and the drama I heard on the other end, I knew that wasn't going to work. She had an older friend named Jerry who has helped her out in the past but he had his grand-kids with him and couldn't help her. As the sun went down on Thursday she was still here.

Gena is a tall girl, about 5-10, with an appetite to match so I kept her fed between what I had, and some fast food. When she woke up this morning I had coffee for her and a healthy bowl of cereal and berries waiting. Jerry had texted me about a place up in Columbia named Crossroads so Gena called them and they said she needs some form of ID and a birth certificate. Did I mention she had nothing of that sort.

We drove to the local health department to see about a birth certificate but they needed ID to release it, catch-22. Then she got the idea to go to her old bank where she had no money but maybe they had her ID on file. That worked! Back to the health department with a paper copy and she got her birth certificate! Armed with these documents we headed North for a thirty mile drive to Columbia, with fingers crossed.

Gina was accepted at Crossroads! She gave me a big hug and grabbed her guitar, backpack, shoes and the remaining Long John Silvers fish from lunch today, and went inside...

My son Riley turns 35 today. He's done well with those years, a fine man, a successful career, now a great father, and he sure makes pretty babies!

Update: My friend Crisinda just pointed out that baby creation is a two way street. Jessica also makes pretty babies! :-)

I've added a new category under the menu item Stuff for my old blog. The first new category is Random Post. If you like, this will drop you randomly into one the 2,232 Posts from my life in Idaho. Rinse and repeat, good stuff!

I've also ported over some cool tools from the old blog, and created a couple of new ones:

 • Posts By Category - This shows every Post within a Category, for individual selection.

 • Category Posts - This presents each Post within a Category, sequentially.

My old blog BusDriverJim was not responsive and looked crappy on the phone. That blog represents a major portion of my time in Teton Valley and I like to reference it, as I did with my new app PiperDays.

I had written a bunch of functions and custom code for the current WordPress theme so I extracted all of that today, updated to a new responsive theme, and put it back in. This was risky as hell, I might have turned it into a slobbery mess, but it worked!

Drop into PiperDays and try out a few of those Piper links under History, they work great, hell even the comments have resurfaced. :-)

I realized I should put together some instructions for Molly when she watches Piper in a couple of weeks, so I thought the hell with printed instructions, I'll just make a website!.

Yea, that's just what I do, so I grabbed the domain name piperdays.com and did it.

It's pretty cool and you can check it out here. The idea is that my pet sitter Molly can just open it up on her phone and know my wishes, contact information, and a bit of history about the cat she is watching.

I love the internet!

I dropped by the hospital today and picked up the records from my visit to the ER last month. Took them over to my clinic, payed my $10 and asked to see the new doctor in the house. They finally got their own Primary Care physician and Wednesday is the only day she is in.

She was terrific, went through the Cat Scan, the EKG and the blood work results. It's actually a cool thing to get your head scanned and it showed absolutely no issues. The EKG showed my heart as healthy and strong, and my blood is great in all areas. She said that despite my old ugly face I have the body of a 21 year old.

Ok, she really didn't say that but she would have if she could have. I also told her I figured out why I passed out and her eyes lit up as she awaited my answer. It's called the drinking on an empty stomach syndrome. She nodded wisely and said that sounds probable, especially since I mentioned Tennessee whisky.