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Dallas, TXOct 29, 2005
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| ****PICTURES ARE IN THE 'PUERTO VALLARTA' ENTRY****************** We left Carlsbad on Saturday morning, figuring we'd take two days to drive to Larry and Donna DeBoever's house in Dallas. When we punched their address into the NAV system, Dallas turned out to be closer than we thought so we decided to drive straight through. Larry and Donna are dear friends of ours from Stamford (by way of Acton, MA) who moved to Texas a few years ago. I think I mentioned in a previous post that we have a tradition of taking a pre-holiday tropical respite with Larry and Donna during the first few weeks of November. Last year we went to Cancun and loved it so much that we decided to go back to the same place this year. We made hotel reservations and bought plane tickets early in 2005 before it ever occurred to us that we both might be unemployed and on an excellent adventure. When we realized that we wouldn't be home in time to make our flight from New York to Cancun, we changed our itinerary to depart from Dallas to Cancun. And then Hurricane Wilma hit, suspending tourism in Cancun. As it turns out, The Westin was so badly damaged that it STILL has not re-opened. Larry and Donna are no slouches in "adaptive vacationing" and by the time Jim and I got our cell phone messages, we had a new place to go (La Jolla De Mismaloya resort in Puerto Vallarta) with hotel and airline reservations made. All we had to do was call American Airlines to confirm the reservation Donna had made for us and we were good to go. I told Donna that when I got to Dallas, I was in desperate need of some buffing and polishing. I hadn't had my hair colored since I left home (it's true, this is not my natural color...) and hadn't had it cut since Salon Rox in Minneapolis. I needed nails manicured and toes pedicured; I needed to buy some resort-wear (since when we left Stamford in July we were planning on coming home before Mexico. She made me all my appointments and starting Sunday we began shopping. Now, in order to really get a feel for the next part of this story, you've got to have some context. Last year in Cancun, Larry and Jim were body surfing in the ocean and a rogue wave (or as Jim says, "a wussy little wave") caused Larry to hit his head on the ocean floor, compressing his neck into his spine. Larry was in a fair amount of pain, but was clear that he wasn't hurt; he was just injured (think football here). Larry comes from a family of Marines and is an ex-Marine himself (though I guess once a Marine always a Marine) so was very stoic about the whole thing (although the tequila may have had something to do with it!). We had a great time anyway and figured that next year Larry would be barred from any form of body surfing. As an aside, when he got back to Dallas he was told that he was VERY lucky he had been relaxed when he hit his head, because otherwise this could have been a much more serious event. As it was, he spent 8 months in physical therapy. Concomitant with Larry's neck injury, Donna gets a stress fracture in her foot (while walking in the mall with her Dad), is put in a walking cast and spends the next several months recovering from THAT and was cleared to resume all normal activity about a month before we showed up. Fast forward to this year. It's Sunday morning and we're all in the kitchen making coffee, fixing breakfast and getting ready for the day. I accidentally step on Donna's foot - the SAME FOOT that was just declared healed a month ago! It didn't seem like much of an issue at the time, but as we go about our business, her foot starts to hurt more and more. Granted, I'm schlepping her all over Dallas, but the foot is really bothering her so much so that while she's not staying off it, she's not able to do all the walking she would have liked. The second or third day we're in Mexico, Donna is slowly working her way into the pool, slips and lands hard on her bad foot. The pain is so excruciating that she turns white as sheet and from that point on really can't walk on it. The good news is that she's forced to take it easy, but the bad news is she's worried it's another stress fracture. This turns out to be the correct diagnosis. Donna is told to stay off it completely, put into a cast and given crutches. Ten weeks later she's just coming off crutches, though she still has a walking cast on it. Luckily for me, Donna has an extraordinarily positive attitude and has been so generous about not blaming me for the whole thing. Needless to say, I feel so guilty. Despite our travails, we had a blast in Puerto Vallarta. As you can see from the pictures, Larry and Jim did not much more than hang out in their respective chairs and hammocks while Donna and I had fun painting pottery. Though the hotel was an all-inclusive, it was in the midst of changing hands so not all the restaurants were functional. As a result, we ended up going out for dinner almost every night, ate in some great places and had a blast. We're all looking forward to next year, when Larry and Donna will DEFINITELY need a vacation as BOTH of their kids are getting married in 2006! Mazel Tov! |
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