Wasted Away Again in Margaritaville

There is a God.

Though we bobbed and weaved all the way over hill and dale to the damn Tahiti Tom strip mall, and had a good laugh about having been there before and having been unable to figure out how to lock our car, which at the time had been stuffed to the ceiling with luggage and just begging to be robbed, when we arrived, there was nary a car in the lot. OK there were three. My guess was bartender, bar back, fry cook.

Yippee.

As we spilled out of our respective vehicles, Chinese Fire Drill style, I was privately having an I Told You So moment. That’ll teach everyone to board a plane and drive miles out of the way to drink prefab cocktails at a cheesy franchise bar. McDonald's with beer taps. I’m not kidding. That uninteresting.

We enter the bar. You can literally hear the bartender’s rag brushing against the bar as he wipes it down. Not a good thing. We are THE only patrons.

We belly up and order an astonishing number of medicinal drinks and decide to make our own fun. Thank God for designated drivers.

And as if on cue, suddenly there are two random dudes on stage, telling us that they are the band, for chrissake, just back from break! (Break from what? Studying?) Alejandro and I approach them about what they play. They reply that they’ll play anything we want; the first one is for me.

My kind of band.

And in spite of it being a ghost town – on a Thursday night no less – the band played on and on quite admirably and we danced and danced (and yes, ate real food, if you can call prepackaged frozen hors d’oeuvres real food) until the bright lights came on, last rounds were downed, and two additional patrons who had snuck in unnoticed were walking out with us.

In the end I find that I have eaten my own words. We are having exactly the fun we came to have and are taking our instant party back to our house.