Please indulge me & allow me to tell you about my day. Left my house at 7:30 & arrived Ft. Lauderdale International Airport 20 minutes later. I parked my car in the wrong parking garage which cost me $12 for the day. I found the LB Limited/Formerly Laker Airways (Bahamas) Limited ticket counter where I had to show my valid passport & pay $42 departure/airport/taxes. No big deal! Down to the gate I went where the jet was parked. Now I've been on some strange airlines like Servenca, Taca, Air Aruba & Copan, but I never saw anything like this! The plane was mostly white with colorful star fish, sharks & an unidentifiable fishlike thing painted all over it. It looked like one of those planes the kids ride at carnivals. Undaunted, I boarded & was greeted by the pilot who said "How's it shaking Bro!" He had a long beard, dreadlocks, & was wearing a necklace that had the map of Africa hanging from it. I knew that I was in proverbal, DEEP DO DOOOOOOO! The second officer was listening to a Bob Marley tape & was smoking some funny looking & smelling cigarette. I was escorted to my seat by the flight attendent who was wearing shorts & a tee-shirt that said, "We do it deeper in the Bahamas." I was not about to ask him any questions! The planes interior was as garrish at the exterior & boy were we cramped. But finally, all were boarded & off we taxied down the runway to the strains of some steel band playing, "Who put the Pepper in the Vaseline". The fight is a mere 18 minutes long, so the meal service had to be rushed. Each passenger got his or her choice of a mint or an orange sucking candy. I chose the mint. After the plane landed at Freeport, Grand Bahamas International Airport, FGBIA as the locals call it, I had to get through Bahamian immigration. The officer looked at my passport & said, "No way MON! Dat ain't you in da picture." It turns out that I had taken my wife's passport by mistake. I showed him my AAA card, my voter'e registration card & my drivers license. I finally showed him my CC>CC membership card which I had laminated to look really official. It seemed to do the trick! I was told that a limo would be taking me to the casino & to wait at the curb. So were 200 other people, who were herded in minivans like cattle. I was on a mission & nothing was going to bother me. I had woken up on the right side of the grass, the sun was shinning & the tropical breezes were blowing.
Ten minutes later, after the lunatic van driver drove all the way to the casino on the wrong side of the road, we arrived at The Casino at Bahamia. There was a wooden sign outside, with crudely painted words, which looked like they were produced by the same "artist" who painted the plane, announcing that I had arrived at the entrance. If any of you have ever been in the old Princess Casino, the only thing new was that sign! Same dingy lighting, a crap table from the Lansky era, and vintage slots all over the place. Anyway, I was there to secure new chips & tokens for my fellow collectors. I headed over to the roulette area & saw that the chips being used had a palm tree, a star fish & that unidentifiable fish that was painted on the side of the plane. No casino name! Next stop, one of the crap tables where the dealers looked like they had just come in from the party the night before & had smoked some of those funny looking cigarettes that the second officer was seen with on the plane. I asked for & got all of the $1 & $5 millennium chips that I needed. I heard the box man say to one of the dealers, "Hey Mon, dat guy just bought chips & he ain't even going to make a bet. I'll wager that he smokes funny looking cigarettes."
