St. Thomas was the second stop on our island hopping cruise in 07'. Putting a camera in my hands (even just a little point and shoot one) for the first time in over 15 years turned out to be a bad idea for my friends as I went off cock wild photographing everything in sight, and loosing them numerous times in the process. The day before on the tiny island of Tortola it got so bad I lost our entire group completely and didn't find them again until dinner time back on the ship. Here on a much much bigger Island they were not having it, and told me to stay close. But within 10 minutes of reaching the shopping district they had lost me again. I tried finding them everywhere for a good 20 minutes or so with no luck. As I looked up and down the streets and shops 90% (well maybe only 80%) of my attention was spent looking for a familiar face, the rest of my concentration was on the colorful and interesting looking shops. I wanted to stop and photograph some of them, but I knew we all wanted to go sightseeing after our group finished shopping for everything they wanted to get here, and they wouldn't do that and leave me alone, so I restrained myself. Fortunately I spotted two of my friends coming out a jewelry store and as they yelled "there he is", we all joined up, and they formed an escort flanking me to keep me from wandering off again. After hitting several more shops here in this outdoor mall we headed for a large wine shop that some of the girls had patronized before. As they talked about all the great things they just purchased everyone temporarily forgot about me, and predictably I slid back, fortunately unnoticed to take advantage of the situation. Wanting some record of this colorful place I quickly turned around and slid over to one side of the banister so it would clearly look like a railing in the photo and not just a long black strip sitting annoyingly in the foreground. With that little bit of creativity out of he way I snapped the picture and hastily raced around the corner and caught up again with the group. As I tucked my point and shoot camera back out of view from my friends watchful eyes, I determined to behave for the rest of the day. A resolution I kept - for about 15 minutes...
dscf_00239 St Thomas shopping mall
