CJG's Big Night Out in San Juan

You know your Caribbean vacation has taken a serious turn for the worse when you're having dinner at the Outback Steakhouse in the Embassy Suites Hotel near the San Juan airport on Monday night, your flight doesn't leave until Wednesday afternoon, and you realize you could be eating off the exact same menu a mile from your house with the exact same group of three thousand overweight American tourists whose highest aspiration in life is to move to New Jersey and whose only ambition when they travel is to try and recreate exactly the same conditions they left at home.

There's nowhere CJG wanted to eat more in Puerto Rico than Outback.

Crankyjewishguy (CJG) and his family were supposed to be spending Monday night at the cliffside condo they'd rented overlooking Aguadilla Bay, but for some reason the city of Aguadilla decided to declare a water rationing program under which they delivered exactly no water to parts of the city for what was going on seven hours when CJG and the family decided to pack it in and head back to San Juan ahead of schedule. CJG is cranky on a good day so you can imagine how he was doing during the two hour drive back to San Juan in the pouring rain. His spirits were not lifted when the desk clerk informed him that the room his wife had just reserved two hours earlier was not available. Though Mrs. CJG had ambitious plans for the night in San Juan, the children (well, they are 20 and 15) declared a moratorium of their own on going anywhere outside the confines of the hotel, hence last night's outstanding dinner at Outback featuring exotic dishes with Australian names you can only find at about twenty thousand other chain restaurants throughout North America. At least CJG could pretend he was in Australia surrounded by spanish-speaking Puerto Rican waitresses.

While we're on the subject of Outback Steakhouse, sentient readers of this blog will recall that a few days ago CJG was kvetching about the fact that no Jew can travel, even to remote corners of the globe, without running into people he or she knows, or is maybe even related to. Hence, the chance encounter between CJG's son and two of his fellow Tulane students (brothers) and their parents on a local surfer beach on the west coast of Puerto Rico. But, just when CJG thought the world couldn't get any smaller, it did.

Before their hasty departure for San Juan late yesterday afternoon, CJG and his family were at a beautiful outdoor seaside restaurant enjoying another of the leisurely (i.e. excruciatingly slow) meals for which Puerto Rico is famous, when a woman comes over to the table and asks if CJG is from Boston, to which CJG replies, "Yes. Any other questions?" After all, it doesn't take a genius to guess CJG is from Boston since older son is wearing a Red Sox cap and a t-shirt that says "Charles River Y." Then she asks, "are you from Mayberry?" (For his own protection, CJG is substituting "Mayberry" for the real name of his town which, except for a very good Indian restaurant and a Starbucks, is in all other respects exactly like Mayberry.) OK, wonders CJG, who's stalking me now? Then the lady points to a twenty-something kid with long sideburns, a scruffy beard and a hat that once belonged to Mike Nesmith of The Monkees sitting a few tables away and says, "my son used to work at Starbucks in Mayberry and he used to see you in there every day." As if it isn't embarrassing enough to be outed as a daily user in front of his wife and kids, now CJG is going to have to spend part of his get-away-from-it-all-vacation saying hello to this lady and her extended family, including Kyle, who for a full year made CJG his tall decaf mocha latte with whipped cream and who, when he didn't prepare it properly, made CJG really cranky. What does CJG need to do to get away? Climb Mt. Everest?

CJG's Starbucks barrista, the one who tracked him down
on Shack's Beach in northwest Puerto Rico.