What I Did On Summer Vacation

Well, I'm sitting in the Cancun airport typing on my MacBook Pro (best purchase I ever made outside of Sarah's engagement ring), getting ready to fly back to Charlotte. My wife is sitting beside me looking as beautiful as ever, with a dark tan she's quite proud of. We got to spend a lot of time in the sun relaxing, so it's been great.

We got here Friday a week ago. We landed in Cancun airport, got our luggage and then our rental car and we were off. One problem. Sarah, who was taking care of all of the traveling details, had forgotten to ask for directions to the house. She had gotten some basic clues from emails wih the owners of the house we stayed in (like what resorts the house was in between) but we had no idea how to get to the house. We had emailed the owners, but (we found out later) they were at a golf tournament for the day and missed our calls and emails. Just as it was starting to get dark, we decided to try down this little street beside one of the resorts and we lucked out! It was the right one. We went to the property manager's house, got the keys, and literally as darkness settled we got into the house. It would have sucked to try and find the place in the dark, so we were quite happy.

Most days, we just lounged around the house. The house is about 4000 square feet and is about 50 yards from the beach, and it was sunny every day except 1, so we would hang out at the house and just tan and relax. Every day, we would head into Playa del Carmen, the closest town (Cancun was about 30 minutes north of where we stayed) and got dinner at a nice restaurant, but for the most part we just stayed at home. Playa has a Wal-Mart, Sam's Club and several large Americanized stores, so a couple of meals we bought food, brought it home and I cooked. It was nice.

My favorite day was on Tuesday. We went to a water park of sorts called Xel-ha. Basically, it's a natural water park, right on the ocean. There's an inlet with coral reefs throughout, a river that empties out in the ocean, a place to swim with the dolpins, assorted restaurants and tons of stuff to do. The day pass that we got was all inclusive, so we got all our meals, free drinks, snorkel equipment, towels and lockers. We pretty much snorkeled the entire day except for lunch. It was great.

There were certain places where the fish were fed, so it was fun to swim there as hundreds of fish surrounded you waiting for food. We swam all the way out to where the inlet turns into the ocean and there were some huge Grouper fish that were bigger than Sarah...they were being fed, so they were swimming past us, brushing against us, getting food...it was awesome.

After lunch, we went up to the top of the river and snokeled down the river, stopping a couple of times to jump off 20-30 foot cliffs (that was fun). Then I talked Sarah into giving up her life vest so that we could dive down into the water. That was when the real fun began. The last 3 hours, we just spent out in the water, around the reefs and rocks in the inlet, diving down to find all kinds of fish and coral and cool stuff on the bottom (the deepest the inlet gets is about 25 feet, as far as I could tell).

So, that was a great day.

Overall it was a very refreshing vacation. There were things (like my iPod) that had been bothering me for a while that I got to take care of, finally. There was music that I had been wanting to listen to in depth for a while that I finally got to buy and listen to. From a creative standpoint, I was nearing empty...I was just tired and needed a break. Now, with batteries recharged, I'm all pumped up to write more new stuff that will hopefully make the record.

I'm excited.

I have said this before several times, but thanks once again for all your support. This blog has changed a couple of times, but I think it's changed for the better. I have decided to refrain from using names of fellow contestants, unless I receive specific permission from them. I may use general terms when talking about friends, but I think it will be best to refrain from names on the blog. Also, I will focus mainly on music stuff and personal stuff here. I may write about the tour, but I will try to focus on stuff that happened personally. There are a lot of people out there that feel the need to tear apart every word I write hear and attempt to use it against me. I could care less about them, but I would hate for their stupidity to ever get back to my friends and for my friends to question even for a second that what those people are accusing me of is true. So, from here on out, I will do things in a way to avoid questions. And eventually the tour will be over and life will go on and the people on here will be the fans, not the "haters".

I love you all and say it again: thank so much for your support and love.