Just Duck-key

After the Gartner conference ended, Jim flew out to meet me and we drove down to Duck Key (about 1/2 way down the Florida Keys) where we stayed for two nights. I'll start off by saying that the service at the hotel/resort downright sucked. From malfunctioning hot tubs, to near total-refusal of service at the resturant/bar, and completely screwing up our bill both at dinner and for the room....well, is there a way to give a hotel a negative star rating?

Ok, now for the good stuff. I swam with dolphins. If you've never done this, you have to at some point in your life. The experience is...simply amazing. I was with a trainer, in the water, mostly on a platform so I was about waist-deep, but a few times fully in the water with the dolphins. I got to feed them, a lot, since after every trick they get about 10 pieces of fish. I got to do the tricks with the trainer, I got to do some of them on my own, I got to hug a dolphin, I got to "shake hands" with a dolphin, I got to rub their bellies (this totally reminded me of rubbing Zoe's belly), I got to make them sing and quack like a duck, I got to spin in circles with them, I even had one kiss me on the cheek. It was incredible. The experience was supposed to last only 25 minutes, but I think since I was the only one scheduled that day I got an extra 20 minutes of dolphin time. Excellent! Jim did not take part in this glorious adventure, something about the males getting agressive with his "privates".

We also did a couples hot rock massage. Now I don't normally get massages, I think I've probably had 2-3 official massages my entire life, so I had no idea what to expect from a hot rock massage. I've only seen pictures in magazines of beautiful women lying on their stomachs with dark grey stones lined up along their spines. I really thought that's what it was going to be like. But that's totally not what it was like. First, I was assigned a small Brazilian girl, and Jim got an American line-backer woman-thing. (I didn't plan it that way!) When asked, we both opted for deep-tissue massage. Then, the lights dimmed, the music started, and Jim promptly fell asleep (huh?). The Brazilian nymph worked my back for about 30 minutes before introducing the hot rocks. She did not lay them on my spine like in the pictures, instead she used the rocks themselves to do the massage. The rocks are quite hot and it took a lot of mind-control to not yell out "fuck that hurts!". Then she used the same approach (hand massage first, then bring in the searing stones) on my arms, legs, and neck. It was a bit painful, but at the same time a totally amazing, somewhat spiritual experience. I highly recommend this if you've never tried it.

After the massage was over we came back and fully took advantage of their hot tub and free food! Somehow we had to try and make up for the poor service at the rest of the resort!

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