Trinidad: A Bitters Sweet Symphony
Most business travelers would likely say the main benefit of taking a red-eye flight is simultaneously knocking out a night’s sleep and the trek, thus maximizing efficiency and minimizing lost work time. Being that I’m in the business of drinking for a living, however, I look at a red-eye as a sterling opportunity to get a really big head start on my business trip duties.
Piarco International Airport in Trinidad is a long way from the Imbiber’s West Coast headquarters, and by the time I arrived there, after nearly 10 hours in Complimentary Booze Class, I was in prime form. I’m talking Rat Pack on New Years Eve-level blotto.
“What do you mean I’m cut off, you thug? I’ve only just gotten here,” I barked at the bartender, a portly dreadlocked fellow named Dmitri who kept yammering on about the open container laws in Port of Spain. This, of course, struck me as quite rude and irrelevant until it dawned on me that I was in the backseat of a taxicab and not in the world’s smallest, hottest and most malodorous rum bar.
So I apologized to Dmitri, we split the rest of my mojito, and away we went. The 2012 Angostura Global Cocktail Challenge was underway, and this professional spirits scribe was raring to get to work. And after a 14-hour power nap, that’s precisely what I did.
