Island time

HAMILTON, Bermuda -- It started out as a battle between Good Karma vs. Evil Karma. It turned out to have a happy ending -- a beautiful trip to a beautiful place, a place that defies description. I spent years pooh-poohing The Wife's desire to visit one of the touristy islands. "We live in Florida," I said. "Why would I want to go to an island?"

Bermuda showed me why.

Words won't do it justice. Beautiful cerulean blue water, pink-sand beaches, everything you'd see in a tourist brochure and then some. Imagine a couple in love walking along a peaceful, secluded, empty beach, and you have a good picture of what we were doing last week. And by that point, we wouldn't have been talking about how we almost didn't get there.

The original plan called for us to clear Bermuda customs at about 3:30 p.m. Saturday and have a little better than a day and a half of a weekend before I had to go work at the island's daily paper Monday through Thursday. That plan was scuttled when the plane's weather radar wouldn't function, which was a bad thing on a day when a tropical storm was hanging out off the Florida coast.

Time for Plan B. Between my wife's sweet-talking and my quick work on the airport's wireless connection, US Airways rebooked us on a Delta flight to New York, which connected to the last flight out of the U.S. to the island on American. We had a half-hour to catch the Delta flight and a little better than an hour in New York. No problem.

Oops, one problem. The Delta flight was landing at LaGuardia. The American flight was leaving from JFK.

We were already making our plans to just concede and stay the night in New York when Good Karma shoved it up Evil Karma's ass. We landed a bit early at LGA. The taxi hit little traffic on the 11-mile ride to JFK. We finally convinced the American gate agent that our handwritten permission note from US Airways was indeed legit. We landed in Bermuda -- without luggage, of course, but it would be there the next day, right? -- at little after 7 p.m., a little later than we wanted but still plenty of time to see the sunset during the taxi ride across the island.

Sunday was an absolutely glorious day. We zipped around the island on our rented motor scooter, which should have been pretty easy. I've been riding motorcycles for a good portion of my adult life. Nothing I know about riding an 800-cc motorcycle, however, translates to riding a 50-cc scooter. Especially not on the left side of the road. After some reflection, I have to be honest: Every second on the scooter was pretty damn scary. Point A and Point B, however, were wonderful.

We rode along the shoreline roads, stopping occasionally at big rock bluffs and tiny little beaches. We went to St. George on the island's northeast end, a charming little town with architecture from the 17th century. We ate and drank and ate and drank some more. Oh, and our bags did show up, but on Monday, not Sunday, and not before I had to spend about 2.5 times what I would normally spend for an emergency set of business clothes.

While I fussed with software during the week, The Wife had a spa treatment and a snorkeling trip. She deserved every minute of her leisure. She's been busting her ass without a real vacation for, God, I don't even know how long. It was glorious to see her so relaxed. It was worth every stride through those airports and worth every penny.

Here's the best travel tip I can give you regarding Bermuda: Make the trip on someone else's money. A perfectly ordinary lunch at the Asian deli for myself was $18. Every dinner we had was well into triple digits. I'm pretty sure the Cokes from the mini-bar were $8; I didn't even look. My expense allowance covered most of it, if you have a fairly loose definition of "most."

Thankfully, I'm a rich man. Not because I have a big bank account; far, far from it. What I do have, though, is the memory of kissing a beautiful girl while the Atlantic Ocean crashed into a coral reef behind us and a bright pink sunset above us.