Let's Slap

  

I thought a Friday afternoon is a great time to share the expression, “Let’s Slap!” Last week I spent some time at the Fiesta Key RV Resort & Campground, MM70 in the Florida Keys. I’ve never been to a RV resort. I didn’t know what it was all about. Now I do. I get it. It is whatever you want it to be, from roughing it in a tent to ‘glamping’ it up in a mini-mansion on wheels. No place is more ideal than a little piece of paradise called Fiesta Key. Pool, right on the ocean, snorkeling, boating, biking, and sailboarding…

   Which is the point of my blog today. You can meet all kinds of people. Serious full-time RVers, retirees, snowbirders, world travelers, weekend honeymooners, family vacationers and sailboarders. The group I met was from Tallahassee. (Shell Point Sailboard Club) This is a serious group that doesn’t take sailboarding or having fun with friends lightly. As a matter of fact, I think they have it down to an exact science. No, scratch that, they have elevated it to an art-form.

   This group has been travelling together, chasing the wind for many years. As with any group, when you hang that much together…a kind of second family atmosphere evolves and with family comes traditions. For example, every year one of the members carves a wooden Tiki that travels with the group and is auctioned off at the end of the year for charity. Which brings me back to “Let’s Slap!”, well, kind of…

   This is the almost tribal call that happens at sunset every day during their trips. I’m feeling the need to back track a bit. After a long day of camping in tents and sailboarding it is time to relax, unwind and celebrate the day’s adventures with a martini. Not just any martini. A very Perry martini. He seems to be the 'go-to guy' for the magic drink. He has perfected his gin martini mixing with much practice and it even includes hand-stuffed blue cheese olives…ummm…yum!

   I got the honor to join in on this lovely ritual on their last night at the camp (probably because I was longingly drooling over their blue cheese olives). And, it really is a ritual complete with rules and lingo. I only participated once, so I’ll try to do justice on the basics:

   1. Perry mixes the magic martinis at base camp. (But with the night’s winds, the drinks were poured at the destination).

   2. Martini glasses are filled. Two olives per.

   3. Several multi-lingual cheers are voiced. “Na zdrowie! Prost! Cheers!” And the first group sip is taken.

   4. Watch the sunset. Laugh. Sip. Repeat.

Now here’s the fun part, as the sun starts its descent, so do the martinis…and the 2 olives become a critical part of the ritual’s timing.

   5. The first person to ‘expose’ their olive, calls the first “slap”. “Let’s Slap” is shouted. The friends gather, rescue their olives, and raise them overhead for a rowdy cheer and eat their first tasty, gin soaked delight! Aaaaaahhhh…

    6. Fyi- now you PUSH your olive to the bottom of the toothpick to ensure that it keeps soaking in that gin.

   7. Watch the sunset. Laugh. Sip. Repeat.

   8. The next person to expose the remaining olive calls the 2nd and final ‘slap’. “Let’s Slap!”

   9. Finishing off the final olive and martini makes for a very ‘happy ending’, of course, to a lovely sunset tradition.

Oh what do those Jimmy Buffet fans say…’Just another shitty day in paradise.’

Skal! (my Swedish heritage and the word for cheers) Slainte! (the Irish version)

Cheers!