Meeting Porch · The Shanna Files · Story Five · Snot Nose Pig Patrol

The Barbados File

From the archives: a 2:30 AM alarm, fireworks, monkeys in the resort, a haunted hotel next door, Vanilla Ice at the piano bar — twice — and a midnight march through the Atlanta airport like a pack of animals.

A standalone story built from Shanna’s own Facebook dispatches, June – August 2025 · About a 5-minute read

The Patrol keeps one file it opens when it needs cheering up, and it starts, as all great operations do, with a countdown. On June 28, 2025, the dispatch out of Fort Myers read: This time next week — cannot wait to meet u, Barbados!!!!

The Patrol notes, for readers of Story One, that the countdown method was already perfected a year before the 98-day Punta Cana operation. Barbados was the rehearsal. It simply had more monkeys.

The 2:30 AM problem

The night before departure, Shanna filed a report that deserves to be taught in travel schools. She had booked a vacation requiring her to be up no later than 2:30 in the morning to get to the airport — on the Fourth of July, with fireworks going off everywhere, in her words, likely till the time u gotta wake up. Her official assessment: Good luck sleeping.

She went anyway. Dawn found her in Atlanta filing the only acceptable follow-up: Next stop, BARBADOS!! Vacation finally here!!! By mid-afternoon the wire carried a photograph of a hotel room view and three words of arrival: Made it to Barbados. The countdown had done its work. The island now had one week to hold up its end.

The four Snot Nose Pigs on a Barbados beach at golden hour, one rescuing a beetle on a leaf, one pointing at a monkey in a palm tree, one backing away from a crab, one holding a tiny suitcase — Barbados, early operations. Blue performs the first official bug rescue. Yellow has located the monkeys. Red has located the crabs, or possibly the crabs have located Red. Rainbow’s suitcase contains mostly smaller suitcases.

The week, per her own recap

Some travelers keep journals. Shanna filed dispatches — a room upgrade demanded and received on day one, because the first room didn’t have a balcony and the Fifth Pig does not vacation without a balcony; a good-morning report whose headline was the resort’s resident monkeys — and then, at week’s end, she published a full recap that the Patrol considers the finest single paragraph in the entire field wire. Its contents, faithfully:

The first beer at the airport. The rescuing of bugs. The beautiful views. The monkeys. Exploring a creepy abandoned hotel next door, with awesome friends they had just met. Harrison’s Cave. Driving past Rihanna’s house. The creepy crabs. And — her words, parenthesis and all — a piano-bar rendition of Ice Ice Baby that she was conspicuously leaving out of the official summary.

From the field report: the Vanilla Ice annex

She did not leave it out for long. Three weeks later she was reminiscing in public about the second time she got on stage with Vanilla Ice — and clarifying that the first time, she grabbed a beer bottle out of his hand. The Patrol has read this sentence many times. It does not get less magnificent. It is filed under Legends, Verified by Her Own Report, and the Patrol will not be taking questions.

Her final verdict on the island, for the record: Barbados is the friendliest island I’ve been to. The last full day was spent exactly as prescribed — soaking up the view. Then: Bye Barbados, until we meet again.

The pack of animals

And then the airport struck back, as airports do. The flight home from Atlanta to Fort Myers was delayed until 12:15 AM. The passengers were told gate A28. They went to gate A28. At gate A28 they were informed that their flight crew had just arrived — elsewhere — and that everyone should follow the crew to terminal T.

Her report of what happened next is the single most honest sentence ever written about air travel: We all followed them like a pack of animals.

The Patrol has attempted to improve this sentence and cannot. A planeload of tired vacationers, herded across an airport at midnight behind a flight crew, in a single obedient herd — she was there, she marched, and she filed it with the dignity it deserved, which is none, which is perfect.

The Patrol’s official verdict

Barbados: the friendliest island, confirmed by the only review that matters. Shanna is awarded the Golden Snout for Vacation, Total — countdown, balcony standards, wildlife rescues, haunted-hotel exploration, stage appearances, and one midnight cattle drive, all in a single week. The pack of animals enters Patrol history as an official maneuver.

More in Shanna’s file

The quiet one (July 27, 2025): Every file has a page the Patrol reads standing still. Two weeks after Barbados, Shanna learned that her gym buddy — a different Mark, a friend of about a year, thirty years her senior and, in her words, such a hoot — had passed away. He was fine one week and never came back to the gym. She wrote that he needed a tribute, and gave him one. The Patrol keeps it here, at the end of the happiest file, because that’s where she put it in her summer: right after the living, as a reminder to do it loudly. RIP, gym buddy Mark. The conversations were the point.
Evening standard (August 1, 2025): After a very crappy, looonnggg week — her spelling, preserved by the Patrol as a unit of measurement — the report was a better evening picture, sitting outside, relaxing to music. Filed under Recovery, Successful.

Story notes: Built from Shanna Kensinger’s Facebook posts — June 28, 2025 (the countdown), July 4–12, 2025 (the early alarm, the arrival, the monkeys, the balcony, the last day, the farewell, the midnight gate march, and her full recap), August 3, 2025 (the Vanilla Ice reminiscence), with the extras from July 27 and August 1, 2025. Dates, details, and the island’s friendliness rating are as she reported them; direct phrases are kept short and hers. The beach deployment, the investigation, and the awards are the Patrol’s invention, as usual.