My Year(s) on the Road - Part Four (Section A?)

I know, I know.  This is a new year, but I'm going to keep with my "Year on the Road" series because this blog needs some sort of continuity, and this may be our only hope.

So I just got back from my first real trip of this year, Bermuda.  WOO!  I left from Baltimore with my girlfriend and her family and I'll admit, I was pretty nervous ya know.  I was about to meet a bunch of people I had never met before, and if they didn't like me, I'd be on a boat with them for a week.

Luckily, they were all awesome, I don't know how they felt about me, but I liked them.

So as we sailed out of Baltimore, the party started.  There's something truly epic about watching a giant cruise ship sail under the Key Bridge with only a few feet of clearance to spare.  And then I started drinking and everything became a blur, not really though.

-- Editor's Note / I start a lot of paragraphs with "So".  That is all. --

It was roughly a day and a half long sail to Bermuda, and if you know anything about cruise ships, there's always something to do.  We drank, ate, napped, walked around the decks, watched a movie, and went to karaoke.  Now, I had never been to karaoke before, the closest I had come was in "Rush Hour 2" when Chris Tucker sings in the bar.


Let me tell you, it was awesome.  Epic-ly unforgettable.  Ah-ma-zing.


First, Kelly's uncle came up and blew the roof off the place with Bad Company's "Feel Like Making Love", and everything that followed sucked terribly compared to the opening act.  Hooray for my brutal "Cruise Karaoke" critique.

My first friend in Bermuda.

After the day and a half, on a Sunday afternoon, we made it to Bermuda.  We hung off the rails and watched the ship dock before grabbing some lunch and lining up to leave and go to Horseshoe Beach, one of the top ten beaches in the world, to see crazy stuff like really blue water and pink sand.

Well, it was crazy to me because all the beaches I had seen prior were Ocean City, Outer Banks, and Colonial Beach... none of those are exactly a staple on Travel Channel.

So we get off the boat and pile into a cab, me riding shotgun (On the left hand side, which felt weird) and took off.

Now, Bermuda is a "British overseas territory", so they drive on the opposite side of the road here.  And the people there are all really, really nice, which I dunno if that's the same in England.  But that's not the point here people.  So we're flying down these tight, narrow little roads and the cabbie and I are becoming best friends, chatting about how long he's been driving a cab (Five years), how long he's lived on the island (His whole life), talked sports (He's a Chelsea fan and was terrible at cricket), and he showed me where he lived.  He had a couch on his porch.

Sadly, we got to the beach and I had to leave my cabbie buddy, oh how I hardly knew ye, but we were at the beach so I got over it pretty damn fast.

Horseshoe Beach.

So we make the short walk to the beach, spread some towels and put up some umbrellas and I take off into the water.

Now, usually at the beach, the sand is hot as hell and kinda rough, but at Horseshoe, it's really, really, really fine and kinda pinkish-whitish, and pretty cool.  And the water was so clear.  And not cold.  And it was really awesome, I'm still really giddy talking about it.  So I'm going to stop talking about that part and move on to the next part.

After we got done swimming, Kelly and I decided to go exploring down the beach, which is bracketed by two big groups of rocks (As seen in the picture above).  We headed to the right hand side, where people had been climbing the whole time we had been there and quickly followed suit.  It was a little rough on bare feet, but the trip to the top was worth it.  Some of the pictures are below, I feel like this post is rambling on, but it'll be over soon.

We didn't know how to get down there, but it looked tough.

The view from the left-hand side of the beach.  

The old fort/building.

Okay, so then we piled into a cab to go back to the boat, sadly this cab wasn't driven by my friend, but by an old guy who called me "Doctor", which was fine by me (I cured his cleft pallet).  He had been driving his cab since 1972 and had lived on the island his whole life, leaving once to go see the World cup.


He told us about some of the history of the island and was kind enough to slow down so we could get a good view (Or in my case, pictures) of the world's smallest drawbridge.

Well, that's the bridge.  It's 18" across and is just plywood and metal.   You're probably asking "What the hell goes through there?  Is it just a tourist trap?  No, it's so sailboats can cross under and the mast on the ship can pass through the bridge.  It's awesome.

That wraps up "Section A" of Bermuda, stay tuned for details and pictures of the last days on the island and the trip back to Baltimore.

As they say in Bermuda, "Goodbye."

Plastic Battleship

Now that I've put that little public service announcement out there for everyone, I'm going to talk about something totally different.

We're one week past Memorial Day and summer is here, even though outside my window it's kind of overcast and freakin' 69 degrees.  I coulda typed "70", but "69" makes me giggle, my blog, my immature rules.

But real summer will be here soon, girls in bikinis, grills being fired up, humidity to the point where you wanna kill yourself, girls in bikinis, and getting drunk on the beach/at the pool with your friends and or family.

The pool I used to go to, or maybe not.  This was the only place
the looked close on Google so deal with it.

Now, my family used to belong to the neighborhood pool in Glenn Dale at the golf course (They call it a "Country Club" but let's be real, it's just a golf course).  Then Glenn Dale pool got closed down, maybe cuz it was a crap hole, maybe cuz no one went, or maybe because that one life guard was too hot to keep the pool open.

Let's side track and talk about her.  I didn't know her name, the only time she talked to me was probably when she would say "NO RUNNING!" and I'd speed walk instead, but I was in love.

She was tall, well, tall compared to my puny grade school body, brunette (The only non-blonde I'll ever love), and had a pierced belly button (Hot).  Below is an artist's rendition of her, apparently dressed for a Christmas party orgy?  Or she's a hooker.  Either way, I wish her the best of luck.

She left life guarding for a
more "lucrative" career.

So back on task, my pool.  To set the mood, it was your basic pool.  Varying depths, diving boards, giant toilet also known as the kiddie pool, and the classic snack stand.  The snack stand was great, it was run by the life guards, had a hard cement floor, picnic tables, and it's were we'd eat cold peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.

It also held the greatest candy bar in all of North Bowie.  We're talking twenty five cent AirHeads, wax bottles, KitKats, Hershey's, Bottle Caps, and Reese's.  It was amazing.  They also had a water fountain that tasted like pure copper.

Now, as far as the actual pool goes it was great.  Coach PeeWee taught us to swim and I refused to learn how to dive.  Still haven't to this day.  The best part about the pool though was that you could bring in any toy you wanted, unlike some other pools in the area.

I mentioned the toys for a reason.  My best friend when I was a wee little pup was this kid Joel.  He was the man, only child, German, hell, his parent's even drove a Volvo, the kid was living the life.  The first baller I ever met (Anthony Nelson, @MDsOwn, is the greatest one though).

Joel also had a Dad whose job was to do something and that something translated into Joel having a bunch of bad ass army toys.  He had a toy AC-130 gunship that had working guns, missile launchers, and a cargo bay that was a show-and-tell staple in kindergarten.

He also had a fleet of plastic battleships, patrol boats, aircraft carriers, and other things that we would spend hours playing with in the pool, attacking them with splash bombs and those awesome toypedos, until that damn adult swim kicked us out for fifteen minutes.  Bastards.

So anyways, I was just feeling nostalgic so I figured I'd right about it.  There you go, my next post will be about my trip to Bremuda so until then, check out my friend Gina's blog here for some cool stuff.