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."

Playing In the Street

It seemed like every day when I got home from grade school I would get in, take off my blue pants and white shirt and put on "play clothes" and run back outside where all gaming hell would break loose.

I'm talking about playing in the street man, the proving grounds, the football field, baseball diamond, basketball court, kickball place, and hockey rink. The border line in capture the flag, guns, and sometimes, the war zone for dodgeball and smear the queer. Okay, so maybe smear the queer isn't the best game to play in the street, but I like saying "smear the queer".

Now in the hay-day of my street baller status (wow, scary to type) we played alotta football, some baseball, and alotta guns. "Hey SamWow, what's guns?" I'm glad you asked loyal reader. Guns is a game where you get guns (NERF, water guns, toy guns) and run around yards and the street shooting each other. Guns was the perfect boys game and not a game for girls, a girls simple mind couldn't possibly comprehend all the running, diving, sliding, screaming, aiming, and trigger pulling. That's an art that cannot be learned quickly. The only problem with guns is what I'm gonna write below this.

Shooter - "You're dead! I shot you!"

Dude Who Got Capped - "No I'm not, you missed!"

Shooter - "No you're dead, lie down/go back to base!"

Dude Who Got Capped - "No, you missed!"

These arguments could go on for hours, sometimes ending in fights, usually ending in either the Shooter or Dude Who Got Capped running home crying like a little bitch. It's kinda like when you play dodgeball and you throw, hit someone, but they say they weren't hit. Arguements explode, laywers are called, and then the gym teacher takes dodgeball away from the whole class. Thanks alot Un-named Freshman in my high school class...thanks alot.

Kids in Cambodia play Guns for keeps.

But out here on North Cliff Road, we were uh, innovative? We thought we had the best idea ever. Why not combine playing guns with capture the flag. Oh my god! Totally original! But probably not. I guess before we could all handle our pieces(glocks, straps, guns), we played by tagging people but come on, it was like, 2001, technology and shit led us to guns. And it led to a awesome game that pretty much turned into Guns with a insignificant objective that looked alot like a tennis ball hidden in a tree.

Now, if your Dad was born in the '50s or '60s, ask him if he remembers/owned and Johnny Seven OMA (One-Man-Army). My Pop did, and I think a few of his brothers did too and they played Guns like champions. I don't really know what words to use to describe the pure awesome firepower that the Johnny Seven OMA contained so I'll put up the picture and tell you this - I want one. Bad. Heres the commercial. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GPhZsauluXM

So now I wanna talk about my true street sport passion. Street football. What was the only place I could pretend I threw like Tom Brady, ran like Marshall Faulk, caught passes like Jerry Rice, pass rush like Lawrence Taylor, and ball hawk like Ed Reed? The street. The home of the three, five, and seven Mississippi blitz (I only put seven in there cuz I'm told in MoCo they rush after seven. Lame.), the place where saying "Shotgun" meant you take a few steps backwards before you hike it and the defense can come at you free, without using their one blitz. Street football was the home of two hand touch rules, two completions for a first down(some went by car lengths), never punting, no extra points, where running the ball was done by the quarterback, and where a recievers route was a thirty step fade route that would cut back twenty steps towards the quarterback.

You learned to talk smack, you could "Moss" people (for those of you who didn't grow up in Gorgeous Prince Georges, to "Moss" someone was to make an epic catch and burn the coverage for a touchdown), you played until dinner or until it was too dark to see the ball, the curbs were out of bounds and mailboxes, cars, and cracks in the street were the endzones. It was the sport at it's purest form, drop back and sling it. And if you were like me, you always tried to do touchdown dances like Ladanian Tomlinson, Terrell Davis, T.O., or some other superstar.

It was an amazing thing to play and still is today. On Christmas we played on my Grandmommy's street (a fine place to play) and it just gets competieve. It starts off all fun and games then you start fudging holding rules and pass intereference (looked that one up in the dictionary). This years game was a rout but it's still fun, I still picture myself as Jason Campbell, Donald Driver, Jerrod Mayo, or Champ Bailey even though I'm unathletic and white.

So that's what playing outside was to me for the most part, if you have anything awesome you used to do playing on the street when you were a kid type something up and send it to my e-mail (samcarroll9@gmail.com) or find me on facebook (SamWow Carroll) or twitter @therealSamWow.

Also, in my last post I said this was gonna be about Jim Vanve, rocks, and my future wife(maybe that'll be the next post). I got off work and stepped outside and decided this post would be more suiting to the weather seeing how it was about seventy degrees in the District.