As I'm sure none of you are wondering, where oh where could Dan have gone? Normally, I'd say nowhere and you wouldn't be surprised considering how infrequently I post. But this time, I do have a reason. A damn good reason. I just returned from Mexico. Cancun, to be exact. And for your reading pleasure, here are the highlights that I can remember, although I can't promise anything as the hotel was "all-inclusive" and I did imbibe just a wee bit of alcohol. Maybe a little bit.
June 7th - Thursday - Arrived at the folks place around 9, unsure if I wanted to stay up all night and sleep on plane or just go to sleep then and struggle with turbulence. Decided on the former and spent the night chilling with my sister upstairs in a house that felt like
McDavid's third floor sans air conditioning. Not the most pleasant evening. One other bad note: parents going through
pre-flight
jitters. Not that they dislike flying, but rather the "do we have everything; what else do we have to do to make sure we have everything..." crap that goes on.
Whatev! It's times like that when I realize how lucky I am to be away from them and in my own place.
June 8th - Friday - Met the limo at my aunt' place around 3 where Wild Bill, our rather charming driver drove us to the airport. I figured that I'd just grab something to eat there, but alas, nothing was open except the bagel shop and a
hot dog/brat place. Somehow, I can't make myself eat brats at 4 in the morning. So I passed on food. We goofed around until 6:45
ish, then went through luggage
car wash and checked in at the gate. Flight was around 3 1/2 hours, then a 30 minute bus trip to the hotel, Dreams Cancun. Six lovely stars and quite lovely. My cousins, the one on his honeymoon and the one getting married, met us in the lobby. Champagne and cookies where served, which is probably not the greatest combination for an empty stomach. I passed on the '
pagne and we were allowed to check in at noon. After throwing on my swimsuit, we all ran down to the pool bar and met Miguel, the man who served drinks there 6 days a week. His mix drinks were strong and managed to replace themselves swiftly, whether you wanted them to or not. I'm just taking a wild guess here, but I'm pretty sure he wanted everybody to be drunk. Just going out on a ledge there. Anyway, lots of drinking ensued (and I'm not drinking Corona again for many many months as the only options were Corona,
Modelo Negro and Bud products). Highlight of the day, besides being in Mexico and on vacation, was the drunk guy at the end of the bar who fell asleep at the pool bar, vomited in the pool and had to be removed via wheelchair to his room to sleep it off. Why was this the highlight? He was at the hotel bar drinking later in the wheelchair.
June 9th - Saturday - More family and friends arrived and I spent the whole day in the pool bar. While it was fun, it was also more than my pasty white Irish skin could take. I managed to just burn on my face, shoulders and most of my torso, but my right side blistered pretty well.
Youch! We had a dinner party that night for 28, which made Hector, the
maitre'de for the
Oceana Club, gave me a very puzzled look for that request. Still, good times. We headed for the swing bar, which is on the ocean with actual swings on the bar (hence the name). It was a pretty sweet idea, sitting on a swing and drinking. We ran into some kids (they didn't look much older than 15) who were doing shots there. So we conspired to do something slightly mean...we made them all drink a cement mixer (
ick!). It's Baileys with lime for those who don't know, which curdles the Baileys in your mouth. Kinda gross, but funny at this point. They tried to get back at us by making us take some
froufrou shot, which was stupid.
Ahh well, beginners.
June 10th - Sunday - Spent most of the day napping at the beach to ride myself of a bit of the sunburn and the hangover that I had. Too many
Absolut and lemonades.
Ahh well. Uncle Bob and Aunt Kris came down (they're not actually related to me, but our family just keep growing with uncles and cousins who aren't related to us, so what the hell?) and Uncle Bob got incredible drunk in about an hour. High comedy ensued:
Me - I'll take an
Absolut and Lemonade.
Uncle Bob - What's that?
Me -
Uhhh, it's
Absolut and Lemonade?
UB - Oh yeah, I knew that.
A little later,
Doobie (don't ask how he got this nickname, as I don't know the specifics but I can guess as well as you) comes over to the bar.
Doobie - I'll take a Jack and Coke.
UB - What's that?
Doobie -
Uhhh, it's Jack Daniels and Coke?
UB - Oh yeah, I knew that.
After attempting to wrestle my cousin Michael under the water, Uncle Bob went to his room and passed out. My top three favorite Uncle Bob stories include him trying to outdo his dad in who got a better deal on fertilizer, his going to a festival and eating 30 ears of corn in one sitting, then going to the hospital to get his stomach pumped (it was just so good, I had to keep eating it) and then him, in a completely sober state, saying "I love salt so much, I could have been a deer. Just stick me at the
salt block and I'll be there all day." He then went and licked the air as if it were a
salt block. Good times.
June 11th, Monday - Spent the day down by the ocean, listening to the sounds of the ocean and having Alejandro bring me drinks. So relaxing. We decided that night to go out to Senor Frogs, which was pretty cool for a while. They had a number of "let's get crazy moments" there, which included my cousin getting on stage to dance like Michael Jackson. He did the moonwalk, but forgot to throw in a crotch grab. Alas, where is Julio
Lugo when you need him? The guy running the show told my cousin he danced like Rick James. (I'm Rick James, bitch!) Then, with a bottle of bubbly up for grabs, the bar side beat the restaurant side 3 to 2. The final contest, with the score tied at 2, was for the four women to get a man with a bra on his head up to the front. So Sean raced up there with a bra from a girl from our group on his head. That was one. Kenny, another one of our guys, was grabbed by the drunk
skank who ripped off her own top and bra (she looked like she had practice at this), grabbed Kenny and pulled him up to the front before putting her shirt back on. I leaned over to Justin, the guy sitting next to me and said "well, anybody who talks to her tonight will end up getting some." He could only agree. Then, Jake, one of Sean's good friends, got called up on the stage for a dance contest. Now Jake has his hair shaved on the sides, but it's down to his butt. So while the other contestants all wore wigs, Jake let his hair down, grabbed a captain's jacket and proceeded to do the
Metallica head roll. Pretty sweet move. The MC grabbed Jake's hand and told everybody to give him some love. Then they grabbed four guys from the audience (by now, it was packed...couldn't really move and more people where coming in) and had they strip down to their boxers. They had to blow up a balloon until it popped, then chug a 30 ounce beer. The first two guys done spilled so much of their beer they was disqualified, so the third place guy won. But they all went down the slide and into the lagoon. High comedy. Then Justin came back from the bathroom and he, Lady and I split to head to a different bar. Justin almost got himself arrested at Frogs as he looked for the bathroom but found himself outside. When he finished his business, he tried to come back in but found a security guard there at the door who wouldn't let him in and threatened to throw him into prison. "If there's one piece of advice my father gave me, it was never get yourself thrown into a Mexican prison." Sounded pretty good to me. We chilled at the hotel bar until everyone else came back, which wasn't long. While we were waiting, this girl kept walking back and forth across the lobby. She had one long pant leg and one that looked like a pair of shorts. It was really strange, so we tried to figure out if she was going for a new fashion or what. Then it came to this:
Justin - Maybe she's a pirate
Me - Nah, she's a hooker.
Justin - A pirate hooker.
Lady - With a prosthetic leg!
Me - A pirate hooker whore with a peg leg...
Justin - Made of pineapples.
Whew! I hope that puts you in the same silly mood we were in. Sean came back from the club and he was kinda drunk, but decided to order 6 Bud Lights and 6 Coronas at last call (1 am). They came and he left with everyone else but Justin and I. So we carried all the beer up to Justin and Lady's room, ordered room service and kept on going. That's where a new sport was invented...extreme dolphin diving. Now, I know what you're thinking...extreme dolphin diving? How extreme could that get? Well, let me tell you. The building was on a 45 degree angle, we were on the fourth floor and there was a pool where the dolphins were at the bottom of the hotel. It was pretty cool because you could get up and watch the dolphin show in the morning (nothing like the donkey show, or so I've heard) without having to leave your room. The objective of E.D.D. is to take your chair down the side of the building at high speeds and jump into the pool before hitting the catwalk just under water. I'm sure the dolphins won't attack you when you get in there with them...
Our hanging out also led to a wonderful phone call from the guards who walked around the
premises.
Guard - Do you speak Spanish?
Me - No.
Guard - Get off the ledge.
Me -
Ok.
Good times.
June 11th, Tuesday - Everyone was recovering from the night before, so it was a chill sort of day. Keri and
Doobie got engaged on this day, which is pretty cool. Congrats to them. We ended the day at the hotel bar because it started pouring rain (a common theme at night), where we tried to get the band there to play songs that we wanted to hear. We were 2 for 10 in requests. Ah well, tough luck.
June 12th - Wednesday - The day of the wedding. Spent the morning in the flea market, looking at tattoos and buying junk. I found the perfect tattoo. It had all the necessary elements. It was a skull, on fire, with a knife through it and a snake wrapped around the skull, also on fire. Perfect. My favorite lines of the day - Come to my shop. I've got more junk for less.
I'll show you something you've never seen before! I've got the stickiest of the icky. They were all over shadowed by one of the shop owners calling to Justin from across the street. Now Justin has a goatee, which is rather large and ominous. He looks like a dude who should ride a motorcycle and have lots of tats (he doesn't have the tats...don't know about the motorcycle though). This guy is yelling at us from across the street - Hey whiskers! Mr. Whiskers! Come see my shop Whiskers! Sounds like the name of a cat. Justin wasn't very pleased.
It was overcast and I was afraid it was going to drizzle on us again, but fortunately it held off. The ceremony started around 5 and was probably half an hour. Megan (not my sister Meghan) looked beautiful in her dress and Sean couldn't have looked happier. Photos were taken on the beach, including one of both immediate families jumping (strange). We speculated that the photographer was going to show his friends that picture and say look what I made the gringos do. Then there was dinner and drinking, where Megan's nursing friends got themselves all kinds of drunk. Two of them had the heads down, deep breathing thing going on. Good times. One of them later bit it on the salsa floor. Too bad I can't remember names...
June 13th - Thursday - The last day of vacation. I spent most of the day chilling by the ocean, breathing in the smells and relaxing. I finished a couple of books, including
Three Nights in August by Buzz
Bissinger (he wrote
Friday Night Lights). Great read, good insight and really nice if you're a Cardinal fan or if you hate the Cubs. Thanks to Caleb for that one. That night we all took a boat trip from 5 til about 9. Plenty of drinking, a beautiful sunset, some really funny stuff. We even planned on boarding a pirate ship (one of those show ones) but we forgot our cutlasses and sabres. Alas.
We kept the peg-legged pirate hooker whore joke running all week and my dad, who has the handlebar mustache going, was called Pancho Villa all week long by everybody on the staff at the hotel. When he wasn't there, the serving guys would all say "where's Pancho Villa?" Really funny stuff. It was a great trip and I'm happy that I went, but I really missed Belle a lot. I wish she could have come with, but I think it will help us being apart in the long run. We probably needed a break. Anyway, that's the gist of my trip. I hope I didn't forget anything and if you made it all the way down here, well, thanks for reading this much. It took me an hour to write it all.
