Iceland – Land of LIES (Day 7)

Our last day in Iceland was very uneventful. We were concerned about the weather and the cancellation of the previous day’s planes ruining things for our flights, but we had no problems at all. We packed our stuff, cleaned the house really well, forgot the bag of food in the fridge that we were going to bring with us, and made it to the rental car place and airport without any problems.

Seriously, look at how beautiful this mountain pass of doom is today in the sunshine!!!

We even had enough time to pull over, so D.Rough could trespass on someone's private property and snap a photo of a cute little camper trailer similar to ours!

It was such a beautiful day out - sunshine for miles! ...Oh wait!... I forgot it hailed on us when we were walking outside from the bus to the airplane on the tarmac. Hahahahaha. One last jab from Iceland.

So that makes for a really boring blog post, right? I’m going to do what I can to fix that, so you aren’t bored by our last day in Iceland. I’ll do that by talking, once again, about penises. I’m clearly not trying for an Icelandic Tourism Bureau position. In fact, I’m BURNING ALL THE (one-lane) BRIDGES!!! So, I might as well keep going!

This vacation, without question, was the most penis-filled vacation I’ve ever been on – and that isn’t even including the Icelandic Phallogical Museum in Reykjavik. I’ve mentioned a few times all of the amazing geothermal pools we went to and the rec center by our house – all of those places have very strict requirements about showering BEFORE you get into the pool without your swimsuit. So strict that many of the pools, including the Blue Lagoon, have some sort of monitor in the shower area to make sure you adhere to this rule. There are signs up showing you which parts of your body to address before getting into the geothermal pool, complete with red circles and pointers.

It’s totally normal in Iceland, and you probably shouldn’t get bent out of shape, but I like to at least warn people, since I know people can be very locker-room averse. The geothermal pools generally don’t use chemicals to clean and purify the water (like U.S. swimming pools use tons of chlorine), so the idea is that you wash away as many of your naturally-occurring body oils before getting into the pools. Makes total sense. So, every pool that you go to will have a swimsuit-less shower requirement before getting in. And, at least all of the pools we went to on this trip, there are separate locker rooms for both men and women, if that eases your fears at all.

Pro-tip for those of you that have “concerns” about being in the locker room with a lot of naked people: Don’t choose a locker on the bottom level. …  …just think about it – you’ll figure it out eventually.

Just deal with it. Don’t make it a big deal, because no one else from any other country will make it a big deal. And, because it isn’t a big deal.

Secondly, despite all of the complaints about the weather and the extremely dangerous driving, we truly DID have a great time. I WILL say we had a much better time once we got to where we were going, but the getting there was really the only bad part. We saw some amazing waterfalls, soaked in some incredible geothermal pools, ate delicious food, met some truly wonderful and hospitable people, stayed in an amazing rental house, drove the cutest 4x4 car ever, saw the ocean from an angle we have never seen before, saw icebergs shortly after their birth, saw seals, had a great time with friends from Minnesota, laughed our heads off at so many ridiculous situations, stole a baby iceberg, tried without success to pronounce every Icelandic word we saw, ate ice cream with cows, petted some dogs, took a sauna every day, baked bread in the earth, saw a geyser, saw Icelandic horses battling in the snow, learned about sustainability and environmentalism, saw a TON of penises, drank tiki drinks, and ate a ton of Icelandic butter.

My wife thinks I tell the story of our trip in such a way as to make people think we had an awful time. We didn’t. We encountered some awful weather and driving, but that was it. We were prepared for the cost, which I know is expensive – but we were mentally prepared. I DO tell the story of our adventures in such a way as to let people know that Iceland can be hard. VERY hard. But we were there in February. What do people expect? It’s cold and windy here in February, just like it is a lot of places. Our mistake was thinking that just because we’re from Minnesota that the warnings that people generously bestowed on us were for Florida-travelers, not Minnesota-travelers. This is the first vacation that has ever broken me – day ONE, in fact. That’s really hard to do, since I’m a pretty adaptable traveler and can drive, sleep, and eat pretty much anywhere. But Iceland is on another level with its weather.

The week before we got to Iceland, they closed the entire island because of a blizzard. It sounded and looked awful. Far worse than we even had. So I’m thankful for that. I’m also thankful that my friends that went three weeks after us had an amazing trip and they want to move there. It isn’t Iceland’s fault.

I laugh because I fully expected to see all of THIS in Iceland:

But instead, I got this.

And, I wouldn’t change it. I survived and came out stronger at the other end of this trip that almost killed us multiple times. It’s going to make our next beach vacation THAT much better.

I have a feeling we’ll be back, Iceland. Maybe not in February next time, but there are still things we know you are hiding from us. Iceland didn’t lie, it just did what my friend Coach enjoys doing – not telling the whole truth. I’m guessing the tourism bureau ran out of room putting pretty pictures on its flyers and couldn’t find the space to put all the terrifying ones in there. Probably smart on their part, hahaha.

Go to Day 6

Iceland – Land of LIES (Day 1)

D.Rough and I got super cheap tickets to Iceland. I won’t got into the details of this, since this is already going to be a long post, but suffice it to say, we got a great deal on flights. We took a 6-hour overnight flight from Chicago, and arrived at 6am Iceland time. We had done a ton of research before this trip, so we really felt prepared for anything. We got great advice from Jennie at Life with a View, as well as ExpertVagabond and TheBlondeAbroad.

The customs agent asked where we were staying and looked concerned when we told him our first night’s lodging plan, east of Vik. The agent told us to leave immediately for Vik and don’t delay if we wanted to make it at all. We told him, “We’re from Minnesota, we’ll be fine. It’s like Southern Canada.” That being said, the entirety of our time spent in the customs area was less than 2 minutes.

We popped into the Duty Free store, at the suggestion of everyone we talked to that had been to Iceland. Iceland is terribly expensive, especially when it comes to alcohol, so you’re encouraged to buy all your booze for your trip at the Duty Free shop, where it’s a pretty “normal” cost. Once you are outside of the airport, expect to pay up to three times as much for the same items – literally.

We shuttle-bussed over to the rental car place to pick up our car. A 4-wheel drive car, again at the suggestion of everyone who’s ever been to Iceland in the winter. It turned out to be a great idea. The rental car agent went through a long list of rules and suggestions for driving in Iceland. We kept telling her, “These are rules for people from Florida. We’re from Minnesota. We’re used to this weather.” She kept on with the rules which included holding the door securely when you get out of the car, since door dings are not covered by insurance. Nor is it covered when the wind rips the door off its hinges or flattens it the wrong way against the front of the car. Hmmmm. If you park near a beach, the wind has the potential to sandblast the paint off your car – also not covered by insurance. Hmmmmm.  Most of the mountain roads are closed from October through April, but there are dangerous mountain passes between cities. Hmmmmmm. Again, “We’re from Minnesota. We’ll be fine.”  She asked where we were driving to and we told her East of Vik. She told us to leave immediately and not to stop before we egt there. She strongly encouraged us to check two websites before we drive anywhere, both of which are updated regularly: The road conditions map and the weather/wind map. Got it, lady.

We hopped in our Fiat Panda (the most aggressive of the bears) 4x4, with metal studded tires for traction. GPS was working on my phone, so we were good. We headed east!

Here was our plan: drive to the famous Blue Lagoon geothermal spa and take some outside photos (our booking later that week was in the evening, so we wanted to see it in the day light and get some photos). Then we’d head south and drive along the southern coast, stopping at a few waterfalls, grabbing lunch, then find our hotel near Kalfafell and grab dinner somewhere. It was supposed to be about a four hour drive.

We drove to Blue Lagoon and got some great photos. It’s close to the airport, so it was an easy drive, although a bit windy. When we first got there, D.Rough said “Hodor” when I turned the car off. If you’re a Game of Thrones fan, you’ll know that this roughly translates to “hold the door”. From that point forward, whenever we’d stop the car, one of us would say “Hodor” to remind us to hold the doors against the wind. It was actually great advice and saved us a few times.  We slid all over the ice-covered path on the walking path around the lagoon, since we didn’t put on our crampons (ice spikes for your shoes) – apparently, we were going to need them. 

We ran inside to use the restroom and I snapped a photo of the actual Lagoon from the snack shop window. It looked pretty amazing. We took some photos in the brutal wind near the Lagoon and hurriedly got back in the car to warm up. 

We left and headed towards Grindavik, the next closest town to the Blue Lagoon, where we were going to make the turn east along the coast.

I made it about 2 miles down the road when we drove into a blizzard. One second it’s windy and sunny out and the next second, I can barely see the front of the car and the road has 8 inches of snow on it and the wind was trying to blow us off the road. I was literally keeping the car between the yellow posts on either side of the road and having trouble doing that. I started to freak out. If the rest of the southern drive was like this, we weren’t going to make it. I turned around the first driveway I saw and headed back. I figured we’d stay on the main highway – Highway 1, also known as the Ring Road that goes all the way around the island – where it was more busy and well-traveled. I was glad I did.

The Ring Road doesn’t quite go all the way to Reykjavik before you turn east. The wind was pretty brutal and blowing us a little in our lane. Once you make the turn East, you head through a mountain pass to get to the next city – Hveragerdi. This road was insane. The minute we started to gain elevation, the wind picked up and so did the snow. The road was completely covered and all you could see were the cars in front of you and the yellow posts on the edge of the road. There were cars spinning off the road and driving over the guardrail posts in the median of the highway because they’re out of control. We never saw cars hit each other, thankfully, but you could see them sliding off the road, or over the center line all over the place. Not once or twice, but maybe 20 times on that 20 mile stretch to Hveragerdi. I was driving about 20 mph on the highway during this whole stretch. White knuckle the whole time. Remember this mountain pass for future posts...

We continued on without stopping towards Vik (one of Iceland’s bigger and well known cities. The driving conditions were not great. In fact, they were awful. Wind, snow, sleet, and icy roads – mainly driving between 25 and 50 kph (15-30 mph). Thankfully, most of that wasn’t through the mountains. Before we got anywhere near Vik, we drove by Seljalandsfoss – one of the iconic 200-foot high waterfalls you see in all the Icelandic tourism photos. You could see it from the road, and I knew I needed to stop so I could take a break from white-knuckle driving and snap some photos of the waterfall. It’s absolutely beautiful. 

It’s also super slippery ice all around the falls, though, since the waterfall mist turns to ice. Those crampons I mentioned earlier are totally recommended. The additional walkways up to and behind the waterfall are closed in the winter due to insane amounts of ice and snow covering them and making them deadly. 

I was able to calm down a bit and get my head in a good place, but I wasn’t looking forward to getting back behind the wheel.

We went to try to find the geothermal pool at Seljavallalaug, 12 miles up the road. This is another one that shows up in a lot of Iceland photos. When you  get to the parking lot, you have to hike a ways to get there (like a LONG way into the foothills – especially in the 30-40 mph wind and snow), but the conditions were so bad, we turned around before we even got to the actual pool. It’s a good thing we did. Time was running out, and we were talking WAY too long. We were in danger of not making it to our hotel before dark – if at all. The road coming into Vik was incredibly slippery and dangerous, so we drove right through Vik and didn’t stop – we could hit it tomorrow. It was a challenge to keep the car on the road.

The next part of the drive was on a sheet of ice. Miles and miles of ice. I didn’t see pavement for what seemed like hours. I drove more than two hours under 50 kph, just to keep the car on the road. Metal studded tires only do so much for traction when there’s ice and slush and the wind is trying to blow you off the road.

We made it to our hotel just outside of Kalfafell, thankfully. I was in tears from the drive. I wanted to throw up. Our 4 hour drive had turned into ten hours. I was a wreck. We got checked into our room – the people at the Fosshotel Nupar were so incredibly nice and helpful.

We snapped a few photos in the dying light – everything was covered in six inches of beautiful snow. But, I was ready to call a helicopter to fly us out of there – I’m not kidding. I wasn’t driving any more that day. However, a helicopter in those winds would have been even more deadly, if that’s even possible. I was NOT going to drive to a restaurant for dinner since the nearest restaurant was at least 30 minutes back the way we came – on a sheet of ice. At that point, I was willing to pay whatever the price was for dinner at the hotel. In fact, it was time to open the bottles we had brought from the airport – my nerves were shot.

The food at the Kvika Restaurant in the hotel was fantastic, though, and not just because we had survived the drive. It was actually very delicious. I got the Thai Tagliatelle, and D.Rough got the Pan Fried Arctic Char. The menu is extremely limited, but the foods that are on the menu are awesome. We drank a few more drinks and cashed out early. I had terrible driving dreams that night but appeared to sleep through the night. My apologies to my wife for all the snoring and sleep-screaming I did that night. She was an absolute trooper and tried super hard to break me out of my sour mood. 

I was beginning to realize that the Icelandic tourism Bureau only shows the beautiful parts of Iceland. Not the you're-going-to-die parts of Iceland. 

Go to Day 2

Cookie Dough Creations – Naperville, IL

I will try not to ramble on and on about this place, but frankly, it’s one of the best culinary ideas ever created, so it will be difficult.

D.Rough had gone to this place a few years back when her sister moved to the Chicago area. When she found out, the hard way, about my addiction to cookie dough, she immediately brought it up and made sure to mention it from time to time so I didn’t forget – like THAT would happen.

We were in the area visiting her family and had some free time, so we headed there. And to be frank, it’s amazing.

It’s a cookie dough shop AND ice cream shop. In fact, what you’re supposed to do is order your cookie dough first (in the same refrigerated cases as the ice cream) and then tell them what ice cream you’d like to go underneath the cookie dough. They have 8 flavors of cookie dough, including Oreo, Turtle, Regular, Peanut Butter, Cake Batter, Fudge Brownie, Brown Sugar, and M&M. The dough is made without eggs, so it’s safe to eat (and healthy, right?) Then you can choose from like 20 flavors of ice cream, which also all sound delicious.

After what seemed like an hour of deliberation on proper caramel-to-chocolate ratio, I decided on French Silk ice cream underneath Turtle cookie dough. And it was stellar. Seriously stellar. It’s half cookie dough and half ice cream in a cup. We got a small dish to share and I’m glad I did. Otherwise, I would have died. They pack a lot of this stuff into the dish.

We went outside and sat on a bench in front of the store. It was so delicious, people walking past asked us what we were eating and then went straight inside and bought their own. We’re great marketers!

When I got home, I looked at the website and I’m glad I didn’t notice they make 10” cookie dough ice cream sandwiches and all kinds of various desserts. Though they do ship these things….. hmmmm…..

No top 5, but it truly is an amazing idea for a dessert shop. Especially if you knew how much cookie dough everyone in our family eats…

www.cookiedoughcreations.com

Longview Park Disc Golf Course – Rock Island, IL

The main reason I wanted to write this review is because I got to play with my old dog Asmodeus, Inciter of Lechery (full name). We call him Moe, for brevity. He’s one of the coolest dogs ever and is still a retarded moose, which is why I love him. It’s been too long since I’d seen him, and it was exactly what I needed this weekend. Thanks for bringing my old pal back out to play, Belcher. It means a lot.

I grew up playing this disc golf course, so I’m a tad biased. It also means I won’t go into as much detail because a lot of it I take for granted. It’s a pretty challenging course due to the elevation and wind, but you’ll have a great view of the Mississippi River Valley and get to play in some awesome mature oak trees (the hundred footers, not the pansy shrubs that Texans call oak trees).

Despite the below freezing temperature and blowing snow (yeah, in October), we played. Belcher had serious gloves and hat action, and I had a sweatshirt and those hand warmer thingies - I'm really glad I brought them). The grass was wet from the snow so the added combination of wet and cold would have killed my game (dang, I should have used that as an excuse for my performance, huh?).

This course has some of the most insane elevation of any disc golf course I’ve played. Your legs will burn after this course. Yes, some of it is down hill, but somehow the majority of it is uphill. There’s been a lot of “work” on this course, and much of it not good. There’s a new blacktopped parking lot down the middle of hole #6, along with three giant trees missing. Hole 7 is missing all of its trees. Hole 17 is missing both of its massive trees and is wide open. And hole 18, one of the hardest holes in disc golf, is now missing one of its massive trees, but it doesn’t make the hole any easier.

This course used to be a 12-hole course and was pretty spread out. Now that it’s 18 holes, it seems a little cramped in spots (but only if you have many groups playing at the same time), but the redesign added some fun holes. There are some flow issues, especially if you remember the easy flow of the original 12, but it’s still a challenging course.

My legs burned after I finished the 18th hole uphill hike, but all in all, this is one of the best rounds I’ve had in a while. I haven’t played with Belcher in years, so I’m guessing she thinks I play like this all the time (I don’t). So I’m glad to have had an audience. She can still putt like a machine though, so despite her thinking she played poorly, we still probably ended up pretty even. She IS a professional disc golfer, after all (yes, seriously).

No top 5 – just play this course. I think it’s very under-rated, and pansy disc golfer complain about their legs hurting, which is why it might have a bad rap (and maybe the sketchy neighborhood as well – haha)

MN Wild vs. Columbus Blue Jackets – St. Paul, MN

My roommate EyeHeartPizza gave me a call on Wednesday saying she had scored four tickets to the hockey game on Friday night (15th row). It was the season opener – pregame, but still the season opener. I haven’t been to an NHL game since I was 8, so I was itching to go. I was put in charge of finding two other suckers to come along to the game so the tickets didn’t go to waste. I got on the phone and e-mail machines and started asking. Turns out SB and EJens were free and willing to go. They’re always fun. We accidentally told them the tickets were free, otherwise, we might have been able to get $90 each out of them. Dang.

We trekked over to the Xcel Energy Center (cutting it close on time), but got SB picked up and met EJens at the door. We sat down and 3 minutes later, the skaters came out and this old guy made a strong attempt at the National Anthem.

EJens was distracted by various lights and shiny things, continuing his long streak of never seeing an opening faceoff (oddly enough, NOT called the Puck-Off, like I assumed). Usually, it’s because he’s late for the opening of the game, but this time it was because he was distracted.

The game was pretty slow to start with, until EyeHeartPizza complained about it being slow. Then the fighting started and the pace really picked up. The passing for the Wild was much better than the Blue Jackets, but I won’t claim to be an expert at hockey, so I won’t get into any analysis of the skills or strategy. However, I did spend a good portion of the game on my phone/internet trying to figure out why Columbus were called the Blue Jackets. Turns out it's all Civil War-y and I filed it under "still don't care" in my head.

I went up and grabbed some deep fried cheese curds and a lemonade for the game. When I got back, SB borrowed some of my curds. She’s from Sconsin, so she can’t help herself. But then she got some mini-donuts and I borrowed some of those, so we were all even.

EJens decided he needed some refreshments, so he got up and punted my lemonade. It was pretty funny, honestly. It was pretty messy and we were sticking to the floor by the end of the game.

We saw more blood than I’ve ever seen at a hockey game before. One guy took a shot to the face and just gushed blood all over. When he skated off the ice, there was a line of blood – NOT a dotted line of blood, a LINE of blood. It was flowing pretty badly. Then we saw one of the Blue Jackets, Jason Chimera, get knocked out in a really bad situation. We waited 5 or 6 minutes for the EMTs to get him on a stretcher and off to the hospital.

All in all, super game. The Wild won 2-0, so that makes it one of the first winning games I’ve seen in almost 3 years. The Xcel Energy Center is a great venue, and the huge crowd is nice to see – MN is known for having slim crowds at its sporting events (except for hockey).

Top 5 things about the Wild vs. the Blue Jackets
1. EyeHeartPizza screaming “freedom” during the national anthem
2. EyeHeartPizza scored us free tickets
3. EJens and SB are hilarious to go to screaming events with
4. Deep Fried Cheese Curds – duh
5. Hockey Whores

Bottom 5 things
1. Gerd bought us tickets to the Wild last year just before all the bad stuff happened. I didn’t end up going to the game last year and I thought about it a lot at this game.
2. There’s no Chuck-A-Puck contest (does anyone know what I’m talking about?)
3. Sure would have been nice to finish my lemonade… sigh… (kidding, EJens)
4. I’m deaf now because of the airhorn when the Wild scores goals
5. We paid for parking at the Dairy Queen, but they were closed by the time we got out. Bummer

http://wild.nhl.com

Toobing on the Comal River – New Braunfels, TX

Yes, the place actually spells it with 2 “o”s. (It’s going to be painful for me to actually write it that way, but I’ll do it, so you’re as annoyed as I am with it.) My nephew and his wife have been talking about this place in San Antonio where you can go tubing on the Comal River. It’s sort of a natural river where they landscaped the sides and put in some awesome “tube shoots” and you can kill an entire day lounging and drinking on the water.

After lunch, we drove up to New Braunfels and found the park at the start of the toobing place. Bikinis and d-bags as far as the eye can see. DeliveryBoy and Amanda Hugginkiss had been here a few weeks back, so they knew the routine. Fill up a cooler with tasty beverages, go rent toobs and an extra tube for the cooler, and hop in the water. We got all signed up and sunscreened up and carried our toobs towards the drop in point on the river. There are police everywhere. I’m guessing a hundred monitor the start area and all along the river itself, watching for underage drinking, drugs, drowning, etc. A cop stopped us and told us we had an unauthorized cooler. Apparently, the size limit is 16 quarts on the cooler. Ours was in the neighborhood of 40+ qts. Whoops. We didn’t know.

DeliveryBoy and I hopped one of the shuttles back to the rental place. Along the way, the shuttle driver stopped the bus to openly stare at a girl in a bikini. He was hilarious. We got back and made the swap of the cooler – we had to pay an additional $4 to rent one of theirs. Then we watched a girl complaining to the rental staff that she couldn’t swim, oh yeah, and also, she had just had surgery on her arm and it couldn’t get wet. See what kind of morons toobing brings out? We started transferring refreshments and the guy watching us said we couldn’t have glass bottle on the river. Well, our refreshment supply was cut in half due to that. Bummer. But in the long run, probably for the best. We left our cooler, hopped back on the shuttle and went back to meet Coach and Amanda Hugginkiss.

We headed towards the water, made it past the police and began what would amount to christmas morning if it involved almost no clothing whatsoever and NONE of my relatives. There was very little clothing out on the river and most of it was a welcome sight. A few sights were very unwelcome, but a couple of Strongbows would take the bite off of those particular views. We put in our tubs in the chilly water and set off at the slowest pace I’ve ever travelled. I have sat in bathtubs with a stronger current. It took us a while to actually move more than 30 feet since there were soooo many people. But the water was nice and cool without being frigid.

Amanda Hugginkiss was getting annoyed with these high maintenance girls who kept saying, “I don’t want to get wet” and “quit splashing me” and putting on makeup like idiots. We mocked them most of the trip, since why the heck would you get into a tube in the water if you wanted to stay dry? Morons.

The first thing that happens is you see signs above you saying “weak swimmers get out here”. Uh Oh. Then you see signs for the “tube shoots”. I didn’t know what this meant, but DeliveryBoy and Amanda Hugginkiss just smiled and laughed when Coach and I kept asking about it. We found out. There’s a small dam right after the drop off point. It’s all roped off, so you can’t go over the falls. But it funnels you into a man-made concrete chute about 8 feet wide that launches you like a water slide down into the river below. And you have no hope of any part of you or your things staying dry. Remember those high maintenance toobers? Yeah, they were NOT happy. Nor were their cameras or blackberries. Hahahaha

We popped open the Strongbows and commenced a long afternoon of drinking and floating.


Again, the current was almost nonexistent, so we might have travelled a half mile (I have no idea) in about 4 or 5 hours. During this time, coach tried to hop back into his toob before another tube shoot and immediately flipped over. It was classic. Everyone in the area was cracking up as coach watched his feet go over his own head.


Every time I would go through one of the tube shoots, I would get hung up just before the shoot – NO, I wasn’t bottoming out or anything, just got hung up in some weird back current. Then immediately after the shoot, I would get trapped in the current and pinned to the opposite wall of the place. Everyone else would float past me and head down the river and I would have to paddle like mad to get away from the wall and catch up to the group. Apparently the laws of physics don’t’ apply to me in toobing, the same way they don’t apply to my golf game.

I have sooo many stories to tell and I don’t want to write 14 pages for this post, so I’ll try to slim it down to the highlights:

Coach’s limit is 2.5 Strongbows – he had 3. Then things got hilarious.
DeliveryBoy realized Coach was over his limit when Coach proclaimed “I don’t even care anymore. I’m just openly staring”, which was hilarious because I don’t think his eyes were focusing at that point. Plus by that time, it was a floating sausage fest…
Coach doesn’t even need girls around for him to yell “show us yer boobs”
There were multiple tiny Chihuahuas with male owners out on the water
Coach asked a ton of random small boys with fishing poles if they were fishing for people
Whenever any females mentioned they almost lost their tops, my camera became activated


One of the most hilarious moments was when we passed a group of scrawny rednecks who were completely soused. They were arguing over college football. One of them got all bent out of shape when one of the other rednecks smack-talked University of Texas. They tried to get out of the water to fist fight, but neither of them had enough balance to walk up the grass on the bank. Seriously, these guys wouldn’t be driving anywhere soon. Then, when the one belligerent guy gave up, his friend yelled, “Texas loves boys!” and it started a whole other fight. Best comeback ever. Then while all this was going on, the other rednecks were getting loud with random people floating by. “Who’s your team!? WHO IS YOUR TEAM????!!!! F*%k you!!!” You gotta love Amurka.

We got to the end and tried to get out of the water. Coach had had 3, and was reminding us his limit was 2.5. When Amanda Hugginkiss realized she could totally mess with Coach, she’d pretend to help him out of the water, then push him back in. Classic comedy! It took Coach like 10 minutes to actually make it out of the water.

I'm not sure if you had guy friends who loved to play the game "slap your shirtless friend really hard and leave a mark", but I know we did. We saw a kid with the champion of handprints on his back. Seriously, you could draw a beak and legs on it and use it for a Thanksgiving turkey it was so clearly defined (and HAD to have been painful).

Coach hadn’t peed the whole time on the river, so he ran/staggered towards the portapotties. As it turns out, he went into the stall marked women. When we mocked him about it, he got all loud and yelled “if they didn’t want guys to use them, they wouldn’t put urinals in there!”

On the way back to the rental place to pick up our keys and cooler, I witnessed a lovely discussion about areolas from the girls next to me. They were… ummm… comparing them. Best vacation ever.

Walking back to the car, Coach took a little stumble, but played it off by grabbing DeliveryBoy’s shoulder for support and hugging him as if it were intentional. Then he reminded us for the 93rd time that his limit was 2.5 Strongbows and he had had three.


Top 5 things about toobing on the Comal River
1. Perfect weather for tubing
2. Concentrated boobs
3. The fight about college football
4. Seeing high maintenance toobers shaking water out of their blackberries and looking like drowned rats (whorish drowned rats)
5. Hearing Coach’s limit 93 times – it should have been a drinking game for us, not that we needed the help

Bottom 5 things
1. Gerd would have loved this ridiculous trip, even though it would have been too hot, too sunny, too wet, too slow, and too many drunk people
2. These people should learn how to spell tube
3. 16 qts is not a very big cooler
4. We didn’t know about the cooler limit NOR the glass restriction (even though both make sense)
5. I apparently missed a swath of my chest with the sunscreen

www.rockinr.com