Wednesday, January 02, 2008

Happy New Year! (Belated)

I've finally caught up on the sleep I missed during our whirlwind New England tour. Here are some highlights from the trip.

Newport Cliff Walk
On Sunday, we drove to Newport, RI to complete the famous Cliff Walk. Essentially, you walk along a beautiful, rocky New England shoreline and look at some incredible mansions. If you're in the neighborhood, I strongly recommend it. More photos of our walk are here.

Avoid doing this if even slightly hungover.
Also, pee before you start.


This is one of the little fixer-uppers along the walk.

Dr. J3K uses his fancy "teaching stick"
to remind us that rowdy behavior
isn't permitted on the Cliff Walk.


Campus Center at Wellesley College
On New Year's Eve, we drove up to see the Wellesley Campus Center that my wife helped design. She gave us a personal tour of it. Seriously, it's an awesome building.

Kimberly, in the midst of her tour.


Another view of the building.

Because we were sooo damned cold, we decided to stop in for ice cream sundaes at a great little ice cream shop. J3K was tempted to order the 8-scoop "white mountain" but opted out of it. Hands down, White Mountain Creamery is tops. More advice: don't let anyone with a lactose intolerance eat ice cream. If you do, they're likely to nearly kill you on the drive home with their champion-like behavior.

Yaargghh!
Other than Graceland Too and a handful of travel situations that I'm happy to have escaped, few places have impressed/terrified/thrilled me as much as Captain Seaweed's Pub in Providence, Rhode Island. I highly, highly recommend it.

A few nights earlier, Dr.J3K and I had a quick beer before they closed. On New Year's Eve, however, we decided to stop in for a couple of rounds before heading to our final destination.

Inside these walls is a fantastic little dive that will frighten and exhilarate you.

In anticipation of our visit, we'd been speaking in pirate voices (yaarrghh!) for most of the afternoon. When our group of seven entered the bar, the total occupancy nearly tripled. There were two old guys at the bar. One was a slight, olive-skinned man who was impressively drunk. The other was a bleary-eyed gent who sat at the bar nursing his Budweiser between sips of his whiskey backer. We walked in and ordered a $5 pitcher of beer to split among the group. Old, drunk guy must've decided that he liked the way we looked because he instantly called for a pitcher of beer for us. "On the house!," he kept yelling in his Southie accent.

Immediately, Dr. J3K and I threw some dollars in the jukebox and offered to play a song or two for the regulars.

"You guys want to hear anything?," I asked.

"Thanks guys but I'm an old guy," Bud/Whiskey responded.

"We can play you a bunch of Elton John," Dr. J3K offered after quickly surmising that the oldest thing in the jukebox was vintage Elton.

"No thanks," Bud/Whiskey said almost immediately.

"Elton John? What the hell?," I urgently whispered to J3K.

"I don't know. We're gonna get killed," he replied.

To atone for any faux pas, we played a ton of manly, classic rock.

A short while later, J3K, our friend Eddie, and I made our way over to the foosball table. As I'm terrible at this game, I played the role of interested spectator as J3K demolished poor Eddie. Each time J3K scored, the foosball hitting the goal pierced the din in the bar. Each time, the beefy bartender and his beefy sketchy pal would look our way, nod to each other, and look our way again. When the game concluded, they quickly headed over to the table and demanded that we play them. The bartender pulled quarters from the register and slammed them down on the edge of the table.

"C'mon guys. Just for fun," he said.

On hearing the phrase "just for fun," I immediately saw an image of myself two hours in the future: I was wearing only my boxers, my eyes were nearly swollen shut from the beating, I bled from my mouth, and wept with fear each time they demanded that I get them their $1,000. So, this is how it starts, I thought to myself. J3K and I shot each other a quick look as he politely tried to decline.

"We'll split up and play teams," the bartender insisted. "You play wit me," he said, nodding to J3K.

The bartender's beefy friend had a host of jailhouse tats on his hand. On noticing this, I immediately felt very, very comfortable with the progressing situation. As I looked over at the women in our group, they played a card game at the table with the pitcher of beer and creatively ignored the old, drunk guy as he attempted to dance near them.

After what turned out to be a very close, hard-fought game, the bartender and his buddy thanked us for playing and then, strangely, disappeared outside. I looked around and the only people in sight were our group and the old drunk guy who was loudly telling a story about Wilma Flintstone and using an object that referred to as one of her adult toys. That's rich, I thought.

After a quick trip to the restroom, I decided to stick my head outside and take a look at the courtyard. In doing so, I thought that I might've made another mistake. Bartender, beefy friend, and Bud/Whiskey were outside having cigarettes. They asked where I was from and we struck up a conversation. Five or six minutes later, J3K showed up looking relieved that I was still alive. Later, he admitted that he'd come out to make sure I wasn't getting my ass kicked. Turns out, though, that all the guys there were really friendly. They wished us a Happy New Year, invited us to come back to the bar, and were super nice. Still, I could easily see them kicking my ass for some dumb thing I did or said.

On the way, out old drunk guy sways out the door and says "I wish yous a Happy New Yeah. God bless yous and ya families. Happy New Yeah."

"Same to you, pal. Same to you," I told him.

For $5: two pitchers of beer, a game of foosball, the fear of impending death/extortion, the escapades of a benign drunkard, and a memorable evening.

Wickenden Pub
After Seaweed's, we headed over to the Wickenden Pub to close out the evening. We had more pints, played Quiddler (an awesome, easy game to which I was just introduced), and rang in the new year.

Avian Duel

Early on New Year's Day, we woke and headed to Boston for our flight. Luckily, we changed to a direct flight home instead of connecting through Cincinnati. We were home in time to see UGA demolish Hawaii. Happy New Year indeed.

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