Providence

I was hopeful for a great weekend with J3K and Sandy in Providence. After a long week of work, I'd surely need some time to blow off steam. I arrived on Friday; Kim joined us on Saturday. Good times were had by all.

Wings of the Dragon
Friday night's hijinks could be summed up by two television show references: The Sopranos and Jackass.

First, we decided to head over to Captain Seaweed's for a few drinks and to see the sights. We were all hopeful that we'd come away with a good story. (Refresher on Seaweed's is here.) Well, my friends, the Captain didn't disappoint. Here's how it went down...

We arrived in the early evening with the anticipation of having a few beers and heading elsewhere. On entering the bar, we were amazed that we saw three other women. Prior to ordering our first beers, we learned that Seaweed's no longer runs tabs or takes credit cards of any kind. Yep, it's now a cash only establishment. Classy! So, we got a pitcher of Harpoon IPA and settled in for conversation and some good old catching up with one another. Some time later, I went to get another pitcher of beer. I placed my order with the bartender and waited as she pulled the beer. With no obvious prompting (or previous conversation), the older mustachioed gentleman at the bar begins talking to me. Here's what he said:

"You better take care of that f*ing girl. You know what I'm saying? You better f*ing respect her or I'll kick your f*ing ass," he said.

"Well, no need to worry because I was going to leave her a nice tip," I said.

"That's good, you're a good kid. You better respect her," he muttered.

"Respect is good," I said and tried to get a look at the guy and size him up.

While I waited for the beer, he continued to drunkenly mumble about respect and treating her right. After an eternity, the bartender gave me the beer.
"Thank you," I said to the bartender and conspicuously pushed her tip across the bar. Then, I turned to the guy and said, "Have a good night, sir."

"You're a good f*ing kid. You know why? 'Cause you got respect," he said.

I politely smiled and got the hell away from him. (A scant ten feet away to the safety of our table.) About three minutes passed before he comes over and joins us at our table. Evidently, he was a homebuilder of Portugese descent who was generally friendly if a little overbearing. Well, for some reason, the guy sort of turns into an older, heavier Fredo: he kept telling us how smart he was, how he was the smartest kid in his class, and so on. I bet he thought that we were students at Brown University or something. Anywho, this went on forever. Every five or so minutes, a large man with a grey goatee came over to try to get him to leave us alone.

"I ain't f*ing bothering nobody," he yelled at his buddy. "Am I bothering you guys?," he asked us. We thought he was pretty benign so we let him stay at our table. During the conversation that ensued, we were instructed to call him "Uncle Walter," invited to his son's bachelor party (we politely declined), informed that he'd be voting for Hillary because Obama sounds too much like Osama), and reminded that he was a smart guy. Things were pretty entertaining until some guy shooting pools yells out, "Don't trust that guy! He did some work for me and he still owes me ten thousand dollars!"

When Uncle Walter heard this, he was apoplectic. Seriously, we thought he was going to kill the guy. Instantly, he's up in the guy's face yelling a string of obscenities at the top of his lungs. We were all shocked and looking for the exits. Almost as quickly as Uncle Walter lost his shit, he was surrounded by beefy guys from the bar. They managed to "break up" the ruckus and proceeded to tell Walter to leave.

"Walter, get the f*k outta here," yelled the beefy bartender.

"What? I ain't hurtin' nobody," he protested.

"It's time for you to go. Get the f*k outta here, Walter! You're scaring people."

It took all of the beefy guys in the bar to throw him out. We sat there stunned at what had just happened. In the aftermath, we notice a gent that we nicknamed "The Captain" is sitting on the floor behind the pool table, crying like a baby. Seriously, he was openly weeping.

The Captain after regaining his composure.

"Holy shit, I bet they're going to whack Uncle Walter. That's why he's crying," I said.

"We need to roll," J3K offered.

Before we could leave, beefy bartender gave us a pitcher of beer on the house for our troubles. I'm pretty sure we drank it in about a minute just so we could get the hell out of there.

Grocery Cart Grand Prix
On the walk home, we stumbled across a grocery cart that was just begging to be taken. Naturally, we jumped into it and proceeded to make our way back the J3K and Sandy's place. At first, J3K got in the cart while I pushed. Then, perhaps he thought better of it or, most likely, he was just terrified, we switched places.

J3K opts to drive.

In any case, pushing a fully grown adult down a sidewalk in a grocery cart is challenging. A few times, I fell out. The first spill I took jettisoned my phone from my pocket. Later that night, some woman found it, sent some text messages to people in my phone book, and returned it to me the next morning.

Anybody seen my phone?

After a few blocks, I decided that
facing the other way was a safer option.

J3K go the hang of driving. At one point, he ran about as fast as he could with the cart. It was awesome until he hit a patch of grass and launched me onto the sidewalk. Luckily, I only cut my palm, bruised my shin, and smashed my elbow. Oddly, he came away with similar injuries.

Launch #2 - Moments after impact.

Seriously, this one hurt.

My boo boo.

Undeterred, I climbed back into the cart, instructed him to go faster and, for safety, advised him to push the cart down the middle of the street until we were safe at his place. Ahh, the joys of youth.

The long ride home.

Saturday and Sunday - Wings of the Dragon Were Not Ridden
Although it's probably hard to fathom, the rest of the weekend was pretty laid back. On Saturday, we gathered Kim from the airport and went for a walk on the beach. We were hoping to see some seals but didn't. Sunday, we went back to Newport and toured some of the "summer cottages" that have, no kidding, almost 100 times the square footage of my house. Good stuff.

Photos of the weekend are here.

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.