Island Adventures

Shiver me timbers! Today brought a whole new meaning to the David Shannon "How I Became A Pirate" book. As soon as we boarded the Jolly Roger's pirate themed booze cruise, I quickly learned that there are 2 main things that pirates do/say.

First, you have to like grog (rum). And I'm not talking about a splash of grog in your drink. They mix about 2 parts grog with 1 part punch to make their deadly punch. How else do you think the pirates get all of that hair on their chest? Argggggg!

Secondly, you have to learn the pirate lingo. Just throw in a few "arrgggs" and "scalliwags" and make sure you drop your endings, ye hear? It would probably help to use a rough and tough voice, too. Oh and ladies, you need to be ok with being called a "wench." Just think to yourself that it's about the same as a nice gentleman calling you beautiful...

Now, one might ask what happens to someone who doesn't abide by the pirate rules? It was immediately obvious that they have zero tolerance for "lubbers" (people who spend their time on the land). Well that's when they FORCE you to walk the plank. Yes, those childhood nightmares that you used to get from watching Peter Pan are real. And the pirates definitely don't play around.

On the otherhand, they were nice enough to feed us some grub and instead of throwing away our chicken bones, we threw them out to sea. A positive person might think that this is to feed the wonders of the ocean, but those tricky pirates are smart. They are just attracting the sharks for when someone "gets the boot," or walks the plank.

It wasn't long before we won over our B.W.I. (British West Indies) pirates. It might have been that we showed them how to fish with just a line and a chicken wing attached on the end. Or maybe it was the fact that we introduced them to Ludacris and the newest hip-hop dance moves. Now you want to talk about crazy...imagine pirates seeing "how low they can go" after a few rum punches.

To say the least, I think it's safe to claim that by the end of our adventure at sea, we were truly pirates. We drank the pirate's blood a few times to prove it. Don't worry, pirate's blood is a mixed shot of rum, red wine, and a splash of rum punch. They even trusted us enough to let us shoot off the canon...ahoy mateys!