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Well, my final Spring Break (SB) as a college student wasn’t quite as eventful as I had hoped or planned but, nonetheless, it was thoroughly enjoyable. Let me lay out the characters:- Mark : A fellow 1st year law student w/Travis from Texas. - Veronica a.k.a. Vag : A fellow 1st year law student w/Travis from San Antonio.- Josh : A fellow 1st year law student w/Travis from Tampa.- Angelique : Josh’s girlfriend (also from Tampa).- Lauren a.k.a. Spanky : A blonde friend of Mark’s from high school who goes to Univ. of Texas and is a proud member of the Delta Gamma sorority.- Tiggle (T. Greaves) : The infamous - he needs no more of an introduction.- MyselfTHE TRIP:After missing my flight from Knoxville to Fort Lauderdale Thursday morning and picking up a later one for only $25.00 more (there is something to be said for flying on a full-service airline such as Delta as opposed to RyanAir - a European equivalent to Southwest - which charged me $180.00 to take another flight after I missed the first one in London I waited on everyone to arrive from Houston and Tampa (where Angelique was coming from) by taking a 4 hour power nap in the hotel. Angelique and I got to know each other over a few free beers (provided courtesy of the hotel’s weekly pool party) and, once the others arrived later that night, we got ready to go out and see what Fort Lauderdale had to offer. Greaves introduced us as the band “Spoon” - I think I was the drummer - and we skirted the line and headed upstairs.On Friday, we headed down to Key West in the minivan we had rented and Mark and I began to talk politics on the way. It was a lively debate that lasted a good hour before we both reached the conclusion that neither one of us was making any headway in convincing the other. On the way down, we stopped off at a Tarpon feeding place where we dangled bait over the water and waited for the Tarpon to jump up and eat it (sort of like Shamoo The Killer Whale or those cute dolphins at SeaWorld except these fish don’t know the difference between a fish and a finger). It was cool. Once down in Key West, we checked into our place, which was the second floor of a house about 4 blocks from the beach and a 10 minute walk from the center of town. It was a great place in that it was a typical Key West house with a hot tub and barbeque grill out back and some fisherman from NC staying beneath us surrounded by all sorts of trees, the occasional breeze, a Cuban restaurant, lots of chickens, and people constantly passing by on bikes or mopeds.We spent most of our days at the beach and virtually every night on Duval Street. Of course, it wouldn’t be Spring Break if I didn’t sport my redneck tan so I promptly went out and got burned all over my neck and face the very first day while playing volleyball and then proceeded to spend the next 5 days constantly rubbing aloe on my red neck (I’m from TN y’all…) and face and, to make things even better, the last night I was snowing like Christmas from all of the peeling skin that was falling off my forehead, nose, ears, and neck. Fun fun!The first night in Key West started off with a bang but promptly went downhill after that. On the negative, a swollen right elbow from a crash landing on Duval Street, $150 dollar coupons, arriving in Key West a week early, and an angry conversation in the street basically sum up my time in Key West. On the positive, the city is very cool (although I doubt it can maintain it’s bohemian atmosphere with houses that cost $500,000+ the bike ride with Veronica was definently a high point, I got to meet some friends of Travis who turned out to be great, the weather was fantastic, I read a bit of Freakonomics (or, as Greaves called it, Freakynomics) and I Hope They Serve Beer In Hell, I realized that people from Texas really are different from other Americans, and I had the chance to relax and laugh a bunch. It was more of a “grown-up” vacation than what I was expecting but I can’t exactly say why. Kudos go to both Josh and Mark for organizing a great trip and taking care of every possible detail someone who slept on the kitchen floor on a blow-up pool raft and a sleeping bag could ask for. From multiple iPods with speakers to coolers, a boat rental, two car rentals, group trips to Wal-Mart, and a great place to stay, the organization of the trip was spectacular. Every person brought something to the table; the dynamic of the group could have been pulled directly from an episode of “The Real World”. BTW, the song I will remember with this trip has to be “Dakota” by Stereophonics and maybe “An Honest Mistake” by The Bravery even though I must have played “Grillz” by Nelly at least 5 times to many - both of the first two songs were introduced to the group courtesy of DJ Tiggle and his iPod.

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