Guam!
27 May 2013 | in Guam
Nick
A sailor at the Marianas Yacht Club had "Where the hell is Guam?" written across the back of his t-shirt. A big red arrow pointed at nothing specific in the western Pacific, our current location, reminding me to ask myself what the hell it is I'm doing here: a rhetorical question to be sure. I couldn't help but think of my black "You are here" sweatshirt with an arrow aimed at a random region of the Milky Way. My good friend Eric, having moved here a few weeks ago from Honolulu, admitted his own "Guam" googleMaps search. What follows is a sloppy summary of the more interesting operations from the past week which in turn follows a seven-day 'internship' bender at Country Boy Brewing in Lexington, Kentucky, a thick story itself that is worth telling, but over a beer, not here. I don't think that sentence was legit. Finding Eric was priority number one (speaking for myself here). Note: street names are worthless on Guam, though only two of four people openly laughed in my face when given a standard address for directions. After the happy reunion, beers, Happoshus (fake Japanese beers that escape heavy beer taxes), Chu-hi's (Japanese fruity-soda-like-6percenters), whiskeys, and wandering the night joined forces to replace Eric as the new combo-priority. This goal was also met successfully. Lei, Eric's girlfriend, introduced us to an all-you-can-drink special, live music, and cheap billiards. Bless her sweet heart. There was a rockabilly band from Japan entertaining a wedding party, servicemen, locals, and us weirdoes. There were at least 2 people who referred to Patrick as "Guam Jesus". There was a smooth-talking compulsive liar from Cincinnati (maybe) who consistently kept all listeners on the edge of their seats and included Patrick and I in his ruse to bed some women from San Diego (we were his bandmates, ostensibly). There was a brewpub making fantastic beer (I outwardly accepted but ultimately backed out of the head brewer's seemingly forced invitation for me to brew with him Sunday morning). There was a convenience store employee that recognized us from a 3am jaunt to K-Mart we had taken with a group of sisterly strippers from Saitama (they wanted souvenirs). There was a tourist trap featuring an employee closing up shop for the day assuring us that "It's all free once you pay" while visibly tweaking. A mid-sixties couple dancing to "Back That A$$ Up", a Whopper-eating contest, a lovely woman named Ilona at a "German fast-food" place called McKraut's that asked if I wanted to send kegs of my beer to them, a Miss Universe Guam catwalk, a man with one leg drinking vodka on the beach from a cut-off disposable water bottle, and several snippets of time that I don't feel comfortable describing here. All of this is juxtaposed against the more 'normal' things we did: collected parts for the boat from post offices, hardware stores, and marine supply stores, re-provisioned, watched the new Star Trek, went on a beautiful hike, and chatted with plenty of local sailors. We're leaving for the Northern Marianas Islands soon. We've got a few islands in our sights. I'll let you know which ones we hit.