I think I mentioned this earlier, but in Crete cats are like squirrels. They run around everywhere and people just feed them. Halfway through our dinner, we had a couple of cute little kittens cozy up to us looking for some food and some lovin'.
Looky, looky! What's going on here in this picture? After Grant was done giving her the "See, aren't we fun guys?" photo review, she quickly cozied up to tha Grizza.
We chatted Michael up for a few minutes and after we'd established a rapport, I asked him if I had any shot with his cute friend and he replied (please make sure you read the next sentence in your best Balki from "Perfect Strangers" voice) "Don' be ree-deek-you-los!"
We got outside and after a quick "Charlie's Angels" pose for the cam, Grant and Tymber made plans to meet up out front of the club the next morning at 11am and then head to the beach together.
With the leather-panted Gunther giving us the stinkeye from across the table we took a view pictures more pics without her in the background to try to throw him off our perv trail. By the way, ever notice how stuff like Coke, ketchup and McDonalds always taste not-so-great overseas? Well with beer, it works the other way around. The beer we are drinking is Amstel. (not Amstel light, regular Amstel) Maybe it was the crisp sea breeze or the abundance of badobnkadonk butts out there but it was hands down one of the best beers I've ever had.
The camera never lies. That's why the picture is blurred. But turn down a complimentary digestif in Greece and you might get your ass handed to you along with the check. Looks like we have some shots to drink. Oh well, here's to minimal liver damage.
In addition to raki, the guy that we chatted up at this restaurant brought us free ice cream sundaes too! Booze and ice-cream before 1pm. And it's not even my birthday!
You can't really tell but the German chick sitting over my shoulder was really cute and Grant insisted on capturing her in a pic so he could "use it later" whatever that means. Here's me as the photo decoy.
Fatty managed to snap a pic of the Grizza and I in a golden slumber before we got some breakfast and hit the road. (Luckily he wasn't there to capture the Golden Shower that had gone on a few minutes earlier).
When Fatty showed me the great mid-air picture he captured of me jumping of the rock, we decided we needed a picture of EVERYONE jumping off the rock. So without further ado, here we go!
Afterwards, we emptied our shoes, got some ice cream in the nearby town and then hopped in the car to head back to Rethymnon. I don't have any pics of the ride home, but we ended up getting totally and hopelessly lost on the way back to the highway. We got stuck on lightless mountain roads and almost drove off a cliff when we tried to make a u-turn.
After a light dinner at home, we were still feeling carsick from the overly bumpy (and long) ride home. We decided to take it easy at the condo. We even managed to find a delicious granola snack that described our photoshoots earlier on in the day.
Here's us bright and early out on our front porch enjoying a breakfast of Greek yogurt and granola. Mmmmmmmm. (ps - what's up, busted dudes in the morning?)
After another hour or so of (sobering) conversation, Kostas brought out a few trays of fresh fruit and several rounds of Raki, which is a bitter digestif made from the distillate of grape stems during wine production (not unlike the Italian grappa).
...that she was only fourteen years old! Doh! Turns out her family owned the club and twice a week she worked the door to earn some extra money (ummm, her allowance, I guess). It was a little past 2am and we were all knackered from our long day of scootering (and too much wine at dinner) so we decided to pack it in early and head back to the resort. We arrived at our car to find Grant sprawled out across the backseat asleep...and decided to do what any friends in our situation would do: scare the living shit out of him. We all got on one side of the car and at the count of three started rocked the (tiny) car back and forth as hard as we could while screaming. Grant leapt awake (screaming along with us) and nearly soiled himself. I tried to take a pic of it, but the flash bounced off the car's glass and it didn't come out. Sorry.
Fatty captured this awesome pic of me turning all quick to try to flash some local girls the "Hey, come join us!" disco smile. No dice. I gotta work on that shit.
About halfway through our meal, Kostas come outside and sat down with us. When he found out that Chris spoke fluent Greek, he became even friendlier (which we didn't think was possible) and started bringing out carafe after carafe of two locally-made village wines.
We wandered the streets for almost an hour trying to decide on where we wanted to eat (ok, trying to find the place that had the most hot girls dining there). The problem was, there was so many restaurants (and so many hot girls) that we couldn't make up our minds. Finally, as we neared the point of collapse from hunger, we were courted by this dude, Kostas Vallasso, and he was so friendly and funny that we decided to eat as his place.
We got back to the scooter place (and please keep in mind that we'd literally been gone for about four minutes) only to find that the scooter rental guy had gone, that's right, you guessed it, ON SIESTA! Here's a picture of my acute disdain. Luckily for us, the people in the shop nextdoor asked what the problem was and when we told them what had happened, they called the scooter guy on his cell phone and he came back and hooked us up with new bikes.
Turns out, the highway was way less scary than the little road we'd been riding through town. On the little road, we were forced to ride in the sketchy, pothole ridden shoulder, where we constantly had to worry about cars pulling out in front of us and dogs that were running around in the street. But on the highway there was hardly any traffic and the shoulder was wide and smoothly paved. (By the way, you know you totally love my wind-styled Farrah Fawcett wings. They're the latest in cycling fashion.)
Heltmets? Check. We had originally planned on driving west to a nearby city called Hania but when we looked more carefully at the map, we realized it was over 75 km away (which is really far by scooter). So we instead decided to head to Balí, a small beach town about 35 km away.
After our quick half-time show, we decided to try our luck in one more bar. Upon returning from the bathroom upstairs, Fatty actually managed to capture with his camera the Force Field that was physically preventing all girls from seeing us (nevermind actually letting them get close enough to dance with us). Once he showed us this pic, we knew we'd better just call it a night.
Lacking both the lower-body flexibility to execute a proper DLR kick and the upper-body strength (believe it or not!) to hold myself horizontal from the signpost long enough for someone to take a picture of it, I had to resort to the really lame "Look at me I'm hanging from a window" pose. Booooo-ring!
Not wanting to make me feel bad, Chris was quick to throw down with a quick "See, not only pussies have to hang from window?" show of solidarity. What a fuggin guy, eh?
Around midnight, we finally got motivated enough to all hop into the car and drive into downtown Rethymnon. We sat at an outdoor cafe right on the water, had some coffee and chocolate cake, then around 1am we started roaming the streets looking for some interesting bars or clubs to hit.
Live Show gets the thumbsdown! Here's us in the parking lot trying to assess the financial damage. Our four Russian "strippers" managed to fleece the four of us for a grand total of €120 in less than 20 minutes! And we still didn't manage to see any heines! We hopped in the car to drive the remaing 1/4 mile back to our resort, and in the moment of silence after we were finished laughing hysterically at what had just happened we all heard Grant say quietly to himself: "Hmmmmm. A hundred Euros, eh?" Hahahahaha.
On the way back to the car a little after 3am, we found another sidewalk snack shop and decided to get something to eat. We all ended up ordering the Cretan equivalent of (my favorite bo-bo NYC food) the infamous Rosario's "Frankie and Cheese." (special shout out to the Crowley brothers, Dens & J Crowley, who have both frequently use their web pages to expound upon the most excellent deliciousness of this culinary wonder of the Lower East Side)
Here we are, four dudes surrounded by nothing but totally hot women from a Greek island who want to have NOTHING TO DO WITH US. Liberia's got nothing on us, THIS is hell on earth.
After putting we put the groceries away, I laid down to take a quick nap before we headed out for the night and woke up just in time to thwart Grant's plans to seriously brain me. He was leaning in to get better sack-to-face proximity, saw that I was waking up and fired off this creepy pic in a panic as he realized I was just about to clobber him in the nuts. (And by the way, what's up with your balls dude? You may have almost brained me but at least my new nickname isn't "Wally Weirdnuts").
Our schtick was apparently so convincing that they even seated us in one of the cool private rooms in the back (that we ended up sharing with Tony Chambers, the Creative Director for Wallpaper Magazine. Oooooooooh! Fancy!)
After our failed attempt to find cheap "dressy shoes," (FUCK, London's expensive!), Grant and I decided to head back to Charlene's and relax while Fatty and Chris decided to stay behind, do some more sight seeing and go to Guitar Center and impress the locals by shredding on the guitars there (Too bad you think I'm kidding).
London being London, it started raining just a few minutes after we got off the tube. We looked around for umbrellas and these were the only ones we could find. "Haaaaaaaaaaaay!"
Reunited! Grant had been in LA working on a TV show and we hadn't seen him in about a month. He arrived in London in the morning and woke our asses up. We showered, got dressed, and headed around the corner to a "builder's diner" right around the corner from her flat and we all ordered...
So in the course of shooting the shit with Tony Chambers, it came up that we had wanted to sing karaoke that night but that the only place that we knew of had already closed. Tony leaned in close and in a conspirital tone told us about a private, karaoke speakeasy he knew of that operated afterhours on the second floor of a tiny, nearby sushi bar. After promising we'd keep it secret, he disclosed to us the location. (Looking back, he was probably just totally psyched to have our loud, American, clearly NOT VIP-asses out of his little private, members only backroom!)
Grant and I giving props to our man Jack (aka - Crazy Pomodoro Guy). Oh, and somewhere right around this time, Layla got all huffy about something and decided to just leave without telling anyone. (Wtf?).
In order to get from the parking lot to the actual building that surrounds the spa, you have to walk this long path that cuts through piles of lava rock.
So this is a picture of the now defunct British band, Kula Shakur. People in the past had told me that I looked a lot like their singer, Crispian Mills (the guy in the left in the pic). Anyway, an hour and a half into the afterparty, this really drunk short guy stumbles up to me and in a super thick Essex accent is like "Oi! Crispian! 'Ow the fuck you behn, mate?" So I very politely told him "I think you've got me mixed up with somebody else." Upon hearing my American accent, which he thought I was feigning he laughed and told me "Ha! That's a fucking great accent. Really great. So seriously, how've you been?" At this point, Charlene came over and told him that I wasn't who he thought I was. He got all embarrassed and walked off really quickly. After he left, Charlene was like "Do you know who that was?"
Chris and me. (Oh yeah, and this is an ACDC concert so prepare yourself to see nothing but tongues and "metal horns" in the rest of these pics. Sorry, I don't make the rules, I just follow them).
