The Last Last Hurrah - 2010

Rio, France, meet me in Mexico, Chinatown, then off to Tokyo
It doesn't matter 'cause anywhere's perfect with you

Waaaaaaay back in the year 2009, me and my best group of friends in the world decided to take a cruise together. The trip was called "The Last Hurrah". The thinking was to have one last party/extravaganza before my married friends started having kids (hence ending their lives as we knew it). We took a four day cruise to Mexico and back and it was a boatload of fun.

Well a funny thing happened. 2009 ended, 2010 rolled around and no one got pregnant or popped out any kids. Then we started talking about perhaps doing another "Last Hurrah" trip. Could we do it two years in a row? Well, I guess we can, cause we did! We didn't do a cruise this year, but instead stayed at one of those all-inclusive resorts. For $700 we got airfare, lodging for five days four nights and all you can eat and drink. Cabo San Lucas Mexico was the destination... We don't have any official name for the trip, I'm calling it the "The Last Last Hurrah".

You know what they always say about movie sequels? They are almost always never as good as the original. I privately wondered if this second trip could be as good as the cruise. The cruise was so incredibly fun and I thought there was really no way this trip would exceed that. I was mentally prepared for a letdown... But how wrong I was, this trip turned out to be even more fun than the cruise was... Why was that? Well allow me to tell you.

Like I did in the first trip, let's breakdown the trip in award show style.

Opening Gala
Before we get to the rest of the trip, let's whet your appetite with some pictures. We had over 1500 images and after sorting through all of them, these are some of my favorites.













The Close Call Of The Trip Award
And the first award goes to Wade's mom. A full fledged disaster was averted thanks to Wade's mom. And I'm not kidding either. Wade literally forgot his passport at home. If we had gotten to the airport without his passport, that would have been a def-con level one disaster. We were just about to cross the San Mateo bridge (the point of no return) when his mom (bless Mrs. Chan for being awake at 5AM to take care of her son) woke up, saw Wade's passport on the dinner table and gave us a call. So we turned back and got it. Luckily, we gave ourselves extra time for driving and made our flight with plenty of minutes to spare.

How thankful are we for Mrs. Chan? So thankful that I scoured the web to find a picture of her to put on this blog.


Mrs.Chan and her forgetful son.

The Chris Hansen (To Catch A Predator) Award
Goes to Wade. For this picture.



For the record, this is not posed. Once i got onto the plane, i popped my ipod headphones on and promptly fell asleep. It was 7AM and I had slept at 4AM the night before. The eight year old girl sitting next to me obviously thought I had a good idea and did the same thing.. in the same position I did. Hence the picture. I didn't even know this picture was taken until it went up on Facebook. In fact, I'm not even sure it's legal to take pictures of a child that is not your own... Hell, i might be breaking laws just by putting this picture on this blog. Congratulations Wade, your skill at taking pictures of unsuspecting eight year olds is impeccable, I hope you don't goto jail for this.

Best Way To Start A Vacation Award
We landed in Cabo San Lucas at around 4PM PST (2 hr layover in Los Angeles) and took a taxi to the resort. We were staying in the Riu Santa Fe, one of those swanky all inclusive resorts. Props to Samuel M. Chan for finding the deal.

I knew it was going to be a good vacation because within two minutes of us getting off the taxi, a waitress hands us a cold beverage.



Me and Lily drinking, thirty seconds after stepping off the van. You cannot beat that. It was at that moment when I knew it would be a great vacation.

Best Invention Award
Allow me to show you a picture.



Yes folks. What you see there is a shot-dispensers... In our own rooms! We could do shots whenever we wanted. If I wanted to take a shot before going to bed, I could. If we wanted to take a shot of Jose Cuervo to start the day, we could... the possibilities were endless. It was at that very moment when I knew that the weekend might possibly the funnest of my life. Let me just say that we used these things pretty liberally... The Mexicans do a lot of dumb things, but this invention is brilliant. Brilliant!!!


Shots! Shots! While we are on the topic of alcohol....

Song of The Trip
Every trip needs a theme song. Last year's was Katy Perry's Hot & Cold for reasons I don't quite remember, except that Wade had a fascination with her. This year, we had a little bit of trouble coming up with one. We scanned the spectrum of music tossing around songs all the way from Miley Cyrus to the other side of the spectrum which is Taylor Swift (our music spectrum is pretty small)... But we could not find one...

We couldn't think of one... because the answer was right in front of our faces!! Literally. I have to hand it to Sammy for figuring it out. Part way through the trip, he made an inspired decision. Every single time he used the word 'alcohol' in a sentence, he would say 'ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-alcohol' like the Jamie Foxx song. And everyone would crack up. It was hilarious. And he did that all weekend. And pretty soon we all started doing that and hence the theme was born.

Blame it on the ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-cohol

Creation Award (Best Naturey Moment)
The sunset over the Pacific on our first day there was stunningly gorgeous. How stunning was it? I was amazed when I saw it, but when I came home and looked at the pictures, I was even more amazed. God put on a show for us that evening. Let's get straight to the pictures.





Skies the color of indigo.. Beautiful. That first day was the best. The other days were cloudy so the sunset wasn't as pretty.

The Long-Time No See Award
Oh tennis I love you. I have not played any real tennis in so long. I've forgotten how much fun it was to play with competent people who could actually hit the ball back accurately. And I've forgotten how much fun it was to play with the gang. Like Hal, Paul, Sammy, SMC and Rachel. We use to play all the time during the summers, but not much recently. I've forgotten about Paul's rocket serve (with 2% first serve accuracy), I've forgotten about Rachel's solid forehand, I've forgotten SMC crazy spins. And to play real games too. I don't think i've played a real game in a years, but we played two this day. Here are some pictures.



Left/Top Sammy. Showing off his 35 mph rocket serve.
Right/Bottom Paul. Only one person could pull off the entire black look in 85 degree and not break a sweat.



Left/Top Your truly. Hitting the shot I really have a hard time hitting. The high backhand. I cannot hit that shot.
Right/Bottom Hal. I played one set with Hal as my doubles partner and I forgotten how much I like playing with him. (I actually thought this on the court, "hmm i really like playing with Hal!"). I think the reason is that his game some what complements mine, as he gets his serves in regularly and has a good forehand which allows me to play the net which i like to do. Good job Hal.



Rachel and me in the final match we played. I have to hand it to Rachel for toughening it out, in this final match we were playing two of the guys and we were down like 4-1 , but we pulled even to 6-6 and to a tiebreak. Rachel displayed toughness I didn't know was in her. She was practically dying out there, it was 95 degrees, we were both dehydrated, and she had played most of the morning already... But the game must go on!! She almost pulled a Pete Sampras and threw up on the court. We eventually lost the tie break, but Rachel will ever won my admiration for the way she played this game. Good job Rachel, i'll take you as my tennis partner anyday.

The Sherry Lee Award (Athletic Accomplishment)
Sherry, i dedicate this award to you my friend. One the second day of Cabo, I pulled off this schedule. Tennis in the morning (as described above). Swimming in the afternoon. Some sprints on the beach. Running the gym for about an hour. Then beach volleyball in the evening next to the Pacific. Pretty much six hours of athletics for the day... And the funny thing was, I wasn't even sore or tired the next day. I guess being on vacation has a way of refreshing your body... or maybe it was all the strange Mexican drinks I was drinking. Regardless, I'm pretty sure a day like that will never be repeated. Sherry, are you proud?

The Rainbow Shot Award
One bar downtown was offering what they called the "Rainbow Shot", basically 9 shots the color of the rainbow for $9. Observe bartending magic.



Pretty neat huh? Anytime you can get 9 shots for $9 you got to do it right? So we did. And now I present my first ever video interview on this site, as i interview everyone before they are about to take their shots. (Scroll to the 16 second marker before interviewing starts)



What a fun fun fun moment. The shot itself was kind of weak (i mean $9 for 9 shots... we're lucky we didn't get H1N1 from drinking this water) it was like drinking juice. I think there was .000000000000000000000001 alcohol in the drinks. Hal did three of them and probably could have done all nine and not feel a thing. I could probably do all nine and I'm usually pretty weak when it comes to alcohol. It was just fun doing them though. Here are more pictures from this glorious moment.



Left/Top The people who would be taking the shots.
Right/Bottom Cheers.



The Illegal Activity Award
An award all Mexicans will be familiar with... the illegal activity award! (okay okay, just kidding, i couldn't resist that joke. I love Taco Bell). Well, last year, we had some adventures with a volleyball. Last year, if you recall, we couldn't find a volleyball... And we couldn't get one since we weren't staying at the resort. So we did the next best thing, Hal 'borrowed' a ball from the resort by pretending to be a guest at the resort. This we did, and it was good until we got caught.

Lesson learned? Well not quite. This year, we stayed at the resort and was entitled to a volleyball, except it took us forever to secure a volleyball thanks to Mexicaness. Good grief... Anyways, once we got a ball (took us about an hour), we decided not to give it back until the end of the trip. Cause we knew we would need the ball again, and didn't want to go through all the trouble to get a new ball each day. So at the end of the game, Winnie just put it in her bag and we lugged it around with us... It's a bit funny, we lugged Volleyball everywhere (since we couldn't leave him in the room, we didn't want housekeeping to snoop in our stuff and find Volleyball would we?).. At the end of the trip, we were on the verge of returning volleyball to the front desk, when someone (i believe Hal, since he's into stuff like this) mentioned why don't we just take the ball home with us, since it was a good ball and would be a good keepsake as a reminder of this epic trip. And we all thought, damn, good idea. So we stole the volleyball. We stuffed it into Paul's bag and rescued him from the evil Mexican resort. The end.

Footnote... Volleyball got confiscated at LAX. Evidently, it's illegal to bring a volleyball onto a plane.... Just kidding! Volleyball is at Hal's house now. But it would have been funny if after all that work to steal the ball, it did get confiscated.

The Mexican Genius Award
I also like to call this the 'The WTF, WTH, and WTFH Award' because so many things the Mexicans did I just flat out did not understand. Let me point out some of them.

WTF #1. The aforementioned volleyball adventure. You know how long it took us to get a volleyball? One hour. It went like this. Sammy went to ask Jose at the front desk for the ball. Jose tells him to see Juan at the pool. Juan tells him to go see Juanita the entertainment manager, Juanita sends him to Jesus at the restaurant.. i mean wtf? At first i thought they were just giving us the run around... but then i realize they probably had no idea who had the ball or who was suppose to have the ball... The funny thing is that they never gave us a ball, we just took it from another group after they finished playing with it.

WTF #2. They had two tennis courts on the resort. Most people borrowed rackets, since it's hard to bring a tennis racket on a plane (i considered bringing mine actually)... So knowing this, if you have two tennis courts and people need to borrow rackets, how many rackets do you think it would be good to have on-hand for the guests... Obviously, the answer is five... Good job Mexicans.

WTF #3. Me, Paul and Wade shared a room. And we had one key to share amongst the three of us which is a bit hard. So Wade went to the front desk and asked for another one... And they gave it to him! No verification needed, no security check, no nothing. They just handed him over a key.. umm I mean I understand honesty is the best policy.. but WTF?

WTF #4. As a bonus WTF?!? I was browsing a Mexican bookstore on site and when I saw this book, I automatically dropped the average IQ of the entire country 20 points in my mind.



Flashback/Flashforward Award
On our second full day in Mexico Paul, Lily and SMC treated me to a day of ATV for my birthday! (Thanks folks!) I've never been ATVing before but I've heard that it was fun and I was really looking forward to it. It was one of those guided tour trips and we would start in the desert and end at the beach. I was pretty excited the night before... that was before I learned that I would have to get up at 7:30 for the trip and i got a little less excited... and then when I woke up at 7 with a hangover, I got even less excited... No worries though, after we got there and got geared up, I was excited again! Here are some pictures.



Left/Top The four of us, geared up and ready rumble in the desert.
Right/Bottom Our wheels..



Left/Top Going through the desert we saw some huge cactus's. Like this one. It was about 30ft tall. Jose, our guide, said cactus's this big are usually 1000-2000 years old. Wow.
Right/Bottom On the trip we ran into a wild ostrich!! Okay, the ostrich was not wild, it was caged. It's about 10 ft tall. I've never seen one of these birds in the flesh before. Jose, our guide, said ostrich meat is really good.





Four shots of villages in on the tour. It's easy to forget, because we were staying in a tourist part of Mexico, that most of Mexico is very poor and the country has a high poverty rate. Most of Mexico is in fact, like villages like this. I am not sure why the guide took us to this village, since it's not exactly that attractive and wasn't really that safe (this is the equivalent of someone visiting the Bay Area for the first time, and i take them to see West Oakland), and it was kind of desolate... But in a way, I'm glad I saw it, because it gives a realer picture of Mexico. These villages have no electricity and they get their water well drawned. The guide told us that most of the villages have their own schools and churches (see picture) because it's too far away from the city... Most of the villages also grow their own produce are self sustaining to a degree. I called this the Flashforward/Flashback Award since it reminded me a little of Cambodia. (Definitely not as poor as some of the Camobodian villages though).



Left/Top The quartet. At the beach. We made it!
Right/Bottom Some action shots of us ripping through the desert.

The Favorite Moment
I'm gonna end with this.... At the end of the trip, on our last night, our tradition is to go around the table and everyone would recall their favorite moment from the trip. Despite all the fun I had atv, swimming, tennis, drinking, eating, I think my favorite part of the trip will be those evening sessions of just sitting around the table, outdoor in the open, under the sky, just chatting and shooting the breeze with the gang... When we're back home, we're all so busy and our schedules are all so different, that it's so hard to get together and just chill. We would get together for things like birthdays or ball games, but those things always surround activities and we don't get time to just sit together, have a beer and talk.

And on this trip we got to do that. Three nights in a row. It was really simple. After dinner, we just sat and practiced the art of conversation. And it was great. Serious discussions. Funny discussions. Silly discussions. So many laughs, so many jokes, so many laughs. And those are the moments that I will remember from this trip. Some final pictures from us just hanging out.





Thanks friends. For a great trip.