Scoring On My Honeymoon
I scored big time on my honeymoon.
I was a force of nature. A one man wrecking crew. I was in a zone that other men can only dream of. I'm sure that the other guests at the resort have never even heard of some of the moves I pulled off. I was just that good. You should have seen the looks on my wife's face…
When I was hunched over a computer desperately trying to pick up a wide receiver to fill in for the Vikings' Troy Williamson who was on a bye week. A word of advice to all those guys out there about to take the plunge: If you spend over 28 hours traveling 8260 miles to your honeymoon destination, it's highly likely that your new wife is not going to have a strong opinion about whether or not you should pick up the 49ers' Arnaz Battle to plug your hole at receiver. Women are just weird like that.
Grooms-to-be receive plenty of advice in the weeks leading up to their wedding day. Don't sweat the small stuff. Remember it's her day. Don't get drunk before the ceremony. Get drunk during the reception. Don't let the hired help get hammered during the reception.
But no one said anything about the adverse effect my wedding and subsequent honeymoon would have on my fantasy football season. The priest didn't mention it at the Pre-Cana classes. My married friends didn't pull me aside at the bachelor party and warn me. No fatherly advice on my wedding day. No one took the time to mention that spending two weeks on a beach, drinking SeyBrew beers and suffering third degree burns, would severely limit my ability to keep track of whether or not Cedric Benson was becoming more of a factor in Chicago's running game.
I put in a lot of planning for my wedding but I put in a whole lot of planning for my fantasy football draft. I joined about six random ESPN.com fantasy leagues just so I could get some practice drafts under my belt before my two real ones. I agonized over having the last pick in the 16 team Barstool Sports league and nearly had to go on anxiety medication before the draft for my other league that includes several honest-to-God, paid for their opinions fantasy experts. Sure, my stomach was in knots on the ride over to the church but imagine how many sleepless nights I've had after picking Ronnie Brown and Cadillac Williams in the first two rounds of one of my drafts.
In the hours before my wedding, I did three things. Drank copious amounts of ginger ale. Watched Wedding Crashers. And set up my fantasy lineup for the next day. I guess I could have taken the easy way out and just lived with the same fantasy lineup for the duration of my honeymoon. But then the terrorists win. And by terrorists I mean the other owners in my fantasy leagues.
When I arrived in the Seychelles, a place as untouched by the hand of man as about any on earth, I didn't run to a computer to check how my fantasy teams had done. That would have been dumb; it was Tuesday so there really was nothing I could have done one way or another to change how my teams performed.
So, I enjoyed my honeymoon.
Until Sunday morning. In a masterstroke of planning, going to the Seychelles actually gave me a fantasy football edge. Being in a time zone eight hours ahead of Boston allowed me to make roster moves while my opponents were still sleeping. When Sunday morning rolled around, I knew that I needed some alone time with the computer. Which was a problem. Our resort had one computer for guests and the speed of the Internet in the Seychelles makes one long for the days of carrier pigeons. After waiting around for some Danes to finish whatever it is Danes do when they're online- updating their Lars Ulrich blog probably- I gained control of the computer.
My wife quickly realized what was going on. She didn't say anything but I could see the wheels turning and have little doubt what Exhibit A of our divorce proceedings will be. Trying to make fantasy football moves, waiver wire lists of hundreds of players, dozens of images to load, countless geeky computer things going on as each page loads- the 30 minutes I spent on that computer may have been the busiest period time in the history of Internet usage in the Seychelles.
Other guests began to line up to use the computer. Germans, Russians, Italians and English. They all wanted in. You could practically see the sweat on the Germans' faces. They needed their David Hasselhoff fix and they needed it now. But I wasn't budging. I pulled my Barstool Sports baseball hat low over my eyes and went back to work. International relations be damned. I had a fantasy football roster to set up.
When I was finally done and all my bye week slots had been filled, I stood up and stretched. I wasn't expecting to work over my honeymoon but Team Jail Bait needed a wide receiver and, by God, they were getting a wide receiver. I walked out of the computer room, the Indian Ocean a hundred yards away, the equatorial sun beaming down, paying no mind to the dirty looks from a gaggle of ghastly white Europeans in Speedos and went on my way. Mission Accomplished.
My honeymoon? It was magical. It was epic. It was a dream come true. I went 6-0 in fantasy football. Now, that's the way to start a marriage.
Jamie Chisholm