Gonna Head To Hong Kong, BRB
Im sitting here in JFK airport getting ready to board a airplane for 16 hours where I will attempt to survivorman myself inside a giant metal tube with no Wifi over the worlds biggest ocean. I’ve only lost my passport and boarding passes in the bathroom once in the 30 minutes I’ve been in the airport so I’d say my trips off to a good start. I just sat there with the 94 bulls intro song playing on my iphone speaker untill the lost and found called my name over the loud speaker like I was running out at the United Center.
I am not afraid of flying, but I am afraid of flying without wifi. And the flight over the pacific does not have internet leaving me free with my own thoughts for 16 hours which is a very dangrous thing. So be prepared for me to drop like 5 blogs upon my arrival written at the altitude of 50,000 feet with some sheeshed-up vino and klonopin coarsing through my system. Either that or I’ll sleep the entire time and then not go to bed again until monday who knows. So while hanging out with myself for 16 hours would be considered forms of torture in most NATO countrys, I’m looking forward to the opportunity to place several large wagers, then have to wait til I land to know if I won them. Hey @news please dont have anything important happen while I’m in the air. Thank you.
(Braves -1.5, 76ers +5)
Packing Strategy
My approach to packing for this long trip is as follows:
1. Check the apple weather for that city 4 days before I go and only look at the first days weather. Says its gona be 80 degrees on friday so only packing shorts.
2. Pack workout clothes I’ll never use unless im nude when room service knocks on my hotel room door then i’ll throw on the basketball shorts
3. Put a xanax for the flight into a unrelated prescription bottle filled with pills that do not resembe xanax in the slightest.
4. Forget to bring socks
Hey PFT why are you being such a sports hipster no one cares about rugby
Wrong. Actually yeah youre probably right. But even if it wasnt the same weekend as the boringest final four in american history I would still want to go to this event. As Donny puts it, it is like Mardi Gras and the Superbowl wrapped into one.
Its no secret Im a big rugby fan. Rugby is football distilled down to its grittiest roots its like if you said what if you made the entire team out of Peyton Hillis’s and Haloti Ngatas and all the fans were from Philadelphia. I played for 3 years in college, then 8 more on a mixture of mens league teams and as anyone whose ever played the sport will tell you its addicting.
It’s the most fun sport I’ve played that isnt currently a event in standard beer olympics, and while partying does seem to go hand in hand with the sport, the game itself is everything that spring football leagues try to be. Its quick, big men and women smacking the shit out of each other. There is no forward passing at all so Christian Hackenberg probly would of even been drafted higher. And it has better athletes than the AAF. Perry Baker and Carlin Isles both run in the 4.2-4.3 neighborhood.
The entire Fijian team are like a mixture of Vernon Davis and magicians. And recurring guest Danny Barrett is like if Rob Gronkowski grew up listening to megadeth instead of jock jams and was much better at defending against laterals:
We are ranked number one in the world in rugby 7s which is no small feat considering we didnt really take the game that seriously until about 10 years ago. We’re better then New Zealand, Australia, South Africa, the remote fishing village known as Wales, and even Fiji at the moment.
So the Hong Kong Sevens Tournament is somethiing I’ve always wanted to go to but for whatever reason like work, march madness, probation, Dontrelle Willis was pitching, etc. I never got around to it. Well on Sunday I went out and played rugby for the first time in 3 years and my brain started humming and its a tough thing to turn off. So Sunday night were recording Pardon My Take I talked myself into it. I’m a big lather guy. I got myself all worked up and kept imagining it and once that stone started rolling downhill its tougher to stop then Quade Cooper seeing a pie made out of meth cooling on his neighbors windowsill/kitchen counter (rugby refrence- kind of a Swag Kelly type breaking and entering situation). Again, big momentum guy and the momentum carried me directly to expedia in this situation.
Fuck It
There are only so many times in your life when you can say fuck it. This is a fuck it moment where Im gonna go halfway around the world, make some content, and enjoy some rugby. You gotta sprinkle in a few of these reckless deicisons every now and again or else you stop listening to the fuck its and they go away forever and next thing you know your dead.
Fortunately I’m lucky enough to be paired up with the Worlds Best possible tourguide Donny (who is one of the most talented people on the internet excluding unboxing experts on youtube), so it should be a weekend to never forget or never remember, not sure which one.