Going to the Beach

With the weather heating up down here in Charleston I cant stop thinking about the Summer Saturdays at the Beach. There is not many better things you can do than spend a day at the beach. Walking up the beach path with cotton mouth waiting on that first beer you step out of your flip flops and into the warm sand (hopefully warm and not hot). Look around to find that perfect spot on the beach, you don't want kids around but you do want bikini clad coeds, and you need room enough for your beach games.

Acceptable Beach Games: Bocci Ball, Horseshoes, and Frisbee

UNacceptable Beach Games:

Paddle Ball(wasn't fun when you were a kid not fun now)

Paddle Ball with Velcro (worse than plain paddle ballBuilding a Sand Castle (its cool for all you 8 year old future engineers of America just weird now)

Then you sling your back pack chair off of your shoulder, if you dont have a back pack chair then you just don't know what you are doing (you might be from Ohio). People from ohio--->

Next is the first Cooler Cold Beer of the day, nothing better. 45 minutes and 4 beers later you get that feeling. You know what I'm talking about, your eye catches view of the horizontal lines of women grouped together at waist high water but just spread out enough; the lone men at least 20 yards away from the next person, you go waist deep and relax. Or, you could do the soccer star special and take a knee 5 yards behind your friends on the beach. All you have to do is enjoy the rest of your day.

Beach Recommendations:

Beer Type- Lager

Food- Sandwich and Chips

Ice have lots of it and Water and Gatorade

Sunscreen- apply lotion before you arrive and reapply with spray can (its not that cool rubbing sandy lotion on your skin)

Music-its a must

Oil Spill in Gulf of Mexico

picture from nytimes.com

I will be traveling to Louisiana next week, so with the state in the front of my mind, here are some fun facts about the oil spill.

Quick Facts:

Oil Rig is larger than a football field

It is Leased and operated by British Petroleum (BP)

It sank (yes it sank) 50 miles off coast of Louisiana

The leak is coming from 3 different locations

You can smell the oil from the coasts of Florida to Louisiana

The Coast Guard is doing controlled burns (like in a forest) to get rid of the oil

It may take up to 3 months to stop the leak (common way to stop a leak like this is to drill another hole and change the flow of oil)

BP will be required by law to pay for the clean up (including the government's cost of overseeing the clean up.

The oil is leaking at a rate of 5000 barrells a day (1 barrell = 42 gallons)

BEER 101:

In general there are two major categories of beer (ale and lager); these two categories may then be broken into smaller categories. Lager is what we grew up on such as ______ (insert the first beer you ever had a sip of and there you go)ie. bud light. Ale is the first import beer you ever tried that you did not like at first but now that you have aged and matured will occasionally drink. ie. newcastle. Lager is bottom fermented (which requires refrigeration) while Ale is top fermented.

LLoyd's Recommendations: ALE: Franziskanker Wheat Ale, Allagash White ale, and Dogfish Head 90 minute IPA

LAGER: Pilsner Urquell, Red Stripe, peroni and Michelob Light.

LLoyd's Dont's: Bud Light, Miller Light, Sierra Nevada(not terrible but you could do better for same price), and Heineken(America's first import).

Try this website to learn more: beeradvocate.com

The Three best places to drink are on somebody else's boat, a bar with taps lining the walls, and Oktoberfest in Munich if you can swing it.

Quote of the Day: "drinking good beer is a coed event"-drunken American at Oktoberfest 2006

First Blog

I was recently encouraged by the masses to start a blog. I think for a number reasons: (in my mind) i'm a genius, for a certain x-soccer star to chuckle to himself as he watches an entire nascar race, and finally to keep the masses informed of all the trivial knowledge and opinions clutterd in my head (both of which you can hear from me with regularity if you want to or not). So here it is, my blog.
Quote of the Day: "you can't drink all day if you don't start in the morning" -anonymous
I've got an Andy Rooney rant for yall: ESPN, how about every now and then you stop rolling the damn news and scores scroller. Its bad enough that you constantly have the virtual scoreboard on the picture cutting off about 10% of the screen. When I'm watching a big game its not that cool to find myself brought to a trance like state reading the same headline and score every five minutes. People usually have the internet at their finger tips as they watch tv; if there is a score somebody wants to know they can go to your website. I didn't realize until last football season how much more enjoyable an experience it is to see just football when watching the game; the regional SEC games are shown like this in HD and ESPN with all of the over-produced highlights and over-hyped individual players don't hold a candle to just watching the game.