In light of realizing that this blog was basically becoming a fishing blog I thought it would make sense to recap the trip to the Dominican for Jen and Ryan’s wedding.

We flew out of Vancouver around midnight on Wednesday. As with most flights I tried to sleep on the plane, which I must’ve done at some point but I still felt like crap when we landed in the Dominican. After we landed we got on a bus and headed out to our resort, the Grand Bahia Principe. To be honest when I first got there I just slept for 4 hours so I didn’t really see much that first day.

I could go into detailed reports about what I did each day but it basically worked like this most days: Sat on the beach, sat around the pool, drank free booze, ate, tried to fight off diarrhea, repeat. One kinda bummer about the place we were at was how adamant they were about not leaving the resort. Apparently the Dominican isn’t the safest place for naïve WASP-y Canadians like myself.

Given that Punta Cana is basically completely owned by foreign investors, the resorts don’t give a very fair view of how the Dominican actually is. In fact the closest real city was about 2 hours by car. I wish I could’ve explored the country a bit more, but it wasn’t really in the cards.

The wedding itself was a good time. One strange thing about it was that since it was done on the beach, there were onlookers who weren’t invited to the wedding itself. And given it was on a topless beach, well that just ups the ante. I don’t think I’ll ever forget seeing Jen and Ryan saying their vows while just a few yards away a 60 year old woman with giant floppy honkers hanging out is wiping away the tears. Magical.

Also tried to go out fishing while I was there. Unfortunately we didn’t catch anything, though judging by the size of the hooks we must’ve been going after some big fish.

On the way back to the airport I tried to take some snaps of what the Dominican might be like for real. Given the fact the country borders Haiti I suppose I shouldn’t have been too surprised with what I saw.

It was a great week. Nice and relaxing, and the tv down there has like 4 soccer games on at any time of the day. I watched some MLS as well as some Dutch Eredivisie which was cool.

Also a side note, while I was down there I read two books, both about football. The first one was “Boys will be boys” by Jeff Pearlman. It’s about how crazy all the cowboys were during their dynasty years, cocaine, hookers, masturbating in team meetings, it’s definitely a funny book. The second was “The Blindside” by Michael Lewis. It’s about Michael Oher a top Left tackle prospect and how he came from dirt poor Memphis and kind of got adopted by a rich white family. Anyways if you’re looking for books to read I definitely recommend them.

One other side note. Because Ryan is a volleyball player, him and all his friends are super tall dudes who are all in crazy shape. Being the short fat guy by default was a bummer.

Joking aside, it was a great time. Good dudes, free booze, wicked weather. Now I’m just counting down the days until I head back to the hammer.