Soccer Road Trippin’ Through the South

It’s hotter than Hades here in D.C. so it seems like the perfect time to hop in the car and drive many, many hours to even hotter locations, primarily in the South.

Sally and Burt
“Oh, I’m sorry, am I inhibiting your driving? It’s just that this is a couples road trip and what could be more magical and romantic than that?”

But we do it for the love of soccer.

That’s right, my travel-partner-for-life XFE and I are going on a road trip to see our favorite English Premier League team, the Tottenham Hotspurs, play two games in the United States as part of the International Champions Cup. Eight European teams, including the Hotspurs, who you may remember came in second in the Premier League this past May, will be playing at stadiums across the U.S. July 19-30th.

Tottenham Traveling Squad

We’ve got tickets to see Tottenham play Paris Saint-Germain in Orlando and Manchester City in Nashville. And instead of trying to see Tottenham is pay Roma in New Jersey in the middle of the week, we decided to skip it and swing through New Orleans instead (we’ve got some history with ol’New Orleans).

So today, we’re in the car for approximately 8.5 hours heading to a quick overnight stop in Charleston to say “howdy” to the fine folks of “Southern Charm.” (Well, maybe not so much. Although, we are going to try to have drinks at the Gin Joint, which was featured on the show.)

Gin Joint on Southern Charm
Cameran = matchmaking fail.

While we’ve travelled quite a bit, we’ve never actually been on a road trip, per se. I mean, we’ve rented a car and slowly meander our way across northern Italy, but that was only 270 miles. SFE dodged Irish sheep for about 300 miles when we drove the Ring of Kerry and explored the Dingle Peninsula back in 2009. And we once got held up on a highway in Peru on our way from Lima to Paracas by a fishermen’s protest, turning a trip that was only supposed to be 3.5 hours into a multi-hour nailbiter. We’ve even traversed northern Spain (twice!) to get our soccer (and kebab) fix.

Poe at soccer

But we’ve never done such a heavy driving trip. We’ll be covering approximately 2,853 miles in a total estimated time of 42 hours and 18 minutes. Which is a lot of beef jerky and “Despacito” on the radio. Here’s hoping we don’t kill each other.

Couples road trip

In the meantime, here are some past posts explaining our love of the Hotspurs.

 

 

 

 

 

The Most Dangerous Job in Sri Lanka

Hey. Let’s talk about driving. Specifically, driving in Sri Lanka. Or as it should more accurately be called, defying death every single breath.

Sri Lanka road safety

I live just a short metro ride away from downtown D.C. in a very lovely, historic neighborhood with all the restaurants and shopping my little heart desires located just blocks from my doorstep. Literally, there I live two blocks from both a Trader Joe’s and a larger, conventional grocery store. I work from home, but when I did work in an office every day, I took the metro, which is an 8-minute walk from my house.

These days, when I have an appointment or something that necessitates I go into D.C., I usually metro or take Uber. Which is all just to point out that 1) I’m used to putting my life in the hands of transportation strangers, and 2) my driving skills have certainly not been tested in quite a while and are probably not honed into a fine laser beam of awesomeness, so I’m not judging any Sri Lankan drivers skills or finesse.

But, I will point out, we’ve been to lots of countries where there are few (if any) traffic signals and whole families zip around piled up on mopeds, slipping in and out of traffic like they’re being carried along a fast-moving river current. And while these road encounters were sometimes heart stopping, nothing prepared me for the calamity and chaos of Sri Lanka’s roads.

Sri Lanka buses

First of all, “roads” is a pretty generous term. Sri Lanka does not have the best road system. It’s pretty limited and seems to rely mostly on old cart tracks, some of which have been paved, a bit. Sri Lanka’s first major highway, the 80-mile E01, opened in 2011. For comparison, Smithsonian.com notes, the U.S. interstate system is 46,876 miles long.

But mostly, while in Sri Lanka, drivers like ours (Thilani, aka Tilly from SL Driver Tours) must navigate narrow, two-lane highways crowded with cars, trucks, buses, “collective” buses (private for-profit buses that compete with the city buses), “gypsy” buses (vans with people hanging on to the sides, the tops, the back), tuk tuks, mopeds, motorcycles and bicycles.

Tuk tuk artwork in Sri Lanka
Tuk tuk artwork in Sri Lanka

There are no traffic lights or signals (except in very big cities like Colombo or Kandy) and there appear to be no traffic rules whatsoever. People are honking and passing and overtaking nonstop.

By the way, these roads have no shoulders to pull over to or use for passing, so people use the middle of the road to pass, resulting in a head-on game of chicken as vehicles bear down from the opposite direction.

The sides of the road, meanwhile, are packed with stray dogs, food stalls with open fires, makeshift vegetable and fruit stands, and people walking (there are no sidewalks), including children walking to school as early as 4:30 a.m., when it’s still dark out. Overhead lights are few and dim, making for especially dangerous driving conditions at night. The first note in my trip notebook is “Driving is pretty intense.”

Sri Lanka delivery truck
Do you want to share a narrow windy road with this delivery truck?

Sure, we’ve been on worse roads (the 50 km rutted and congested road from the airport in Arusha, Tanzania comes to mind, as does the road from Siem Reap to Phnom Penh in Cambodia). But I’ve never been somewhere where none of the cars were blaring music or talk radio. It’s completely silent except for the sounds of honking and some yelling. It has got to be the most dangerous job in Sri Lanka. Maybe the world.

Tilly told us that four people die every day from road accidents in Sri Lanka, but actually, the number might be higher than that. In 2015, more than 2,700 people were killed in road-related incidents. Luckily, we didn’t see any accidents during our 10-day stay, but that’s probably due only to the skill of our excellent driver, Tilly.

Car from SL Driver Tours
My view for most of the trip. Tilly definitely provided premium service, without injuring or killing anyone.

The guys over at World Nomads also have a pretty good description of the driving conditions in Sri Lanka.

Yertle Goes Hollywood

When last we checked in on our saucy little friend, Yertle the tortoise had just moved from Chicago to Las Vegas where he was running with a fast crowd, playing craps all night, and lounging in the pool all day.

Well, the Vegas lifestyle has clearly been good to him. Yertle is now an Internet phenomenon. A celebrity if you will.

And like all celebrities, he’s decided to endorse a product. Specifically, sandboxes. You can see him here at SandboxChoices.com.

Yertle
Somebody better put some salad on this plate or it’s about to get crazy all up in here!

I hope he got PAID. I mean, Beyonce gets $20 million lending her likeness to marketing campaigns by Armani, Nintendo, and L’Oréal, among others. And she doesn’t even have a big hump. Oh, well, yeah, I guess she does now, but that’s not going to last forever.

Yertle 2
Ah, that’s better. I did not want to throw my weight around like that, but somebody was hungry. Now go get me a diet coke.

It hasn’t been all kale and flashing bulbs for Yertle, though. He did have a tiny bit of a mishap this summer, falling into the pool. I personally blame too much hibiscus flowers in his diet. Makes a tortoise a bit loopy, if you know what I mean.

And so we learn that tortoises do not make good swimmers, apparently. Luckily he was rescued, and thus was born the need for a sandbox containment mechanism. Now, Yertle is safely sunning himself outside, without taking anymore dips.

Yertle’s also off on an adventure this weekend, and is road tripping it to San Diego for a little R&R at XFE’s sister’s house. I guess the rigors of being a celebrity spokesman have been quite stressful on the little man.

It will probably be his last vacation before hibernating for the winter. I wonder what kind of music a tortoise takes on a road trip? Maybe “Happy Together” by the Turtles? But seriously, how many times can he listen to that one song?

Holy weirdness, the Googles tells me there’s a song called “Road Trip” by a band called Turtle Tank!! What the what!? That is too crazy a coincidence!

Yertle 3
I was hoping for a little ‘Party in the USA’ or maybe some Brittney.

Be sure to check in on the blog the next couple of days. Lots of good stuff coming up, including a very big poolside-bikini-photo shoot from a couple of weeks ago. I think you’ll be amazed. I mean, I’m no Yertle or anything. I don’t think anyone’s going to be approaching me to model a sandbox or anything in the near future, but, you never know. These are pretty special pictures.