Two weekends before the wedding the groomsmen and I headed out to South Padre Island Texas for some deep sea fishing and parasailing adventure for my bachelor trip. The four of us, Aaron Chandler (Kaela's brother) Ben Sword, Bo Gillespie (best man) and I made it to Padre Thursday night (May 9th) planning on sleeping on the beach. Well, we went to the public beach access and noticed what seemed to be some sort of criminal deal happening with some unsavory looking dudes so we decided that after a 7 hour drive to Padre we should turn around quickly and go treat ourselves to a nice Motel 6 room. We had made pre-reservations at another hotel at Padre for the remainder of the weekend, but we couldn't check into that hotel (pre-paid on the internet) until the next afternoon. We all got to bed around 2 AM and the next day got up and transferred to the new hotel where we would be staying until Sunday morning. After we got settled in to our room, we headed out for some lunch at Taco Bell and then headed to the pier to find the deep sea fishing boat we had chartered. Ben gets very motion sick, so much so that when he is riding in a car he always has to sit up front or he will get sick to his stomach. Well, with this in mind we went to Wal-Mart before hand and had bought him some Dramamine (sea sick prevention pills). We got to the dock and we're sitting around waiting for the captain to finish his prep of the boat when I noticed on the pill bottle that it says for the pills to be effective, they needed to be taken 2 hours before going out on the water. I told Ben this as we heard the captain say "all aboard".

The three of us had a great time fishing out on the gulf. I say the three of us had fun because the other one of us was busy calling dolphins off the side of the boat rail for a good four hours. We had paid to stay out there for five hours, but we all had pity on Ben and asked the captain if we could go ahead and head in when it looked like Ben was just about to pass out. Bo and I caught a few throw away fish, and Aaron caught some sort of whale that broke his line and got away.

We all headed back to the hotel and stayed the rest of the night hanging out in the hot tub down stairs (Ben was better now) and talking and getting to know each other better. The next day we all wanted to go parasailing but all the places we called told us that it was too windy. So we found a little place that didn't look too reputable to take us out... wind... I don't feel any wind. Heh.

Ben wasn't going to risk another boat ride so he stayed this one out on the sidelines. But Bo, Aaron and I headed out on the boat and were taken 200 ft. in the air on parachute. It was fun but I felt a lot like a grasshopper that accidentally caught a ride on a kid's kite. The wind was really throwing all of us around and I wasn't too happy a few times. Also, as I was being pulled up into the air, I shouted out to Aaron "tell your sister I love her"... the boat captain thought I was talking to him and was trying to insult him some how, and they guys didn't let him think any differently.... interesting driving he did after that. But all in all it was a great ride and I had fun.

After that we spent the rest of the day walking around on the beach and hitting the local Island shops. Sunday we headed back to Austin all of us with some great memories and good times to think back on. Back To Main Page