YOU ARE NOT YOUR OWN

Since Pelican Island is on the back side of Galveston Island it is rightly considered the armpit (or more likely the rear end) of the island. It stinks... literally. Huge mountains of sulpher greet you as you cross the only way on or off the island... a single drawbridge. Well across Galveston Bay is a town called Texas City which produces lots of gas (as in the natural energy type). One day the wind was so bad the smell of gas drifted all the way across the bay and the campus smelled like there was a huge gas leak somewhere. I was resting in my dorm (probably watching Jerry Springer and eating Ramen noodles) when the fire alarms went off. If was about 3 in the afternoon. I was in a pair of boxer shorts, a t-shirt, and flip flops (hey it was Galveston ok). Anyway my roomates and I went down figuring it would only take a few minutes. We were wrong. They told everyone we had to leave the island right then. They were evacuating the entire campus! They would not even let us back in the dorms. So we pile up and head to the main island. But where do you go when you have nothing to do? The Strand of course. So there I was walking around The Strand in boxer shorts, a t shirt, and pretty much no shoes. My roomates somehow knew the dangers of fire alarms and were all dressed casualy and ever-so-cool looking. But there I was... no wallet, no money, no nothing... For 3 hours! I was never so glad to get back to that stinking dorm room in my life. Luckily being Glaveston, TX a large college student roaming around in boxer shorts was not all that uncommon, expecially on The Strand. The police only gave me inquisitive glances.

Disclaimer: The Strand (if you don't know) is the touristy part of Galveston where all the shops, stores, bars, and clubs are. Oh and it's also where families take their kids to see crazy half-naked college students!

Speaking of The Strand... Once while there, we saw this little black boy busking some 5- gallon buckets like nobody's business and earning some serious coinage along the way. We decided (my roomate and I) that we could go down there and put on our own little show. So we take our guitars and I'm going to be cool and bring my slide so we can play some Eric Clapton-like acoustic blues (we had quite the set list prepared). Well we find a spot and as I'm getting my guitar out of the case my glass slide falls out and smashes into a hundred pieces on the brick sidewalk. There went our entire routine... or so we thought. I had an idea... I ran over to a garbage can and dug through it until I found a longneck beer bottle. I then proceeded to break the beer bottle at the neck. I slipped my pinky through the neck (the mouthpiece) and proceeded to wow our audience (which actually was just a couple of elderly men trying to figure out why I was breaking a beer bottle on the ground). We played our hearts out that day and not one person gave us any money. No coins, no bills, no trash, nothing. I guess our laid back acoustic blend of Led Zepplin & James Taylor was a little to cutting edge for them to appreciate. Saddened but proud we returned vowing to one day return with some Nirvana and Stone Temple Pilots covers... that day never came!

Stay tuned! More stories to come.