The Cougar Patrol

Well, After what I can only describe as an emotionally exhausting week, I found myself with a car sitting in Manhattan and nothing to do. So I decided to take a little drive.

Now, recently I’ve been reading this. It’s about the creation of the parkways, highways and parks of the NYC area. Since the first big projects associated with Moses’ work were built on LI, and I had a car to use, I figured that it’d be a good idea to check them out while I can. Anyways, the day started off with a swing through Brooklyn on the Belt Parkway to try and get a new hat. Unfortunately, they won’t have the one I want until July, so that was a useless detour.

Continuing along, I drove across the Marine Parkway bridge to check out Rockaway Beach, which was nice in a Myrtle Beach sort of way. Definitely beats the rest of Queens.

After the Rockaways, it was off to Jones Beach on the Southern State Parkway. The road itself was basically the LI version of the Merritt Parkway, and was virtually cleared of traffic, which was nice. A nice quick drive, and we were at the beach.



The beach itself at Jones Beach is amazing. It’s long, white, and sandy, and there’s nothing really in the way of rocks and other stuff you have to cross at most beaches in Fairfield. That was a pleasant sight. Also, the beach was completely empty, except for a few hardy souls. It was a really chilly morning, but the afternoon was in the 50’s and the sun was out all day. It was a great day for driving and walking on the beach, to be sure.

Here’s some photos of the place. The water tower and the two beach houses were built in the 1920’s, The first of it’s kind anywhere in the world. The whole beach was virtually empty, but I can imagine the place gets mobbed in the summer. I bet it gets filled with a bunch of those Long Island people. Ugh. But it was still a pretty decent piece of undeveloped shore. Too bad the waves sucked.




Continuing east along the Ocean Parkway, I drove the entire length of the island, then took a quick drive over the bridge to check out Robert Moses State park on the tip of Fire Island. LI has lots of good beaches, it’s a shame all of CT is blocked off from the ocean as a result. The roads were all very nice though. Almost no traffic to speak of all day, and it was a great day to be outside.



There isn’t a whole lot to say about the beaches. Here’s some of the stuff that’s out there:

The large water tower, pretty much the symbol of the park, sits at the traffic circle that lets you onto the island.



These are the east and west pavilions. They definitely put Penfield and Jennings to shame.




Another water tower, this one at RMSP. You have to admit it beats the usually “golf ball on a tee” look that these things have.



After cruising around the freeways out on the Island, I decided to head back in and call it a day.

I dropped by Flushing Park on the way home, to get some sots of the all the stuff from the World’s Fair grounds. This is yet another Moses designed park, one of the last ones he built. I’ll let people more knowledge-able than I discuss the merits of the thing, all I know is you really need to have a car to get there for the most part, otherwise it’s a bitch.

That brings us to the end of the trip.


The night time, however, went down in true Patrol fashion.

I met up with three hot young Nebraska chicks, and took them out clubbing. And obviously, I hooked up with none of them, because I’m cool like that.

It was a fun night though. Crawled to two different lounges before heading to Culture Club, which was where the one chick who lived in NYC wanted to go. Well, that was fine with me, as there were about 25 bachelorette parties going on in there. Literally, there were about 10 women for every guy. It was pretty sweet. After making a mental note to myself that I should head back there, I escorted the girls to 1849 and then the subway when they said they wanted to leave. I don’t blame them for going, that was a hard trio to split up (one from Neb, one from New Haven, both crashing with the 3rd in E. Williamsburg)

Of course, it’s not such a bad thing really. I went home, poured myself a nightcap and settled in for a couple rounds of Battlestations. Not 5 minutes went by before the roomie came home with his buddies and one single annoying Long Island female (with a cute face and big boobs). The roomie defintely gets Wingman of the Year award for an event that sort of transpired in the same method as the torpedo chase at the end of "The Hunt for Red October". Good times, as always.

Yes, that's right. The Patrol is going semi-family friendly. Apparently, a highly trafficed blog is adding this here corner of the interweb to its list of top 10 sites. While the sanity of the webmaster of that particular site could be concievably called into question for such a decision, we here at the Patrol have decided to eradicate 95% of the bad material from this site (such as the famous "Interpreting women's flirting signs" post) in lieu of family friendly material such as INXS videos and The Europe Incident.

Ok, so there may be cause for concern due to the fact that 90% of the events in my life cannot be summarized without the word "Incident" in the title (Mr. Dillon Finals Incident, Pre-Prom Incident, Boston Incident, Wilmington Incident, Naples Incident, etc., etc., ad infinitum). And yeah, it only took about 5 seconds for those doozies to pop into my head. Granted, one of them established one of my most enduring friendships, one left me with my biggest scar, and one almost cost me everything to a degree that I've never actually explained to anyone, but still, I need to start having incidents along the lines of "The so-and-so got arrested 4 hours after Wooderson bailed with his wife for his honeymoon" Incident.


Oh wait, that's right, the INXS dude died. Oh well, no INXS videos.

Ok, I really have little to say about Mallorca. A small island in the Baleriac archipelago off of Spain, it is often overlooked in favor of its more famous neighbor, Ibiza. That’s not to say that Mallorca isn’t a nice place though. I imagine if you lived in London, Mallorca would be your equivalent to, say, Puerto Rico; A nice sunny place, relatively friendly with little to really distinguish itself historically. The beaches however, were incredible. The water was clear down to 15-20 feet, despite us ending up at what is technically the “dirty” tourist beach. We took a bus tour around the city, which was notable if only for the fact that I was so absolutely hungover and destroyed that I could not function. Hence all shots of the bus ride are relatively shaky (due to hangover) and have very little value in a story. Or maybe it’s just the fact hat there wasn’t really that much to see. Granted we didn’t actually get to see the really cool stuff (like the Blue Grotto) but it was a fun day. Why? Well, since Continental Europeans are lucky enough to have not had to deal with such pesky little things as puritanical values, the beaches are casually topless. And how! It's safe to say that I would NOT mind living on a beach in Europe after having observed female Swedes au naturel under a bright warm sun. No, I don’t have any pictures of that, you perv. What I do have a single picture of is me trying my damnedest to windsurf. Not easy. Anyhoo, a few shots of the area.

This is the big gothic cathedral in downtown Palma de Mallorca. It’s a pretty sight, I must say. The architecture is very nice.



Here’s the boardwalk by the beach. We had a nice lunch there, then it was time for some swimming.



The beach itself, nice and big.



Reporting for duty, Colonel…



Yes, that’s me on the green wind surfboard. Look, I’m standing up! Giggity.




And so, with that ends our trip…



…or so I thought. The next day would see us stuck in the Barcelona airport for 6 hours, as we watched riot police storming the baggage handling area to break up a strike.



Did I mention we missed our flight to NYC from Amsterdam? By 3 hours? Yeah, that sucked. But hey, I got to see Holland. Or at least, a field of grass in Holland. And the airport. But that was about it.




We did however, get first class all the way home, which was very nice.



Final stats for this trip:

X - [REDACTED]

1 - girl jumping overboard
(resulting in)
1 - 90 minute conversation with the Italian Polizia

8 - Consecutive nights out on the cheap.

5 - countries that I've visited (bringing the total to 9)

1 - GB worth of pictures I took, of which the only usable ones really are the ones on here.

Peace out for now.