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Pic via (@overtheline89) and (@skeetwallace)

We’re back in-full following a four-day break, and I type this with a nagging reminder of the weekend on my left ring finger. No, I didn’t get drunk and married… I cut my finger while trying to hop a bridge railing in Margate in search of a bathroom. 

Que?

I was on a boat with a friend’s family, whom I was meeting for the first time. They were nice enough to have me and Ms. CB join them for a Saturday morning jaunt (nautical term?) in the bays behind Margate, Ventnor, Longport and Ocean City. After an early morning iced coffee from McDonald’s and then beers on the boat, I had to piss, badly. Normally, going off the side wouldn’t be a problem, but I wasn’t sure of the protocol for peeing off the back of a boat owned by someone you barely know. I figured it fell somewhere between rude and that fucker better not get one drop of urine on my leather upholstery. Plus, I couldn't tell which way the wind was blowing.

So I held it. I held until I was blue in the face and every mild wake that came our way made me feel like I was going to explode and spew a stream of excellence all over the nice vessel. 

I had to speak up.

Um, excuse me, Mr. (let’s call him) Jones… um, might you know of food and fuel dock that we might be able to pull up to? Those, ah… haha… beers… they, ah, went right through me.

Well, we can just head back to the marina. We’re just going to circle behind Ventnor and turn back. Probably only like 35 minutes until we dock.

Yeah, that’s not going to work.

A further exchange – thankfully – revealed that I wasn’t the only person onboard who had to go. There were no fueling stations or anything of the sort in site, so Mr. Jones, heroically, found a pylon beneath a small bridge in – I think – Margate. It appeared to be an unoccupied public or commercial dock. This’ll do

I jumped out of the boat, ran up the ramp, through a gate and… boom, I was in somebody’s gated backyard.

The yard was bordered by the small, two-lane bridge, which gave me two options: scale the four-foot rock wall and hop the thick steel fence onto the biker's lane of the bride… or run through the yard and walk out the gate, which is located right next to the backdoor. Either way, I was now trespassing.  

By this point I thought my innards were going to combust. I had roughly 3 minutes until something bad or extremely embarrassing happened. I tried option one – the bridge – but once I hopped on top of the short wall, cutting my finger in the process, I quickly realized that jumping the thick – and dare I say slippery – steel railing wasn’t happening. I jumped down, quickly ran for the gate and plowed through it. Safe. For now. I still had to find a bathroom, quickly.

What happened next was out of a bad 1990s teen comedy. Like Finch in American Pie, I sprinted through the streets in search of a place to unload– a bush, a pole, a fire hydrant… anything would have sufficed. I ran to one corner, looked left and right… nothing. I turned around and sprinted back in the direction of the bridge. By this point I must have looked like Mario after he obtained a star. I had an unusually high knee kick and my fists were pumping like an old-timey boxer getting ready for a bout. As I crossed the bridge, I noticed Ms. CB below, hopping up and down: 

Slow down! Help me up. I might as well go too.

NO TIME! NO TIME! YOU’RE OWN YOUR OWN. SURVIVAL OF THE FITTEST. THE WAY NATURE INTENDED. GOTTA GO! GOTTA GO! LOVE YOU!

But… I have…… her voice faded as I crossed over to the other side of the bridge. 

Finally, I found a small eatery that looked like the kind of place that would allow non-paying customers to urinate. An old lady greeted me:

Hi! How many?

DO YOU HAVE A BATHROOM?!!!

I was shouting.

Yes, of course. 

CAN I USE IT I’M SO SORRY OHHMIIGOOD I’M SO SORRY BUT I JUST HOPPED OFF A BOAT AND RAN THROUGH THE TOWN AND IF YOU DON’T POINT ME TOWARD A RECEPTACLE OF SOME SORT I’M GOING TO PEE LIKE A FRIGHTENED RACE HORSE IN FRONT OF ALL YOUR PATRONS. NO ONE WANTS THAT, LADY. NO ONE WANTS THAT.

Sure, it’s right through that door

Relief.

When I got back to the boat, I thanked Mr. Jones and apologized. He laughed and said, “You should have just gone off the back of the boat.”

Let’s hit it.

 

But first, a word from our sponsors:

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The roundup

Cliff Lee almost killed Shane Victorino on Friday night.

– Roy Halladay will see a doctor today to have his right shoulder evaluated. Rich Dubee thinks Doc wasn’t helping the team by pitching with injury.  

– Michael Vick had to cancel a charity event in Vegas after a backlash on a car dealership’s Facebook page led to threats against the Eagles quarterback

– The Celtics took a mild swipe at the Sixers with this in-arena jumbotron message on Saturday night:

Screen Shot 2012-05-29 at 8.44.36 AMPic via (@YoWillieM)

– Reader Ryan sends us a picture from inside a Porta Potty outside PNC Park in Pittsburgh, which sound like the most unlovely place on earth:

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– The semifinals of NHL 13 cover voting concluded last night. Stay tuned to see if Claude Giroux defeated the ugliest player in the league, Evgeni Malkin. 

– Real Madrid will once again play at Lincoln Financial Field this summer. They’ll play Celtic on August 11

– Dave Grohl was spotted walking around Rittenhouse and taking pictures with fans.