Here's a funny story from my life that I thought I would share with all of you.
Last Sunday was supposed to be a day filled with copious amounts of alcohol and Scalloping, but it didn't quite happen that way.
Spent the night way out in Crawfordville, Florida, which a good 45 minutes to an hour outside of Tallahassee proper where I currently live, at my friend Leslie's mother's house. Woke up at the crack of 7:30 am…which is an hour I haven't seen unless I was already awake from the night before, in, oh, I don't even know how long. Thankfully all that was required of me was rolling out of bed, putting on my bathing suit, brushing my teeth and putting in my contact lenses, in no particular order, and off we went for Karen's pontoon boat. I was excited, the idea of snorkeling around chasing down delicious scallops always gets my juices going.
But the boat was fucked.
Now, the plan was to hop on the boat which was docked in the Wakulla River, which leads into the St. Mark's River and then out into the Gulf of Mexico. It's kind of a long boat ride, but it's fun and the sun was out and we had a retarded amount of Sangria (which Karen made) and beer, so, no biggie. But due to the boat being fucked we decided, fuck it, lets grab the cooler tube and just tube down the Wakulla instead.
Dropped in at a bridge and drank and smoked and talked shit in the freezing spring fed river until we made it back to Karen's neighborhood's dock. Ate some lunch, whatever whatever, however when we got back a bunch of kayak'ers had a couple of manatee's corralled between them. I made a joke about riding one, and had I been drunk enough at that time and the current not so strong I totally would have.
Anyway, after lunch we decided to go get more beer and drop in at the bridge again and float back down the river. Now this time when we got back, there were no canoe assholes, but there was a manatee and her baby. Karen joked and said “Thought you were going to ride one,” but what she didn't realize was that I was drunk enough at this point to do so, so I jumped in.
Swam up beside it and pet it, it definitely liked it when I scratched it's back, but who doesn't? But then I thought, hey, I'll grab it's tail and it'll take off dragging me behind it. WRONG, that son of a bitch didn't like all that, so I had to chase it down again and reaffirm that I was not a threat by giving it some love. At some point I hugged it, as much as a human can hug a manatee…and that's when I took my chance, and slung a leg over it. I rode it for like, 3 seconds before it barrel rolled me off, and at this point the baby it had, had swam off a good ways so I figured I should leave it alone…and that's when I heard “Ma'am, please proceed forward and remove yourself from the water.”
Fucking Marine Patrol caught me. Apparently everything I had just done was illegal. http://www.homesafe.com/manatee/rules-of-the-road.html
We tried to play it off that I wasn't from around there so I didn't know better, but I had to give him my ID, which says I'm from Miami, and the officer was all “you're are from Florida, you have no excuse, blah blah.” So then I had to explain to him that I had never seen a manatee in Miami and that the only animals in South Florida were people, and that Miami doesn't even really have trees for that matter and whatever else bullshit I could come up with in my stupor.
For whatever reason, whether it was the fact that he had 3 drunk women in bathing suits before him, or that he was just being nice, he let me off. No cuffs, no fine.
Here's the moral of the story kids: Don't ever try to ride a manatee.