El Bano Esta Aqui*

*The bathroom is over here

Speaking of South Padre Island... Augs’s comment on my “Surf’s Up” post reminded me of a story from when Todd and I went to South Padre Island. South Padre is located at the southern most end of the Texas coast, almost in Mexico. We spent half a week there on the Texas leg of our honeymoon, and drove there from San Antonio.

The first evening in South Padre we went horse back riding on the beach. This is something he and I had never done together—we both had been a few times in the past. But it’s not something we did very often. I think we can each count on one hand the number of times we ever went horse back riding. It’s safe to say that we are novice horse riders. So, when we had the chance to ride horses on a beach in Texas, we jumped at the opportunity.

We arrived at the hotel close to 5 o’clock, and on a whim called a horse barn on the island. They were leaving on the sunset ride in 15 minutes or so, we raced to the barn and were saddled into the last two horses they had available. My horse was great; he was very responsive and good natured. Todd’s horse, however, was a barely broken in stallion. The moment Todd sat on this horse, the horse turned his head and bared his teeth at Todd. At that point Todd knew he was in for a memorable ride. We had just begun the ride when his horse harassed the matriarchal horse that was leading the pack. The matriarch ended up kicking Todd’s horse square in the chest, and Todd and the horse went down. They were both lying on the sand when his horse turned and looked at Todd as if to say “What the hell was that all about? You believe that chick?” Todd said to him “Don’t look at me, pal, you’re the one who bugged the momma horse. You’re on your own.”

My horse behaved perfectly. Todd’s horse didn’t respond to any of Todd’s commands. I enjoyed the sunset over the beach. Todd fumbled on the horse’s back, barely holding on as he pestered the other horses, refused to move, went too fast and all around wasn’t paying the slightest attention to Todd’s commands.

After the ride we went to a Mexican joint for dinner. (Augs, I don’t know if this is the place you mentioned in your comment, I cannot remember the name. If it’s off South Padre Island, then we definitely didn’t go there.) We ordered our drinks, and decided to head to the bathrooms to wash our hands. I headed for the door labeled “Banos” while Todd headed for the door labeled “Restrooms.” At the time I wasn’t sure why these two doors that were leading to the bathrooms were close to each other, and didn’t think anything of it. I opened my door, and jumped as Todd opened his. The door to the “Restrooms” was a fake door. There was a brick wall behind the door, and a loud alarm rang out as soon as he opened the door. The lamp above the door flickered on and off, and the patrons in the bar began to hoot, holler and cheer loudly. We laughed at how Todd was suckered into going to the restroom instead of the bano, and walked into the door leading to the Banos.

We had a wonderful time on South Padre—the water was heavenly warm, we saw a naked fisherman in the water wielding his… um… pole, we rode jet skis and saw dolphins splashing in our wake. But the look of surprise on Todd’s face, and the jump and screech that escaped my lips when he opened the door to the restroom definitely made South Padre Island memorable.