I sat beside this canal in Utrecht for about three or four hours, completely content with myself. About ten or 15 of these party boats cruised by in that time.

And the whole time, I was doing nothing but kicking myself. If Chase, Hunter, Jamison, Robbie, Boo Boo and I had known you could rent party boats in Holland while we were just next door in Germany for three weeks during the World Cup, the definition of the word rowdy would have had to have been amended in Webster's to include a picture of the spectacle.

"Damn that would have been fun."

Girl boats were inevitably much more "OMG!" style. Case in point: Whereas the dudes above were only interested in going nuts so that I would take a picture of them for my own enjoyment, these girls went "nuts" so that I would take a picture for whatever the middle-aged, Dutch equivalent of a Facebook photo album is.

"Dutch Dutch Dutch Dutch Dutch Dutch Dutch??" they hurriedly asked me as their boat floated away.

"English?" I yelled, our separation increasing at about a meter every two seconds.

"Can you send that picture to us on email??"

Before waiting for a response -- there was no time for that -- they desperately screamed out something unintelligible, as if I would a) know how to spell a Dutch first and last name and b) take time out of my day to send them this measly little picture, when Lord knows they all already had about a billion shots of the day's festivities in their digital cameras.


Girls are the same, I don't care where you go.

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A bike resting against the backdrop of a calm, quiet canal. If only one more thing were present, this photo would sum up perfectly my memory of The Netherlands, without any words necessary.