On my third trip across the pond I visited the emerald island of Ireland with my friends Brian and Erin Frederick.
We planned about a week to see some highlights in the country, and that's pretty much what we did as we drove most of the perimeter of the island.

My story comes from one of the last of the places we really stopped to visit, which was Cork, in the southern part of the country.

Cork is a good sized town that's most often visited for Blarney Castle to the north and the harbor where the Titanic departed from just to the south.

And yes, for the record, I did kiss the Blarney Stone...see for yourself here to the right. This photo was taken by my friend Brian, as were all of the other photos in this entry.

Well, anyway, after we finished touring Blarney Castle and kissing the stone we decided to drive down into Cork and see if we could find a bar to eat and drink at. Erin had volunteered to be our designated driver so Brian and I were ready to dig in.

At a neighboring table were four or five men, about our age, that had come down to have a few drinks as well and watch some soccer matches from Spain that were on TV that night.

We all got to talking and ended up combining tables and just having a grand old time together...that is until I angered the smallest of the bunch, Mic.

Mic was a small guy and, as I later found, had small guy syndrome when it comes to physically proving himself.

After a few rounds of drinks, and all of us taking turns signing our favorite songs for the group, Mic decided to challenge the biggest guy in the pub to an arm wrestling contest. And yep, you guessed it, that biggest guy was me.

By this point in the evening, the whole pub had their eyes on us since we were acting like such the fools and great free entertainment. This quite concerned me since there was no way I could lose to a man half my size in an arm wrestling match in front of all of these people. I'd lose way too much face for my country and myself.

So, I thought it a good idea to reach across the table and check Mic's bicep and see how I was sitting. And holy shit, it was huge. There was absolutely no way I could beat this guy.

What to do, what to do...I thought. And after a quick moment a scene from the movie Harley Davidson and the Marlboro Man popped into my head and I took full advantage just as one of Mic's friends was counting us down and locking up our arms to start.

Here I let go quick, reach across the table and grab his face and plant one quick on his cheek.

Mic was so stunned he didn't know what to do so I grabbed his arm and slammed it down on the counter and raised my arms in victory.

Everyone in the pub cheered as Mic protested, but his friend said it was a fair victory and he had to accept defeat.

Well, this hung bad with Mic all night and he got on my later for leaving Brian to puke in the bathroom alone, with Erin checking on him occasionally, but I would've switched shoes with Brian in a heartbeat. That hangover the next day was the worst I've ever had.

But, it was all in fun and definitely gave us all some interesting memories at the end of an interesting trip.