Despite my better judgement, I decided to risk all and headed to the malicious castration capital of the world, North Carolina. I’ve been coming to North Carlina several times a year since my in laws moved here four or five years back. They have a house on a nuclear power plant heated lake. I never realized how dangerous the area was until this week when I read about a recent malicious castration in North Carlonia. A quick Google search revealed that the majority of the top 25 Google listings on the topic of ‘malicious castration’ all occurred in North Carolina(Try it yourself and see!).

My gut reaction was to say, “OK, enough is enough, I don’t need to take my chances in North Carolina.” But then we got half way into the Memoria Day weekend. We had a party, cleaned up the house went shopping, mowed the yard, washed the car, did some computer programming and it was only Saturday evening. We were board and I decided to put it on the line and head to the lake.

Now I’ve been to Vegas a few times, and when you go somewhere its always a gamble. You go to Vegas thinking, I’m willing to risk a couple hundred bucks, or a couple thousand bucks, or if you’ve got more money than I do, maybe several thousand, tens of thousands or more. You might even think to yourself, that if things go to hell in Vegas you might end up out on the town with a hooker on your arm and an ATM card that won’t stop and before you know it your out $20k. These are all possible scenarios. However, most people don’t think that if they go to North Carolina, they might come back minus half their nards and absent their manhood.

So I packed up the family and we hit the road last night. We got into Belmont, NC around 1am, and slept upstairs in my in laws bunk house (a converted two story shed, with the second story sporting a double bed and 2 single bunks). We’ve got three kids so my wife and I started in the double bed, but our three year old soon displaced me, and I ended up with a bunk that was about 8” to short for my average 6 foot body. I slept scrunched up on a shelf with memories of Kramer from Seinfeld renting his oversized dresser drawers to three travelling Japanese tourists.

We woke up in the morning, I jogged around Paradise Circle, Hit Easy Street, came back around to Paradise Circle and took off up to the Sunset Strip. I made it up to the main highway and then turned around and ran back again. Picked up my wife and two of the kids, and we walked the same route, this being my cool down. We got suited up and hit the lake for a quick swim.

Took severals break from writing, to take a swim in the lake with the kids. On and off drinking bear, rum and coke, whiskey sours and more bear. Played ‘Sequence’ and hung out with my 11 month old daughter while everyone crammed into the pontoon boat for a couple hour ride down to a warmer swim hole.

Finished the night after grilling brats and burgers, hanging out by the fire.

I traveled back from NC on Tuesday. The family jewels remained safe and fortunately for me North Carolina did not live up to the hype!