Bienvenidos a Miami

MIAMI — It was three o'clock in the morning on the Sunday before Labor Day, and I was somewhere in the Miami metropolitan area, shirtless, wet and soapy, covered in grass, three sheets to the wind, and starting to get close with a girl from Trinidad. I really wasn't sure how I'd gotten there.

Somehow, there was a Slip-N-Slide involved, but beyond that I can't be too sure. What follows is the condensed version of my attempt to reconstruct how this came to pass.

Princeton's women's soccer team was at the University of Miami for a season-opening tournament. I was there for four and a half days, diligently reporting on the then-No. 21 Tigers, and it was a trip to remember. If you're a freshman reading this, join the Prince sports staff, and someday you too will be able to take debaucherous trips like this for free.

We saw a few airports along the way. Harry, my roommate, was along for photographic purposes, recording our trip — and the games that were its ostensible purpose — in savage detail. In the first airport, we met Amy from Cadillac, Mich.

Amy is an undergraduate in Ann Arbor studying biopsychology, but she is dating a doctor in Baltimore quite a few years her senior. Afterwards, Harry and I would agree that she should leave him. Harry is now friends on thefacebook.com with Amy. If you're reading this now, Amy, I recommend that you come to Princeton to discuss this matter further.

When we finally stumbled into Miami and were picked up by Harry's friend Will from high school, our first stop was Target (with a hard T), just because it should be your first stop in any new city. The hurricane had come through a week before, so downed trees were everywhere on the side of the road like an early January day in the suburbs. Once we got to the store, we didn't waste any time, just picking up the necessary items for our brief stay covering the Tigers' games: a folding table for Beirut, some booze from the liquor store across the street and nine-dollar flip-flops for Harry. We we were good to go.

The house we stayed in was something out of a Kid 'n' Play fantasy, circa 1990. At some point it was a recording studio, so there was a soundproof room on the first floor with interior windows, a Jacuzzi room off the master bedroom, hot tub in the backyard and, just because, bidets in all the bathrooms. Very classy. My favorite part was the arcade basketball game on the back porch. The first night was a sordid affair, and I think I ended up sleeping on an inflatable mattress in a closet with no sheets or bedding.

We went to the beach once, and though I'm told South Beach is supposed to be filled with attractive people, the highlight for us was the large old man in a thong doing calisthenics right in front of us on the beach. We took pictures of him, and then left in search of more appealing ways to spend our time.

The team had two games, and they were interesting, even though we lost both of them. Not we, since I have journalistic impartiality, but Princeton. The first game was on Friday against UCLA and was scary as hell since lightning was striking around us nonstop, and Harry and I were seated, along with the rest of the spectators (read: parents), on a large, aluminum structure.

Apparently the rules for respecting the possibility of death by electrocution have gone down since I played Little League, so they pretty much played through it until the rain really started to pour.

The whole period of time between the games on Friday night and Sunday afternoon is kind of blurry, but I know I managed to write an article on the UCLA game, find the Internet (not an easy endeavor in a hurricane-struck city) and send it in so you beautiful people could read it on dailyprincetonian.com.

The second game was on Sunday against Miami and was supposed to be a cakewalk (the Hurricanes won as many games all of last year as Princeton lost — three), but instead it turned into a blowout in the wrong direction. The intriguing part of this game was hatching plans to kill Sebastian the Ibis — who, by the way, is a shameless self-promoting scoundrel.

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After the Miami game, we went back to the house. Harry hung out in the Jacuzzi for about six hours with some girl named Alex. At some point other people started coming over to the house, and another long night of drinking began. Only this night couldn't end like any other night because we had a plane departing at 6:30 in the morning from Miami International Airport. This had the potential for disaster.

Like any responsible young adults, we took care of it a few hours ahead of time and called a cab company and asked them to be there at 5:00 a.m. the next morning. Assuming they would be reliable — and I tend to be trusting of strangers — all we had to do was make sure we were there at the same time, possessing some level of consciousness.

The night progressed and eventually some girls invited us back to their house for the aforementioned Slip 'n' Slide.

Having felt deprived as a child for never owning one of these wondrous inventions, and being always willing to shed clothes in the subtropical Miami climate, I headed off some time after midnight, throwing caution to the wind and getting kind of excited about the possibility of getting to stay in Florida for another day.

Suffice it to say, we slipped, we slid, we made it home safely and decorum prohibits any further explanation of that night. Somehow, when five o'clock rolled around, I was back at the house, suitcase in hand — minus a few items, perhaps. I'm not sure if there's a moral to all this, or any morality for that matter, but we certainly had some fun.