Question: what do mad cab drivers, huge men in spandex, and the beaches at Coletta have in common?
Answer: they're all things that the men's basketball squad ran into during their recent trip to Portugal.
Every four years, athletic teams can travel abroad for preseason trips, but the men's hoops venture to Portugal definitely did not turn into a typical roadtrip.
While basketball was a focal point for the Big Green, the trip was mingled with numerous other experiences that the Dartmouth men are sure not to forget any time soon.
One thing the squad learned early on during their visit is that there is something that's faster than Kenny Mitchell '97 at point guard. Its name is the Lisbon taxi.
"The cab drivers drive full speed ahead all the time, no matter what," Jason Neeser '99 said.
And for some, these cab drivers turned out to be a real problem -- as a midnight cab ride through Lisbon nearly turned a Dartmouth sophomore into a permanent resident of Portugal.
The Big Green forward shared his story on the basis of anonymity (for now, let's just call him big guy). And his adventure went something like this.
It was about 4:00 a.m. in the morning following the team's last night in town. Big guy had been out all night at a disco and needed a ride back to the hotel, so he grabbed a cab. Bad choice.
Big guy told the rest in a Blitzmail message.
"It turns out that [the cab driver] didn't speak a word of English," big guy explained, "so he just sat there and nodded and smiled and proceeded to take me to some random corner of Lisbon."
"Not knowing the town very well, I had no idea that he wasn't taking me back to the hotel. By this time it was 4:45 a.m., and I started panicking. I finally (God only knows how) communicated to him that he should take me back to the hotel instead, and that I needed to be there by five."
"So he then proceeded to take me on a ride through Lisbon at about 3:00 a.m., and I arrived at the hotel at exactly 5:00 a.m., just in time to run upstairs, pack all my clothes and get into the second to last cab. A few minutes later, and I may have ended up living in Lisbon for a while."
Still, that's nothing compared to what happened a couple days earlier.
Before the Big Green left American soil, Coach David Faucher and his guys made it clear that they wouldn't let anything get in their way this season.
But one night in Lisbon, as they traveled down a narrow alleyway, it seems they took their creed way too literally.
Neeser, relayed the incident over Blitzmail.
"We were driving this giant team bus through these tiny back alleys," he wrote. "The road became way too narrow and had cars on the side so the bus got kind of stuck. While we're trying to work around it, some huge man wearing all spandex jumps out of this vitamin store and proceeds to lift up one of the cars on the side of the road to move out of our way. With Chris Butler ['97] assisting him, he actually moved the car out of our way."
How strange. Last year, this men's hoops squad moved mountains with a milestone victory over Penn. Now it seems they're into moving cars.
Talk about movers and shakers.
Overall, the 16-day visit to Portugal proved humorous to say the least for the Big Green. On the hardcourts, they also played some fine ball, winning one professional tournament outright and finishing third in another.
Off the courts, Faucher's squad had barrels of fun enjoying the sites along the Portugal coastline and around the Lisbon proper.
The team's favorite sightseeing spot? The beaches at Coletta. Go figure.
