The Girl in the Hot Tub ... a Sports Love Story

Canada's prairie province of Saskatchewan
joined Confederation in 1905. 
They created a football team to compete in the Canadian Football League five years later.

From day one the team was community-owned
like today’s NFL

Green Bay Packers.

Long-story-short, they named their
football franchise the Rough Riders
and chose green as the team's colour.

Season tickets are left to heirs in wills.
Every citizen of Saskatchewan is
a Green Rider fan.

The team played at Taylor Field
with a capacity of 32,848 in the
province's capital city, Regina.

However, 35,000 fans showed up for every game. Saskatchewan fans really, really love their team and many drive 200 miles each way just to be a part of game day. After kick-off, nobody sits down. Everybody wears green -- jerseys, hats, coats and lots of face paint -- all green.

Even the team's fight song is
"Green is the Colour".

They also like ...
"Paint the Whole World Green".
Sit amongst them and you know what they mean when they call themselves
Green Rider Nation.

They've won the League Championship Grey Cup on four occasions in their history. Each time the province literally gets painted green and the population parties for three days.

If you attend a Green Rider game and are rooting for the other team, it's best to sit down, stay down, don't cheer and hope nobody notices you.

You with me so far?  

Let's move to a hot tub on the Norwegian Cruise Line ship, The Epic. We were in the mid-Atlantic after departing Barcelona and on our way to Miami, Florida.

I had just settled in alongside 3 American men. Typical 20-somethings, lots of tattoos, Eagles caps on backwards, a little noisy, a little drunk due to finishing their third Pay-For-Five-Get-Six-Beers-in-a-Bucket special.

They started and finished each sentence with "dude".
I tried a few get-to-know-you lines but they were a bit full of themselves and weren't interested in a conversation with me.

In-between their high-fives, our attention was drawn to a woman on the far side of the deck.

My home-boys were quiet

She seemed to be making her way in our direction.

She was very tall, jet black hair,
and wearing high-heels making
a clickety-clack sound on the wood floor.
Her bikini was stunning.
Her tan was total.
Her body looked like 
it had been photo-shopped.
                                                                          Clearly, she had visited the nude sun-tan
area on Deck 17.
                                                                                              

I sensed their silent prayer
... please God, let her join us in the hot tub.

She moved closer, gliding. Remember Bo Derek in that movie on the beach. Ya, like that.  

She was now at the bottom step of the hot tub and started to undo the buttons on her see-through cover-up. She let it drop to the floor. I heard a silent thank-you God from my compadres as she kicked off her high heels.

Now she was only inches away and in full focus. $200 hair-do,
$300 Versace sunglasses and if you were a Seinfeld character, you'd say ... "they're real and they're spectacular".

As she slid into the bubbling water, I wondered who'd speak first.
The noisiest guy didn't disappoint. However, I was hoping for a better opener.

"Hi!" he said, "where you from?"

Although the sunglasses shaded her eyes, I knew they were blue and she was looking directly at him.

She quietly and distinctly said, "Regina".

She definitely got their attention with that one word.

They weren't really sure what she just said.

He said, "pardon". She said, "Regina".

The boys were totally confused. Their eyebrows were sky-high ... 
what was she saying? Was it a place? Did she understand the question?

What's a Regina?

I was facing her directly when the bubbles stopped making their gurgling noise. The homeboys were very quiet. Stunned.

I said to her, "you're from Regina?
... if I cut you open, are you all green inside?" 

"You're damn right I am, " she said.

She's all green inside

With that, I climbed out of the tub
and didn't look back as the drink server
approached the tub with another bucket of beer.

However, I heard homeboy #1 say to the server ...
"no! no more beer" and "hey dude,
have you ever heard of Regina, dude?"