Daniel Youngblood

Crawdaddy's and long walks on the beach

• By Daniel Youngblood
• Posted June 19, 2009 10:28 PM
• 1 Comment

After spending the day on a bus with the Ruff Riders players, Tommy and I got a taste of the Corpus Christi cuisine this evening with the team's coaching staff. Gerald Dockery and his staff members graciously invited us to dinner, and man can those gentlemen eat! We went to a Cajun restaurant called Crawdaddy's and as a Shreveport, La., native that was right up my alley.

A half tray of SPICY crawfish, sausage, potatoes and corn was plenty for me, but Dockery and offensive line coach Robert Beebe opted for and conquered the crawfish feast, a full tray of the same great food. In fact Dockery ended up taking on food others couldn't finish. It was a performance Man Vs. Food host Adam Richman would have been proud of.

After dinner, which gave us a good chance to get to know the guys who roam the Abilene sidelines every Saturday, we walked to the pier to get a good look at Corpus' ocean view. About three steps out onto the pier I found myself calling my wife to plant the seed for a 2010 Corpus vacation.

We hung out there for about an hour and half, and after the coaches got a chance to walk down the pier and get some pictures of the ocean, Dockery and some of his staff members, who had made quick friends with a couple of kids who were fishing there, grabbed the poles and did some fishing of their own. Only Dockery caught anything, and the one tiny fish he caught brought more ridicule than praise from his assistants. The fish, which Dockery jokingly said would render "a fish nugget" if cooked, was thrown back and spared its life. But Dockery wasn't spared some good-natured ribbing.

It's obvious the Riders' staff is close-knit and the coaches all get along. It's fun watching them interact because they have no problem ripping on each other or laughing at themselves.  

As a blogging novice, I don't know all the rules yet. But I think we're supposed to keep these things pretty short, so I'll wrap this up now. The team has meetings at 10 a.m. tomorrow and will eat their pregame meal at 3 p.m. I'm just focusing on catching the bus when it leaves the hotel tomorrow. I might get into some trouble if I miss the game.