The last night of the 311 Caribbean Cruise aboard the Carnival Destiny was a little different. After a few days on a boat, you start to adjust to your new life. You are part of a society of only 3,000 people. Beer is your currency, and you must find a mate.

ECR on-camera talent, John Tole, and I started to notice that the women we’d been seeing all weekend were suddenly looking better than ever before, despite the sunburns. We had developed cruise goggles, and we weren’t alone. We asked one guy in a Cubs hat if he intended to try to hook up in his last hours on the boat. “Something’s getting pounded tonight,” he replied. Yikes.

As the cruisers hungered for companionship, so too did they hunger to rub elbows with the members of 311, who aside from their various scheduled appearances, had been noticeably absent from the decks of the ship. So as the sun set for the last time on the cruise, everyone simultaneously noticed that I look like 311 drummer, Chad Sexton.

It first started in the dining hall. John and I walked through single file. John has a bouncer’s build, so perhaps he looked like a body guard trailing behind me. A young man sprang up from his table and chased after us, yelling, “Chad!” Of course, we didn’t turn since our names aren’t Chad. When he caught up with us, he panted, “Oh, man, you look like Chad.”

“That’s funny,” I said, assuming he was talking about a member of 311 since I actually wasn’t sure what Chad he might be talking about. “No one said anything until now.”

While I was never so fully mistaken for Chad again, this began a chain of people stopping me and saying, “You know, for a second, I thought you were Chad,” or, “You kind of look like Chad if he wore glasses.” I even met a guy who said he had been mistaken for guitarist Tim Mahoney and we posed for a picture.

This continued until the very end of the night, when, in one of the ship’s smaller bars, there was one of the MCs from Shootyz Groove talking to…no…it couldn’t be. Chad!“Hey, Chad,” I interrupted. “People have been saying I look like you…” And even though I had just taken a group photo with him earlier that day, I asked him to pose for a side by side photo, “The Pepsi Challenge,” I called it. His girlfriend obliged. Sure enough, there is a resemblance. I’d say we could be brothers.

Oh, I almost forgot. While I was running around impersonating Chad, John won the lottery, er, a raffle. He got his whole bar tab paid for. For a moment, we thought the $500 limit of his winnings extended to that night and almost went crazy. But it only extended to what he had already spent. So after a celebratory final drink, I went back to my Chad-look-alike bed and dreamed Chad-look-alike dreams one last time on the Carnival Destiny, where after four days at sea, anything is possible.

My favorite part of this night was actually not meeting Chad, but rather standing at the exit of the Palladium Ballroom after 311′s set ended. The fans walking out were jubilant and still had so much energy, they didn’t know what else to do but mug for the camera in embarassing ways. It cracked me up. We leave you with this final image from the 311 Cruise. See you at sea!

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