OK look. I'm not going to say I was on a bender. I think a bender requires a certain negative, down-in-the-dumps mental state. I was decidedly the opposite of that the entire time.
This was entirely a celebration of my birthday and of seeing friends and family I haven't seen in a long time and of just generally being young and alive.
But the nine-day period from Friday, June 17 through Saturday, June 25 -- whew. I do believe that's as close as I'll ever come to a bender.
Two ridiculous nights in Savannah (if you missed it, read all about it in my three-part Savannah story: Part 1. Part 2. Part 3.). A night with two old college friends, Tanner and Clark. My birthday with my best friend Jon and his girlfriend, which most decidedly earned a place on the Swanson Pyramid of Greatness. And then a ridiculous Saturday night, partying with one of my newest friends for her birthday (and mine, as she excitedly told almost everyone, leading to many shots [Thanks, Katie haha]). Five nights out of nine were spent drunk. Before last night, I hadn't had more than five or six hours of sleep per night in two weeks. I mean. I didn't even do that in college. It couldn't have been more awesome though.
A quick word about Saturday night before I move on to my fitness update.
Mike is a a friend of Katie's who I met for the first time Saturday night, and he was absolutely raving about this shot combo he loves. You take a shot of Jameson whiskey and chase it with a shot of pickle juice. Yes, you read that right. And yes, it sounds like a nightmare.
It wasn't long before he was tapping Katie and me on the shoulder and holding Jameson and pickle juice. Well then. Here we go. I have to say, it was not nearly as terrible as I thought it was going to be. The pickle juice immediately canceled out the burn of the Jameson. But then I just tasted pickles for a while afterward. Other drinks cleared that up eventually, but you know. Pickles.
Without question, the best part of the night was the dancing. Ask my cousins or my brother. I was just itching to dance the entire weekend in Savannah, but there was never really an outlet for it. The dueling piano bar was promising, but it just didn't work for me.
Saturday night, however. Man. Let's go. They played a solid mix of hip hop and 80s and terrible pop songs, and it just happened.
I know three things:
1. I almost assuredly make a fool out of myself when I'm dancing.
2. When I get a little drunk, I cannot stop myself from dancing.
3. I care not at all that I look a little foolish.
I have to say, it was awesome. They absolutely had me at "Take Me Home Tonight."
The night ended with me falling asleep on the Metro, and eating a double Quarterpounder and fries from McDonald's at 4 a.m. So, like I said, that night closed out a nine-day span that's as close as I'll ever get to a bender.
But it was a fun, happy bender. So there's that.
Now, after spending three days in Savannah and six days in Charlotte, I was expecting my little weight-loss odyssey to hit a speed bump. I ran exactly once -- the day before I went to Savannah. And I most definitely did NOT really keep track of what I was eating. And then, oh yeah, I drank, like, a million drinks.
After Saturday night, I knew nothing of note was going to happen on Sunday. I ran a few errands that needed running after being out of town for 10 days. I walked to Jersey Mike's (great success!), and then I collapsed on the couch for the remainder of the day, only leaving to take the dog on the second of our twice-daily two-mile walks. It was magnificent after so many days in a row of GO GO GO GO GO.
Today was going to be the day I got back to it. I walked the dog, then I went to the gym to run. I was ready for the run to be rough. Like, really rough. Yes, I run on a treadmill. But that's because it's easy on my knees, and I don't like running in the heat. So whatever. I usually just get on and run 30 or 35 minutes on speed 6, which is a 10-minute mile pace. Nothing crazy.
As soon as I started, I could feel it was going to be a good one. I always start off the run with "The Distance" by Cake. I felt completely energized. I was cruising. I pumped it up to 6.5 around the two-mile mark. At 2.5 miles, "Knights of Cydonia" came on. If there weren't other people in the gym, I would have probably yelled in excitement. It has a perfect, driving drum beat. Just exactly what you want to hear when you're running. So great.
I pushed it up to speed 7.5 for the last half mile because of the song, and I was rolling, man. I made it to 31 minutes straight, and then walked a four-minute cool down. I felt so, so great. I was expecting a day where I ran a mile and a half, walked for a few minutes and then ran another mile and a half or so. This blew me away.
I hadn't weighed myself yet because I was afraid to, honestly. If you were keeping track, before I went to Charlotte and Savannah, I'd made it down to 206 from 227. 21 pounds! I fully expected to see a 210 or a 212 or 214 on the scale today.
I got home from my run, stretched and got ready for my shower. I got on the scale. 205.5!!
What the shit!
I'm fully aware I lost a good bit of water weight running on a treadmill for 35 minutes, but that number still means I did not gain any significant weight over the past 10 days. Color me floored.
So that's where I'm at now. It's almost July, so I'll take some more progress pictures with no intention of posting them publicly just yet. My short-term goal is to be less than 200 pounds by the end of July, but I'm just going to keep on working, and we'll see what happens.
For now, I'm happily standing at 205.5, which has contributed greatly to me being happier than I've been in years. I just need to make sure I get out there soon to dance again. And! Softball game soon! Less than two weeks!
Nick, if you were here, I would pound my chest, yell "MAN LET'S GO" and then chest bump you. Goddamn I feel good.
Let us go.
-BG
Showing posts with label Savannah. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Savannah. Show all posts
Monday, June 27, 2011
Wednesday, June 22, 2011
Ohhhh Savannah Part 3
My Weekend in Savannah; Or Why You Shouldn't Send a Text Saying "I'm at a Hospital" after Midnight Part 3
When my cousin Kris got married in September of 2009, it was the first time the whole family had really gotten together when we were all above drinking age. My dad and his brothers and their families and us got together a few times for huge vacations, but the cousins were always younger. I think I was 18 on our last big all-inclusive vacation.
So this wedding was absolutely insane. Best wedding I've ever been to, and I don't anticipate that changing any time soon. They had a live band playing 80s and oldies, and trust me when I say that's the most efficient way to get the maximum amount of bodies on the dance floor.
Well, it was a big family wedding with an open bar. The drinks were flowing, starting at around 3 p.m., ending around 10 p.m.
Let me tell you something else about me. When I get a couple of drinks in me, I have the propensity to dance. As my friends from softball can attest, what happens once we get two or three beers down? I start to jam in my seat.
The wedding was no different, except instead of three or four drinks, it was 13 or 14 drinks. And the band was playing 80s music. I'm sorry, but if they're going to play "Billie Jean" I am compelled to dance. I am, of course, making no claims about being any good at it. It just happens, and I have a hell of a lot of fun.
What does this have to do with Savannah? Uncle Steven apparently began referring to me as the "funky cousin" based on my performance at the wedding. So his girlfriend Kim and Lindsey's friends Nicole and Laura knew me as the funky cousin before I arrived. I believe his exact words were "I've never known a Jew with rhythm until you, but I suppose that's because you're only half Jewish." I mean. I'll take it. Gladly.
Much to Kim's great delight, it took exactly two bourbon sweet teas at Bernie's on Friday before I was jamming gleefully in my seat and saying things like, "This is most definitely my jam," and "I can't dance to this, man, play something else."
So there you go. This guy: funky cousin. Nice to meet you.
Back to the haunted zombie tour! After the guy's camera battery jumped out, the girls and I were all sufficiently creeped out. I'm sure there is a perfectly logical and reasonable explanation for the battery jumping out. Of course there is. But even if the hatch pops open, there's usually something holding the battery in, right? At this point, after all the drinking and ghost stories, and it's close to midnight or after midnight -- the mood had been set, and we were perfectly happy believing in the not-so-logical explanation. It was more fun anyway.
The tour continued to other cemeteries and houses with creepy pasts. And, of course, no haunted tour is complete without a stop by an abandoned hospital. Unfortunately, we couldn't go inside, much to my dismay. They were in the process of "getting clearance" to go inside, whatever that means. But it wouldn't be possible until August, and even then, it would cost $100 to go on that tour. Oh well.
As I mentioned back in part two, Matt and Jeb's constant texting was a theme for the night. Still, I wasn't any less drunk than before, and it wasn't any less dark outside. I got another text from my brother, "Hey where are you? We want to come meet you."
Yes, I understand that. I still don't know where I am, so I gave them the only descriptor I could.
"OK, well I'm at a hospital."
Right. At the time, it didn't occur to me at all what a text saying I was at a hospital would mean, especially with it being nearly 1 a.m. and following 12 hours of drinking.
The texts stopped and the phone calls started picking up at that point. I excused myself around a corner and explained I was not, in fact, injured, suffering from alcohol poisoning or in an actual hospital. Haunted tour. Abandoned hospital. Relax. And no, I still don't know how to tell you to get here.
The tour finally ended at a bar called McDonough's at around 1:30 a.m. One of the girls wanted to keep hanging out, the other admitted they were driving to Chicago at 7 a.m. (where they're from), and it's a 16-hour drive, which meant they'd be waking up in four or five hours. Not really conducive to continued hanging out, unfortunately, so we said our goodbyes.
However, I finally had a legit landmark to give Jeb and Matt. They arrived 15 or 20 minutes later, and we went into the bar for a handful more drinks. I think I had two more drinks in there to bring my total for Friday to the following:
4 bourbon sweet teas
8 beers
2 lemon drop shots
1 Washington apple shot
1 cider
Yikes.
The bars don't close until 4 a.m., but I had no interest at all in closing down the bar. Around 3 or so, I recognized the importance of getting some food in me since we didn't actually eat dinner, and all I'd had to eat all day was a chicken wrap at around 12:30 p.m. Someone in the bar suggested a place across the street called Parker's, which turned out to be a gas station with a breakfast hot bar inside that was open 24 hours. Like you do.
Needless to say, Matt and I went. Jeb stayed behind for a bunch more drinks and closed the bar. I ended up eating two sausage, egg and cheese biscuits, some cheese grits and a little fried chicken. Matt had a similar spread. It was amazing. Well, no. It was gross, I'm sure. But it was exactly what we needed.
We found a table out front of the gas station and hung out for, like, two more hours. Jeb stumbled over around 4:30 and went inside for some food. He came out with two huge take-out boxes of food. Apparently, he asked a rather large man for suggestions, and he ended up just asking for what the big man got.
One of the boxes contained only a foot-long piece of fried fish. I don't know what kind of fish. I had a bite of it, and then we ended up giving the fish to a homeless guy. The other box contained cheese grits, scrambled eggs, hash browns, sausage and bacon. And, oh by the way, sitting there in the middle of the cheese grits was a kielbasa. Of course.
We had a great time just sitting out front of the gas station at our table. Talking to all the drunk guys and girls that stumbled by. We had a group of about five girls that sat with us for about 30 or 45 minutes while they ate their drunk food.
I never could have imagined when I woke up to drive to Savannah on Friday morning that the night was going to end nearly nearly 23 hours later with eating breakfast food from a gas station. Luckily, it turned out our hotel was only a few blocks away. We stumbled back and fell into bed around 5:30 a.m.
What. A. Night.
The next day was much more low key. Fortunately, I continued my lifelong streak of waking up without a hangover. GREAT SUCCESS. Once I had some water, I was good to go.
We found a restaurant for lunch that served oysters and margaritas. I had three margaritas, and then we wandered around Savannah in daylight (for a change) for several hours. We managed to stumble across the very first haunted house from the night before -- the one with the camera battery incident. It was less frightening during the day.
We ate some dinner, and then hung out at a dueling piano bar for a few hours. No real crazy stories at that point.
I'd never been to a piano bar before, and I was told this one was a little disappointing. They played a few too many songs I didn't care about at all. But there were a few that got me out of my seat and into my "funky cousin" suit. Faaantastic.
Like I said, it was a more low-key night. We got back to the hotel and into bed around 2:30 a.m. The final tally for Saturday was:
3 margaritas
2 beers (one was a to-go beer, while walking around a park!)
3 jack and cokes at the piano bar
Got up the next day, ate some breakfast and drove back. All the weekend did for me was reinforce the need for drunken cousin debauchery way more often.
I would go back to Savannah tonight for a repeat performance. After everything that has gone on the past several weeks and months, I needed this more than I can even explain. All in all, on a scale of 1 to 10, the weekend in Savannah gets a 73.
Check out part one of the story here and part two of the story here!
So! In other news, tomorrow is my birthday. It's the first birthday I haven't been excited about. I'd like to post again tomorrow because I'm heading back home on Friday and likely won't write anything after spending, what I can only imagine will be, the whole day in the car. And then I'm heading out for a softball friend's birthday on Saturday night! Hey-oh! I'm a busy guy these days.
That's all I've got for now. LET'S GO!
-BG
When my cousin Kris got married in September of 2009, it was the first time the whole family had really gotten together when we were all above drinking age. My dad and his brothers and their families and us got together a few times for huge vacations, but the cousins were always younger. I think I was 18 on our last big all-inclusive vacation.
So this wedding was absolutely insane. Best wedding I've ever been to, and I don't anticipate that changing any time soon. They had a live band playing 80s and oldies, and trust me when I say that's the most efficient way to get the maximum amount of bodies on the dance floor.
Well, it was a big family wedding with an open bar. The drinks were flowing, starting at around 3 p.m., ending around 10 p.m.
Let me tell you something else about me. When I get a couple of drinks in me, I have the propensity to dance. As my friends from softball can attest, what happens once we get two or three beers down? I start to jam in my seat.
The wedding was no different, except instead of three or four drinks, it was 13 or 14 drinks. And the band was playing 80s music. I'm sorry, but if they're going to play "Billie Jean" I am compelled to dance. I am, of course, making no claims about being any good at it. It just happens, and I have a hell of a lot of fun.
What does this have to do with Savannah? Uncle Steven apparently began referring to me as the "funky cousin" based on my performance at the wedding. So his girlfriend Kim and Lindsey's friends Nicole and Laura knew me as the funky cousin before I arrived. I believe his exact words were "I've never known a Jew with rhythm until you, but I suppose that's because you're only half Jewish." I mean. I'll take it. Gladly.
Much to Kim's great delight, it took exactly two bourbon sweet teas at Bernie's on Friday before I was jamming gleefully in my seat and saying things like, "This is most definitely my jam," and "I can't dance to this, man, play something else."
So there you go. This guy: funky cousin. Nice to meet you.
Back to the haunted zombie tour! After the guy's camera battery jumped out, the girls and I were all sufficiently creeped out. I'm sure there is a perfectly logical and reasonable explanation for the battery jumping out. Of course there is. But even if the hatch pops open, there's usually something holding the battery in, right? At this point, after all the drinking and ghost stories, and it's close to midnight or after midnight -- the mood had been set, and we were perfectly happy believing in the not-so-logical explanation. It was more fun anyway.
The tour continued to other cemeteries and houses with creepy pasts. And, of course, no haunted tour is complete without a stop by an abandoned hospital. Unfortunately, we couldn't go inside, much to my dismay. They were in the process of "getting clearance" to go inside, whatever that means. But it wouldn't be possible until August, and even then, it would cost $100 to go on that tour. Oh well.
As I mentioned back in part two, Matt and Jeb's constant texting was a theme for the night. Still, I wasn't any less drunk than before, and it wasn't any less dark outside. I got another text from my brother, "Hey where are you? We want to come meet you."
Yes, I understand that. I still don't know where I am, so I gave them the only descriptor I could.
"OK, well I'm at a hospital."
Right. At the time, it didn't occur to me at all what a text saying I was at a hospital would mean, especially with it being nearly 1 a.m. and following 12 hours of drinking.
The texts stopped and the phone calls started picking up at that point. I excused myself around a corner and explained I was not, in fact, injured, suffering from alcohol poisoning or in an actual hospital. Haunted tour. Abandoned hospital. Relax. And no, I still don't know how to tell you to get here.
The tour finally ended at a bar called McDonough's at around 1:30 a.m. One of the girls wanted to keep hanging out, the other admitted they were driving to Chicago at 7 a.m. (where they're from), and it's a 16-hour drive, which meant they'd be waking up in four or five hours. Not really conducive to continued hanging out, unfortunately, so we said our goodbyes.
However, I finally had a legit landmark to give Jeb and Matt. They arrived 15 or 20 minutes later, and we went into the bar for a handful more drinks. I think I had two more drinks in there to bring my total for Friday to the following:
4 bourbon sweet teas
8 beers
2 lemon drop shots
1 Washington apple shot
1 cider
Yikes.
The bars don't close until 4 a.m., but I had no interest at all in closing down the bar. Around 3 or so, I recognized the importance of getting some food in me since we didn't actually eat dinner, and all I'd had to eat all day was a chicken wrap at around 12:30 p.m. Someone in the bar suggested a place across the street called Parker's, which turned out to be a gas station with a breakfast hot bar inside that was open 24 hours. Like you do.
Needless to say, Matt and I went. Jeb stayed behind for a bunch more drinks and closed the bar. I ended up eating two sausage, egg and cheese biscuits, some cheese grits and a little fried chicken. Matt had a similar spread. It was amazing. Well, no. It was gross, I'm sure. But it was exactly what we needed.
We found a table out front of the gas station and hung out for, like, two more hours. Jeb stumbled over around 4:30 and went inside for some food. He came out with two huge take-out boxes of food. Apparently, he asked a rather large man for suggestions, and he ended up just asking for what the big man got.
One of the boxes contained only a foot-long piece of fried fish. I don't know what kind of fish. I had a bite of it, and then we ended up giving the fish to a homeless guy. The other box contained cheese grits, scrambled eggs, hash browns, sausage and bacon. And, oh by the way, sitting there in the middle of the cheese grits was a kielbasa. Of course.
We had a great time just sitting out front of the gas station at our table. Talking to all the drunk guys and girls that stumbled by. We had a group of about five girls that sat with us for about 30 or 45 minutes while they ate their drunk food.
I never could have imagined when I woke up to drive to Savannah on Friday morning that the night was going to end nearly nearly 23 hours later with eating breakfast food from a gas station. Luckily, it turned out our hotel was only a few blocks away. We stumbled back and fell into bed around 5:30 a.m.
What. A. Night.
The next day was much more low key. Fortunately, I continued my lifelong streak of waking up without a hangover. GREAT SUCCESS. Once I had some water, I was good to go.
We found a restaurant for lunch that served oysters and margaritas. I had three margaritas, and then we wandered around Savannah in daylight (for a change) for several hours. We managed to stumble across the very first haunted house from the night before -- the one with the camera battery incident. It was less frightening during the day.
We ate some dinner, and then hung out at a dueling piano bar for a few hours. No real crazy stories at that point.
I'd never been to a piano bar before, and I was told this one was a little disappointing. They played a few too many songs I didn't care about at all. But there were a few that got me out of my seat and into my "funky cousin" suit. Faaantastic.
Like I said, it was a more low-key night. We got back to the hotel and into bed around 2:30 a.m. The final tally for Saturday was:
3 margaritas
2 beers (one was a to-go beer, while walking around a park!)
3 jack and cokes at the piano bar
Got up the next day, ate some breakfast and drove back. All the weekend did for me was reinforce the need for drunken cousin debauchery way more often.
I would go back to Savannah tonight for a repeat performance. After everything that has gone on the past several weeks and months, I needed this more than I can even explain. All in all, on a scale of 1 to 10, the weekend in Savannah gets a 73.
Check out part one of the story here and part two of the story here!
So! In other news, tomorrow is my birthday. It's the first birthday I haven't been excited about. I'd like to post again tomorrow because I'm heading back home on Friday and likely won't write anything after spending, what I can only imagine will be, the whole day in the car. And then I'm heading out for a softball friend's birthday on Saturday night! Hey-oh! I'm a busy guy these days.
That's all I've got for now. LET'S GO!
-BG
Tuesday, June 21, 2011
Ohhhh Savannah Part 2
My Weekend in Savannah; Or Why You Shouldn't Send a Text Saying "I'm at a Hospital" after Midnight Part 2
Here's the thing about me. I'm not a heavy drinker. At all. Every once in a while, I throw a ridiculous night in there. But for the most part, if I'm out drinking with friends, I feel a pretty good buzz after maybe four drinks. It doesn't take much.
By the time we got back to the hotel after the second bar on Friday afternoon to prepare for our haunted pub crawl, I was at least 10 or 11 drinks deep. So it's around 7:30 p.m. I think, and I'm gone.
I remember getting into a cab to get to the starting point of the pub crawl, a bar called Moon River. I have absolutely no recollection of the cab ride there. Apparently, my brother, my cousin Lindsey and Lindsey's two friends joined me in the cab, and there was a lively discussion about tattoos and possibly getting some later on? (We didn't, apparently.)
I don't know.
My memory catches back up when I'm standing at the bar with Lindsey's two friends (Laura and Nicole), ordering a water before we head down to the basement for the start of the haunted tour. The water definitely helped, as I remember everything else the rest of the night.
On the whole, the haunted pub crawl was only OK. It was pretty cool to walk around downtown Savannah and near River Street and just kind of hang out.
The first stop was the best, with some pretty cool stories of people seeing things and strange happenings. I'm afraid the alcohol has robbed me of the details of the stories. So we're downstairs in the basement of the first bar, and I'm talking to Jeb and we notice these two girls standing reasonably near us.
I start chatting them up as we're going through the tour, just talking and hanging out. We go upstairs to the bar to get a to-go drink (no open container laws for the win! We brought drinks from the previous bar to each new bar all weekend).
The girls and I walk outside because the tour is getting ready to leave. We get to the next bar when I look around and see Uncle Steven, his girlfriend Kim and...none of the rest of our party.
Matt, Jeb, Lindsey, Nicole and Laura are just gone. We couldn't even make it past the first bar without losing 60 percent of our party. Sigh.
I start getting texts from Matt and Jeb, which ends up being a theme of the night, except I'm in the middle of a city I've never been and, oh yeah, drunk. I have no idea where I am, which also ends up being a theme of the night.
As I said, the tour was unremarkable, but the bars were pretty cool. We're in the second bar on the couch just relaxing before we leave for the next stop when the tour guide gathers everyone outside to leave. Uncle Steven came up to me to say he and Kim were calling it a night because it was like 9:30ish at that point. I, obviously, was not ready to head back just yet.
So the party of eight we left the hotel with to go on the tour was now down to just me after only the second stop on the haunted pub crawl.
There were two more stops on the tour. I bought the girls a drink at the third stop, some kind of cider. Pretty tasty, I think. But I have to be honest, I don't really remember what anything tasted like at that point.
Matt and Jeb kept texting me to find out where I was, but I had nothing. My only directions were "we turned left at a light, and then right down an alley." So, yeah. Not very helpful.
At the last stop on the tour, the three of us get one more round of drinks, and the girls ask me if I want to join them on the midnight zombie tour they have next. Yes I do. Yes. I do. The tour actually did sound pretty awesome -- going around cemeteries and haunted houses, etc.
One small problem. They didn't know where the tour was supposed to start. Obviously I did not either. So we just kind of wandered around Savannah, trying to find a group of people on a tour. We walked and walked. Turned down this street and that street. They called their hotel (where they booked the tour), and the hotel said it was starting at some bar called Cleary's I think? We finally find Cleary's, and we get there right at the meeting time for the tour. There are no people. Of course there aren't. We do the only thing we can do and keep wandering.
There are squares all over the city with parks in them. We turned a corner and saw there was a square with a cemetery in it. This looked promising. We made our way to the other side of the cemetery, and there's the tour! We'd somehow only missed the introductions.
The wandering around, however, did nothing to help my bearings or sense of where I was in the city. So Matt and Jeb kept texting, and I kept saying things like:
"I don't know where I am."
"I've never been to this city before. I'm drunk. It's pitch black. It's after midnight. What makes you think I can answer these questions?"
"There are houses around. Does that help?"
"You keep asking for locations, but I don't know what to tell you. Houses don't have signs."
So on the tour we go.
There's a house in Savannah that no one wants to own. Hasn't been lived in for more than a hundred years. The house has no electricity -- it doesn't even have a power box to make it capable of having electricity. Allegedly, a girl was found tied up in a chair in the window in the late 1800s. Dead, naturally. If you take a picture of the window, you're supposed to be able to see funny green orb-like lights in the window where she was found.
Of course, I forgot my camera. Like you do. But! One guy tried to take a picture, but the battery jumped out of his camera and hit the ground as he tried to snap the photo. So. That happened.
This is getting pretty long again. Part three coming soon, with the exciting conclusion and why my family refers to me as the funky cousin. Yes, really. Holla.
Here's the thing about me. I'm not a heavy drinker. At all. Every once in a while, I throw a ridiculous night in there. But for the most part, if I'm out drinking with friends, I feel a pretty good buzz after maybe four drinks. It doesn't take much.
By the time we got back to the hotel after the second bar on Friday afternoon to prepare for our haunted pub crawl, I was at least 10 or 11 drinks deep. So it's around 7:30 p.m. I think, and I'm gone.
I remember getting into a cab to get to the starting point of the pub crawl, a bar called Moon River. I have absolutely no recollection of the cab ride there. Apparently, my brother, my cousin Lindsey and Lindsey's two friends joined me in the cab, and there was a lively discussion about tattoos and possibly getting some later on? (We didn't, apparently.)
I don't know.
My memory catches back up when I'm standing at the bar with Lindsey's two friends (Laura and Nicole), ordering a water before we head down to the basement for the start of the haunted tour. The water definitely helped, as I remember everything else the rest of the night.
On the whole, the haunted pub crawl was only OK. It was pretty cool to walk around downtown Savannah and near River Street and just kind of hang out.
The first stop was the best, with some pretty cool stories of people seeing things and strange happenings. I'm afraid the alcohol has robbed me of the details of the stories. So we're downstairs in the basement of the first bar, and I'm talking to Jeb and we notice these two girls standing reasonably near us.
I start chatting them up as we're going through the tour, just talking and hanging out. We go upstairs to the bar to get a to-go drink (no open container laws for the win! We brought drinks from the previous bar to each new bar all weekend).
The girls and I walk outside because the tour is getting ready to leave. We get to the next bar when I look around and see Uncle Steven, his girlfriend Kim and...none of the rest of our party.
Matt, Jeb, Lindsey, Nicole and Laura are just gone. We couldn't even make it past the first bar without losing 60 percent of our party. Sigh.
I start getting texts from Matt and Jeb, which ends up being a theme of the night, except I'm in the middle of a city I've never been and, oh yeah, drunk. I have no idea where I am, which also ends up being a theme of the night.
As I said, the tour was unremarkable, but the bars were pretty cool. We're in the second bar on the couch just relaxing before we leave for the next stop when the tour guide gathers everyone outside to leave. Uncle Steven came up to me to say he and Kim were calling it a night because it was like 9:30ish at that point. I, obviously, was not ready to head back just yet.
So the party of eight we left the hotel with to go on the tour was now down to just me after only the second stop on the haunted pub crawl.
There were two more stops on the tour. I bought the girls a drink at the third stop, some kind of cider. Pretty tasty, I think. But I have to be honest, I don't really remember what anything tasted like at that point.
Matt and Jeb kept texting me to find out where I was, but I had nothing. My only directions were "we turned left at a light, and then right down an alley." So, yeah. Not very helpful.
At the last stop on the tour, the three of us get one more round of drinks, and the girls ask me if I want to join them on the midnight zombie tour they have next. Yes I do. Yes. I do. The tour actually did sound pretty awesome -- going around cemeteries and haunted houses, etc.
One small problem. They didn't know where the tour was supposed to start. Obviously I did not either. So we just kind of wandered around Savannah, trying to find a group of people on a tour. We walked and walked. Turned down this street and that street. They called their hotel (where they booked the tour), and the hotel said it was starting at some bar called Cleary's I think? We finally find Cleary's, and we get there right at the meeting time for the tour. There are no people. Of course there aren't. We do the only thing we can do and keep wandering.
There are squares all over the city with parks in them. We turned a corner and saw there was a square with a cemetery in it. This looked promising. We made our way to the other side of the cemetery, and there's the tour! We'd somehow only missed the introductions.
The wandering around, however, did nothing to help my bearings or sense of where I was in the city. So Matt and Jeb kept texting, and I kept saying things like:
"I don't know where I am."
"I've never been to this city before. I'm drunk. It's pitch black. It's after midnight. What makes you think I can answer these questions?"
"There are houses around. Does that help?"
"You keep asking for locations, but I don't know what to tell you. Houses don't have signs."
So on the tour we go.
There's a house in Savannah that no one wants to own. Hasn't been lived in for more than a hundred years. The house has no electricity -- it doesn't even have a power box to make it capable of having electricity. Allegedly, a girl was found tied up in a chair in the window in the late 1800s. Dead, naturally. If you take a picture of the window, you're supposed to be able to see funny green orb-like lights in the window where she was found.
Of course, I forgot my camera. Like you do. But! One guy tried to take a picture, but the battery jumped out of his camera and hit the ground as he tried to snap the photo. So. That happened.
This is getting pretty long again. Part three coming soon, with the exciting conclusion and why my family refers to me as the funky cousin. Yes, really. Holla.
Monday, June 20, 2011
Ohhhh Savannah Part 1
Sorry for missing my Wednesday and Friday posts last week. This whole driving to Charlotte and then to Savannah thing really threw me off. Anyway, I've got some stories from the weekend, and I'll share them here. I'll probably break it up into at least two parts so you aren't faced with too much of a ridiculous post. Anyway, here's part one!
My Weekend in Savannah; Or Why You Shouldn't Send a Text Saying "I'm at a Hospital" after Midnight Part 1
Let me tell you something about Savannah: It is awesome. Like, for real.
As you know, I drove from DC to Charlotte on Wednesday, and then from Charlotte to Savannah on Friday morning.
Two of my cousins had been planning this trip for a couple months, and they were trying to get everyone down there to have a little fun together. We always have such a ridiculously great time together, and we absolutely need to do this more often than just weddings. Yearly, etc. And the great thing, as observed by my uncle, is it doesn't matter how long we've been apart, or how long it's been since we've seen each other. We get together, and it's like we hang out and talk to each other every day. It's never awkward; it's never weird or strained. We just get together, and we know we're having a great time.
I really wanted to do this trip from the first I heard about it, but I always just kind of figured I wouldn't be able to go because of everything going on with the job thing, and it's an insane drive from DC to Savannah, etc. Just seemed like it wouldn't work out. Well, things have changed over the past several weeks, and I suddenly was overwhelmed with the desire to go out and drink and participate in general debauchery (the sorts of things at which my cousins are quite good).
My cousin Jeb messaged me on Facebook chat on Tuesday in a last ditch effort to get me to come. I'd already resigned myself to missing it. With the dog, it just was a lot of logistics to work out.
Then I started thinking. Matty is in Charlotte. Charlotte ended up being less than a four-hour drive from Savannah. My dad travels around a lot for work, and I knew my mom was going to be in Florida watching my sister's dog because she was going to be in Chicago hanging out alone for back-to-back NKOTBSB concerts. I know. Long story. But! It turned out my dad was coming back to Charlotte early on Friday. If I could get myself to Charlotte, the logistics behind the drive became much more palatable.
So I just said, in so many words, "fuck it." I told Jeb I was in. I called home and told them I was driving home the next day, and we were going to do it. Spontaneity has never been a strength of mine. I've always been a go-with-the-flow kind of guy. Take it as it comes. Just kind of hanging out and seeing what happens. Well I figured I would change it up a little, stop thinking and planning and just do it.
I packed a bag and left the next day.
My brother and I left at 8 a.m. on Friday. I knew we'd have to come home on Sunday, so I wanted to get there as early as possible to maximize our time in Savannah.
I should have known how things would go when I called my cousin Jeb around noon to let him know we were close, and he was still in bed because of the night out before. Turns out he, his sister Lindsey and Lindsey's two friends were out until 5:30 a.m.
We grabbed some lunch at a cafe around the corner and walked down to River Street. The car stayed parked at the hotel the whole weekend, which was fantastic. We were close enough to walk everywhere we needed to go.
Once we got to River Street, Jeb was complaining because we'd been there for an hour and hadn't had a drink yet. So Jeb, Lindsey, my brother and I found a place called Bernie's Oyster House. I was drawn in by a sign promising sweet tea with bourbon in it. As I said on Facebook that afternoon, it's like they knew I was coming.
Oh boy were they fantastic. It was just after 1 p.m., and things went progressively downhill from there.
The bourbon sweet teas were like silk. I told the bartender it didn't even taste like there was any alcohol in it, and he responded by saying he put in a lot more the usual because he liked our group. Great success.
Well I had four of those bourbon sweet teas. And, as I recorded on Facebook, the first shot of the weekend occurred at 2:34 p.m. I believe it was a Washington apple. Two lemon drops followed not too long after.
We ended up staying at Bernie's until around 5 p.m., just hanging out and drinking a lot. One of Lindsey's friends met up with us there, and so did my uncle and his girlfriend. From there, we went to another bar, but I was most definitely drunk by that point -- along with my cousins and brother -- and have no idea what that bar was. It was pretty wide open, with some pool tables and bottles of Sweetwater Blue -- a great beer that tastes like blueberry muffins. If you've been to the World Beer Festival in Raleigh (well I'm sure it's in many place, but I went to the Raleigh beer fest), you may have tasted this beer. So good.
I think I had two or three. Honestly, this is the point in the evening where things get a little fuzzy. We walked back to our hotel, and Jeb and I hung out in the courtyard area outside with another beer or two while we waited for everyone to get ready to go to our haunted pub crawl.
The pub crawl is where things really got interesting. Part 2 to come!
My Weekend in Savannah; Or Why You Shouldn't Send a Text Saying "I'm at a Hospital" after Midnight Part 1
Let me tell you something about Savannah: It is awesome. Like, for real.
As you know, I drove from DC to Charlotte on Wednesday, and then from Charlotte to Savannah on Friday morning.
Two of my cousins had been planning this trip for a couple months, and they were trying to get everyone down there to have a little fun together. We always have such a ridiculously great time together, and we absolutely need to do this more often than just weddings. Yearly, etc. And the great thing, as observed by my uncle, is it doesn't matter how long we've been apart, or how long it's been since we've seen each other. We get together, and it's like we hang out and talk to each other every day. It's never awkward; it's never weird or strained. We just get together, and we know we're having a great time.
I really wanted to do this trip from the first I heard about it, but I always just kind of figured I wouldn't be able to go because of everything going on with the job thing, and it's an insane drive from DC to Savannah, etc. Just seemed like it wouldn't work out. Well, things have changed over the past several weeks, and I suddenly was overwhelmed with the desire to go out and drink and participate in general debauchery (the sorts of things at which my cousins are quite good).
My cousin Jeb messaged me on Facebook chat on Tuesday in a last ditch effort to get me to come. I'd already resigned myself to missing it. With the dog, it just was a lot of logistics to work out.
Then I started thinking. Matty is in Charlotte. Charlotte ended up being less than a four-hour drive from Savannah. My dad travels around a lot for work, and I knew my mom was going to be in Florida watching my sister's dog because she was going to be in Chicago hanging out alone for back-to-back NKOTBSB concerts. I know. Long story. But! It turned out my dad was coming back to Charlotte early on Friday. If I could get myself to Charlotte, the logistics behind the drive became much more palatable.
So I just said, in so many words, "fuck it." I told Jeb I was in. I called home and told them I was driving home the next day, and we were going to do it. Spontaneity has never been a strength of mine. I've always been a go-with-the-flow kind of guy. Take it as it comes. Just kind of hanging out and seeing what happens. Well I figured I would change it up a little, stop thinking and planning and just do it.
I packed a bag and left the next day.
My brother and I left at 8 a.m. on Friday. I knew we'd have to come home on Sunday, so I wanted to get there as early as possible to maximize our time in Savannah.
I should have known how things would go when I called my cousin Jeb around noon to let him know we were close, and he was still in bed because of the night out before. Turns out he, his sister Lindsey and Lindsey's two friends were out until 5:30 a.m.
We grabbed some lunch at a cafe around the corner and walked down to River Street. The car stayed parked at the hotel the whole weekend, which was fantastic. We were close enough to walk everywhere we needed to go.
Once we got to River Street, Jeb was complaining because we'd been there for an hour and hadn't had a drink yet. So Jeb, Lindsey, my brother and I found a place called Bernie's Oyster House. I was drawn in by a sign promising sweet tea with bourbon in it. As I said on Facebook that afternoon, it's like they knew I was coming.
Oh boy were they fantastic. It was just after 1 p.m., and things went progressively downhill from there.
The bourbon sweet teas were like silk. I told the bartender it didn't even taste like there was any alcohol in it, and he responded by saying he put in a lot more the usual because he liked our group. Great success.
Well I had four of those bourbon sweet teas. And, as I recorded on Facebook, the first shot of the weekend occurred at 2:34 p.m. I believe it was a Washington apple. Two lemon drops followed not too long after.
We ended up staying at Bernie's until around 5 p.m., just hanging out and drinking a lot. One of Lindsey's friends met up with us there, and so did my uncle and his girlfriend. From there, we went to another bar, but I was most definitely drunk by that point -- along with my cousins and brother -- and have no idea what that bar was. It was pretty wide open, with some pool tables and bottles of Sweetwater Blue -- a great beer that tastes like blueberry muffins. If you've been to the World Beer Festival in Raleigh (well I'm sure it's in many place, but I went to the Raleigh beer fest), you may have tasted this beer. So good.
I think I had two or three. Honestly, this is the point in the evening where things get a little fuzzy. We walked back to our hotel, and Jeb and I hung out in the courtyard area outside with another beer or two while we waited for everyone to get ready to go to our haunted pub crawl.
The pub crawl is where things really got interesting. Part 2 to come!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Posts
