Oktoberfest!

I don’t have a lot of time…Sons of Anarchy is about to come on and I’m pretty sure I’m going to lose what little motivation got me to this point (it was a 10 minute nap).

This past weekend we celebrated Oktoberfest in Fargo with our traditional pub-crawl…, which we’ve only done twice, and there was a year in between the two…so yeah, traditional. Any competition that includes getting together with a group of great friends, making an ass out of yourself, and drinking to win a medal…count me in! We even had a pregnant friend to drive us around this year, God we’re getting responsible! Or does that make us irresponsible…I swear it was a planned pregnancy!

The festivities began at Rhombus House of Pizza…or whatever it’s called, that sounds catchy though and I’m pretty sure my memory of the night starts to get pretty fuzzy at this point… We had some delicious pizza and also got our Pub Crawl Mugs and official cards, which we had to get stamped at every bar (8 maybe?!) in order to earn our medals at the end of the night. The first time we did this pub crawl we ended up giving our leftover pizza to some skater punks in the parking lot because we didn’t want to carry it all night, but being responsible adults now (two years older, and now officially in our twilight years – not the fantastic vampire series, puke, but the downward spiral into death years) we brought the pizza back to the car because we knew that after completing our crawl we would undoubtedly need some food in our stomachs…we’re all going to make such great parents!

So, back to being responsible…the next bar was in the basement of the local strip club. Soooooo classy!!! We were greeted by one of the other patrons who thought we were up at the door redeeming a certificate for free porn, which apparently she was up there to do…got to love new experiences! We crawled down into the dungeon of a bar (also, I’m pretty sure I was there for a buddy’s bachelor party before and it use to be part of the upstairs club…not the case anymore) and instead of having our one casual beer and onto the next bar, we decided to stay for a few drinks, and as it turns out, if you order certain shots you get to spin a wheel for free prizes…including free porn! We tried and tried and tried but the most we could pull out of there were a few ping pong balls, some Frisbees, and a $25 bar tab…which just got spent right away again. The final thing we were able to pull out of there were our drunk butts…that’s two out X(maybe 8) bars and we were all feeling no pain, except our one friend, but that was mostly related to pregnancy.

On our walk to the next bar we decided that playing Frisbee was the most logical thing to do in downtown Fargo so we went ahead and did that until our Frisbee ended up on top of one of the buildings. Feeling adventurous I decided to go ahead and climb the building with the assistance of a couple of my buddies, it took some effort but once I finally got to the top I felt like I was on top of the world…then my buddy Cam scaled the drain spout on his own and was standing next to me, that’s the same guy I defended in the cities and ended up getting maced for…so, I threw him off the building. I told him to aim for the bushes, and it worked about as well as it did for The Rock and Sam Jack in The Other Guys… actually, we just got the Frisbee and jumped down, but yeah, we still got it.

This is where I really start to forget the day…I know that at some point we got yelled at for hitting a window of a tattoo parlor with our Frisbee…can you imagine. The guy came out and he was all like, “god damned kids! Get off our yard!” and he was covered in tattoos and we were all at least 30…yep, you’re only as old as you feel.

We then met up with some of the craziest guys I’ve ever known, so we did shots of tequila, because life’s too short to drink good booze. I’m pretty sure this was done at the old VFW, which was one of the stops on a famous bar tour my friend Dan and I had taken in college where we spent the night cutting in on older couples dancing, apparently old veterans aren’t too cool with that as we were asked to leave shortly after our third or fourth dance. But we got the last laugh as the Pirates apparently took over the building…I believe it was called the Parrot’s something or other?! Wow, writing this is really bringing back why I try not to do too many pub-crawls!

I believe it was the next bar, as it was above ground that we were able to partake in a drink holding contest…

I believe Darren won as apparently I was cheating having my elbow bent and Kyle ended up spitting his beer everywhere. I didn’t know this picture existed until I was looking through my phone the next day…stay tuned and you’ll see a video I had no idea we even took!

The guy running the contest was pretty cool, he let us keep those sweet hats and gave us some key chains as well! I love Oktoberfest…and whatever bar that was…seriously, does it look familiar to anyone?!

At this point in the night I draw a blank…for quite a while. Next thing I remember I was wearing a medal and tearing up the dance floor at the O.B. There weren’t too many people out on the floor with us but we were sure having one heck of a good time. We might have made a bit of a mess out there as it was later told to us that I would go dancing up to a group of women and proceed to fall directly on my face, and Kyle was busy making it rain on the dance floor with bowls of popcorn. Why didn’t we get kicked out, you may ask?! For some odd reason the bouncer seemed to really enjoy our group, he even bought us shots…which apparently it looked like we needed! It may also have had something to do with the fact that it was all of like 9:30pm…at some point I was no longer wearing my medal, which was disappointing and I was pretty sure that I gave it to Kyle’s brother, I also couldn’t find my sweet hat so it was shaping up to be a pretty sad ending to the night. At 10:30 our baby mama (sober cab) was thinking that she might just head back to the hotel for a bit and come get us when we were ready, but Kyle and I walked her to the car anyway…then got in…then went to Drunken Noodle (remember that pizza we kept being responsible earlier?!), then…I think I passed out in the car.

Before the night began, my buddy Dan was texting me videos of his daughters, the first one was of his youngest (as of now!). He asked if Jay and Kyle should go out drinking, and it was just about 10 seconds of her shaking her head no…the second was him asking his oldest (that Faith knows about) what will happen if Kyle goes out with Jay, and her response was, “He’ll fall down!” In the morning I was able to find my medal…in my pocket (I’m an idiot-the parenthesis means its not obvious…), my hat was in Kyle’s car and this video was on my phone:

 

 So, I guess the life lessons learned over the weekend…are probably numerous. But, I guess that sometimes we just need to let loose, hit the town with some great buddies and win some championships. Also, there is no such thing as “free porn.” Now I have to go mow some more lawns as my dad is making me pay for the tattoo parlor window out of my allowance…why the heck am I shaking my finger in that video?!