Jun 23 2008
Multi-day hangover
In this installment of Stories from the road, our hero finds himself in Chicago.
Is the multi-day hangover a myth? Fuck no. I’ve got one. I remember the days when I could drink until 3, and then still make an 8 o’clock class the next morning (my notes would be unreadable and would smell like stale beer, but I still made the class). I just got back from Chicago where we drank like rock stars, told and re-told old stories, and realized our age all in one fell swoop. And then we re-told some old stories. The impetus for the trip was a reunion of a rugby team I used to play for, we had won a regional championship game for our division in Chicago 10 years ago and there were 3 international rugby matches scheduled for this past Saturday, so we scheduled the trip, took our pain medication, and went. I think there was a total of 18 guys on the trip.
Friday night was fairly typical reunion fare, a couple of us went to lovely Gary Indiana to play some poker while the bulk of guys went to the Cubs-Sox game. We all met up at bar/restaurant afterwards in the suburbs of Chicago. We sat around and bullshitted the night away while pounding down brew-dogs. And eventually closed the place down. I haven’t closed a bar in years.
Saturday is a rugby day. I only got about 3 hours of sleep (stupid internal clock), and after some greasy breakfast to lube up the gullet, we headed over to Toyota Park for the rugby matches. The first thing I noticed was that the parking lot was full of people drinking in groups of 10 or 15 and singing rugby songs. We entered the gate, and cracked open our first beer of the day. The time was 10:50 AM. We got into our seats on the 50 meter line and got ready for the first match (Ireland vs. Argentina, when the sun came out. I have mixed blood (mostly Irish and Scottish). This. No. Good. For. Sun. My face now glows a deep bright red and you can barbecue off of my forehead. Anyway, I moved into the shade soon after the first game, but too late. The good news was the beer kept flowing, so soon I didn’t feel my face too much.
The other matches of the day were fairly uneventful (England vs. Scotland, and US vs. Canada), my only comment is, we fucking suck. All told we were at the field for 7 hours boozing it up. We headed back to the wonderful Holiday Inn (nuthin but the best for our lot), and had a few more cold ones while we sat around and argued like little bitches about what we were going to do that night. In a moment of drunken clarity we came to the conclusion that some people are planners, some people are do-ers, and some people tell the do-ers what to do. And the do-ers get paid the least and do the most work (i.e., they’re fucked). But I digress. We eventually found a planner who planned an elaborate plan. The plan was, walk across the street to a sports bar. We’re fucking idiots. So a person that tells the do-ers what to do said “hey fuck-nuts, we’re leaving” and we left. Problem solved.
After some food and beer and shots and mustard and a little side of burning rage, we decided (again we needed a planner for this) to head over to a more “exotic” bar. In other words, we found a strip club. We ended up at the strip club and even the burning rage issue went away for some reason. All I could say was “god-damn we drink a lot” when I saw our bar-tab at the end of the night. We got a cab at 3:30 AM and headed back to the hotel. The last beer I finished, 3:20 AM. That’s 16+ straight hours of boozing it up if you’re keeping score at home (assuming I’m doing my math correctly course, remember the multi-day hangover thing?). I realized how old I am when I only got another 3 hours of sleep again (fucking bullshit stupid internal clock!!!).
I’m done… where’s the tylenol?
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