JC Beach Trip July 2001 - Part 2

Stumbling back to the clan, I left the half-eaten meal and jail-bait waitress behind. I returned to find a friendly game of touch football going on and decided I should either sit or vomit. Luckily I chose sit. And now we step right into ‘Awkward Situation #1’. Two guys, one girl, previously all mutual friends, then one dates the other, then the other, then no one stays friends, now two are friends. Not pretty. And now the ‘odd man out’ is confronting the others by accident. Luckily nothing came of this.

Soon it was time to go in, change and get over to Happy Hour. It was probably good that the place was packed and there was a line for the booze. I don’t think that many people should get but so many drinks. Whew. Though since they allowed you to get two at a time, people still found ways to get pretty loose as it were. Which brings us to ‘Awkward Situation #2’. In a room full of people trying to get drunk, the last thing you want to see is someone’s ‘Little Buddy’ trying to poke his way out of a pair of shorts for a ‘peek’. Scary to men and women both.

Fortunately I get to shake this off with female company. First I’m sitting in Amanda’s lap, later, Sheri in mine. This helps ease the pain, ha. By this time, almost everyone has shown up and so it’s a whole lot of people looking for fun. Which means it’s now time for what is affectionately known as ‘100 drunk people trying to make decisions and coordinate’. You’d think going to dinner would be easy. So many people, so many reasons to use a bat.

Instead of taking the easy route and just eating in the hotel, our little-but-growing group goes out to Broadway on the Beach. Others stayed in the hotel for the café, or ordered pizza or also went out. I usually like to get out, and even trying new things isn’t normally too much of a problem. Except when it comes to food. Neurotic at best, going out to eat with me is simply a painful experience for all involved. In this case, I was actually in good form, but what bugged me was the time consumed. Travel out to dinner, get on 45min wait list, go over to another place for appetizer, go back and finally get seated, order, wait forever, finally get food, food doesn’t taste good. We also managed to get separated from the other groups we tried to go there with.

And now we’re tired. And so I shuttle people home. Except some want to stay, others are sick and the car is full. And the gas light was on. Oh boy. We make it to the gas station, although I almost made Carol Anne vomit. I get the car load home and have to go back for Amanda. I find the club where she’s supposed to be. Except it’s actually 3 clubs connected, and it’s crowded. This takes quite some time to sift through all those people. I finally find the group when they tell me, "Oh, Warren took her back to the hotel." (note: no my brother wasn’t there, lol).

Alrighty then. Back to the hotel. So damn tired I just slept on the floor. Luckily I found some couch cushions. I was later informed there were approximately 362.5 other places I could’ve slept that night that would have been better. Thanks for cheering me up. But I did manage to get 9hrs of sleep, which was about the equivalent of 3 days sleep the past week so I was happy nonetheless.

Time to wake up and shower. Or the reverse order. I got in the shower without fully being awake. This was a bad plan. Instantly I was plastered to the back wall by burning water. Like a boiling salmon, I swam against the current to turn this firehouse down. I actually had to put it on ‘Cold’ to be only ‘warm’ and there was simply no adjusting the velocity. The good news is I was now awake.

And ready for some free breakfast. Not bad, but not great. Then out to the beach. So now it’s time for Amanda and I to go on our ritual beach walk. This is not unlike some sort of Survivor Challenge where she likes to see at what point my legs will fall off. I returned a beaten man. Sweating, dehydrated, and panting, I fell to the ground. Which is about the only way I can lie still enough to actually sunbathe. Otherwise I get too bored.