Weekends will be the end of me yet.
After work on Friday I jumped in the car, picked up the parents in Sauk and headed north to La Crosse. The plan was to have a family event before my brother and I left the country. We’re in the same unit and are going overseas. When we arrived in La Crosse, no one was at my sister’s place; they were out on the river with the big boat. They weren’t expecting us that night. I did a slight change of plans and decided to show up Friday night instead of Saturday morning. No big deal, that’s what cell phones are for. They were up around the river bend, so my parents and I went to get some good old Wisconsin fish fry. Do you catch a theme yet? I love Wisconsin fish fry and it’s going to suck being without it. Anyways, after dinner we went back to the house, sat around for awhile, then headed to our hotels. Kid Rock was in town, so it was apparently difficult to find a hotel room, or so I was told. Before driving up I made reservations for my parents at the hotel closest to my sister’s house. I had no difficulty at all making that reservation. Do you really think Kid Rock fans can afford a hotel room after buying overpriced concert tickets? I dropped the parents at their hotel and headed to my brothers hotel. It was still too early to sleep, so we killed time at the pool. There was a family in the pool and a couple in the hot tub. The man in the hot tub was a very hairy. I thought to myself that a bear had gotten into the hotel. At least this bear spoke English, his mate didn’t however. During the process of the conversation we had with this couple we learned that they were riding from Washington to Green Bay with a stop in Sturgis. We learned that from the man. We have no idea what the lady tried to tell us. I heard a terrible noise and I thought someone was killing a cat in the corner. After looking around for kitty homicide, I realized this woman’s lips were moving and the death shrill was coming from her breathing hole. The hairy man didn’t look concerned, so I can only assume that this is how this subspecies communicates. It was nearly 11 pm, closing time for the pool and we gladly retreated.
In the morning we decided to check out the Continental Breakfast. Can you believe they had real food? I ate biscuits and gravy, eggs and a bowl of cereal. Still no Kid Rock fan sightings. There isn’t much to write about the rest of the time in La Crosse. We went out on the boats to the beach next to the airport, drank some alcohol and water skied. On the way back to the house, my sister Mouse (her real name is Maureen, but everyone calls her Mouse) was showing off and cut the corner around an island. Unfortunately for her, the water depth was less than a couple feet and she caught the prop on a rock. So we towed the ski boat back to the dock. There didn’t appear to be much damage. My brother-in-law Al pulled the boat out and took the prop off. The prop was banged up a bit, but everything else seemed fine. I ended up leaving around 8 pm. I had a long drive ahead. I drove from La Crosse, through Wisconsin Dells, down Hwy 12 to Sauk City, dropped off the parents and then drove right back to Wisconsin Dells. It was about 10:30 pm when I parked the car in the Dells. Record time I would assume.
I thought I was half an hour late. It turns out I was the first one at the bar. A group of people I work with and will be heading overseas with decided that we need one last major night out on the town. Everyone else had been in Pardeeville for the day and I was supposed to meet them at the bar. They hadn’t even left to the Dells when I called them from the bar. I felt like a total idiot sitting at the bar alone. That was ok though. I might have been an idiot, but there was plenty of other idiots at this bar. The Swing Crew was playing a gig at the bar and there was more than enough to amuse myself until the cohorts made their appearance. The entourage showed up about 30 minutes later and a commencement to begin stupidity was declared. I don’t know exactly how it happened, but somewhere in the course of conversation we started talking about truck stops and my mouth, without my permission said “jerking off to pictures of missing children in the truck stop bathroom”. Everyone then struggled to come up with something involving a truck stop that is more disturbing. We needed a new bar at this point. So we went to have a swig at Nigs. Being that we were at a biker bar, I started discussing the brown chaps that Johnny was wearing the other night. Ed, never being shy to say something that might get himself into physical danger asked some local experts. He approached some bikers at a table and said them very directly, “Can a biker wear brown chaps and not be a complete homo”. The bikers didn’t react violently and agreed with our assessment. Johnny needs to come out of the closet or buy some black chaps.
Unfortunately, the bars in the Dells close at 2 am. We had no desire to get arrested that night and we had an unsurprising lack of drivers sober enough to operate a vehicle between the lines. The only reasonable choice was to get a hotel room. At the first hotel, our group and the hotel staff were unable to reach an agreement on the price of a room, so we went across the street to the Embassy Hotel and got rooms for a total of $20 less. We’re apparently bargain shopping drunks. All night we were on a Hunter S. Thompson kick, so Bill and I walked into the hotel office repeating obscure quotes from the movie Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas and the various writings and adventures of Hunter S. Thompson. The guy working the desk was Russian, which isn’t altogether uncommon. Companies in the Dells have been recruiting help from overseas for about a decade. I’m not sure exactly why companies do this, but it can certainly make a strange night even more odd. I’m sure this Russian fellow had become comfortable dealing with drunks over the course of the summer, but we had taken things to a whole new level. There was also a women working behind the desk. She obviously had no interest in talking to us or didn’t speak English. She just stared at me like my face was melting. After fumbling through a form we got our room keys and headed upstairs to continue the festivities. Our only supply was a bottle of rum and that wasn’t going to last long between six people. We had to take a collection to buy mixers from the soda machine near the pool. Quarters are not apparently a monetary unit that drunks carry, but luckily Kate had a supply in her car. We were now in business. Someone had produced a deck of cars from a pocket and we decided we need to play some sort of game. With only one bottle of rum, we couldn’t play any traditional drinking games, so poker was the obvious choice. With all games of poker, you need something to bet. After making a sausage count and consulting the opinion of Kate and Michelle, I suggested we not play strip poker. I wasn’t about to play a game of strip poker when there is a 2 to 1, guy to girl ratio and the girls wouldn’t be playing. I’ve seen a naked man before and I haven’t found the urge to see that again. We still needed something to bet however. Being that we were just at the bars, cash money was sparse and few wanted to play a game that had actual financial value. I managed to find a coupon book next to the hotel phone. We played poker for about half an hour before the coupons lost our interest.
I spent much of my youth in the Dells and I suggested to Kate that she accompany me on a walking tour of my childhood. She accepted and we took our drunken stupor to the streets. The playground was an obvious choice to recapture my youth. Someone had shrunken the playground equipment however. That didn’t stop us from playing though. The playground was rather exciting and I explained the nicknames of the equipment and the games that were specific to each piece. Sadly, I had run out of cigarette and the sound of police sirens signaled a good time to depart. When we returned to the hotel, we had found that the party had moved to the pool. There were also more people, including the Russian. I’m not exactly sure how it happened, but Ed had established a friendship with the Russian during my absence. The point in which anything was making sense was well behind me and I needed to lie down.
In the morning I woke with the inability to open my eyes more than a few millimeters. I think someone had been rubbing sand in my eyes. It was already past 10 am and we needed to depart the comfort and security of the Embassy. Ed’s friendship with the Russian had lasted through the night and we were taking him with us. This might have seemed overly strange a week before, but not this day. The plan was for Kate, Michelle, Ed and the Russian to drive to Madison. Then Ed and the Russian would continue on to Chicago. I’m not exactly sure what was supposed to happen from there. All I know is that it didn’t involve me, so I stopped paying attention. My plan was to get food and drop off Bill in Pardeeville before going home to peace and quiet. The Russian and some others had left, but it took the few remaining awhile to leave the parking lot. Dude’s girlfriend had arrived and we were discussing what we remembered from the night. We were obligated to establish the proper impression with his women since this was the first time many of us had met her.
I’m sure I have left many details of the night out, but I’m still processing the events in my mind. It will probably take collaboration with the others to get the story straight.