Last Dance at the Ranch, Part V

Once Dennis was safe inside his own room, Steve and I headed back to our own cabin to continue our night of drinking.

We sat on the front porch and started in on our first cocktails. A night of outdoor drinking couldn’t have been more perfect. The weather was great, the drinks were strong and there was no one around to bother us.

As we finished our first round of cocktails, we realized that the drama with Dennis had a negative effect on our level of drunkenness. We needed to catch up.

Two, three, four drinks later, we were almost there. I recognized this because we were both starting to laugh at really stupid shit. And the shit was becoming more and more stupid. Just dumb ideas and thoughts and observations. And then, we came up with a brilliant one.

“Dennis’ window is still open,” I told Steve. “I couldn’t get it closed when I broke into his place. Why don’t we go sneak in there and scare the shit out of him?”

“That could be a really bad idea,” Steve said, “What if the guy has a gun or something and freaks out and kills us?”

“Good point. Let’s walk over there and check it out.”

We walked along a little path which connects all of the cottages together. It was pitch dark, but the path is lined by bright solar lights.

When we got to cabin 117, I whispered to Steve, “Let’s wake him up.” Then I picked up the window screen that I had removed from the window earlier and through it through the window. I was hoping that it would knock over a lamp or something, but it just disappeared into the darkness of Dennis’ cabin.

“That’s no way to wake him up.” Steve said to me with a silly tone that meant step aside, little boy, let the grown-ups take care of the real work.

I watched as he walked back to the foot path and pull two of the solar lights out of the ground, then return to the window and flung them as hard as he could into the cabin. Two things happened. First, they made a shit load of noise. Second it completely illuminated the inside of the cabin’s living room and kitchenette. It was cool.

We started giggling like little kids and ran back to our own cabin to do some more drinking.

After another drink or two, I decided to pick up all of our empty bottles and any other trash that I could carry and throw that through Dennis’ window too.

A few minutes later, Steve disappeared down the path toward cabin 117, only return a few minutes later laughing like a lunatic.

“What did you do?” I asked.

“Well, I had decided to try to take a piss through Dennis’ window but couldn’t find anything high enough to sand on. Fucking thing is five feet off the ground! So, I just grabbed a bunch of sticks and weeds and tossed them through the window.”

Jesus, I wish Steve wouldn’t have brought up the idea of pissing through the window, because now we both really wanted to make it happen.

Finally, when we were both to the point where we were barely able to speak English and/or walk, we came up with a plan.

We took the little Rubbermaid trash can from under the sink in our cabin and carried it down the path to cabin 117. We set it on the ground and both took turns pissing into it. When it was as full as we could get it, Steve lifted it up and poured it through the window, onto the living room carpet.






We were both startled awake by someone knocking loudly on our door. I hadn’t made it to bed the night before and was still lying in the hallway. Steve was leaning backwards on the couch, passed out. Who was it going to be? Dennis? Tom? A security guard? The cops?

Oh fuck.

I opened the door to find a maid wondering when we would be checking out.

Relief

We straightened up the place as best we could manage, threw our shit in bags and into the ice chest and hauled it all out to my car. And within fifteen minutes, we were heading home.

It was the end of an era and the death of an old friend, rolled into one.

But, how is cool is that? Even if Stevinson Ranch wasn't closing, we were both pretty sure that we would never be allowed to come back. We walked across the bridge and threw a lit Zippo over our shoulders.

It was fun.

Last Dance at the Ranch, Part IV

Steve woke up and felt the need to apologize.

“Sorry man, give me a minute and I’ll be ready.” He was frazzled, and I'm not sure if he really knew what was going on. “Just let me take a shower and I’ll be good to go.” I was still a little drunk. Steve was still drunk too.

It took him about twenty minutes to prepare for day of golf and another day of drinking. God bless him.

When we started our round at 11:00 A.M., the starter said “You have both played this course five times each.” That was odd. And how would he know? And why would he give a shit?

We finished at about 4:30 P.M. Both of us played golf like a couple of dick heads, but our ending scores weren’t too bad, considering that I lost five balls and had to take a penalty for each of them. In the end we had a fun time.

We loaded our golf bags into the back of the FJ and headed straight to the bar.

“Hi, I’m Dennis,” a guy from out of nowhere said, as he reached out his hand for a shake. “I’ve played 60 rounds here.”

Steve and I walked up to the bar and found our old friend Kelly waiting with a Captain and Coke and a Gin and Tonic waiting in front of her on the bar.

“Thanks Kelly,” said Steve. “Here’s my credit card. It’s going to be a long night.”

We wanted to smoke, so we took our drinks out to the massive deck.

“I’m Joe,” another guy from out of nowhere said, as he reached out his hand for a shake. “Can you believe that I’ve played this course over 4,000 times?”

“Four thousand?” Steve asked. “That’s 200 rounds a year… That’s almost four rounds a week. Pretty impressive.”

Okay, okay we get it. The guys in the pro shop have been keeping tabs on all of us for twenty years and they get a kick out of telling each and every one of us how many rounds of golf we’ve played at Stevinson Ranch since the day they opened for business. Steve and I have played five times. Dennis has played 60, and Joe has played 4,000.

“Hi, I’m Dennis.“ Dennis was back reaching out his hand for a shake. “I’ve played 60 rounds here.”

We all shook his hand and both Steve and I acted like we’d never met him before. Including, but not limited to, the time he introduced himself to us five minutes before this.

“I guess Dennis is drunker than us,” I said to Steve.

“Then we have some catching up to do,” he replied.

We sat on the large wooden patio for a few hours, drinking one cocktail after another and listening to
funny stories from strangers.

Every twenty minutes or so, Dennis would come by. “Hi, I’m Dennis. I’ve played 60 rounds of the golf on this course.”

He was a funny guy and we started watching him make his way around the deck having the same conversation with the fifty or so people who were there. He was bumping into chairs and, at one point, almost fell into the fire pit.

By the time the sun was setting, Steve and I started becoming concerned about Dennis. We don’t know the guy, but we could tell that he wasn’t very good at being drunk. He was bound to hurt himself and he needed a babysitter. So, the next time he came by to introduce himself and tell us how many rounds of golf he had played, we started asking him questions.

Dennis was from Santa Barbara and made the five hour trip to Stevinson Ranch a few times a year with his buddy Tom.

I excused myself and went into the bar. The place was packed and noisy. “TOM,” I yelled into the crowd.

“That’s me,” said a mid-fifty-ish-year-old guy. “I’m Tom.”

“Are you here with Dennis?”

“Yea, why?” Tom asked.

“He’s pretty loaded and probably needs someone to look after him,” I explained.

“Okay. I’ll be right out.”

But he didn’t come right out. I returned to our seat on the deck and continued to watch Dennis deteriorate into a nuisance and a liability for another 30 minutes.

“Let me give this a shot,” said Steve, as he made his way into the bar.

A few minute later, Steve returned with two more cocktails.

“Did you find Tom?” I asked.

“Yea. He’s busy trying to get laid,” Steve explained. “He said he’d come get Dennis right away. They’re both staying here too. So I’m not too worried about them.”

We stayed for a couple more hours and finally decided to head to our cabin, where we would continue drinking.

This time, we remembered to bring our room keys and the little paper folder with the gate code written on it.

As we drove through the complex, we were surprised to see that there were very few cars parked anywhere near the cabins. We assumed that most of the people who were staying here were at the bar.

“Hey wait,” said Steve. “Back up for a second.”

Why? What’s up?”

“Just back up.”

I stopped and put the car in reverse.

Steve rolled down the passenger side window and looked carefully towards cabin 117. “Look at that,” he said. “Look up that walkway by the porch.”

Yep, I saw it too. There was a person lying in the bushes. Oh shit. Is that Dennis?

We parked and walked quickly to cabin 117. Sure enough it was Dennis. He was laying about five feet from the bottom step of his cabin’s porch. His knees were bloody, his shirt and shorts were muddy, he was missing a shoe, and he had pissed his pants.

“Dennis, are you okay?” I asked

“I think so.”

“Why are you laying in the bushes?”

“I can’t find my key.”

“Come on,” Steve told him as we helped him to his feet. “We’ll help you out.”

We went through his pockets and couldn’t find his key, but we did find his cell phone. So we found Tom’s number and tried calling him. It went straight to voicemail.

Tom’s an asshole and a shitty friend.

Finally, we decided that we would get Dennis up the steps to his porch and I would break into the cabin through the living room window. I had practiced this and knew it would be easy.

While Steve stayed with Dennis to keep him from falling down the porch steps, I carefully removed the screen and slid the window up high enough to fit my entire body through. Then I climbed up and slid across the window seal on my stomach and came through head first onto the floor of the cabin’s living room. Then, I turned around to close the window but it was now stuck open. It must have come off its tracks when I pushed it open. I worked on it for about 30 seconds, and then remembered that Dennis is probably never going to realize that the thing is open, so it didn’t really matter.

I opened the door from the inside to find Steve and Dennis exactly where I had left them. Dennis extended his hand and I expected to hear him say “thank you,” or “sorry to trouble you,” or something like that. But instead, he said “Hi, I’m Dennis, guess how many rounds I’ve played here.”

“Ummmm… Sixty?” I guessed.

“How’d you know?”


JUMP TO PART V

Last Dance at the Ranch, Part III

I woke up at about 9:00 A.M. I was fully dressed, shoes and all. My shirt was stained with Guinness and there were pieces of sticky popcorn in my hair. I wasn’t hungover. I was still drunk.

What. In. The. Fuck. Happened?

Sometimes when I pass out under similar conditions, it takes me a few minutes to realize where I am. This wasn’t the case that morning. I knew we were at Stevinson Ranch and I had a vague recollection of crawling off to bed. I even kind of remembered where the popcorn came from.

After being forced to “go inside” by the security guard, we decided to keep drinking in the living room. We also decided that we needed a snack. I had brought a small bag of beef jerky, a package of roasted pistachios, a bag of kettle corn, and a jar of honey roasted peanuts. I clearly remember opening the kettle corn. But my drunk fingers couldn’t manage to open the bag carefully and I ended up spilling a few pieces on the floor. That was right before a small argument broke out between Steve and me about who was going to sleep in the bedroom and who was going to sleep on the fold-out couch.

“I’ll take the fold-out,” I announced. “You slept on it the last two times we were here.”

“Fuck you,” Steve answered. “I’m too drunk to walk to the bedroom.”

That had made sense to me. Then, I remember helping him unfold the thing.

So here I was. It was Friday morning at 9:00. I could hear Steve snoring in the other room. We needed to get our shit together for an 11:00 round of golf.

I opened the bedroom door and walked into the living room trying to decide how and when to wake my sleeping friend.

Holy Shit Almighty!

The place wasn’t exactly the way I remember leaving it. It looked like a Central American Cock Fighting ring and smelled like a well-used hockey glove. There were six empty Guinness bottles scattered about the floor, and two full ashtrays that had been spilled onto the furniture and floor. The carpet was soaked with a combination of ice, gin, rum and Guinness. And, an entire bag of kettle corn looked like it had been shot around the room from a confetti cannon. It also looked like we may have moon-walked and done the twist on the popcorn to make sure it was thoroughly ground into the carpet.

But I laughed out loud when I saw Steve’s bed. It wasn’t fully unfolded. The last section that folds out – the foot of the bed – was resting in a vertical position against a chair. Steve was sleeping sideways with his lower legs and feet cantilevered off the side of the uncomfortable contraption.


JUMP TO PART IV

Last Dance at the Ranch, Part II

We continued to drink at the bar until we were among the last five people there. It was only about 1:00 A.M. but we could tell that Debbie and Kelly were spent. So we cashed out and headed back to our cabin.

The road from the clubhouse to the cabin complex is a long, dark one. It’s well covered by a canopy of old-growth trees and guarded on each side by a pair of grassy ditches. I was driving and thought it might be fun to drive in the ditch on the right side of the road than on the road itself. But it didn’t work out so well. We quickly discovered that the grass covering was deceptive; the surface below was soft and muddy. We were stuck.

Luckily, my car has four-wheel-drive. But I was too drunk to remember how to engage that wonderful option. It took several minutes to figure out how to operate my own car. Which, by the way, I’ve had for six years.

When we arrived at the gate to the cabin complex, we found that it was locked. No big deal, when we checked in, they gave us a code to punch into a little key pad thingy that would open the gate.

“Steve, do you have the piece of paper with the gate code on it?”

“No, I gave it to you. Wait, let me check my pockets, No, I think I gave it to you.”

I checked my pockets too. “It’s written on the paper folder that the room keys are in. Do you have the room keys?”

“Let me check my pockets, No, I think I gave them to you.”

Shit.

We got out of the car and found that it was pretty easy to just push the gate open. Fuck their security system. The electric gate is nothing more than a device that says “Hey, don’t go in there,” and just as effective.

Now, without the paper folder that the room keys are in, we have no room keys and no way to get into our room.

Fuck.

But we decided to drunkenly move ahead. There was no turning back. We went through too much already. We would figure out something.

Turns out that the windows on our cabin were just as secure as the front gate; I slid one open and climbed though. Easy.

Although we had already checked in, and dropped our bags in the room, we hadn’t yet unloaded the
giant ice chest from my car. It’s pretty heavy and takes two people to carry it. As we slid it out of the back of my FJ, we discovered the little paper folder that the room keys are in. There it was, right next to the ice chest, where we would remember to find it.

We spent the next couple of hours sitting on the front deck of our cabin drinking cocktails and smoking and getting more and more insanely drunk. Apparently, we were getting louder and louder too because a security guard came by and paid us a visit.

“It’s a little late,” he said politely. “You gentlemen are going to have to go inside your cabin. Other guests are trying to sleep,”

“But we aren’t allowed to smoke in there,” answered Steve.

“Well, you can’t stay out here,” countered the security guard.

That’s when I let him know how shitty the gate was as a security measure and how easy it was to break into our own room. For some reason, I thought that by telling him this it would somehow demonstrate that we were not a couple of drunken fools and that we should be allowed to remain on the front deck while we finished our drinks and a few more cigarettes. But it didn’t work.

“Go inside or we’ll have to ask you to leave the property.”


JUMP TO PART III

Anaheim Part IV, The VIP Party

Just like a snake eating its own tail, the conversation with Val went around and around and kept getting more and more frustrating, and both of us were getting more and more short with one another.

“Well, exactly how many are you talking about?” Val asked

“I can fill the place if you want.”

“How many do you think that would be?”

“What’s your capacity?”

“Just tell me how many people you are thinking about bringing.”

“Look,” I finally said, “I’m at the convention center with tens of thousands of people. All of them want to have a drink or two. I’m planning on inviting them all. Will that be okay with you?”

I guess my determination was fueled by a degree of hubris. It was about 2:00 in the afternoon and my goal was to fill up McFaddens with people. The end result would be that I get to drink for free. Which, I think, is a good result.

There were several people with whom I was working at this particular conference. Two of them were good looking twenty-something-year-old girls. Kelly and Amy. I explained to them what was going on and they agreed to go from booth to booth in the convention hall and invite as many people as they could. I thought it was a fantastic idea. Off they went.

We wrapped up our day at the conference at about 5:00 P.M. and I headed straight to my hotel to change clothes and then straight to McFaddens to start drinking before anyone else got there.

I started at the bar with a couple of Guinness and then moved to the patio with a Captain and Coke and a fresh pack of smokes. I sat there by myself for another half hour or so. I was relaxed and happy. I was sort of wondering which drinker I would decide to be for the evening.

We all know those really shitty drunks who get mean and end up starting stupid arguments or, worse, they end up punching someone in the face. On the other hand, we also know the guy who wants to get super introspective and ends up hugging everyone and telling everyone how much he loves them. There’s also the guy who embarrasses you by turning into the cheesy ultra-ladies-man with non-stop pick up lines and the never-take-no-for-an-answer attitude. Finally, there’s the guy who’s shit doesn’t stink and wants everyone to know how much cash he makes and how important he is.

With me, I always plan on having a good time, but I have to decide if I will lead or say “fuck it, let the spirits guide me.” Honestly I prefer the latter. It’s fun to just not give a shit to the point where John Taffer might walk in, kick me and my friends out of the place and then turn to the owner announcing loudly “YOUR BAR HAS BEEN RESCUED! MY JOB HERE IS DONE!” But sometimes a cruise director is necessary. So who would I be?

Then the place started filling up.

I saw a group of about ten people who I know pretty well and called them over. We moved some chairs and tables and all sat together in a large circle.

Meanwhile there were several dozen other people sitting on the patio and about 30 people inside. If this night could be compared to the night before, this was clearly a bigger and better money-maker for the owners of the bar.

We all sat and talked and drank and laughed. Someone asked the waitress about a Moscow Mule and then someone else asked “What’s the difference between a Moscow Mule and a regular Mule?”

Then some quick witted drunk replied “They are exactly the same, but one has heroine shoved up its ass.”

For some reason, this was the funniest thing that any of us had ever heard. We were finally drunk.

Over the next few hours, the place got busier and busier, and by ten o’clock the place was packed. I was proud of myself.

I realized that I never did introduce myself to the waitress as the guy who won the “VIP Party”, and thought it might be a good time. So I asked for Val, but was told that she wasn’t in. I then explained our agreement and the waitress looked puzzled. Then, she ran off to talk to a manager and came back and said “how many of these people are with you?”

“All of them.”

“But there’s over a hundred people here,” she said.

“Yep. They are here because I invited them.”

She disappeared again and returned with a guy who introduced himself as the owner.

I’ll spare you the finer points of our conversation and just sum it up by saying that the mother-fucking guy tried reneging on our deal.

He actually lied through his teeth and told me that the crowd was average size. BULLSHIT! There were ten people in the place the night before and there were about 150 in the place at that very moment. What a piece of shit.

In the end, he agreed to give every single person a free shot – as long as everyone drank the same thing, and I would drink for free and the ten people with whom I was sitting would receive a discount.

We all had Kamikaze shots and I had a few more drinks.

As I was leaving, the owner came over to talk to me again. He tried making small-talk and I wasn’t having any of it.

“Hey, you know that this place is busier than you ever seen on a Wednesday night,” I said. “All of these people are here to drink…”

“Well,” he interrupted, “we want to attract the locals.”

“What? You're located a block from the Convention Center. All of these people are businessmen and women, and all of them have expense accounts. They are the low-hanging fruit and you don’t give a shit about them?”

One of the photo's from the McFadden's
website showing an empty bar.

I was getting nowhere with him. So I told him that his website sucked. Well, it's nicely designed, but all of the pictures were poorly chosen; they were attractive shots of the bar, but none of them showed any people having a good time. Then I gave him a few other pointers about how to run his business and he placated me by telling me I made good points.

Looking back on it, I was just a drunk guy being a know-it-all, but I still think I was right.

We ended our conversation by him giving me a couple of free drink coupons for his bar in Las Vegas – which is located next to Mandalay Bay. I wondered if that idiot doesn’t give a shit about the tourists and only wants to attract Las Vegas locals too.

I still had one more night in Anaheim…


SKIP TO PART V

Anaheim Part III, Start Drinking

I spent Tuesday at the Anaheim Convention Center in a series of boring meetings with boring people who do very boring things. I couldn’t wait for the day to be over.

Finally, there was nothing left that I had to do and no one around to answer to. So, I sat out on foot to find a good bar.

I usually like hotel bars. It doesn’t matter if I’m out of town or not. I just like them. I think they’re interesting places to interact with people and to watch other people behave very badly. I guess there’s something about hotel bars that makes adults do things that they wouldn’t -or can't - normally do at home. Maybe it’s because they are out of town and getting loaded, and they know that everyone else at the bar is probably out of town and loaded. So it’s a fairly decent recipe for sex with a stranger or other things that they aren’t allowed to do at home.

Whatever the case, this is amusing to me. And, who knows, I might decide I want to do shit that I can’t get away with at home. If so, a hotel bar is the perfect place to make that decision. Right?

The hotel where I was staying didn’t have a bar. But I was across the street from Disneyland and a block from the Convention Center, so I figured there had to be a hotel bar somewhere close by. Sure enough there were at least 25 hotels in any direction, but not one of them had a bar.

Fuck that.

So I started walking. Finally, I found a cool Irish bar with giant sliding doors that opened to a patio in the front. I guess they kept the doors open when the weather was nice, which pretty much means that they're always open.

It surprised me that there were only about ten people in the entire place. Weird. The place is so close to the Convention Center, where hundreds of thousands of business people come every week. Why is this place so dead?

I picked a nice spot at the bar and ordered a Guinness and made small talk with the bartender.

"Where is everyone?"

"We just opened last month and nobody knows we're here yet," she replied.

I looked up at the T.V. The only thing on was a Hockey game. Hmmm. I fiddled with my phone.

"What's the name of this place?" I asked.

"McFaddens," she answered.

I quickly googled "mcfaddens" and immediately found that this one is the second location. The first one is in Las Vegas. "Oh, here's your website," I said to the bartender. "Nice looking site."

She nodded and smiled and I continued to check out their site. I saw that they were pretty dialed in to social media. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram... Then I noticed that they have a weekly contest where customers tweet about their experience at McFaddens and then management picks the best one and that person wins a "VIP Party."

I had no idea what their idea of a VIP Party was, but I was bound and determined to win the fucking thing. I figured, hey, this tweet-about-us-bullshit is a ploy to get attention. It's a pretty good marketing gimmick. And it probably has a better return-on-investment than buying radio airtime or advertising in the local paper or visitor's guides. And, I figured I have a solid chance of winning the thing because I have about 15,000 followers on my twitter account. So I ordered a second Guinness and started working on a good tweet.

I couldn't come up with anything.

So I ordered another Guinness. Then I ordered another Guinness.

And then I took a picture of my beer and typed the caption "Dinner at @McFaddens_OC". It wasn't very original, but it's all I could come up with.

Then I switched to Captain and Coke. I drained that pretty quick and started looking around for the bartender so I could order another one. she was nowhere to be found. Probably on a smoke break.

So I tweeted "I'm guest bartending for a few minutes at @McFaddens_OC while the bartender is on a smoke break. I hope I don't get caught."

And then I tweeted "@McFaddens_OC is the only bar open in Anaheim. So I'm drinking here. I should probably apologize to them in advance."

The bartender finally came back and I lost interest in Twitter and I continued drinking until the place closed at 2:00 A.M.




The next afternoon, I was working at the conference when I received a Direct Message through my Twitter account. I won the fucking VIP Party.

So I exchanged several DMs with a promotions manager named Val before she finally asked me to call her directly

I turns out that the party was for me and ten of my friends. I was going to get free drinks all night and my friends were going to get half-off prices during the same time period. And we would also all get some free shots throughout the night. The only problem was that this was supposed to take place on Saturday night. I was planning to leave on Friday.

I told her that I was in town for a conference and that I wouldn't be there on Saturday. "I figure," I began my argument, "that Saturdays are usually busier than Wednesdays. Right? How about if I bring a whole bunch of people and just pack the place tonight?"

How many people are we talking about?" Val asked.

"How many do you want?"


SKIP TO PART IV

Drinking Puerto Vallarta, Day VII - The Final Day

On our last full day in Puerto Vallarta, we decided to head into town to pick up some gifts and souvenirs for a few people back home. Of course, this task was seasoned with several stops at street-side bars. Most of the day was spent like this. Shop a little, drink a little, shop a little, drink a little.

Our only real plan for the day was to attend Mexican Fiesta Night at our resort. It’s a big event that they hold each week. Tickets are available, in advance, for about $50.00 per person. It’s a very nice all-you-can-eat, all-you-can-drink affair with traditional Mexican singers, dancers and other entertainment. We’ve always wanted to go, but never have. This time we planned ahead and purchased the tickets early.

We showed up on time and traded our tickets for a little badge that was pinned to our shirts. The badge was in the shape of Barbie-sized serape, but it looked more like some sort of sharp shooter’s medal from the Mexican army. Either way, it was an all access pass to all the food and drink we could consume.

And we proceeded to do both.

We stayed until the very end of the event. It must have been about 10:00 PM. And then we started our stagger back towards our room. Along the way, we passed the pool. “WHAT THE FUCK,” Jackie exclaimed. “Those fucking people and their shit!”

Sure enough, the guests who have been driving Jackie insane all week by hogging all of the lounge chairs had already staked their territory for the next day. Oh, she was pissed. But, I witnessed a calm come over her as she removed her little sharp shooter’s medal by pulling the straight pin out. And then she walked around the entire pool and inserted the pin into every single blow-up raft in sight. Justice was served. I guess.

It was a beautiful way to end the week. And a beautiful way to say goodbye to one of the planet’s finest drinking cities.

Adios Puerto Vallarta. Until next time.

Drinking Sacramento

Without reading Amtrak for Dummies, you will have no idea about my original failed attempt to reach Sacramento by train to meet up with some friends for a long weekend of drinking; but that doesn’t matter. This is the rest of the story:

I left Hanford at 8:30 AM for a four-hour train ride on Amtrak to Sacramento. Just the night before, I had a true “glass is half full” experience and I intended to ride that wave of up-beat optimism. But honestly, I was pretty fucking hung-over and just wanted to get a little sleep on the train. But that was impossible. This was the first official day of a long weekend and the train was full of families – all with noisy little kids - heading north, up the valley for a bunch of individual-sized mini-vacations. Sleep was not an option.

Thank God for the bar car. I was able to relax with a decent Bloody Mary and three Captain Morgan & Cokes as we passed through towns like Fresno, Madera, Merced, Modesto, Manteca and Stockton. We reached Sacramento at 12:30 PM. Not too bad, I thought to myself. Plenty of time to salvage my plans for a full-on drinking weekend.

Somewhere around Modesto, I had called Khan to tell him that my train was on schedule and that I’d be there in about an hour and a half. I’m pretty certain that I woke him up. The loose plan was to start at his house, which would be the meeting point for a small group of friends who all planned to experience California’s Capitol City from the bottom of a glass.

Khan lives in a small house just a couple of blocks from the Sacramento Amtrak station on “I” Street, just a few blocks from Downtown, Old Town, and the thirty or forty bars that are located there.

When I arrived at his house, I found him mixing up a cocktail. He had only been awake for ninety minutes but he was obviously hammered. I’m not sure who he thought he was racing, but the drink he was making was number eight in a series of Gin & Tonics.

“It’ll go bad,” he claimed as he finished stirring the cocktail with his index finger, “gotta finish it.”

Apparently, Khan had started drinking right after I called him from Modesto, and within an hour and a half, he was in no shape to get dressed, drive, walk a straight line, or speak English.

Oh fuck. This will not end well. There is nothing more recklessly impulsive than Khan in the throws of a Gin and Tonic bender. No sir, this will not end well.

I had to make a choice right then and there. Was I going to turn the day into an unbuckler – an opportunity to totally let loose, to stop holding back, stop worrying about anything and start drinking until someone makes you stop or you pass out. Or, was I going to babysit Khan?

It was, after all, Sacramento. One of the greatest drinking cities in California. There is a rich history of drinking that was born there back in the summer of 1849, after gold was discovered a few miles up the American River. Prospectors began to arrive in droves and a large number of saloons, gambling houses and brothels opened as entertainment venues. To this day, Sacramento’s citizens and visitors have no problem locating and consuming liquor.

Part of me said “fuck it all! I’ll get just as drunk as Khan and do it just as fast. We’ll work out the logistics later on.” The other part of me said “Goddammit! There are too many moving parts here. Khan needs to stay close to home, closer to a bed, further from the danger that we could create.”

But throughout all of this mad desperation, I failed to formulate a real plan. Somehow, I managed to forget that we were waiting for a small group of friends… and I began to drink.

At some point between 1:30 PM and 2:00 PM, Steve arrived. He was sober. A few minutes later, Larry called. He and Jeff were going to meet us at the Pre-Flight lounge. I think they were still sober too.

I’ve known Steve for several years. We were roommates for a short time in college and I actually met Khan through him. I knew Jeff pretty well too. But I had only met Larry once before, at a Christmas party back in December. I liked all of these guys and appreciated their bullshit. They were all sarcastic fuckers who could be trusted to turn on you at any moment.

By the time we were ready to head downtown, Kahn had finished off two more Gin & Tonics and it was clear that he was, in fact, going to be a problem. He was giggling like a lunatic and speaking in tongues. He had refused to ease into our drunkenness and, instead, faced it head on. Maybe he thought this was his best offensive move. Maybe he thought he could win a game of “Chicken” with the Gin. And then again, maybe he only intended on having one crisp and cold Gin & Tonic but was quickly put under the spell of the spirit and whisked away to the path of no return. Either way, I was not going to be held responsible for anything he said or did. I also knew that, at some point in the near future, Larry, Steve and Jeff would all try to saddle each other or me with the responsibility of keeping Khan safe and sane. So, I decided that my best defense against this would be to stay a few drinks ahead the three currently sober guys.

I believe there are two types of people in this world. Those who are drunk and those who are not drunk; alcohol is the great equalizer. I was somewhere in-between, and still sober enough to talk Steve out of driving to the Pre-Flight. Our destination was only a few blocks away but I convinced him that this would be better, “just in case we had to get Kahn’s drunk ass home… We certainly don’t want to walk him home and become human crutches for him, do we? This will force Larry into having to drive. We don’t need that kind of responsibility.” I guess I made a pretty good case, because he agreed to the plan. But the real fact of the matter was that as long as Larry was the only one driving, he would have to be less drunk than me. Therefore, I could begin my unbuckler. I was proud of myself for being the owner of this plan.

About a half-hour later, we all met up at the Pre-Flight Lounge. It’s a strange little dive set in an almost secret location. I’m not sure that I would have been able to find it with a map, but it was very cool. The owner, Jason, knew all four of my Sacramento buddies and greeted them with delight. Clearly, my friends were regulars there and have spent enough money to put his kids through college and buy him a boat. The drinks were strong and cheap and the regulars were friendly. I could have stayed there all day, but we knew we had to move on. So after about 45 minutes, we were out the door.

We walked around the corner to Chambers Room, another dive. This place was dark and dank and right up my alley. Again, the drinks were cheap and stiff. After two beers and two cocktails, I started to feel the drunk coming on. I always know when this is taking place because there’s this thing that happens to me. I excuse myself to use the restroom and while in there, I think of a few really important things I want to tell the other guys about. Ideas, observations, theories, solutions… all sorts of things. But by the time I get back to the bar, I get sidetracked and all of those things slip my mind. Even with a clear head, I still can’t recall what any of those thoughts were ever about. But they were, at that moment, the most important and most brilliant thoughts of all time.

The one big issue with Chambers Room was that while we were there, it started filling up with hipsters.  I often think about taking out a full page advertisement in any major newspaper that would be an open letter to all of the hipster sissies and their ugly, clueless hipster girlfriends

Dear Hipsters: I hate you. You make the world worse by being around me. Every time I see all of you Pabst swilling posers sitting there at the bar with your shitty attitudes and stupid clothes I really want just want to beat the fuck out of you. But it’s cool. At least you can blog about it later.

But then again, they’re too cool to read newspapers.

So there we were. The five of us swimming in a sea of dickheads. Converse Chuck Taylor sneakers; vintage dresses with rain boots even though the sky has been clear for days; skinny jeans; stupid hats; shitty haircuts; scarves; and ironic facial hair. Those motherfuckers have ruined mustaches for everybody. I used to think a mustache was cool and something I’d wear when I was a badass 50-year old, like Burt Reynolds or Billy Dee Williams, but those unemployable twenty-something-year-olds ruined it for me with their waxed handlebar mustaches like they just walked off the set of some Coen Brothers set.

At that point, Khan had ceased communication except to interrupt other customers’ conversations with absurd and insane remarks. Through the darkness, he spied a young couple making out in the far corner of the room. He staggered across the room and sat down next to them and initiated a conversation. They were polite, but the rest of us could tell the couple was annoyed. Still, we didn’t stop Khan because it was too fucking funny to watch. We couldn’t hear anything Khan was saying except for “Sorry for fucking up your shit,” which he must have said ten times before shaking the guy’s hand and walking away. When he got back to our side of the room, he told us that he had palmed a five dollar bill and passed it too the guy when they shook hands… You know, for fucking up their shit.

We visited a few more places and Khan seemed to get a second wind and started perking up a little.

By this time, we all agreed that we really needed to find a place with some food. Otherwise, the night was going to end too soon for all of us.

Our next stop was the Three Fires Inn, located at the Residence Inn Hotel. Supposedly the bar is great and the food is delicious. I didn’t get to sample either one. The bartender was an immediate dickhead – probably because we forgot to throw out our lit cigarettes before we walked in. But even after that, he was a true fucker. He recognized Khan’s condition and informed us that he couldn’t serve us. Any of us. WHAT. THE. FUCK?

We were there to drink. The way I see it is that this was our right. We all work hard. We all pay taxes and we all contribute to society. The long weekend provided us an opportunity to let loose, to relax and to have a little fun. Who in the fuck would want to prevent us from having a little fun? Who in the fuck thinks they have the right to stand in the way of five guys spending their hard-earned money on legal drinks at legal businesses? This is, after all, the United States, not some god-damned communist country. America, for God sakes. We were going to drink and we were going to have fun. And all this bullshit only served to make me want to drink more.

The bartender wouldn’t back down. “Nope, you’ve had too much,” the little fucker told me.

I’m not sure what his problem was. Maybe it was me. But I’m pretty sure it was him. After only thirty seconds, I wanted to kill him. Well, maybe not kill. That’s a strong word. But I didn’t like him one bit and wouldn’t stand in line to piss down his throat if his stomach was on fire. I was ready to leave.

This is about the time that our whole Sacramento drinking experience began to break down. There are probably too many moving parts in the rest of this story, so please try to stay with me…

Jeff wanted to walk over to Old Town to a place called Fanny Ann’s; Larry and Steve wanted to stop at a Mexican restaurant for some quick tacos and beer; Khan was starting to fade into idiocracy again; and I didn’t give a shit. In the end, we split up. Larry, Steve and Khan would go to the Mexican place and meet Jeff and me at Fanny Ann’s in about an hour.

Fanny Ann’s is an interesting place. It’s only about fifteen feet wide, but it’s three stories tall. Basically, it’s a staircase that you get drunk on. We managed to find a couple of stools at the bar and began to drink like professionals. There was a large wagon wheel located above the bar. Each of its wooden spokes had the name of a drink written on it. At the beginning of every hour, the bartender would give the wheel a spin and the drink which landed at the top of the wheel would become the $1 special for five minutes. When 7 PM rolled around, the special drink was Hot Shot Shooters. I purchased ten. Five for me and five for Jeff.

The shot wheel should probably be outlawed due to its ability to drive a man into a sudden fit of lunacy. I had fallen under its spell before and I was quickly falling again.

Things start to get hazy at that point and I’m not sure how long we were in the bar. I’m not even sure if Khan, Larry and Steve ever made it to Fanny Ann’s… The next thing I remember is sitting on the curb and puking into the gutter. Then, a cop on horseback came by and started talking to me. I can’t remember exactly what we talked about, but he ended up taking me to a drunk tank that was located just across the street from where I was sitting, which I thought was convenient.

I’m not sure if it was because I had vomited everything out of my system, or if it was because I was being arrested, but I sobered up pretty quick. So, I can pretty much remember everything during my time in the slammer.

It wasn’t a real jail. It was more of a holding cell. And as long as you weren’t an asshole, the Old Town cops just held you there until you sobered up. It wasn’t punishment as much as it was them trying to make sure you didn’t hurt yourself.

But they did take my wallet, phone and wristwatch and held it in a big yellow envelope until I got out. While I was sitting and waiting to be let loose, there was an old Mexican man who woke up and started screaming “SOMEONE STOLE MY WALLET! SOMEONE STOLE MY WALLET! SOMEONE STOLE MY WALLET!”

He went on and on until the cops told him to shut up or they were going to take him to the real jail. He quieted down for about thirty seconds and then jumped up and started punching another poor son-of-a-bitch who was just trying to sleep off a little too much hooch. “YOU STOLE MY WALLET! YOU STOLE MY WALLET!” he kept screaming while landing punch after punch on that poor drunk fucker’s face.

 

The cops dragged him out and took him to real jail.

After about two hours, they came by, gave me a bottle of water and a chocolate chip cookie, talked to me about nothing in particular, gave me my stuff back and let me go.

This was the second time in 24-hours that cops treated me really nice while I should have been arrested for public intoxication. It was only Midnight and I felt great.

None of my friends were at Fanny Ann’s, so I tried calling Khan. No answer. I tried calling Jeff. No answer…. Steve and Larry. No answer. So I started walking back through the tunnel towards Downtown and ran into Steve. He explained that while I was locked up, my friends had inquired about me and were told that I should be out by midnight, “unless he acts stupid.” So Steve figured he’d come pick me up. He also explained that all of us had met up at Fanny Ann’s and drank together until Khan passed out in the restroom. Security was going to have him arrested until Steve, Larry and Jeff agreed to take him outside, call a cab and get him home.

This all happened at around 10:00 PM. It was now approaching 12:30.

Steve was elected to pick me up from the holding cell and to retrieve Larry’s car from where he left it when we started this drinking adventure in the early afternoon of the previous day.

“Twelve thirty?... Twelve thirty?” Steve kept asking. “Twelve thirty? We still have over an hour to legally purchase AND consume alcohol.”

“Come on,” I told him, “I know just the place.”

We double-timed it around the corner and down an alley to a little shit-hole of a place that I had been to on my last visit to Sacramento. It’s the kind of place you go to if you want to get stabbed. But they stay open right up until 2:00 AM and if you tip well enough, the bartender will let you stick around while he closes up. And that’s exactly what we did. We stayed and drank and played dice with some young Armenian guys until about 3:00 AM.

So Steve and I were both feeling pretty good. A lot like we were packed in cotton. Not overly stupid drunk, but definitely not sober. I remember that we tried to decide if we should head back to Khan’s house or go find something to eat.  And, I remember leaning towards going back to Khan’s when Steve said something about Chicken Fried Steak & Eggs. Change of plans. We’re going to Denny’s for some breakfast.

But Denny’s couldn’t be reached by foot, we needed to pick up Larry’s car. The problem was, neither one of us had actually seen Larry’s car. Ever. We only knew that it was a dark green Saab, and that it was parked around the corner from the Pre-Flight Lounge.

So we walked around for a few minutes until we found the Saab. “Wow,” Steve pointed out, “Larry drives a real piece of shit.” When he tried to fit the key into the door, it didn’t fit easily. So he jammed it in and turned it. And the door opened. Same thing with the ignition. But with equally dramatic motions of filigree and flash, the key turned and the car started.

After a delicious late night breakfast, we were ready to call it a night.

 

At about 11:00 AM on Saturday, I awoke to Larry yelling at Steve. We picked up the wrong car. Yes, there was a Saab parked in front of Khan’s house, but it wasn’t dark green – it was black, and it was about 20 years older than Larry’s car.

We debated whether or not to take it back but finally decided to leave it alone until later in the day. And we all went back to sleep.

We still had another day of drinking ahead of us.