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"Another Thing We All Survived."

July 20, 2009 11:15 PM

our of my best friends are getting married this year--Mr. Vice and pH in October, and L-Dawg and Xtina in just under two weeks. Somehow, they, along with chelsadilla, RPM, RPM's still un-nicknamed significant other (I'm going to suggest Hannelore, based on this), Mr. Utah, and L-Dawg's brother, all managed to take some time out of our calendars to head up to the Dells this weekend for a bachelor party for the men, a bachelorette party for the ladies, and a day at Mt. Olympus for all.

Large portions of this thing were supposed to be a surprise. Certainly, the fact that L-Dawg's brother was flying in from the West Coast was intended to be a bit of a shock. But that failed when various people mentioned that he was coming. Then, somehow, L-Dawg randomly guessed where we were going for dinner. And the overall theme of the evening--get drunk and then go gamble--was fairly easy to discern. In fact, the only thing that seemed to remain a surprise was the fact that this was Mr. Vice's bachelor party, too--he apparently didn't know that it was until just hours before it started.

Anyway, we convoyed it up to the Dells, arriving at right around 4pm. That gave us just enough time to get situated in our hotel and get to the restaurant. The men headed to Ginza of Tokyo because I figured that the food and the volcano (a giant bowl of booze with a rum-fueled flame in the middle) would serve as good bases for the rest of the evening. But we got to the restaurant early, so we decided to have a drink before sitting down at our table. Many of us started with Long Islands.

Now, for some reason, I hadn't eaten all day. I had woken up late and then was busy the whole morning and early afternoon. So I was starving. But I also didn't have much of a defense against the initial rounds of strong drinks. So I was in a good mood when we left the restaurant. Figuring that it was too early to head to the casino, we instead decided to check out a locally infamous bar: Nig's. Yeah, the place is called Nig's. No, that wouldn't have been my first choice for a bar name, either. Still, I had read about Nig's in police reports way too many times not to want to check it out. And I was not disappointed.

We walked in and I decided we needed a round of shots. This was an Important Event, so I decided that we needed Fancy Drinks. I ordered five shots of Patron. I pulled out a wad of cash, expecting an absurd tally. But the guy told me the total was $25. Patron for $5 a shot? Things were about to get awesome. And stupid.

Nig's was fun, but Mr. Vice had noticed a knife and sword store on the drive in (he was DD; we did a lot of dumb things that night, but driving drunk was not one of them), so we obviously went and checked that out. There were some seriously awesome weapons in there, and I took the opportunity to sneak next door and buy some much needed items. See, Hannelore had bought each of the bachelorettes sashes that identified them as, well, bachelorettes. So I decided that we needed some similar items for our bachelors. But sashes are sorta wussy, so I bought each of them hats. Mr. Vice got a pointy wizard hat, and L-Dawg got a pizza hat. They seemed to like them, and we got a lot of Gandalf jokes pointed in our direction as a result of Mr. Vice's hat. L-Dawg's hat was taken prisoner at some point by an old lady at Nig's who said she needed to take it because she "loves pizza" so much she "eats it every day." Strange.

Feeling that the time was right, we headed to the casino. On the way, we decided it might be interesting to stop at an "adult novelty" store, but we failed to find it, so we just plowed on to the casino. Part of the plan for the evening was to bankroll Mr. Vice and L-Dawg for the evening, so we handed them a wad of cash and let them loose. Then someone suggested that we should all smoke cigars, which sounded like a good idea until we found out that the best cigars we could get were Swisher Sweets. Undeterred, we smoked them, anyway. They were terrible.

We played poker for a while, with L-Dawg making some money, Mr. Vice busting out, and me ending up about $40 down. We wandered around in the casino for a while, played some craps, then some blackjack, and then headed back to Nig's, but not before we made another effort to find the adult novelty place. We were successful this time, but they failed because they were closed.

Once we got back to the bar, we had a few more drinks, then decided it was time to find a place where we could hang out on the edge of the water. We wandered aimlessly for a while, always following Mr. Vice's pointy hat. We took a vote and decided against trespassing, and eventually, through the use of Google Maps and a Blackberry, discovered that there was likely a dock within driving distance. So we started driving and eventually discovered not one but three docks. We sat there for a while. Nothing deep was said.

We came back to the hotel. Mr. Vice took his leave of us and the rest of us walked to a local breakfast establishment. What followed will forever be referred to as The Ugliness, and I will not speak of it here. I think it will suffice to say that it involved a Slovakian waiter, an interminable wait, some extremely mean people, and the police. In the end, though, we all made it through and, as someone said to me, it was just another thing we all survived together. Some friends are linked by war; my group of friends is now linked by The Ugliness.

Anyway, we all made it back to the hotel safely and went to sleep. Four hours later, we woke up and spent the day at Mt. Olympus. I had never been, but we got the tickets free with our hotel, so we decided to try it out. As it turns out, Mt. Olympus kicks fucking ass.

We started off at Poseidon's go-carts, and they were pretty awesome, even if the line was fucking long. But then everyone wanted to ride the Hades rollercoaster. I went along with it for a while because I didn't think chelsadilla would do it if I didn't, and I could tell she really wanted to. But I was terrified. I think people thought that I was playing up my fear, but I really wasn't. Previous to this weekend, the most hard-core rollercoasters I had been on were at Disneyland. The prospect of riding Hades--a wooden coaster with a top speed of nearly 70mph; a 65-degree, 140-foot drop; and 90-degree banked turns--was daunting. I honestly nearly chickened out, but I'm glad I didn't. The ride was terrifying but extremely fun, and I sorta wanna do it again. Here's a video of the ride:

We spent the rest of the day exploring the dry and wet portions of the park, and it was a lot of fun. I would definitely go back. In fact, if Mt. Olympus ever gets a ride on par with Black Anaconda at Noah's Ark, I can't think of any reason why it would be worth it to go to latter.

Anyway, the weekend was fun and exhausting, like a good party weekend should be. I think that everyone involved had a good time, especially those of us who are about to get married. I hope, anyway.


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