Wednesday 7/3: do you realize how short you are?
The last straw was my birthday last year. I got laid off, served eviction papers on my apartment and turned 25 all in the same week. My friends from home - Mike.F, Mike.D and Rob - had equally crapass 25th birthdays as well. Thus, we decided that for each of our birthdays this year we'd make it a point to all get together and do it up Ja-Rule style. We've been true to it so far with the four of us meeting up in DC in March for Mike.D's 26th and then again in NYC in June for my 26th.
Which brings us to birthday #3 - Mike Ferrari's 26th and a roadtrip to Washington DC. Actually, there was no shortage of things to celebrate - Mike's birthday, July 4th and, of course the one year anniversary of last year's running of the bulls in Pamplona.
So, Tuesday afternoon, Steve (Mike's friend from Bates who also starred in the running of the bulls) and I meet up in Grand Central, take the slowest train in the planet out to Stamford, CT, meet up with Lt. Rob Moore and start our trek down to DC. Four hours and nine McNugs later we arrived in DC (luckily, an hour too late for last call). No worries - the real adventure doesn't begin until the next morning.
Thursday 7/4
10:45a - Rob's breakfast: chocolate chip pancakes.
10:46a - Steve's breakfast: The Supercake (Aunt Jemima + cheese + onions + bacon + all baked in = Supercake).
4:14p - We take off for Harv's cookout, finding this abandoned vacuum on the way. (Note reads: "Dear Neighbors, Please stop dumping at our home. We don't know what to do with your garbage either. With affection, Your friendly neighborhood theater people")
4:38p - Not even 10 minutes into the party and Ferrari is trying to pull the old "oops-my-pinkie-touched-yours and-now-we're-holding-hands" trick on my ex-girlfriend! (this pic was snapped about 2 seconds too late)
5:36p - It's still 100+ degrees outside. We're all still relatively sober. Not sure why Mike.D asked Harv to blast him with the hose. (this incident prompted the first of Mike.D's seven change of outfits - keep an eye on the rest of the pics).
9:39p - So much drama went down in between the firehose pic and this shot of the four of us on the roof top of some random girl's luxury apt building. A week later and I can't really piece it all together.
I will tell you it's a miracle that (a) we actually got into this apt (think Mercer Hotel in terms of how fancy this place is), (b) we actually got onto the roof (I was part of the elevator crew though Mike.D and Steve were scaling walls and fences Bourne Identity style, not to mention shamelessly helping beautiful ladies up and down the rooftop ladders), (c) we didn't get arrested on our way out (especially with Ferrari urinating in the stairwell, Steve multitasking (beers + StairMaster) in the "fitness center", and me trying to pick the deadbolt to indoor pool with a hairpin and my Amex Blue.
(Note Mike.d with shirt #2)
Special thanks to Ken Allard who kindly IMed me and said...
Kans87
11:31p - Back to Harv's place. What's a cookout without a full-out brawl between best friends? Two points for the reversal.
(Note Mike.d with shirt #3)
12:07a - Drinking games. Skinny white kids. Farmers' tans all around.
To those interested in the frat-monkey, behind-the-scenes story, this is "Strip Flip Cup" - girls vs. guys. The goal: finish your cup, flip it 360 degrees in the air until it lands right side up, then repeat with the person to your left. Losing team takes off an article of clothing.
12:09a - More of the same. The guys lost. The girls cheated. Chants of "Show your cock" soon followed.
(Note Mike.d in between shirts #4 and #5)
1:30a - I don't really remember too much of this, but here we are at Brass Monkey down in Adams Morgan. Look at me, I am disgusting - Soaked with beer (from the brawl) Split Day style.
(Note Mike.d missing, as he's macking on Weird Looking Girl(tm) back at Harv's. He would have been macking on the girl we nicknamed "Low Hanging Fruit", but after the Wrestlemania pictured above, she told him "you are disgusting" and left.)
Late Night - $3 for a slice that dwarfs the size of Steve's hand. I could only eat half.
Friday 7/5
It took a while to piece together Thursday night when we got up on Friday morning... lots of hazy details such as "how did we end up at Meredith's place?", "Mike, what happened with you and Low Hanging Fruit?", "Dens, who gave you that scratch on your neck?"
11:26a - I was admittedly pretty sore Friday morning from the previous night's battle. I was marked with a few small bruises on my arm and a scratch here and there. The most damage came from Mike.D's cat-scratch Shoryuken to the back of my neck.
12:43p - Poor Mike.d developed a slightly larger bruise on his arm. (D, you so owe me for not putting that pic of you with your shirt off flexing your scars). Please note the cutie sitting behind us at brunch. Meow!
2:47p - Post-brunch, our bestest friends in the whole wide world ditched us and went golfing (nope - we weren't even invited even though I could kick Ferrari's ass in Pitch 'n Putt using only a four iron.) Anyway, with the big boys off to play their big boy games, Steve and I headed into DC for some sightseeing action. Here, me at the White House. (Sorry, but "steve_at_whitehouse.jpg" was axed by the teendrama.com editors)
4:45p - We continued onto the Washington Monument, a stroll through the mall, a stop at the Hirshhorn (museum of modern art), then making a quick stop at the National Air and Space Museum in search of the fabled Moon Rock. (Steve was convinced that there was an actual rock from the moon that you could touch. Crazytalk!)
While searching, Steve and I were distracted by an old-school interactive display allowing you to test your skills against that of a Sabre-esque airline reservation app.
The object is to find the shortest possible route that connects the airports in 16 US cities. As you touch each city, a line connecting one airport to the next is drawn. When all the cities are connected, the computer calculates the total mileage of your route and compares it to the mileage of what it has determined to be the shortest possible route.
4:47p - In true Matthew Broderick "War Games"-esque fashion, Steve BEATS THE COMPUTER BY ONE MILE (steve: 8208 miles // cpu: 8209 miles) which I'm sure kicked off a crazy match of Global Thermonuclear War on some secret government computer.
Oh yeah, and we did find the moon rock. It's wicked cool.
11:07p - Okay, enough computer talk. We go back to Ferrari's place. We order dinner in. We drink a bunch of beers on the porch. Robyn and her friends stop by. In all that time, no one noticed this super cute girl that was hanging out on the porch the whole time (at least, not until we reviewed these pics the next morning).
11:07p - Off to some random bar (Felix) where I dropped $35 on a round of drinks. In the backseat of Robyn's car, left to right, Fancy Shoes, Scuba, me and Random Girl Sara.
In the backseat of Robyn's car 10 minutes later: Rob and Robyn.
... oops, did I just accidently edit out that part about me, Robyn and Sara? Oh well. :)
11:46p - Whenever the four of us get together (Me, Rob, Mike and Mike) you can be sure of two things: (1) you'll inevitably see a few dozen Mike.D ReachArounds, (2) you're guaranteed to witness a Meltdown(tm) between the Medway kids. The meltdown can best be described as the point at which we individually get over the excitement and nostalgia of being together again and start to get sick of each other's company.
We usually last about two days before the meltdown hits. Here's Rob facilitating things on Day 2. (The full meltdown actually came at around 3am when Rob decided it would be a good idea to jump on Ferrari - knees first - while he was sleeping. Oh, and then to drag patio furniture into his room and egg him on until his glasses were broken.)
12:48a - There's a fine line between 'drunk' and 'drizzunk'. Here's where we crossed it thanks to a round of tequila shots. I swear, I am the most unphotogenic motherfucker on the planet.
1:07a - Man, these pictures suck. But the story is good... this is taken two minutes before Steve busted out with The Worm and two and a half minutes before the girls behind us started giggling in delight (?) of Scuba's moves.
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Okay, sorry for that interruption. Do we all feel better now? Back to the present-tense, Mike Ferrari birthday styles...
Saturday 7/6
Saturday - the eve of Ferrari's birthday. The afternoon is split recovering from Friday night, watching "The NFL's 100 Best Touchdowns", and playing basketball vs. bigger kids in some random park. Luckily, I wasn't picked last, I just wasn't picked at all... I ended up watching the game from the park bench on the sidelines. We hit dinner at some Mexican place around 9p then motivated to some bar called Adams' Mill.
Steve at dinner - Decked out Hustler-tee style and pulling his best Robyn impersonation with the fancy little napkins.
A little recap...
Ferrari. Thursday night. 12am. The kid disappears. Runs home and goes to bed.
Ferrari. Friday night. 2am. The kid disappears. We find him passed out at home late night (again).
Ferrari. Saturday night. The eve of his 26th birthday. There's no way we're letting this kid pull the same shit three nights in a row. We take the keys to his apt. at dinner and we all agree to keep a solid eye on him at all times. No leaving the premises - not even to take a call. (We tried to confiscate the cell, but he wasn't going to play along since he was still trying to rendezvous with his lady friend.)
11:26p - Lady friend shows up. (Her face doesn't look as blocky in person)
11:31p - We confiscate the phone.
1:46a - Okay. So I am drizzunk. I admit. We're dancing up with these two girls who looked pretty cute at the time (blondie was actually digging Mike.D). They're talking about how they're coming to New York next week. I give them my 'Man of Leisure' card. I tell them to call me. It's not until I dump the pics from my camera that I realize these girls look like their 19!
Update: I never heard from them.
Late Night - Not sure why we keep going back to the pancakes. After I whacked Lt. Moore in the face with a loaf of moldy bread, Steve whipped up a few round of Aunt Jemima's finest:
Round 1 - Tequila Cakes.
Round 2 - Whiskey/Tequila Cakes.
Round 3 - Yuengling Lager, Tequlia and Old Feta Cheese Pancakes.
We fed the third round to the sketchy foreigners Tim brought home. Chumps.
So, that's pretty much it. Rob, Steve and I left on Sunday afternoon and battled traffic for four hours before Rob dumped the two of us in Newark to fend for ourselves. I took the Path; steve went the NJ Transit route. I beat him back by 30 mins. The end.