My Madison Romance, part 1

Like Halloween, I love Madison. There's something about that city that I know I won't find anywhere else. It has to be some combination of the memories, the people I met there, the food, the culture, the places, well you get the idea. Our core group of friends unofficially decided to meet up at least once a year for a football game, and this weekend was it vs. Penn State. Of course the football game would only be a small part of the entire weekend, but important nonetheless.

Before I even start talking about this trip, I have to mention the ridicuously long email threads that continually circle on a daily basis between everyone in this group. In these emails are some of the most funny, vulgar, witty, nerdy, and serious comments known to man. If someone particularly likes something, pretty much everyone else finds every which way to rip it down and boast their interest. If we all agree on something, we'll all agreei in some ridiculously nerdy way. And if there's something serious someone needs to address, it goes in there too. It's quite the digital life. I probably check my email 283492837948273 times a day. Just kidding. But not really.

Anyways, I took Friday off of work so that we could drive there during the day and arrive in the late afternoon. D&D, two old roommates, and I planned to ride down together for the 3rd time in a few months. Our friend L, who relocated to New York after graduating, had a connecting flight in Minneapolis to get Wisco to meet her parents prior to all of us meeting, but their stupid airline screwed up in holding planes back for their hour delay, so she missed her flight. So, she readjusted her plans to ride with us, and it all worked out in some weird way. The four of us endured the 4+ hour drive to meet up to see Borat, which we all have been looking forward to for a long long long long time. Unfortunately for me, I was drinking liquids in the car and had to go sooooooo bad for the last hour, and it got to the point where I could not hold it any longer, pretty sick. We were 10 minutes away from our destination when I reached this point, and it was at this point that I asked for a pull-over to a "no way" as he pointed to an empty powerade bottle, and at that point I reached for it and did something pretty sick. The two guys were laughing, and the girl was screaming and squirming. We arrived and met up with 3 others, but I couldn't hug or high-five yet as I had a mess on my hands... don't worry I washed up. Then we saw Borat, which was pretty sick. 9 out of 10.

Next was dinner at some place I initially thought was a joke in our email thread, Quaker Steak and Lube. Seriously, a place with lube in the title is a little weird. It was a racing themed restaurant with doodads all over the place and the food was surprisingly excellent.

After that we headed to downtown and got ready to go out. The first bar was unanimously Monday's, which probably has the stiffest mixed drinks, ever. I'm serious. The red bull vodkas are ice, vodka, and a splash or red bull. Basically this stop is just to get things jump started. Next stop was the Crave, the new workplace of one of the friends still in Madison. Having vast bar experience in the past, he was already Mr. Manager. He was just getting off as first cut so he changed and introduced us to some newer friends he's met since most of us were last there. I'm not sure when word of mouth spread a request for a post-bar appearance by a certain cat, but it did, and I informed everyone that I unfortunately didn't bring the costume. After Crave was Bullfeathers for a final drink until after-bar. I must note at this point was ecstatic to just be out until bartime for once as I hardly ever get to do that on a regular basis. In Madison, there's always someone to go out with on any given night until the sun comes up, and while I may be outgrowing those days, damn do I miss it.

A-bar time came and we headed back to the apartment where people reached for anything they could get their hands on to eat, and I changed into my newly labeled alter-ego and made an ass of myself. 4:30 rolled around and I finally bit it.

Well it's lunchtime, I'll have to finish this later.