2003-07-23 - 12:34 p.m.

Warning: This is gonna be a long one. However, I recommend finishing. Lots of people have interesting drinking stories. Few of them are as good as this (in my biased opinion).

In a few days, it will have been a year since the most horrible drinking/walking/almost dying experience of my life. You see, my twenty first birthday was on a Saturday just over a year ago. So, Friday night at midnight, I had a drink at a a bar and then went to a small party. Saturday I went to the air show and had a beer. I didn't get to have a decent celebration until Wednesday evening. Danny and I took the day off because Wednesday was his 21st. So, to celebrate both of us being legal, we took the afternoon off and went to Hooters for a while. Then had our first "real" bar experience. A small, comfortable, but busy place call the Pour Haus. We only stayed until about 8:00 then had Stooph come get us. I fell asleep early that night. No big deal.

This story starts Thursday evening. Disappointed by our first bar drinking night, Danny and I decided we'd go back to the Pour Haus and have a better time. Since it would be busier past 8:00 and there would be more going on, we were really looking forward to it. I drove to Danny's because (and don't laugh yet, this isn't the really funny stuff) we were going to have his mom drive us to the bar so we could get wasted and take a cab home. I would crash at Danny's and drive my car to work the next morning.

After we got to the bar, we sat down and shared a couple pitchers of Bud Light. Matt, the bar's owner told us he had an awesome surprise for the patrons that night. After a little while, we found out his surprise was an Elvis impersonator. It was hilarious. People were just trying to figure out what was going on. Danny and I had a pretty decent time talking to Matt, watching Elvis and legally drinking. After Elvis had finished, we'd had about four beers each and decided to try a flaming Dr. Pepper (as neither of us had ever tried one). Those went down easily with a slight buzz. I'm pretty sure it was about this time we decided rather than call a cab, we'd try and walk the five miles or so back to my apartment complex. Not too far during daylight hours.....sober. As we were getting ready to leave we spotted a couple of guys we knew from highschool. They bought each of us a tequila shot for our birthdays. We B.S.ed with them for about 15 minutes and left for our walk home feeling no pain. We had walked about half a mile when both of us decided we really had to pee. We ducked away from the street lamps on the FOUR LANE DIVIDED MAIN ROAD IN THE REALLY BUSY RESTAURANT DISTRICT and peed behind a pine tree next to a lake.

With that all taken care of, we began our trek again. About another half mile down the road, we get to one of those main restaurant areas. Danny brings it to my attention that his dad used to frequent one of the bars just around the corner. His dad had taken him into the bar when he was younger and introduced him to some of the people. So, now that Danny was 21 he wanted to stop in and see the place again and see if anyone remembered his dad. We walked in, grabbed a spot up and the bar and took a look around. The bar was about a third of the way full. We were easily the only people not over 27 or so. The bartenders all looked a little "gone to pasture" themselves. We could tell this was more the middle aged scene. We bought a pitcher anyway and Danny asked the bartenders if they knew his dad. I don't really remember if they did or not, they may have recognized the name. Either way, some of the other people must have heard us because a gentleman came over and talked to Danny a bit about his dad. We finished our pitcher, and I remember another birthday tequila shot came out of somewhere.

About this point, things start to get a little more sketchy. I remember it was a little past one o'clock when I barely heard the male bartender telling Danny we had to get out of the bar because I was passing out. He wasn't rude at all, but he had to ask us to leave. I got up, and Danny and I headed (very intoxicated) for the door. Once outside, we decided rather than go back to the main road that would take us easily to the next road, we would cut through the parking lots and take a shortcut. I remember eventually getting to a barbed wire fence that we climbed over, then walked through a muddy area and finally, climbed over a second fence. We found out later that we had walked through a fenced-in horse paddock. There was an old man that had a small barn in the middle of all the other hubbub. He refused to sell because he kept his horse there. So, we walked through that poor horse's enclosure and flipped ourselves over the barbed wire on the other side just to roll down a grassy knoll and get ourselves pretty itchy.

After collecting ourselves, we found our way onto Spring Valley road which conveniently would lead us right up to the last road before my apartment complex. We had only to walk about another mile and a half and we'd be home free. We walked three quarters of that distance without too much problem. However, when we go to a street light where Spring Valley crossed Washington Church Rd. I got a bright idea. Across the street and to the right of us, was a large NCR complex. Rather than walk all the way up to the next road, take a right, and another right into the apartment complex, we could just cut right through NCR and we'd be almost there.

We set out across the NCR grounds trying to walk around to the back of the complex. We walked about 3/4 of the way when we decided we had made a mistake and should turn back. I think this was the point when I turned around to see Danny carrying one of those large realty "For Sale" signs across his back. He was holding it by the spiked parts you shove into the ground. I remember asking him, "What are you doing?" and his response, in a very matter-of-fact, gruff voice was, "I got this sign!" The next thing I think I remember is that we came to a wooden fence that barred us from getting back to Spring Valley Rd. Rather than climb over the four foot fence, or perhaps THROUGH the gapping spaces between the horizontal wooden planks, we decided it might be easier if we kicked out some of the boards. I'm fairly certain we exhausted ourselves for about ten minutes doing that. I THINK it was when we finally made it over the semi-busted fence, that the worst possible thing could have happened. No, not a cop (I'll explain why that wouldn't have been horrible in a litte bit). As we crossed the fence, Danny lost hope and fell down. I tried to convince him to get up, but there was no hope. I told him I was going to start walking. I'm pretty sure I walked about fifty feet, and when I turned around, Danny was gone. I called to him for about a minute and then in my drunken stupor figured he'd be alright on his own even though he had no clue where my apartment was. We were separated.

I continued walking up Spring Valley to one of the condo complexs. I think I went into the one that my mom lives in now. I walked to the back of that complex where, again, I should have been able to bust through the fifteen foot wooded area to my apartment complex beyond. However, the underbrush and small tree branches were so thick that there was no way I could make it through. I got my foot so bogged down in mud that, when I pulled my foot back, my shoe came off. I grabbed my shoe, made it back out of the wooded area, and fell down in someone's back yard. After collecting myself, I got up and started walking again. I have no recollection of the next mile and a half/45 minutes or so.

What I can recall next is being on the total oppoiste side on my apartment complex and across another main road in my current work parking lot. At this point I must have gained some sense of direction, because I crossed that main road again, and started walking up Newmark Dr. This is where the rest of the NCM buildings are. I also remember that I had somehow taken off my other shoe and both socks and was tramping across asphault roads totally barefoot and without feeling any pain. As I walked up the middle of Newmark Dr. a car was coming toward me. Rather than move to the side of the road, I proceeded to cuss him out when he passed me and wasn't courteous enough to pick up the barefoot, muddy, teenage looking young man, with a face that said I would probably kill the next person who spoke to me. I turned on Gander Creek Rd. which was another road that backed right up to a wooded area, right outside my actual apartment building. I cut across another field (about 150 feet worth) and proceeded into the forested area that would lead me home. I successfully journeyed through about 80 feet of wooded area before coming to a slight drop and a two and a half foot deep stream. I sloshed down the bank, pounded through the wather (still barefoot) and up the other side. I finally made it through the last twenty feet of forest and to my building's entrance door.

I couldn't find my keys (which were currently hanging from one of my belt loops), so I buzzed our apartment for a solid two minutes until my petrified roommates came across the intercom. They asked who it was, and I guess I responded with somehthing along the lines of, "It's Justin, I'm drunk, I'm tired, I walked the fuck home, now let me the fuck in."

I will continue this entry tomorrow my lunch is over and I still have half the story to go.

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