Beerfest

This is my follow up story to Drink Boulder 2010.

This.  Is Beerfest.

Last September my friends and I began what will undoubtedly be a continued tradition. 

Every fall, Colorado hosts the Great American Beerfest.  We all got the idea to make it an event in January of 2010 when we went to visit my friend Susan for the first time.  She told us we had to come out for Beerfest that fall, and since we all had so much fun getting drunk that weekend, we obliged.

Along the way, we picked up a few more friends who were along for the ride.  It was me, Susan, Laurel, Laurel's boyfriend Scott, and our other friends from high school Peter and Chris.

The journey began on a Thursday.

We flew out and Susan met us at the airport late that night.  We went home only to fall asleep that night.

This trip was different. 

This trip was innately devoted to alcohol, so when we woke up, no one felt guilty that we decided to start our day by hitting our first brewery...at 11 AM.

Beerfest wasn't until Saturday and we wanted to get a head start on the debauchery.

Again, being the lightweight that I am, I was drunk almost immediately.  We toured craft breweries for the better part of the day, drinking and doing stupid things like climbing hay mountains that we found on the side of the road.

There is one important piece of the story I should add before I continue.

Before I left for my trip, my boyfriend and I were hanging out. 

We had about 3 hours to kill before he had to take me to the airport.  "We should rent a romantic movie," he said. "Like The Human Centipede."

"The Human Centipede?"  I asked.  "What's that?"  (<---big mistake)

"....You don't...know...what The Human Centipede is??"  He excitedly asked.  When I confirmed I did not, he briefly explained the plot.

If you still don't know what it is, here is a summary.

...Yeah.

I immediately grabbed my computer and googled the trailer.  How did I not know about this??? 

I became obsessed with everything about the movie, except actually watching it.  I was still trying to decide if I could handle watching a crazy scientist stitch 3 humans together, ass to mouth so they shared a digestive tract.  

Of course I brought it up immediately to my friends.

I couldn't believe my luck, because none of them had seen or heard about it either.  So I got to explain it to them.

And then we were all obsessed.  The amount we talked about just the idea of this movie was insane.  I am not exaggerating when I say we spent hours talking about it.

The evening turned into a continual rant of logistics. 

"So, what if we sewed A to C???"

"What happens if one of them throws up?  Where does it go???"

"Couldn't they develop some kind of system when they use their tongues to let the others know they're about to take a crap???"

It was a long night.

Then Beerfest day arrived. 

But the Human Centipede conversation held strong.

(I eventually watched the movie, but we had discussed it so much and gone over every little detail that I pretty much knew everything about it and was bored to tears.  I ended up fast forwarding through most of it).

Moving on.

We headed down to the convention center. 

...An entire convention center dedicated to beer and drunk people.  There were so many people.  And so many beer stations.

They handed us this tiny little cup and explained that we get as many 1 ounce pours as we could drink.

"One ounce???"  We all thought.  "We only have 4 hours, how can we possible get drunk off of one ounce pours in 4 hours???"

<----Little cup

To move the story along, by the end of hour 2 we were all annihilated.  The question then became, "How do we keep this up for 2 more hours???"

But we did.  It was awesome. 

We took Shot Skis:

<---Cool pretzel necklaces that are a must

And at some point, this seemed like a good idea:

....

Yeah.  Temporary tattoos.  And mouth vaginas.  Laurel had to go to a wedding the next day.  She obviously did not think the fake-tattoo-on-her-boob thing through.

Any time someone dropped their little plastic cup, the whole convention center erupted into one giant,

"OOOOOOOOOHHHHHHHHHH!!!"

<----Us doing that to other people

Which basically meant party foul. 

I held onto that thing for dear life. 

Unfortunately Laurel dropped hers...at the very end of the night.  8:(

<----("OOOHHH")



The session eventually ended. 

As soon as it did all 30,000+ people burst out into applause.  The applause did not stop the entire time we were in the convention center/leaving.

After 5 minutes of listening to the shouting and watching the sea of people pour down the stairs clapping and shouting with drunken happiness, I finally (I was drunk or I would have done it much sooner) snapped a quick video of it which I will add here later.  Until then this link might work:  I don't know if this will work.

Annnnyway.

The night was far from over.  But we're just about at the part where I stop remembering what happened.

Peter and I apparently decided to hop on a rickshaw (there were rickshaws??).  I think we were ready to crash.  But just as we started to move, our friends flagged us down and told us we were all going to a strip club instead.

....Apparently that's what we do in Colorado.  Drink, and go to strip clubs.

Though this time we stayed at the club for a few hours.

Lots of money was spent.  Lot's of boobs were seen.  Scott got his camera taken away by security after he tried to take a picture of one of the dancers.  It was a good night. 

And then we left.

And here's where it gets really hazy...

For some reason (I am guessing I was borderline too intoxicated to walk efficiently) Peter was carrying me on his back.  And somehow we got separated from the rest of the group, which I didn't know until the following morning.

We stumbled around looking for our hotel, and ended up in the wrong one.  Whatever hotel we stayed at had 2 different sections to it and was pretty confusing even when we were sober, so you can imagine how difficult it would be to navigate while drunk.

Which reminds me.

-----------------------------------------------------

Dear Hotel Builders/People:

If you are going to build or have a hotel right next to a Beer Festival, maybe make your hotel a little less fucking confusing.  Because you are about to have 30,000 stumbling idiots calling you because they can't find their rooms and are probably in the wrong damn building of your hotel.

-----------------------------------------------------

In any event, we made it.  Peter flopped me down on the bed and went in the other room and that's all I remember.

So when I woke up the next morning - head throbbing/on the verge of death - and Peter came into our room with coffee and asked me, "did you find your pants?"  You can probably guess why I was confused and alarmed.

"I'm sorry, what??  And also,  shhhhh not so loud...ugh."

"You don't remember?"  He asked.

Oh God oh God what did I do...

He laughed:  "Yeah well in the middle of the night I opened my eyes and you were standing over me saying, 'Peter....Peter...I need pants...Peter....I need pants!'  And I looked down and you were not wearing pants."

I smacked my hand to my head in embarrassment and looked under the covers.

I definitely wasn't wearing pants.

...Don't worry I was wearing other clothes.  But still.

"You just were so sad that you couldn't find your pants...so I helped you look through your suitcase, but I couldn't find them either so I gave up."

I looked around the room. 

Pieces of my outfit were flung everywhere.  My pants were draped over the desk.  My jacket was hanging over the lamp.  My bra and shirt were both folded nicely in my suitcase...which was weird.  Somehow in my drunken state I managed to get my sleep tee shirt on.

...And then someone discovered the wet spot in the corner.

To this day I will swear that it was not me, that peed in the corner.  But unfortunately, no one knows what happened that night.  I don't remember a thing past the walk back to the hotel.  And everyone else was just as drunk as I was.

So my friends think I peed on the floor.  I don't, because I'm OCD with being neat and clean, so even in my drunken state I don't believe I would have done it.  But I cannot prove either side.  I can neither confirm nor deny.  Except that I will continue to deny until the day I die because I DIDN'T PEE ON THE FLOOR. 

I know I said Boulder 2010 was my worst hangover, but that was only because I had not yet experienced Beerfest.

Oh.

My.

God.

That was THE worst flight I've ever been on.  I've never been so sick.  I don't know how I didn't throw up.  I don't know how none of us threw up for that matter.

Note to self/friends for next year:  Do NOT schedule return flight for the first thing the morning AFTER Beerfest. 

To wrap things up, Beerfest this year is the last weekend in September.  And I will be there. 

So who's in???  Let's do this.

I did not pee.  Also.