Roadside Surprise
When I was 18 one of my friends was going away to college. The year before when he went away the first time we'd had a hotel party where 10-15 of us got a crappy hotel room, drank til we dropped and slept there for the night. We reprised that party for his second year. At this time, we had a friend who was a relative baby, a 16 year old, we'll call him Sully. We had corrupted Sully in every way, we taught him to drink that summer shattering his innocence. Thing was, though, Sully was a hilarious drunk. There was the time he wanted to have actual sex with the tailpipe of a truck (he fondled the wheel well instead) and I have the obligatory photo of Sully passed out with with my exposed appendage an inch from his mouth.
On this night, though, I was obsessed with this book I had "100 Drinking Games". So we spent the evening playing stupid drinking games. The one that really set us on the path to a fabulous drunk was a game called Beer Hunter. I don't remember the specifics of the game, but it was basically Russian roulette with shaken cheap MBL beer cans and our kind of crazy friend yelling in Vietnamese an inch from our face. We were beer soaked and drunk. Many things happened that night that changed a lot of our friendships, but Sully really took things to another level.
The room was a double with 2 queen size beds. I think about 7 of us slept in the room and apparently Sully didn't have anywhere to sleep. I remember waking up, still quite drunk, and hearing the water in the bathroom tub run for a couple minutes then stop. 10 minutes later it would run again and stop. This went on for about an hour before I felt the strength to get out of bed and see what was going on in the bathtub. There was Sully, fully clothed laying in the bathtub filled with water, empty beer cans and plastic ice bags. That's where he decided to sleep and since he didn't have a blanket, he thought filling the tub with hot water would keep him warm. When it got too cold, he simply ran some more hot water.
We all laughed about Sully while we hurriedly packed up whatever we had and fought over who had to take the key (it was an actual key in those days) back to the office to get the deposit back. Since we pretty much trashed the room, we thought this situation was fraught with peril. We settled on making Sully do it. Sully who was completely soaked.
Later in the day I found out from Sully the pertinent information for this post. After dropping off the key and getting the deposit, Sully wasn't feeling good so he stopped at McDonald's for orange juice and a milkshake. After drinking both on the way home Sully stopped on the highway (on I-135 just south of the Harry street bridge), still soaking wet, got out of his car and threw up all over the shoulder as passersby must have gawked at this soaking wet kid puking all over.
I thought of this when I was drinking Shock Top Raspberry Wheat as I tried to identify the taste that was prevalent throughout. Shock Top Raspberry Wheat is mostly a mildly enjoyable raspberry beer, but it doesn't have much raspberry flavor. The raspberry seems to be flavored with what I imagine is Sully's soaking wet puke breath from a night of Milwaukee's Best Light, an orange juice and McDonald's vanilla milkshake. I'll still drink my remaining 4 but mostly out of nostalgia for Sully, not for any love of the Shock Top Raspberry Wheat.
On this night, though, I was obsessed with this book I had "100 Drinking Games". So we spent the evening playing stupid drinking games. The one that really set us on the path to a fabulous drunk was a game called Beer Hunter. I don't remember the specifics of the game, but it was basically Russian roulette with shaken cheap MBL beer cans and our kind of crazy friend yelling in Vietnamese an inch from our face. We were beer soaked and drunk. Many things happened that night that changed a lot of our friendships, but Sully really took things to another level.
The room was a double with 2 queen size beds. I think about 7 of us slept in the room and apparently Sully didn't have anywhere to sleep. I remember waking up, still quite drunk, and hearing the water in the bathroom tub run for a couple minutes then stop. 10 minutes later it would run again and stop. This went on for about an hour before I felt the strength to get out of bed and see what was going on in the bathtub. There was Sully, fully clothed laying in the bathtub filled with water, empty beer cans and plastic ice bags. That's where he decided to sleep and since he didn't have a blanket, he thought filling the tub with hot water would keep him warm. When it got too cold, he simply ran some more hot water.
We all laughed about Sully while we hurriedly packed up whatever we had and fought over who had to take the key (it was an actual key in those days) back to the office to get the deposit back. Since we pretty much trashed the room, we thought this situation was fraught with peril. We settled on making Sully do it. Sully who was completely soaked.
I thought of this when I was drinking Shock Top Raspberry Wheat as I tried to identify the taste that was prevalent throughout. Shock Top Raspberry Wheat is mostly a mildly enjoyable raspberry beer, but it doesn't have much raspberry flavor. The raspberry seems to be flavored with what I imagine is Sully's soaking wet puke breath from a night of Milwaukee's Best Light, an orange juice and McDonald's vanilla milkshake. I'll still drink my remaining 4 but mostly out of nostalgia for Sully, not for any love of the Shock Top Raspberry Wheat.
