OK, the Preakness story is going to take forever to remember/write, so that one is going to kind of be the piece de resistance of this thread, but I have a few minutes today, so here comes :
Daytona '02 : The Return of Barry
(You may remember Barry from the Key West story, if not, feel free to go read that one again to refresh your memory and then come back. This story takes place within a few weeks of that one and involves the same cast : myself, Barry, and my brother Yams.) This one is what I would consider "B" material, but here goes.
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Not long after the Key West trip, Yams, Barry and I went out to Daytona for an overnight to see the band Tool at the Ocean Center in Daytona Beach. We drove out early afternoon from Melbourne and checked into our motel room and immediately begin drinking beers. We probably plowed through a 12-pack in about an hour and then struck out onto the "boardwalk" and started walking.
Before long, we came to an arcade that sold 32 oz beers, so we went in and started playing Skeeball and drinking even more aggressively. At one point, a couple of quarts in, Yams suggested a 32 oz beer chug-off. Not wanting to back down from a challenge, I agreed to compete - Barry backed out. Barry gives us the "Ready......set.......go !" command and we're off. About halfway through chugging the beer, my stomach gives me the warning signal - "stop now or I'm not responsible for what comes next..." Just then, I hear Barry narrating : "I think [EG] is in the lead by roughly 4.5 ounces...." so I push through and keep chugging. I get about 3/4 of the way through it and the warning is now a blaring siren : "STOP DRINKING NOW." I stop for a moment and kind of throw my head back and wiggle around a bit like Joey Chestnut on July 4th, trying to create room and/or bring up air. As I'm doing this, Barry is yelling : "AND YAMS IS CATCHING UP ! YAMS MAY BE IN THE LEAD ! [EG] IS GETTING A STANDING 8 COUNT !" So naturally, I dig back in and finish the rest of the beer. I end up beating Yams by about a second and a half and am in the midst of receiving the spoils of victory when all of this beer decides to make a hasty escape from its prison and FAST. I run out to the boardwalk and begin vomiting up beer (still ice cold) into a large metal garbage can just outside the arcade. Now, it's roughly 3:30 in the afternoon - families with children are all over the boardwalk and people are sitting there at picnic tables eating cheesesteaks as I regurgitate merely feet away. I hear Yams and Barry laughing hysterically and Yams begins taking photos of it with his camera phone (a relatively new phenomenon back then.) He took about 15 pictures, which were fun to watch in a sort of time-lapse video later, especially with the horrified looks of parents in the background, picking up their families and food and moving to other tables.
After this, we decide it's probably best to move to a new location, so we walk a few blocks off the main drag to a place called the Oyster Pub. We settle into a table there and I immediately order 3 beers and 3 Jager shots. Barry sighs in resignation as he realizes the trajectory this afternoon is taking. We eat a little bit and go through three rounds of pints and Jagers when the waitress comes by and asks if we need anything else. Simultaneously, Barry says : "No just the check" as I say : "Yes, 6 more Jagers !" The waitress just kind of looks at us, puzzled, and walks away. Barry says to me : "I wonder if she listened to me or to you..." I replied : "Well, let's see, one of us wants to close the check, one of us wants to inflate it by $30, which means roughly $6 more in her pocket. I wonder who she listened to." Naturally, it was me and 6 more Jagers land on the table. Barry, already half in the bag, reluctantly drinks 2 shots, Yams and I do the same. Barry mutters : "Jesus Christ, I am f#$%ing wasted.." We pay the check and depart.
10 minutes later, we're back on Atlantic Avenue and walking towards the venue where the show is. Barry is complaining frequently about his need to urinate, but apparently isn't seeing anywhere to relieve himself that meets his strict standards. Yams and I are just staggering down the sidewalk, already destroyed and nearly oblivious to his plight, when I look over my shoulder and see Barry walking backwards. Now, mind you, it's about 6:00 PM, broad daylight, at a crowded intersection with a huge hotel across the street, gift shops and surf shops open and crowded, the whole nine yards. People are everywhere. I'm wondering why he's walking backwards when I see it.... the trail of urine following him. This idiot has pulled his John Thomas out and is walking backwards down the sidewalk and pissing at the same time. I yell out : "Dude, WTF are you doing? You're going to get arrested !" He just moans in relief and continues. He must have left a stream of piss 200 yards long down the sidewalk. Luckily, no cops spot him and we get into the show without incident.
The show is great and mostly uneventful. The highlight came about 2/3 of the way through them playing the "Lateralus" album in its (near?) entirety - during the latter half of the album, there's a lot of long songs with a lot of "jamming," so Barry and I go to round up some beers before the show ends. We get back to the seats and Yams is passed out COLD in his seat. We start laughing at him, then I squeeze his cheeks so his bottom lip juts out and we start pouring beer into his mouth, to the great amusement of the people sitting next to us. He comes to halfway through our doing this, jumps up out of his seat and throws his fists in the air and bellows : "BEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEER !!!!!!" so loud that you could hear it over the music. The people around us that are watching us are cracking up laughing, while the others surrounding our row are looking back with furrowed brows.
After the show, we walk back out onto Atlantic and towards our motel. We stop off at a pizza place to get a pie and there's one guy working there - the place is completely empty aside from us. We order a large plain pie and start talking to the guy working there about the show... he's got long hair and tattoos, so we figured he might be into metal. Turns out, he is... and has about 16 functioning brain cells. I mean, seriously - this guy was a clinical moron. (Save your comments here, Tanner/Rudi/OPM/McJose/Reg Llama.) He starts lamenting about how sober he is and how he'd give anything for a buzz, so we ask him where the nearest convenience store is, telling him we'll grab beer and bring it back there. He lights up and says if we bring him back a few beers, he'll give us the pizza gratis. We agree, and light out to the gas station/convenience store and grab a 6 pack. We bring it back and walk into the pizza joint and he's in back tending to the pie. We sit down at the table and someone puts forth the notion that it would be hilarious if we finished all the beer before he got back. So, we each grab a can and shotgun it, then grab another and drink that one quickly. Maybe 3 minutes elapsed and the entire sixer was gone. We put all the empties on the table and a few seconds later, he comes out with the pie. He excitedly sets it down and then notices all the empty beers (and no full ones) and lets out a low guttural moan of disappointment.. "Ohhhhhh man......" The three of us start cracking up, and Moron is not happy. He starts telling us that now we have to pay for the pizza, so to avoid this, we tell him that we have a bunch of weed at our motel and we'll come back and smoke him out. He loves this idea, we eat the free pie and head out.
We go back to the Boardwalk and have another 32 oz beer and then Barry decides he wants to go on the Skycoaster. For those who may not know what this is, it's
this thing, kind of like a cross between bungee jumping and a giant swing. Dozens of people are standing on the Boardwalk watching people ride it and swing over their heads. I tell him that I'm not sure that this is the best idea as I might yak if I go on the thing... which prompts an idea. Yams decides we should chug another quart of beer and then immediately go on so that we can
try to throw up on the people below us. In our drunken stupor, we all agree that this is a capital idea, we each get another 32 oz beer and wolf them down as quickly as possible, then head right to the Skycoaster. We strap in, they slowly ratchet us up to the top of the thing, then Barry pulls the ripcord and we plummet to Earth, swinging out and over the crowd just before we get to the bottom. We swing out.....then back......then out...... and Yams expels about a gallon of beer from his stomach in one giant heave. I can hear screams of panic as spent beer rains down on the crowd, but I can't entirely enjoy it as the wind blew some of it back at us and I now have Yams' beer puke mist on my face. I'm disgusted and gyrating wildly trying to wipe it off with my left arm when I begin puking uncontrollably for the second time that day. Barry is laughing hysterically as the people below on the Boardwalk scatter like ants trying to avoid the vomit cloud descending upon them.
Finally, now it's nearing 2 AM, so we head back to the hotel and finish off the beers we have left in the cooler. As we're doing this, Yams and Barry start playing "King of the Mountain" on one of the beds and are throwing each other around the room, knocking furniture over, and generally making a nuisance of themselves. Right as I say "Well, looks like we're going to get kicked out of another motel" (referring to Key West), it happens. One of them goes off the bed and onto a round table, which tips over and shatters the front window of the motel room. Glass is everywhere. Not long after that, we pass out.
The next morning comes and we're getting ready to leave when I remind these two that the motel has my credit card downstairs and that they need to go down and settle the window situation. Barry concocts a story that he's going to tell them, he's going to claim that someone threw a rock at our window and broke it. Before I can point out the obvious flaw in his story, he marches into the office and begins passionately telling the tale of the horror we endured when this rock came hurtling at he window and broke it, yada yada yada. He may have even used the phrase "hate crime", which made no sense as we are three pasty white, fair-haired Arian poster boys. Two of us even have blue eyes, for Christ's sake. The motel manager interrupts him :
"That didn't happen.
You guys broke the window."
Barry : "No, we didn't ! Someone threw...."
Manager : "We were up there. All the glass is on the
outside of the room."
Barry : "Ehrm...........That's because we grabbed a bunch of it and threw it outside so we wouldn't cut our-"
Manager (interrupting) : "It's $37."
Barry "feet, because then you'd have a..... what? $37?"
Barry realizes the juice isn't worth the squeeze mid-sentence and just throws two $20 bills on the counter and marches briskly out of the office. I followed him out laughing my ### off as the manager gazed at me disapprovingly.
After that, we drive home and Barry drops me off at my place. The last thing I heard as I got out of the car was Barry saying to Yams : "You know, we totally forgot to go back and get that f#$%ing idiot at the pizza place high...."
-END-
P.S. Forgot to mention that somewhere between the pizza place and the Skycoaster, we were shooting pool in a bar when these two 40+ year old, 200 pounders started hitting on us and fishing for an invite back to the motel. Yams pulled the Irish exit and took off, leaving Barry and me to navigate these dangerous waters. At some point, we went to the bathroom and ducked out a side door to give them the slip, which set off a fire alarm in the bar. We ran down the street and found Yams trying to take money out of the ATM using his hotel room key instead of his debit card.
this thread. Never again.
. Well done as always sir! One of these days we are going drinking on my tab so I can be part of one of these stories....
But yeah, there's always a conversion program out there and I'm sure you can find a free one on the Googles. 
