Going on a Golf Trip With Your Bar

The staff and friends of Tai's Til 4 returned Monday night from a Golf Trip to Galena, Illinois. I attended this trip with them, and had a purely lovely time. I've spent the last few days compiling a list of Dos and Don'ts so that you'll be able to glean the maximum enjoyment out of a trip with your bar, should you have the chance to go on one.

• DO ride there with your bartender. He already knows how to get there and he'll buy you lunch and play the Cow Game* with you**. He will also take you on a very fun and entertaining "Girls I fucked in Galena" tour.
• DON'T expect a direct route to Galena when riding with your bartender. He will stop repeatedly, including an hour and a half detour to take his niece for a throat culture at the hospital. Go with the flow. It will be worth it when he announces he knows how to cure his niece's sore throat, then walks over and farts on her.
• DO remember to bring your bathing suit, lest you find yourself doing some emergency shopping at the brand new 24 hour Galena Wal Mart.
• DON'T just decide "Aw, fuck it" and go swimming in your underwear. Especially if your underwear are a pair of white boxer shorts. And if you forget and do go swimming in your see through undies, please, please don't get out of the pool and go running around the banquet room where everyone can see your drippy wiener. Trust me: NO ONE wants to see that shit.
• DO room with your bartender. He will handle check in and check out and will carry your bags in for you.
• DON'T expect to get any sleep if you room with your bartender, between his snoring and his jumping on your bed at 4:30 in the morning when he gets done drinking while asking you why you disappeared an hour earlier. You can nap when you get home. (and at the golf course clubhouse under a table before dinner)
• DO steal a golf cart and ride around the course harassing the people who actually went on the trip to golf.
• DO partake heavily of the free alcohol the bar owner provided at the convenient filling stations placed strategically around the course. DO also take advantage of the tiny bottles of Captain and Jaeger the bar owner has stashed in his golf cart.
• DON'T forget sunscreen if you're going to be driving around harassing golfers in a stolen golf cart all day.
• DO invite the little boy bringing you ice to have dinner with the group. Do engage him in a deep conversation about the life of a dairy farming family when he tells you he can't have dinner with you because tonight is his turn to milk the cows.
• DON'T ask him if he has to milk the cows by hand. He'll look at you with scorn and say "no one milks by hand anymore" and then you will feel stupid. Or go ahead and ask if you don't mind feeling stupid.
• DO hang out with an ex-marine CPD sharpshooter and watch him try to cure someone else of the hiccups through Extreme Breathing Relaxation techniques. DO laugh about this with a guy who has a master's degree in religion but dropped out of seminary to be a bouncer.
• DON'T leave your arm hanging out the window for the duration of the 2 1/2 hour return trip - especially if you burned it on the golf course the day before because you forgot your sunscreen.

* The Cow Game is this thing my mother invented when Cap and I were kids. When you go on long car trips, you look out the window on your side. Any cows that you see you count out loud. How ever many cows you count is how many you get to have. As you pass more cows, you add them to the cows you already have. If you pass a cemetery on your side, you have to bury all of your cows and start over. Whoever has the most cows at the end of the trip wins. It took me until high school to figure out that my mother only invented this game to get us kids to shut the hell up and stop touching each other.
**He'll play it but he won't play it right. For instance he'll see a field of cows, and instead of counting them, he'll just estimate "Oh, 100 cows." when clearly there aren't more than maybe 30. Or neither of you will pass any cows for a long time, and then suddenly there will be some on your side, so while you're basking in the glow of your hard earned 4 cows, he'll say, "Well yeah, but I've got like 60 horses." You can try to tell him horses don't count, but he won't listen. At this point I advise that you just sigh and be content with the fact that you got him to play your asinine game in the first place.