I'll Have a Golf Trip, but Hold the Golf

Ah, the Tai's crowd. Ah, Galena. Ah, the Tai's crowd drunk in Galena.

A good time was had by all, witnesseth my notes:

My two closest buddies on the trip, the bartender and Chris G., were golfing together and therefore sharing a cart, and my drunk cart driving buddy from the last trip didn't make it to this one, so instead I ended up a passenger in the "shot cart" with BigRon. The shot cart, of course, is the cart loaded with Jagermeister and Ketel One and a case of Red Bull that you drive around the course offering shots to people and getting them very drunk (this is not to be confused with the "beer bong cart", which drives around the golf course with a whole lot of beer and a beer bong offering beer to people and getting them very drunk). One thing I've noticed about being in the shot cart is that everyone you come across has an expectation that you, also, will be doing a shot. This got to be tricky as I had been left in charge of making sure Chris G. made it back to the hotel safely since he was planning to drink heavily (helped along by his good pal in the shot cart of course). I ended up talking BigRon into splitting most of the shots with me. And by "splitting" I mean I breathed the fumes first, and then he drank the shot.

The other adventure BigRon and I encountered was the Sisterhood of the Traveling Contact Lens. Another of our drive-around-in-cart-not-golfing friends had something in her eye and took out her contact lens while we were out on the course. The wind was angry that day my friends. So angry that it blew her contact lens right off the tip of her finger. So the three of us all got into the "someone lost a contact" pose: hunched over, peering at the ground, trying not to move your feet lest you step on it. And somehow, BigRon actually found it laying in the grass. Don't ask me how he saw that, because I don't know. But it prompted C and me to shout "Ron is GOOD!" to everyone who passed by for the next 10 minutes. Until...

C had her contact lens in her mouth to keep it wet until we could get back to the clubhouse and she could have another go at putting it back in her eye. BigRon wasn't really ready to go to the clubhouse yet though, so he came up with the idea that he and I stand up and form a wind blocking wall while C sat in front of us and put her contact in. Did I mention the fury of the wind that day? The wind was pissed, and to punish us for our audacity, it blew C's contact out of her hands again. And this time, even BigRon's eagle eye couldn't recover it. Prompting C and I to modify our battle cry: "Ron is GOOD! But only the first time."

Other hilarity ensued later. Such as the two-year-old son of another tripster. He was sitting at the bar in the clubhouse and the bartender went over to talk to him. "Hey wee-man! Whatcha drinking, orange juice?" The kid pointed to his drink and shouted "SCREWDRIVER!" His dad insists that screwdriver is his favorite tool. Yeah.

Also, while I did get Chris G. back to the hotel safely the first time, we still ended up losing him later. He had gone to the boat to gamble with many of the others while a few of us stayed at the hotel eating and drinking and a few others hit the strip club. I couldn't go, I was babysitting the babydrunk. People were returning from the boat in small groups all night long...everyone except Chris G. No one knew his whereabouts. "did you see Chris when you left?" we asked, oh, everyone. "No," they told us, or "He was still at a table last time I saw him." Around 3:30 a.m. Chris strolled out onto the patio.

"How did you get here Chris?"

"Oh, I got a ride."

"From who? Everyone else came back hours ago!"

"Yeah, I know. The pit boss drove me home." No joke, the PIT BOSS drove him home.

I also collected a whole catalog of bartenderisms, including but not limited to:

"I mean, that guy's sex life even bothers me!"

"Vodka at 4 a.m. is a bad idea. Why didn't you stop me?"

"I am so tired. I must have yawned 70 times today. Well, maybe not 70, but at least 38."

There were more, I just didn't have any paper to write them all down.

*UPDATE*

I forgot this part until I was at the bar last night. I headed back to the room around 4 a.m. The bartender showed up around 5 and went to bed. Right about 7:30 I woke up to some kind of crinkling, crunching sound. "What the hell are you doing?" I mumbled to the bartender, who was standing with his back to me next to the sink (i.e. not in his bed).

"I'm having a sausage sandwich and some chips! You want anything?"

"What? No. Dude? It's like 7:30 in the morning."

He turned around and grinned at me, popped the rest of his sandwich in his mouth, got back in bed and fell right back to sleep as if it had never happened.
Can't wait for the next trip.