Stories From the Road (10 years later) - Syracuse

I am gonna skip around on our trip here to tell you about the night we stayed in Syracuse with my cousins Stan and Jimmy. Now, they were my great aunt's kids, and a little bit older than us, but it turned out we had a great night. The day started off on a good note, arriving about 2 hours before the Syracuse football game against BYU. My cousins already had their tickets, but had none to spare. They Suggested we go buy some scalped tickets along the way. (I know, illegal, but we did get quite adept at finding great tickets for good prices that were being scalped!) So we walked to the Carrier Dome, and along the way (only 30 mins from kick off) and bought our tickets at a ridiculously low cost. The guy just wanted to dump the tickets, and didn't really care how much he got for them at this point. Well, it turns out , we got tickets that were a whole lot better than my cousins tickets, and for a hell of a lot cheaper! SO we sat through most of the game, until the third quarter. BYU was getting blown out (at this point they were down by like 25 points or something) so I called one of my cousins and we all agreed to go to a bar that was along the walk back to his house. Well, we had a few drinks at the game, had quite a bit more at the bar. We both had a lot of drinks in us, since neither of us were driving. Turns out it made for an interesting night. So we all walked into the bar, and we all started drinking. Well, Chris decides he wants to play some pool, and finds this amazing gorgeous blond who wants to challenge him to a few games. So they play a game, (she REALLY sucked at pool btw) and he kicks her ass while attempting to lose on purpose to her. So since she lost, she heads down the the end of the table to rack the balls. Of course the shirt she has on is VERY low cut, and Chris being a lot tipsy, comments on "Such a Gorgeous Rack)! Well, unbeknown-st to us, she was there with her boyfriend, who she had ditched to play pool with Chris about 30 mins ago. We found this out when he finally found her, and told her to quit the game and come with him right then. Chris decided to tell him to screw off, and threw a few colorful words at him, telling him that she would be done when he was "done playing with her". Both my cousins looked right away at me, and we all thought there was gonna be some fists flying. We all put down our beers, and got ready for the first punch to be thrown by this guy. I knew Chris would never throw first, no matter how drunk he was. We had both been raised the same way. Never start a fight, but don't hesitate to finish one if someone is dumb enough to start one with us. So We sat and waited , but the guy turned bright red and fled the room. So we all toasted him being a total pansy, and drank more. The woman decided to stay with us, and had a few beers with Chris while they played a few more games. About an hour after he first came in to yell at his girlfriend, the guy came back. This time he was more commanding, yelling at her to 'Knock this shit off and let's go!" So Chris again told him to put up or shut up. "C'mon Ralph Mouth... put your money where your mouth is. $100 dollars says I kick your ass in this game and I am down 3 balls right now! You beat me, and she and I are done playing tonight." This time my cousins and I all put down our beers and stood up bracing for the inevitable punch that this guy was gonna throw... that never came. He left the room flustered again, and we wound up closing out the bar while Chris played pool with woman until about 1AM. So when they sent us on our way, we went back to Jimmy's house. Stan and I were pretty much toasted at this point, and were drinking water and soda at this point, but Jimmy and Chris decided they were gonna drink a bottle of Jose' Cuervo. But they had no lemons, and no salt either. So they did straight shots of Jose' until about 4AM, when they killed the bottle. Stan had gone to bed at this point, and I went out to the car to get our stuff to bring inside. While I was outside, Jimmy decided he had enough and had gone to bed. Chris didn't know that. So he shows up outside, at 4AM mind you, with the last two shots in his hands, yelling "WHERE'S JIMMY??? WHERE'S MY JIMMY?? HE NEEDS TO FINISH THIS JOSE' WITH ME!!" I finally convince him to shut up, laughing my ass off, and that it was ok if he had the last two shots. He polished them off, and I helped him find his room. I was pretty much sobered up at this point, but I knew Chris was super slammed, and I wanted to make sure he went to bed. So I sat on the floor next to his bed until he fell asleep.

The next morning I woke up about 9AM, and was the first one up. I started getting breakfast ready, when Stan and Jimmy came down from their rooms. Chris didn't wake up until around noon. He looked like shit, was bright red in the face, and didn't feel so great. He had gotten sick during the night, but he was still in bad shape. We suggested he drink some water to help himself some. He did, but threw that up too! He decided to go back to bed, and woke up the second time after 8PM. Two football games later he woke back up! We all razzed him incessantly that night, and had a great time laughing at the memory of him yelling for Jimmy at 4AM. Ironically, I still to this day tease him about it, and he has stories that he teases me about too! I will share them another day, as this was a VERY long post!