Nevertheless, interest existed, but I pushed it to the back of my mind since at this point I still had probably a month left of school to deal with. It wasn’t until one Sunday night shortly before finals that I started thinking about it again. I’d just gotten off the bus after a sweet church service when I looked down at my phone to see if I’d missed anything during the festivities (obviously, my phone was silenced during church). My display read that I had four missed calls. Intrigued, I opened up the device to see who had called me. Phil. Each time.
Not going to lie, four straight calls (each with a voicemail) is enough to make you think that something’s wrong. So it was with a bit of trepidation that I began listening to his messages. Relief came upon me as his greeting was clearly one of high-spirits. Turns out the crazy kid just wanted to tell me about his plan for Florida… over the course of several voicemails. Honestly, I don’t really remember much of what was said except for the part that he was down and wanted me to call him back with my thoughts. And that I did.
He told me that he’d definitely wait for after my graduation before rolling out, so the only issue was finances. But let’s be honest here, screw even thinking about that. Let’s go to friggin’ Florida!!! At this time, the specs as a whole were kind of vague, but all we knew was that the equally awesome Erik and Tom were going to join us the adventure. We weren’t exactly sure when or what was going to down, but we were going to rock it like nobody’s business.
So over the course of the next couple of days, we hammered everything out. I can’t say that I really know what went on in the other guys’ worlds, but the short of what happened over yonder was that I graduated on Monday the 17th (see previous post :p), went home that day with the fam, chilled and packed on Tuesday, went back up to the cities for a job interview on Wednesday (and as an aside, I eventually took that position and the subsequently left it 7 weeks later – legit), got home at about 5:00 that afternoon (or is 5:00 technically considered evening?), and was picked up by Erik and Tom at like 7:00 to roll off to Phil’s. Epic!
We got to my brother’s (Phil’s, obviously) place shortly thereafter to start the awesomeness. We all tossed our gear in his gold-ish Chrysler (Concorde?) as he called out to his sister, Rachel, to have her take a “before” picture of us (you know, while we were all still friends :p). It took a couple of tries and a weird pink circle hovering over Erik’s (I think… or was it Phil’s? Gosh, it’s been so long. I really should learn to write these things more quickly after the events take place) crotch in the photo, but we got the picture nonetheless and were ready to rock! So we all hopped into the car and hit the road.
By now we’d put together a fairly solid plan for the entire trip. The first portion was just going to be us legging it straight out to St. Louis. We were hopefully going to arrive there sometime around like 9:00 in the morning, which would give us plenty of time to hit up the Gateway Arch before repping a Cardinals game that afternoon. A nice little start to our journey, indeed.
But of course, the awesome thing about such epic roadtrips is the crap that actually happens on the road itself. And the first of such things was our discovery of McDonald’s. Yep. We discovered it. Just like Columbus discovered America. You follow me on that one? Like, Columbus didn’t actually discover America, and we didn’t actually discover McDonald’s. But dag-nabbed if I’m not going to claim it as such :p We’d made it all the way to Mankato before we decided that we should probably stop for some food and possibly gas. Obviously, McDonald’s was the best option for sustenance. Now it should be pointed out that this trip was pretty much the absolute opposite of any and everything healthy; by the end of it we came to the conclusion that we’d hit McDonald’s at least 8 times (that we could remember – I feel that it was more than that), Burger King a couple, Chick-fil-a once, Arby’s once, and a whole bunch of gas stations and other stuff. So yeah… not good for you. But again, who cares, right? :p
But McDonald’s really deserves to be mentioned because of Phil’s quest to procure two of each of the four Shrek collectable drinking glasses that were being offered at the fast food establishment. And by gum, if by the end of our trip he didn’t have that task completed. T’wasn’t easy, though. Given that some of the places didn’t carry them and others didn’t have the right ones on hand, it proved to be fairly difficult. But really all that it meant was that we stopped at McDonald’s a lot. And as you can probably imagine, that didn’t really bother me a bit.
But the awesomest thing of all occurred just after we crossed the border into the absurdly boring state of Iowa. It couldn’t have been more than ten miles into that place when we discovered “Diamond Jo’s Casino.” Seriously? “Diamond Jo”? Yeah, just like the Simpsons character (well, spelling aside, that is). Money (hopefully) in the bank. Obviously, it didn’t take too long for the four of us to decide that we should probably hit this place up. I mean, we were on pace to make it to St. Louis like 3 hours before the Arch even opened, so yeah, kind of a no-brainer.
We hopped out of what I’m calling the Concorde (whether that be correct or not, I don’t know – and clearly I can’t be bothered to do any fact-checking; that’d just be crazy) at whatever hour of night that it was and rambled our way inside. To be perfectly honest (because that’s the cornerstone of a good blog), the casino itself wasn’t overly impressive. It was actually quite reminiscent of something you’d see in small-town Minnesota (*coughJackpotcough*); that probably shouldn’t be too surprising, though, since Iowa is basically Minnesota-lite in all respects. Zing!
A couple of cool things stood out, though. 1) There was a live roulette wheel (something I’d never seen before), and (2) there was a full-on craps table (another thing I’d never seen before). Now there was no way that I was going to rock the craps since I really don’t actually fully know how that game is played, but I did want to hit roulette at some point. Unfortunately, though, it closed up before I got the chance. It was pretty much exactly like the time that I was going to meet Mr. T at the mall. I kept saying “I’ll go a little later. I’ll go a little later.” But then when I got there, they told me he’d just left. And then I asked if he’d ever be coming back, but they told me that they didn’t know. Well, I’m never going to let that happen again! But I digress.
What did happen was a bunch of Blackjack played by Phil and Erik (and some by Tom, I believe). I tend to avoid that game due to the high amount of starting capital needed to properly play it, so what I did was wander around the place (mostly with Tom), drink free lemonade, and occasionally toss some money in the Keno machine. Now for those of you unfamiliar with Keno, let me tell you something. It’s a game for dumb people. Or geniuses. It really depends. Basically, it’s a machine that you put money into, and it in return gives you sadness and fail.
The premise is that there’s a screen of like 80 numbers and you do your best to pick which ones the machine will randomly choose. It’s sort of like the lottery. It’s also sort of like the lottery in that you usually get worked. There was actually one time recently in Minnesota where I was playing this insipid game with my fellow roadtripper Erik. He and I hadn’t been performing too well, so when it came down to our last dollar we each decided to pick the numbers (between 1 and 80) that meant the most to us. Now I can’t remember if we picked 8 or 10 of these numbers (I think 10, and that’s what we’re going to go with for the story’s sake), but we totally didn’t hit a single one. At all. Now think about this for a second. We picked 10 numbers, and not ONE of them hit. The odds of that are pretty darn small. And I’m pretty sure that’s a sign too. Like we picked our favorite/most meaningful numbers, and they ALL missed. Probably shouldn’t play that game anymore.
But I’m apparently a fool and ignored that. So what I did was proceed to lose $3 on that stupid machine before eventually traveling back to the tables to see how the guys were doing. Turns out they weren’t fairing a lot better. Some success had been had, but yeah, not on the whole. After hanging for a bit I asked each of them to give me a single number. Armed with these three miniature weapons, I returned to Keno to have one last try. I plugged in my player’s card (yep, we’d all decided to get cards while there – cool souvenir, no? :p), watched the concoction eat another dollar bill of mine, and then unleashed the guys’ and my numbers. *anticipation builds*
I watched on as slowly the numbers started hitting. Holy crap, they kept coming! My eyes dazzled as I instantly pushed the “cash out” button on the machine. I grabbed my monetary ticket that was spewed out to me as I looked around to see if anybody had seen my good fortune. Thankfully, no one had. I gandered at the piece of paper that I was so furiously clutching. FIVE (5) DOLLARS!!! I’d one back all of my money AND gotten an extra buck too! I’d taken down the casino! I sprinted back to the tables like I’d just found the golden ticket into Willy Wonka’s factory and told everyone of my great news!
Unfortunately, things still weren’t looking so strongly for them. Erik and Tom had bowed out of the game. Phil was still pushing, but shortly thereafter he was out too. But let me tell you something about Phil: he’s crazy :p. So against our advice he went to the ATM to get some more money to play a bit more. And well… what the heck do we know since he proceeded to hit about the best run I’ve ever seen and more than make up for his losses. Props to that guy.
Wisely, the man then decided that he’d had about enough, so we decided to roll out. We looked back into the place as we headed towards the doors at the woman who had dealt all the guys’ earlier misfortunes. She was still as jovial as ever telling us all to come back, but we knew better and got the heck up out of there before it was too late. I’m calling this one a victory for us. Awesome dudes: 1. Iowa Casino: 0.
The rest of our trip to Missouri was fairly uneventful in the sense of writable stuff. I mean, a ton of cool stuff went down, but it was all just us chilling in the car. We did learn, though, that I’m a complete trainwreck when I sleep sitting up. Apparently, my head bobs all over the place in what’s an entertaining (for everyone else) and extremely uncomfortable (for me) fashion. But whatevs, I’m sure I’ve embarrassed myself more greatly than that before.
But it was sometime aroundish 9:00 (I think) when we eventually hit St. Louis. The skies were overcast as it had been raining fairly consistently for the previous couple of hours, but it still wasn’t too difficult for us to find the Gateway Arch given that we had Erik’s GPS (which as an aside, gets pretty friggin’ annoying after while with all her talking) and Tom’s ridiculous abilities as a human map (f’real. The kid’s insane).
So we found ourselves a nice place to park and started our quick trek through the rain toward the geometric monolith. It didn’t take too long before we spotted the massive edifice towering over EVERYTHING in sight. Now I knew this thing was large. But good gravy, it was gihugeant! Standing underneath the thing as we took pictures really was a bit of a surreal experience. But we didn’t go there just to hang outside, so we shortly headed in to see what was going on up yonder.
The interior is basically a huge tourist trap. There’s all sorts of little shops, a tight historical museum for people to spend money in, and BALL IN A CUP!!! But undoubtedly the main attraction is the ability to go to the top of the Arch. So $10 and about 10 minutes later we found ourselves standing in line waiting to be let into these weird basically “pod” things that were going to bring us up.
Now when I say “pod,” I literally mean “pod.” Like it’s exactly what you’d imagine it to be: just a small, kind of spherical/egg, white thing. It looked like something out of some movie where people go to space. A pod. Eventually, we discovered that the inside was fairly expected as well. Just like 5 or 6 little seats. Nothing fancy. But still, quite possibly fancy enough to go to the moon in.
After a brief period of time, the pod jolted to movement. Our excitement at the whole thing could no longer be contained as we started jokingly freaking out about the matter. There’s no real good way to describe it, but you know what I’m talking about. Instantly, though, we heard a voice over the intercom (which apparently all the pods were outfitted with – ah, technology), “No screaming in the pod,” came flat and unforgiving sound. We chuckled at that as we kindly quieted up a bit.
A couple minutes later, we exited the creation and were greeted by a fantastic, 630-foot high view of basically the entire city. We could see government buildings, old architecture, and even Busch Stadium (which is where we were to spend the rest of our time in the city at the Cardinals game). We took all sorts of pictures whilst up there, but after a bit we decided that it was best to get our shoes back on the ground as we had a couple of other things to do before the baseball game.
By this point, it had thankfully stopped raining, so with a brand new sense of vigor (exaggerated), we started heading to the tram/train/whatever station. Why, you ask? Well, that’s because Phil has this thing where he likes to get stuff. What? You know those elongated and flattened souvenir pennies? The ones that you put 51 cents into some machine for, and then it subsequently keep your quarters but spits out that novelty penny for you? My man Mr. Honzay enjoys says said things. And I’d by lying if I said I didn’t have one of those pennies myself hanging out somewhere in my Olivia casa, so I definitely knew where he was coming from this one.
We’d asked the peeps at the Arch if they had one of those machines there, but for whatever reason it was not to be, so they pointed us in the direction of the previously mentioned station. And since we had a couple hours or so before the game was to start, this seemed like a solid idea to partake in. Heck, it gave us the opportunity to wander the streets of St. Louis for a while. At one point we actually ran across some crazy dude who asked us for directions to Busch Stadium. Not going to lie, it took us a while to wade through his interesting accent/drunkenness before we were able to get the guy going. That’s always cool, though – giving directions to someone when you yourself are a tourist.
But the station was probably only a mile away, so it didn’t take us too long to walk over there and procure Phil’s coins. Enjoyably enough, there was some sort of mall connected/nearby to this building, so we chilled there for a bit before deciding to rock some solid food court food-age. Personally, I got some sort of burrito/Mexican stuff; Tom picked up Chinese, Phil (I think) got a pizza-esque thing, and then Erik… something else… Point is, four different things. We ride together. We die together. But we eat separately :p Well… we ate together, but you know, different things.
Anyways, after this was complete we figured it was finally time to go hit the game. Now I’m going to lie, I’m not the biggest baseball fan, but I do enjoy it to some extent. And the Cards are one of my favorite teams, so I was fairly excited to see them play. Uncooly enough, though, it had started raining a bit again, but that didn’t really detract from what basically amounted to be a fairly uneventful 4-2 Cardinals victory (over the Marlins). Nonetheless, solid experience.
Erik, Tom, and I rocked out of the stadium amidst the swarm of people to head back to the car to meet Phil (he’d decided to leave the game a bit earlier to get some sleep since he’d be taking the next shift driving). We woke the man from his slumber and rolled off. Next stop: Panama City! Well… not really, since there was still a LONG drive ahead of us.
But enjoyably enough, it ended up being quite possibly my favorite part of the drive since by the time we got into like Kentucky I was fully cognizant again (after doing the sleep-head-bob for entirely too long) and capable of carrying on a conversation. Erik and Tom were asleep in the back, which left Phil and I to have ourselves a nice, long chat. Something that we hadn’t done in entirely too long. I mean, c’mon. He’s the closest thing I have to a brother (besides Paul), so you know, bro-talks = good.
But I’ll spare y’alls the details of our convo/the rest of the drive to Florida since not a whole lot happened/I don’t feel like writing about every minute thing. Let’s just say that it was awesome, and it helped us to realize that Ke$ha is also awesome. Yeah. Phil bought her CD at a Wal-Mart in Alabama. Complete win. D-I-N-O-S-A U-R a dinosaur!
Sleep was short-lived, however, as Tom, Phil, and I decided to get up after only a couple of hours to get some McDonald’s. Yeah. McDonald’s. Because it’s awesome. And because Phil needed to keep trying to collect those glasses. And because we wanted to make Erik jealous (since he shares my same affinity for the restaurant). Of course, the best way to do this was by stopping at Burger King and getting him their breakfast instead of McD’s. Although, I think we learned something there: Burger King > McDonald’s in terms of breakfast. So that just worked out on all fronts. Once we returned from all that, though, we pretty much just chilling, showered, and watched some TV until the peeps got back from work.
Because once that happened, it was time to hit Chick-fil-a for some lunch action. Now even though there’s once of these establishments at the student union at the U of M campus, I’d still never eaten there before. In retrospect this was probably a mistake because the food was pretty darn good. And what’s more than that, the employees at the place were darn friendly cats who called everyone (well… the dudes anyway) “sir.” Now maybe that’s a Florida thing in general, or maybe it’s just Chick-fil-a. Who even knows? But what I do know is that just once I’d like someone to call me “sir,” without adding, “you’re making a scene.” :p
Obviously, though, there was really only one thing to do after we ate. And that was wait for an hour or so (safety first) and then hit the beach! Carolyn had to go back to work unfortunately, but we five guys headed off with a football, a volleyball, and an absurd amount of sunscreen to rock the sands for a while.
Now as you probably know, I’m not much of a swimmer. In fact, fairly sure that I’d drown if left to my own devices in any sort of deep water. And by “deep” I mean taller than me. Yeah… probably should’ve taken some of those swimming lessons when I was a kid. Oh well, live and learn, I guess. But either way, that wasn’t going to stop this pale, Minnesota kid from destroying the Gulf of Mexico… at sports. Nah, I’m just playing. While I did definitely spend some time tossing the pigskin and playing some v-ball at the net that was there, I for sure hit the water as well. Just not too deep :p Go ahead, though, ask me if I peed in the water. Of COURSE I did!
But alas, we could only spend so much time at the beach (a few hours) before we figured it was time to head back to the apartment to meet Carolyn. And get ready for more food! On our drive to their place, only a couple miles down the road, we’d spotted what appeared to be a BBQ establishment (called Sea Breeze) that was just off the side of the aforementioned road. It looked like one of those authentic(ish) places that just had to be tried. And by that I mean that the place itself was one of those like county fair-esque movable trailer dealies. You know what I’m talking about. Like they could just up and move at any time they wanted and go elsewhere. Seems kind of sketchy, but at the same time awesome.
Turns out that sketchiness aside, it was absolutely AWESOME! Oh my gosh, some of the best food I’ve ever had the good fortune of having. I believe all of us decided to get what was the aptly called “Mega Meal.” This included bread, corn, some sort of pasta/rice-esque thing, pulled pork, a dessert, and the most amazing ribs ever eaten by anyone ever. Oh my gosh, they just fell off the bone. Sooooo perfect that words can’t describe. I should’ve called for a poet at the time to help me put things in perspective. It definitely was a ton of food, though, but I’m proud to say that I decimated it (and later on Carolyn’s bathroom).
Of course, though, by now it was starting to get a bit later, so it was time to figure out what to do for night life around Panama City. It didn’t take too long, though, for all of us to decide what to do after we heard about what was around the area. Now I don’t necessarily remember the name of the place. Well… hold on a second. Let me try and look and up. Gosh, I don’t know what to search for really. I know it was a tiki bar, and it turns out there is a place called “Tiki Bar” around there, but I don’t know for sure. *shrugs*
Either way, it was no doubt the coolest bar I’ve ever been to. The place itself was about 30 or so minutes away from the apartment, but the drive was totally worth it. Located right on the beach, it had a cool-outdoor-party-cabin sort of vibe, palm-esque trees, and an open area for karaoke as well. Wait. Karaoke? You know it! Now I’m not going to lie, I’m a terrible singer, but I do love me some karaoke, so there was a whole lot of doubt that I was going to try and make that happen.
“Try” being the operative word. Now while Carolyn got up there and give a pretty solid rendition of a song that I can’t remember what it was, the rest of us didn’t so much get the chance. Why? Well, we were signed up as “Carolyn and friends” to sing Garth Brooks’s awesome song “Friends in Low Places,” but something went wrong in the process.
Turns out there was a bachelorette party at the bar where one of the girls also happened to be named “Carolyn.” A pretty raucous (and inebriated) group of people to say the least. And as soon as “Carolyn and friends” was called, they all assumed it was for them, so they headed up to the stage to sing. Now given their proximity to said stage versus ours, we didn’t have a chance. Sadness. But what’re you going to do? Sit back and tell the story, I suppose.
I’m also going to tell the story of how the middle-aged bride-to-be smacked me on the bum TWICE while I was standing at the bar talking to Tom (with about 8 minutes between each contact). Well, that’s pretty much the story in itself. She smacked me on the bum. Twice. Now normally I’d have some sort of witty thing to say to someone that would do such a thing at such a place (twice, no less), but she was like 40. And about to get married. So I honestly had NO idea what to do. So I just looked at her, gave her an upwards head-nod (s’up), and a smirk. That was all I had. Some people’s kids, I tells ya.
But anyways, it's also very much worth noting that at 11:00 the karaoke gave way in favor of DANCING! Heck to the yeah! So once we dudes finished chasing the blue crabs on the beach and listening to surprisingly good people sing, we rolled back to our stations and proceeded to sit down and talk about dancing. Phil and I were definitely down to break it down, but try as we did we couldn’t really get any one else of our crew to want to join us on the floor. Obviously, that didn’t stop us, though, so eventually Phil and I headed to the zone of dance to awkwardly maneuver ourselves for a while.
Now the super-cool thing about being in Florida is that no one knows us there, so we were absolutely free to do whatever we basically wanted while there. And that we did. We tore up that floor with any number of people for probably pushing two hours before the other peeps decided that it was about time to go. Not going to lie, I didn’t necessarily want to leave, but it was about 1:00 by then, and I have to wonder how much fun everyone else was having just watching Phil and I dance awesomely.
But alas, that was the end of our night. We got back to Carolyn and Matt’s place and chilled for a bit before we decided to hit the hay and call it good. We resumed our previous sleeping positions from that morning and said goodbye to the world for a few hours.
Not too long, though, since we had more cool stuff to rock the next day. And by that I of course mean more beach! Since Phil and Matt decided to go fishing that afternoon, that left Erik, Tom, Carolyn, and I to kick it in the water again. Of course before the water festivities, we four took a little tour of part of Panama City. Specifically we went to see this super-weird 4-headed palm tree, which is apparently the only of its kind in the world. Definitely a nifty sight. Gosh, “nifty” is an awkward word to type. Try it.
After that we went to some place called “Gator Pond” (or something similar) in hopes of, you know, seeing an alligator. But unfortunately, there were some people fishing in said pond, so yeah… no gators were present at the moment. But that just meant that we had to go wash off the stench of failure in Gulf. Or something like that. We hit up a slightly different place than what we had the previous day, so that was kind of cool. Made us more well-rounded in our Panama City beach knowledge :p
The place we actually did rock was pretty cool in the way that there was standard ocean-like water in one area, but there was also this cove-like bay thing that was somewhat cut off from the rest of the Gulf. The water there was super-sorta-still and warm. The heat honestly reminded us of pee, but you know, whatevs :p Not that any of us really know what being neck-deep in urine is like, but you catch my drift. We repped all sorts of cool football with a volleyball stuff over there.
And on the other, more open side, Erik and I came to the conclusion that we should just try and jump over all the waves as they came toward us. “Sir… you’re making a scene.” But that aside, I have to say that that was pretty darn fun. Especially when you get absolutely upended by the water. Not as fun, though, (but still pretty really cool) was the family of like 8 stingrays we saw that came in darn close proximity to Erik and Carolyn at one point. Now you about know that we got the heck up out of that specific spot after we saw them. Don’t need another Crocodile Hunter incident on our hands. Although, I’m sure the ray that ended that dude was a lot bigger than the little guys we saw. Fun fact. Did you know that only TWO (2) people in the history of Australia (at least as of his death) have ever been killed by stingrays? And one of them is the friggin’ Crocodile Hunter. That just doesn’t seem right to me. So yeah, imminent danger non-existent or not, we still booked it.
Again, though, it wasn’t too long before our time at the beach came to an end, and we headed back to the apartment (not before stopping at McDonald’s and Wal-Mart, though) to figure out the rest of the plan for the day. Again, though, it wasn’t too difficult to figure out since Phil was pretty set on the idea of doing up some seafood/oysters for food. Made sense. I mean, if you’re in Florida, you probably should at least give that a whirl. So the six of us spent some time wandering around Panama City in search of the most available seafood restaurant. It took us a while, but eventually we found a solid establishment that overlooked some bay. I’m saddened to say, though, that our server wasn’t exactly awesomely friendly. Even through all my (what I thought to be) clever sayings, she hardly broke a smile.
Regardless, the food itself was quite fine. This included the oysters that Matt ordered for the table as well. Now if you’ve never had such a food item, it’s worth a shot. They don’t necessarily taste poor, but the texture itself is simply odd. It’s just… really smooth and like nothing else I’ve ever had. It’s not slimy at all, but that’s the best description I can give it. Slimy with the slime… if you know what I mean. But on the whole, the entire meal was quite good, and I can’t really imagine being not pleased with the quality of it. Now the after-effects, though… well… well, we’ll get to that. FORESHADOWING!!! :p
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As we drove back to the apartment, it became clearer and clearer what Phil and I wanted to do that night. We’d been hearing advertisements for what was supposedly the largest dance club in the nation, a “Club La Vela” all day and yesterday (and there was even apparently a radio station broadcasting from there), and after our awesome experience at the tiki bar the previous night, the idea just slowly kept building in our minds. We joked about it to each other the entire way ride back, but eventually it just hit us that that was where we should go. Our exact conversation at the end went a little something like this:
Phil [jokingly]: “We should go to Club La Vela.
Aaron [also jokingly]: “Yeah, we should.”
Phil [a little more seriously]: “Do you really want go?”
Aaron [with everything starting to set in]: “Yeah. Do you?”
Phil [smiling]: “Yeah.”
Aaron [smiling]: “Let’s go.”
Phil [smirking]: “Yeah!”
So that was that with the whole thing. We were going to hit the biggest club in the country. And let’s be honest here, why not? When were we ever going to be in Panama City again? The rest of the crew wasn’t going to join us, though. Matt and Carolyn had some friends that were apparently going to have a bit of a gathering over at their place, so they decided to hit that. And given that Erik’s not much of a dancer, that’s where he was to end up. Then Tom for whatever reason went with that idea as well. Meh, it’s all good. So Phil and I put on some jeans, Carolyn gave us some last second advice about the whole thing, and then we were off for more dancing!
It wasn’t too long before we found the place as it couldn’t have been more than a 10-15 minute drive. We found ourselves some rockstar parking right up front and headed to the entrance. Said entrance itself was divided into two main lines. 21+ year-olds on the left and 18-20 on the right. I assume this was so they could properly stamp your hand for those who could get alcohol. One interesting thing, though, at the entrance was a giant sign that had a list of club rules on it. Most of them were pretty standard fare, but the one that really stood out (and was awesome) was the one that said, “Hats must be worn properly.” Fantastic! No stupid sideways hats here at all!
Logically, Phi and I headed the 21+ line; however, he realized that he’d forgotten his ID in his car, so while he sauntered off to recover it, I continued moving my way up toward the innards of the club. Once I eventually got to the front of the line, a bouncer took a quick look at my ID and told me to simply “Go ahead.” I paused momentarily and asked him which direction I should go in since at this point the line split into two. He told me to go to the right. Mistake.
Wasn’t too long before he met me inside. I asked him about his process, and it turns out that he’d gone to the left of the line. Pretty sure he got to go that way because he used his military ID to get in, but nonetheless, the cat went to the left where he only had to pay $5 to enter. I suck. I either (a) shouldn’t have asked the bouncer which direction to go (since I most likely would’ve chosen left because I like left more than right – what? Seriously), or (b) should’ve asked him and figured out that the right is where the non-locals go, and then I could’ve wisely proceeded to the left. Either way, fail.
Win as a whole, though, because heck yeah for this experience! They were supposedly like 15 rooms in this club straight meant for dancing (over the course of three levels), and then add in a huge sort of main/common area (with a small pool-esque thing), and you’ve got yourself a pretty darn big complex! Unfortunately, there were only like 5 rooms open that night (according to the radio) for to get down with your badself, but that was still probably plenty.
Phil and I walked the entirety of the thing a few times and checked out all the rooms before we figured out a gameplan. It looked like one of the rooms was only for people that had dressed up, so we weren’t getting into that one (we’d actually talked about bringing our suits down to Florida, but wisely, at the time, figured that’d be more trouble that it’d be worth); another room had a band playing in it, so that seemed mostly out; and then we couldn’t find one room (i.e. the radio lied to us and there were only 4 rooms open that night). So that left two solid places to break it down.
The first of these rooms was, I believe, called the Underground. Made perfect sense since it was in the basement. There wasn’t a lot going on there when we arrived (probably because we got there at like 10:30) or so, but we did notice that there was some wicked blacklighting going on there, which definitely highlighted a bunch of lint on my shirt. *shakes head* The other room, though, looked like quite promising. I can’t really remember what it was called, but for some reason I’m thinking it was simply known as “V.” So that’s what we’re going to go with. A bigger, more open area, it had two levels within it: the base for busting a move and then a small upstairs just for chilling that overlooked the dance floor. So since there were still so few people there, we parked ourselves on one of the couches up there and hung out for a bit while we waited for some more life to show. It wasn’t too long before some random dude came up to us and started talking.
[all conversation = yelling over the loud music]
Dude: “Where y’all from?”
Aaron: “Minnesota.”
Dude: “Tim Paw-lenty governor!”
Aaron: [taken aback] “Yeah, how’d you know that?”
At this point Phil got up and jumped into the conversation as well. Turns out this guy (whose name escapes me at the moment) was a Poli-Sci student from Alabama, so he was all about such political stuffs. Pretty nice guy too. Now let me fastforward to the end of our convo.
Dude: “Y’all have Facebook?”
Us: “Yeah.”
Dude: “What’re your names, so I can add you?”
Phil: [while shaking hands] “Phil Honzay.”
Aaron: [also shakes hands] “Aaron Landin.”
Dude: [points at us as he speaks] “All right, Erik Brandon and Phil Homzay. Nice to meet you.”
Us: “You too.”
[Dude walks away]
So needless to say, neither of us every got a friend request from this chap. Although, I did see him basically instantly bust out his phone and seemingly go on the internet after he walked away from us. Poor kid probably thought we lied to him… Or just straight forgot about us. Yeah, probably that one.
Anyways, shortly after this whole thing went down, enough people were starting to show up for to make for a legit dance party. Now rather than going into a long story about all of Phil’s and my dancing successes, I’m just going to talk about how dance clubs like this are like some sort of bizarre-world where nothing really makes any sense.
It’s just super-weird because it seems like all of the social norms that exist in regular society cease to exist at a club. I mean, as you can probably imagine at the biggest night club in the US, which happens to be located in one of the biggest party towns in said country, that there’s some less-than-reputable stuff that goes on there, but still, like the whole thing is just absolutely indiscriminate non-family-friendly dancing.
You know, like in everyday reality if you want to meet someone, you go up to them and just start talking and build a relationship from there. In the club, you just go up to them (oftentimes without even making eye contact) and just start dancing away. And then the transaction is complete once the dance ends. No words, let alone names or anything. And then you just move on to dancing with someone else and start the whole process over again with someone else. That’s just club reality. And it’s completely accepted. I mean, the whole thing makes some semblance of sense from a biological point of view, but it’s still just so different from normal society… which now that I think about it, doesn’t make a lot of sense biologically. Hm… maybe the clubs got it right… or maybe not. Now obviously with all this, I’m writing here in the most general manner possible, but you know what I’m talking about.
But anyways, it was a bit after 1:00 when all the seafood we’d had the evening started to hit Phil. So we wandered out to the main area and chilled for a bit while we discussed our next move. He wasn’t entirely how he was feeling at that point, so after a bit of conversation I told him that I was going to head back to the dance floor and then come back to him in 15 minutes. If he wasn’t doing any better, then we’d roll. Go ahead 15 minutes (and some fist-pumping with a Guido), and my bro wasn’t doing any better, so we rocked out of the place and back to the apartment.
But even though it sort of sounds like I might not have really enjoy myself at the club, let me say this: Club La Vela was an absolute BOATLOAD of fun, and I’d love to go back at some point :p It was probably the overall highlight of this phenomenal trip for me!
On the plus side, I did score some wicked good pizza in the process of seeing these dirtbags do dirtbag things. We rolled away from this place in quick order, though, to continue Phil’s quest for a palm tree. Our epic journey brought us to three separate random shops around the town before finally finding a palm tree/bottle opener combination that from the sounds of it Catey would quite enjoy. Success.
Lady: “Would you like to buy one?”
Aaron: “Nah, do you know how many of those things it would take to fill me up?”
GOLD! The lady didn’t really respond to my quip, however, and just kind of sauntered off. Gosh, was there food in my teeth or something? First the server at the seafood restaurant and now this? Floridians must just have a sense of humor that I can’t speak to.
Of course, she came back a few minutes later and started talking once we pointed to a turtle that seemed to be dead near the bottom the of the tank. “Oh no, he’s not dead,” said the lady as she poked him with her little turtle-catching device. “Oh! He IS dead!” Hilarity.
But that was to be the end of our souvenir shopping. Of course, it certainly stands to say that Tom totally tripped and fell in slow motion while we were taking a picture outside of the last shop. I’m still waiting on Carolyn to get that picture up on Facebook :p
But that was it as we rocked back to Carolyn and Matt’s place one last time, grabbed all of our stuff, and tossed it in the Concorde. We say our goodbyes to the awesome pair and hit the road for the long haul back stateside. As well pulled away I took my phone out of my pocket and sent a text to my mom (because I’m cool like that) saying that I’d be home in about 24 hours or so. T’was 4:54 (Sunday).
This drive definitely posed a bit more of a challenge than the one down to Florida since there wasn’t going to be any halfway stops in Missouri; we were pulling it all the way through since both Erik and I had interviews on Tuesday. Thankfully, though, the whole thing went off without a hitch. And even given our tired natures, we didn’t crash and die in the process (although, it should be noted that minus the trip to the tiki bar on Friday, I didn’t drive at all for whatever reason. Oddly enough, I did most likely spend the most time awake of everyone. *shrugs*)
We did enjoy some Arby’s somewhere in Tennessee, though, on our way back. Phil had like four free sandwich coupons that he decided to share with everyone. This certainly led to hilarious consequences when Erik didn’t understand that they were free coupons. Thus the poor guy didn’t get any Arby’s. It was also pretty darn hilarious when the cashier told us that she could only accept two coupons at a time. No doubt the way around that was for Phil to get two himself and then for me to use the other coupon to get the third awesome roast beef sandwich (Phil saved his fourth coupon since Erik misunderstood what was going down). It seemed like the woman wasn’t too pleased with everything, but she was cool enough to let it all slide. I mean, we were in Tennessee (I think… or Kentucky) at some absurd hour near closing time, so they probably didn’t care at that point. Meh.
But by far the most hilarious moment (that probably has no chance of transferring at all right here) occurred probably less than two hours from Panama City. We were driving past a farm site when Erik noticed some ducks and cows in a pasture. He immediately yelled in his most perfect angry voice, “DUCKS AND COWS!!!!!! LOOK HOW CUTE THAT IS!!!! DUCKS AND COWS!!!!!” Comedy genius, right there.
But that was it right there. Eight states (Florida, Alabama, Tennessee, Kentucky, Illinois, Missouri, Iowa, and Minnesota) and we were back home. We hit made it to Bird Island without any sort of difficulty, unpacked our stuff, and then obviously had to take our after-pic because we still totally friends! Although, I should state that another amazingly funny thing happened at this time. One of the few times in the ever where I literally could not stand it was so funny. Again, maybe this will transfer.
Whilst preparing to take the pic, Tom dumped out the rest of his drink that he’d gotten at some random gas station on our way back. Of course, though, it was quite windy at the time. And Phil’s awesome dog Tanner was just hanging around us enjoying the festivities as well. So given this setup, you can almost certainly see where I'm going with this. Poor dog got absolutely worked. So amidst a sea of him coughing and Phil questioning what happened, we took our final pic. Win!
Erik, Tom, and I then hopped back in Mr. Dikken’s car and road off into the (not quite) sunset. My phone vibrated as we approached home. My dad. “It’s 4:55, where is you?” he wrote in his comical tone. I texted back, “I still got time. Unlock the door.” We pulled into the driveway at 4:54. 24 hours. Button.
So just so you know, Phil did end up collecting his desired 8 glasses (2 of each of the 4 types) on our trip. However, a couple weeks after we returned home, I stumbled upon an article about them. Turns out that they were all being recalled due to presence of cadmium in them. And that's apparently bad... and possibly poisonous in large enough quantities. Oh, the irony.
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