Recently I had a nice gap in blogging, which was caused by a rather impromptu and a rather planned vacation. How could it be both? Well, this was a tale of two vacations my readers as the first six days of it were spent traversing the Pacific Northwest with my wonderful friend Kellie (aka KLH aka Magical Princess) and the latter four days were exhausted (quite literally) on making Colver and Lorna's wedding the best wedding ever.
It was an awesome time but an extremely tiring one. Here's a quick day by day analysis of the fun:
"Day" 1: Get off the plane and start grinning uncontrollably.
Back story: Kellie and I had met twice before but we had first started talking on Twitter. Twitter turned into Facebook, and within the first evening of talking on Facebook Kellie had asked me if I'd like to go on a road trip with her before the wedding. Given that I was looking to try to make this happen, and after much deliberation and talking by KLH and I, it ended up happening. Fin.
"Day" 1 continued: Get off the plane and start grinning uncontrollably because I'm about to see the Magical Princess. See her, hug, get coffee, get bag, and then we drive from Seattle to Coos Bay, Oregon (7 hours!) immediately after I land. Did I mention this was starting at 1 am?
When we get there, we napped and then Kellie abandoned me with a posse of guys to go to an all girl BBQ, with whom I watched District 9 (still awesome!), drank coffee and beer and played shuffleboard. We then met up at the party and had an awesome time.
Day 2: Woke up a little hungover and extremely tired. The tiredness was beginning to compound. We spent the day roaming the Coos Bay Blackberry Festival, checking out Kellie's friend Erin's school OIMB (Oregon Institute of Marine Biology), and eating. I spent most of this time near catatonic because my brain was effectively broken from tiredness.
Crazy beautiful spot of our hike
Day 3: Kellie and I leave Coos Bay, roam up the Oregon Coast and have an awesome day. We hiked, I swam (Pacific Ocean = cold...who knew?), we checked out the Rogue Brewery and the Tillamook Factory, and just talked all the way up the coast. We got into Portland somewhat late, but Erik and Katie were up waiting for us and we stayed up way too late talking about this, that and everything else.
Day 4: Catatonic David re-enters the picture (this was my biggest bummer during the trip - I was off my game the entire time, I completely failed at conversation), plus I end up having to do a little work this day (54 minutes on the phone explaining a spreadsheet sucks). Kellie and I spend the day shopping for books and clothes, I spend a bit of it trying to kill us in Portland traffic, and then we go back to E & K's. After which we go to Pok Pok, which is a Thai joint in Stumptown that is knee bucklingly good. I honestly think it is one of my two or three favorite restaurants immediately. Amazing barely covers it. We then go watch Ponyo (the new Hayao Miyazaki film) and then go home to crash.
Myself, Sobo, Sarah and Kellie
Day 5: Kellie and I go see Sobo and Sarah! Sobo is my amazing friend who is currently dealing with leukemia, but I can say for a fact that he is dealing with it like a champ and looking great. He's on the road to recovery and he has an amazing support group starting with the incomparable Sarah, his wife and pillar in his time of need. I'm very proud of him. We spent the day with them talking and playing an amazing board game called Pandemic (we even walked around the hospital with this in our hands - odd looks aplenty). After that, Kellie and I drove to Seattle as she had to work the next morning and I had to go to stupid Montana. Thankfully, we had relaxing to do and insane amounts of delicious Lebanese food to eat, which is always a plus.
Day 6: Kellie leaving makes a very sad David. Thankfully, Marc (my fellow groomsmen in the wedding) quickly gets me and we have a delicious breakfast and then fly off to sunny Missoula, Montana, followed by a not so quick drive up to Columbia Falls, MT. The good news is, because it wasn't so fast we were able to do great things like 0 to 60 test our rental car, talk about politics without going bonkers, and listen to Ghostface Killah and NWA while driving around Montana with our windows down. So it was great.
Once we got to Montana, we met up with everyone else at our soon to be home: Lorna's house, which also featured a smaller cabin for all of us to stay in. YES! We played badminton for a while until we went out to dinner with Colver's parents at a rather tasty pizza joint in Whitefish. The group partied down a bit after that and that was that.
I make it rain
Day 7: This day was freaking awesome, as we went out and got our tuxes and then went off to a sporting goods shop. Why? We needed targets to go shooting with! We picked up camo hats and targets and then went back to the Weidling Mansion to go shooting with Lorna's dad Ben's guns - including a Kimber 45, two scoped rifles, a completely rowdy shotgun, and a howitzer. Okay, that last part just felt like shooting a howitzer and I have no idea what it actually was. I'd never shot before so all of the girls assumed I would kill myself. Well I didn't - I actually was completely awesome hitting every target. I guess the years of Counter-Strike really did pay off.
The whole posse
After that, we had rehearsal and then the rehearsal dinner to go to, and that's when things started getting rough. Given that two of the groomsmen were Lee and Paul and they are the Larry Bird and Magic Johnson of drinking, I (the Mike Dunleavy, Jr. of drinking) was not exactly smart in trying to keep up with them. That night was foggy at best...
The first kiss!
Day 8: ...and that day was devestatingly painful. Nothing like the best man getting completely annihilated the night before the wedding. It was like I was trying to recreate the Hangover as a one man documentary. Not my strongest day. The good news was I mostly had to deal with actions I had perpetrated the night before (shame wave!) and feeling completely terrible right up until the ceremony, at which point I started feeling great again. Evidently I'm the really clutch version of Mike Dunleavy, Jr. The ceremony was beautiful and the fact it resulted with Lorna's last name becoming Colver effectively blew my mind. Lorna Colver. Lorna Colver. Weird.
The first dance!
The reception was a blast, as it was a complete explosion of dancing, drinking and good times. Everyone had an absolute blast as we broke it down, with moments including Erik, Katie and I doing our standard wedding dance to Ghostland Observatory's "Sad, Sad City" as everyone else looks on at us like crazy people and the groomsmen dance as Colver, Lee, Paul and I rocked it out to the Beastie Boys "Fight For Your Right." It was awesome.
Myself and JR at the Blue Moon
PLUS! I gave my toast and it turned out extremely well. I had thought of revealing it here, but some things are better left to the event. But I do have to share - it was great. I'm glad it turned out as well as it did.
The whole group at the Blue Moon
At the end of the reception, the bride and groom piled into a towncar and rolled out while we all looked on, and the remaining wedding party plus piled into cars and went to a country bar in Columbia Falls. While I hate country music, it turns out I love country bars. We pretty much dominated the Blue Moon (the aformentioned bar), as we danced like crazy and met a ton of people there (including Mary, this very attractive blonde who taught me how to two step and spinny dance and then proceeded to wink at me for the rest of the night and JR, this hardcore biker type who let me try on his vest and may have slightly violated Hannah). Perfect ending to the wedding night.
Day 9: Travel day...goodbyes...complete deadness. Ready to get home.
All in all, it was an amazing trip. I met lots of great people, had a ton of fun, and did many things I've never done before (some very regrettably). When Kellie first asked me to come down early, I was really unsure. But why would I be? The trip ended up being a blast and worth every penny and minute spent. The only problem is I really want to go on vacation again immediately, but I'm sadly going to have to wait.
Katie and Kim looking as happy as any two people I've ever seen
The groomsmen and the groomsmom
Intense drinking by these playa pimps
Katie, Todd and Marc dominating as Ben looks on
Marc and Todd...killers