Hot Springs Pt. 2

The electrifying conclusion...
(continued from here)

After a brief stop in Missoula to visit my parents, I headed up north to Hot Springs. Despite having spent 25 years living 75 miles from the place, I had never once set foot in the hamlet of Hot Springs. It's kind of out of the way, or not really on the way to or from anything in particular. Driving northwest from Ravalli was really pleasant; there's almost nothing up there, despite how nice an area it is. Virtually unsullied by the hand of man. I decided to stop and get a pack of cigarettes, knowing that whenever I drink more than about three beers, I start wanting to smoke really badly. I lit one on the drive up to Hot Springs, and it was a big mistake. I pretty much gave up habitual smoking a few years ago, so this cigarette hit me like a ton of bricks. My heart started pounding and my head was spinning, and I almost puked right in the car. Okay, no more cigs until the drinking begins.

6/26/04:
Hot Springs, MT

I pulled up to the wedding just moments before the ceremony. Lots of old faces to see, and I was glad as hell to see them. It's always a little overwhelming to catch up with so many people all at once, trying to make sure you don't forget something important about that person as you catch up with them.

The wedding ceremony was awesome, probably the least boring wedding I've ever been to. There was very little ritualistic mumbo-jumbo, but instead a lot of talking about the people getting married. It seemed much more human than a lot of the weddings I've been to, refreshingly so. Andy and Joanna wrote and read their own vows, and I tell you, there wasn't a dry eye in the house. I'll also say that I never thought I'd see the day when little Andy got married, and indeed, from the time I got the invitation until I pulled up to the wedding, I was operating under a "I'll believe it when I see it" mode. Well, I saw it, and so it must be true. And it seemed much more natural than I would have anticipated, seeing Andy up there looking all dapper and stuff.

After the ceremony, I got so caught up catching up with people I hadn't seen in a few years, that I never did get a chance to get in the receiving line and congratulate the couple first hand. Lots of old familiar faces of course, but now some of them have little kids running around, or are married themselves, so lots of hobnobbing to attend to. I also imagined the wedding to be much more of a who's who of Missoula affair, what with Andy being Mr. Man-About-Town and all, but it was actually a pretty condensed crowd, and lots of people from Joanna's hometown of Richland, WA and people from Andy's high school era and friends from his time in Finland.

I'm extremely fond of this shot

Just as I was getting a first buzz on, I hear the first schlocky strains of some AM radio classic emanating from the lodge. I disengaged myself from schmoozing long enough to poke my head in and see none other than Andy, on the mic, backed by the almighty Volumen, serenading his new bride with Climax Blues Band's "I Love You," surely one of the cheesiest songs ever written (right up there with that Charlene song about having been to paradise, but never having been to me) But Andy rendered it sure-footedly, every little lilt intact, almost as if he'd been secretly singing that song in the shower for years.

"When I was a younger man / You came along / when I was growing my hair (???)"

...and then there's this display of human achievement

So then the drinking progressed apace, and it felt awful good. I've all but given up the sauce and the smokes, but I make exceptions for weddings and stuff, so that when I do drink and smoke, it's like a joyful homecoming. Also, I hadn't been drunk since my own wedding, so I was quite out of drinking shape, and had to throttle back and actively pace myself so as not to find myself puking on the other more seasoned attendees.

At some point in the night's proceedings, I was cajoled into getting into the hot springs pool. Without even thinking, I whipped my shirt off and waded shoulder-deep into the pool. It felt great, but I couldn't help thinking that I was carrying a little too much payload to be in a pool. Sure enough, I had forgotten to remove not only my wallet from the pocket of my shorts, but my in-laws' goddamn cell phone! Holy shit, this was the dumbest thing I've done since I locked myself out of my car with the engine running. I bolted out of the pool and tried to revive the cell phone, but to no avail whatsoever. Not even a dying gurgle. Its LCD screen was inundated.

I felt really bad about trashing the cell phone, since it wasn't mine, and I hate to do harm to shit that people are kind enough to loan me. But I figured there wasn't much I could do about the situation, so I decided to try to forget about it. Luckily, alcohol is a very helpful agent when forgetfulness is desired. I continued swilling and schmoozing and eventually made the acquaintance of Mikka, one of Andy's cohorts from Finland. I'd met Petteri, the other Finn in attendance, once before and found him quite fascinating to talk to. Well, for one thing, he's more well-spoken in English than most Americans, and can discourse exhaustively on pretty much any topic you can think of. I'm always intrigued to learn about cats from other countries, and Finns seem especially intriguing to me. Mikka is a fucking laff riot, too, let me tell you.

"...and damned if there wasn't a drunken Finn on the countertop!"

Mikka brings you ancient gifts of Miller and Pabst

As may have been predicted, around 1am, as we wandered back from one of three beer runs to the local hole-in-the-wall, I figured that I might be better off if I just hit the sack, rather than make a fool of myself or throw up on somebody. So I fashioned a makeshift bed in the back of my Subaru and passed out. Some time later, I woke up with the bad taste of sulfur in my mouth (the hot springs in Hot Springs are highly sulfuric), and managed to open the door of my car up just in time to hurl.

Andy and Mikka (I think) used to have a band in Finland called Dukes of Havoc

I woke up around 7:30, feeling like absolute shit. My throat was coated in vomity phlegm that tasted like sulfur. I was extremely out of it, and in no condition to do any more socializing, so I hit the highway. I don't remember ever feeling so DUH in my life. As I drove down the lonely highway from Hot Springs, my mouth was hanging open and could barely turn my head from side to side. I didn't even have enough energy to listen to music.

When I got to Polson I decided that a nap was very much in order, so I pulled into the parking lot of the local Wal-Mart and got back into my makeshift bed in the back of the Subaru and slept peacefully until 11. I woke up, slightly more alert, but still feeling like total shit. I called Glenda from a pay phone and broke the news to her about the cell phone. Luckily she wasn't too mad about it.

I stopped into my parents' house in Missoula wanting to recover some more, but wouldn't you know a bunch of relatives were over that day. I was irritable as hell and in no mood to make small talk, and I had a hell of a drive ahead of me, so I did my best to get the hell out of there gracefully.

By the time I got to Billings, I was still feeling like total rotten ass, and couldn't bring myself to drive any further that day. The next morning I woke up still feeling like shit, and drove all the way to Denver non-stop, except for the speeding ticket I got near Buffalo, WY (85 in a 75). My second ticket in that state, and this one cost me $95. The cop wanted to get into that whole "do you know how fast you were going?" routine of pointless cop rhetoric, and I &emdash;ordinarily very deferential to police officers&emdash; couldn't even muster the energy to engage him in such imperious flummery. I wanted to say, "Man, could you just write me the fucking ticket and spare me the dialogue?" Luckily I didn't.

And I also stopped at the local hospital in Wheatland, WY to avail myself of a pay phone to call Glenda to tell her I was on my way home. I find that when you're in a strange town, hospitals are a great place to use the phone, and they usually have clean bathrooms, too, which is crucial to me. Anyway, after wandering around the hospital for a few minutes finding no pay phone, a corpulent woman with a mouth full of chocolate asked me &emdash;quite derisively, I might add&emdash; if I was lost. I said I was looking for a pay phone, and as she replied, I had to look away to avoid having to see the spin cycle of mushy Hershey's bar in her mouth as she spoke. No pay phone. What the fuck kind of hospital doesn't have a pay phone? I walked huffily out of the building and tooled around Wheatland (where I got the speeding ticket last time around, by the way) looking for a pay phone, stymied in disbelief that a goddamn fucking hospital of all places would be pay-phoneless. So I decree herewith that Wheatland sucks, until such time as I get evidence to the contrary.

What have I learned? I have learned that the number of days spent suffering from the after-effects of a night of alcohol abuse is given by the following equation (and this is only true for me; you may be one of those spring chickens that feels great the day after swillfests):

days = (age/10) * n

...where age is the age of the abuser and n is the number of consecutive nights spent drinking. So for me, at age 32, I spent approximately 3.2 days recovering from from one night of drunkenness. If I'd followed that night with another night of even mild bacchanal activity (as was very often the case as recently as three years ago), I'd have spent six days and change recovering. But again, I'm pretty out of shape for drinking, so your results will surely vary.

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A Note To The Reader:

As you may know, I'm anticipating having a new baby in the next week or two. This may mean I'm too freaked out or frazzled to feel up to typing up 2000-word expositions for a while. Or maybe I will feel like it; I can't say. Either way, I think it would be a good thing to make good use of the space by having someone be a guest poster. If you're up to the idea of becoming a proxy Yalestar for a week or two, let me know by e-mailing me at yalestar at the yahoo to the dot and the com. I'd be way into the idea. If you have something you need to get off your chest to an audience of about 40 people, this is a golden opportunity. Great resumé builder, too, I would imagine.

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