Onward and Upward, into the Great Beyond.

This past weekend marked the slide into self-depravity that everyone needs to fall into occasionally. It was officially the start of my summer vacation, so I figured why not start it out with a open bar wedding and follow it with a week down in North Carolina hanging out with a couple of good friends. As you can imagine, Reverend Moloquin has taken the occasion to not just have a moderate amount of slumming, but instead slide down into the lowest bowels of drunken enjoyment, although it has come with a price. As much as I don't believe in karma, there seems to be some of it following me around, like some leprous person insisting on sharing all the fun with me. For every fun and debaucherous action, there is an equal act of punishment or retribution if you will.

It started with what may have been the wedding of the decade. The same buddy who's bachelor party I went to a couple of weekends ago had the reciprocate wedding this past weekend. As much as I love the principle of an open bar, it is like having bleach in one hand and having toilet bowl cleaner in the other. I wonder what this would make if I mixed them. Do not try that one at home kids...It makes mustard gas. Bad, bad stuff. Anyways, walking up to an open bar at a wedding always results in the same first question from everyone, which also becomes the same question every time you walk up.

"So, what do you have here?"

If it is a well stocked bar this always becomes the most dangerous predicament, because as much as I say I'm going to stick to beer, it becomes an every second drink kind of thing.

"Give me a Creemore, and whatever that is in the neat shaped bottle over there."

As you can imagine the rev was quite mightily tanked by the end of the night. Yup, mighty inebriated. So much so that I was planning on starting the road trip down south on Sunday, but when I woke up early to get on my way, I was still drunk. Not a good combination for driving for 14 hours with a border crossing in the middle, so I decided to sleep Sunday away and leave Monday morning. All in all sounded like a reasonable thing, but it seems that Monday is not a good day for me to travel, or it was that karma bullshit that CG is always talking about.

I'm not going to lay down my 14 hour becoming over 17 hours drive and all the highlights therein but there are a couple of points worth mentioning. Ok, only one worth mentioning, but it is good.

I've always had problems at border crossings. More so when I fly, but occasionally when I drive. I'm not entirely sure why I do. I'm usually wearing my work clothes so all my ink is covered, and I'm not disrespectful or nervous around the guys who wanted to become cops, but ended up as border guards because they couldn't get their shit together, but I can almost never get across the border without some hassle, and why would this time down be the exception? To start with, as I am approaching the border the traffic starts backing up. A little of this is expected, and seeing that it has been a while I couldn't remember where exactly the little booths were so I just rolled with it. An hour later I was still rolling with it, two hours later I was still rolling with it, but now I had to go to the washroom as well, and then, around the two and a half hour mark I could actually see the little border booths. I haven't even got to the border yet and I'm already getting fed up. This should prove interesting. Eventually I get up to the border booth, pass out my documents and start the process of answering all the questions I usually get asked. Where do you work, how long are you going to be in the USA for, etc, etc, etc. I am so used to the questions I'm pretty sure I could be asleep and still answer the questions, but this time they threw one at me I had never heard before.

"What exactly are you bringing into the States?"

Not a question that seems extremely out of the ordinary, but was worded strangely enough that my response was "Uhhh, clothes, ummm....." at which point I got the honor of giving him my keys and got all my baggage searched. The truth is I faltered because my smart ass nature came out with the answer first. I had to choke it back as I wanted to say, "Oh, I'm bringing in Chlamydia, and Tuberculosis, and 48 pounds of black heroin...and a small puppy which is actually a thermo-nuclear detonator."

Luckily my filter came on or I may have got to have fun with a rubber glove that day, fun being a relative term.

Eventually they decided that I wasn't a threat to National security, I didn't have a WMD hiding out with my underwear and socks, and they let me cross the border.

Fast forward 16 hours and I am pulling into the drive at my friend’s house. You gotta love it when you show up at after four in the AM and there is cold beer waiting for you when you arrive, followed by another, and another, etc, until it's bright and sunny out, all the neighbors are driving to work, and me and my buddy are hanging out in his garage, drunk to the lords, deciding that maybe nine in the morning is a good time to go to bed. It pretty much set the mood for the week.

Damn. My liver is crying right now. Shut up and take it bitch. We'll be home soon and we can detox then.

Cya'all in a week. Got some drinking to do.