My Crawl for a Cure

As I had previously mentioned, Saturday I attended the Crawl for a Cure in Fremont to benefit cystic fibrosis. For those of you who don’t know what cystic fibrosis is, Frankie on Real World San Diego had it. Although I don’t have a personal connection to the disease in my life, it seems pretty serious. According to CFF.org, cystic fibrosis is a genetic disease affecting approximately 30,000 children and adults in the United States. A defective gene causes the body to produce an abnormally thick, sticky mucus that clogs the lungs and leads to life-threatening lung infections. Frankie was always blaming all her needy, social problems on it while she sat smoking in front of the camera. I really felt sorry for her.

I woke up Saturday morning with one of those “please be sunny” moments we often have in Seattle when something life-changing is planned and good weather is a must, such as a wedding. This pub-crawl wasn’t life changing, however, I was really hoping to drink and be merry on various patios while basking in a few Vitamin D rays. No such luck. We had beautiful weather all last week, and the day after the pub-crawl, but as most of you know, it pissed down rain on Saturday. Amanda and I drove to the check-in location moaning in the wake of our miss-fortune. As we waited in the line that almost wrapped all the way around the block, Amanda said, “Hey, at least this is good beer-drinking weather.” And I replied, “Yeah, well so is sunny weather.” She was just trying to be optimistic I suppose, and I guess we both just enjoy drinking beer whether it's pouring or sunny. So, we put our beer-drinking hats on and trudged in the multi-directional drizzle toward The Nickerson.

When we arrived at The Nickerson, we discovered that the seven drink tickets we had received for free drinks counted toward a slightly-larger-than-2 ounces of beer. “Hey officer. I swear I’m not drunk. I’ve only had 7…2-ounce beers.” That’s like a little over one beer right? Does a pint have 12 ounces? Hell, I don’t know. All I know is that we took our mini beers down in one gulp and bought full-size beers at each bar. From our first stop, it seemed like all the people working at the bar were less-than happy to be serving all of us pub-crawlers. Geez. It’s for a good cause! We weren’t all out there being mid-day drunks for no good reason! When we ordered our drink at The Nickerson, the guy behind the bar must have been the owner and was obviously reaping way too many benefits from owning a Fremont bar—in the way of high-priced fatty meals. He must have been at least 350 pounds and hated girls like Amanda and I—ones who think he’s gross. He asked us for our I.D.’s even though we had to show real police our I.D.’s in order to get a bracelet that showed we were part of the pub-crawl. He made some snide comment after Amanda asked him if our bracelets didn’t count about cystic fibrosis paying his fine and please tell him what we want and step aside so the waitresses could pull drinks. Asshole. I ordered a Heffeweizen and Amanda said snidely under her breathe, “A Heff from a heifer,” which although mean, made me laugh.

Next we bundled up in our jackets and walked to The Red Door. We were excited to get inside and take off our jackets. While they provided some sort of shelter for our clothes, neither of them were water proof so it was like wearing a big wet blanket. And our jeans were soaked for at least the bottom six inches. Definitely fun attributes to have while piled into a bar where you can’t move without bumping someone’s butt or smelling their breath. We tried to seek refuge on the covered patio to smoke. The Red Door is one of the only bars in Seattle that I know allows you to smoke on their fabulous and large patio. I’m not sure if this was changed just for the pub-crawl, or if it’s permanent now that it’s spring time, but there was a large sign on the pole outside that said, “NO SMOKING ON THE PATIO!” What the fuck? How could they ban smoking during the pub-crawl…I mean, it’s not like this is to benefit a lung disease or something. Fuck!

From here, we were already a couple hours into our crawl and had four more bars to go and only two hours to do it in. We decided to skip Dad Watson’s and just get our free mini beer from The Triangle and Norm’s. That way we could spend a good amount of time at our favorite bar, Brouwer’s, before we had to make it to Nectar by 5. We downed our beer at The Triangle and crossed the street to Norm’s, where we stood in an extremely chaotic line just to receive our free 2 ounces. Three people behind us seemed nice, and at this point, everyone was getting a little friendly so we decided to order their free beers for them too so we could save them time. By this time, I was feeling a little bit more than tipsy and pulled out the other half of my squished and soggy sandwich I had stashed in my purse when I left my house. I knew my stomach was going to be needing some sort of sustenance after drinking all day—so I started chowing down amidst the crowd of beer seekers. The three people we helped ordered a round of Slutty Redhead shots and included Amanda and I in the round. I don’t EVER take shots, but the girl in front of me snatched my sandwich from me until I downed the whole thing. Jerk.

Brouwer’s ended up being our final stop. After a Hoegaarden, I was hoping to see an end in sight. By that time, we had been drinking at a fast-rate, it was almost 6 o’clock, and I hadn’t had any dinner—never a good combination if you don’t want to puke in the bar bathroom, which isn’t really my style. Amanda and I decided to throw in the towel and head to Taco Del Mar before heading home. We downed a burrito (Amanda) and enchiladas (me) and reminisced about how nice it would be to smoke. Not that we ever could smoke in Taco del Mar, but I suppose it just reminded us of a time where we could smoke indoors. So, Amanda did the most logical thing and lit up. I think that was a sure sign that it was time for us to head home. We jumped in a cab and said, “Queen Anne please!” In our drunken state of all-day drinking, we thought it would be a good idea to go to Peso’s and try to choke down another. I took two sips and wanted to ralph, so we attempted to walk back to my house with a quick stop in Blockbuster for movies where we giggled like hyenas on pot, and another embarrassing stop in The Melting Pot to supposedly say hi to Josh. At 8 p.m., we finally made it home—seven hours after we started—and crashed on the couch. We had managed to drink approximately eight beers each, take one shot, stuff our faces with Mexican food, and smoke ¾ a pack of cigarettes—all in the name of cystic fibrosis.

Currently Feeling: Ready to leave work, go to gym and to Sarah’s for dinner.
Currently Anticipating: Is it ok to anticipate Cinco de Mayo on Friday when it’s only Monday?
Can’t Wait For: Pearl Jam release tomorrow!