I just took off for my weekend road trip to Ann Arbor with Gerard, Turner, and Briggs. We’ve got a long drive ahead of us, and I’m going to try to liveblog along the way.

Update: So although the live blogging thing was neat, it really was a pain in the ass to stop what I was doing to update this post. A lot of things were left out, and around Saturday morning, I just stopped doing it. I’m going to add updates in italics to what I wrote through Saturday morning.

Disclaimer: This is a grab bag of things I found most memorable from this weekend. There’s so many that I haven’t had a chance to really edit much of this, and there may be a lot of things in here that are only funny to people who were there. I apologize if there are things in here you don’t find entertaining.

Thursday
5:25pm - We just took off from battery park. We’re using Gerard’s company car for this trip. For the last two weeks prior to this trip, whenever we ask if it will be OK to do this, Gerard has replied with a story about how his coworker Kenny took a trip to South Carolina in his car.

5:35 - Gerard: “This is going to be a great trip. My buddy Kenny took a trip down to South Carolina in his car.”

5:45 - There’s a lot of traffic for the Holland tunnel. Briggs contemplates what happens when you put too many Listerine strips in your mouth. Gerard puts four in and starts having a little trouble breathing. Turner takes ten, rolls them into a ball and starts chewing away. About 15 seconds later, he starts gasping for air.

6:13 - Briggs just talked about his plans for the weekend. “I’m gonna do something I’ve never done before. Hook up in West Quad.” (He lived in West Quad.)

7:30 - Nothing interesting to report. Sharing stories from college and talking about Michigan football. Probably pretty unintersting for you. Much like this entry.

8:05 - It was just revealed that Briggs sent a text message to Sachin about a year ago saying, “If I were going to go gay, it would be for you.”

9:30 - While taking turns ripping on each other, the phrase “You been zapped!” (from Chappelle’s SHow) is used. This would continue to be used the entire weekend.

At some point during the night, I accidentally reveal a nickname Sachin uses with Anushka, to the EXTREME amusment of everyone else.

12:45am - The last few hours have been pretty slow. We spotted a sign for motel rooms for 32.95. We circled around to go back and Briggs saw some orange cones on the road.

Briggs: Dude, can we snag a cone?!
Gerard: What? No way.
Briggs: Come on, well at least knock one over.
Gerard: Are you crazy? Its going to get stuck under the car or some shit.
Turner: Don’t be a pussy.
[silence]
…
[whoomp-whoomp]
…
[silence]
Briggs: Hahahahaha, it stayed standing!
[whoomp-whoomp]
Briggs: You got that one.

1:07 - We just checked in to the Tallyho-tel. Seriously. This place defines ‘creepy roadside motel’. They asked us to pay a deposit on the remote control for the TV, and the entire place felt like it hadn’t been cleaned since 1987.

1:10 - Gerard already broke a lampshade.

1:30 - As a prelude to what would come the rest of the weekend, Turner pusses out to go to sleep (”time to rest my eyes and reflect” is how he put it), while Gerard, Briggs and I crack open a handle of Jack Daniels and some beers.

2:30 - Me: “Gerard, when are you going to fill up your car?”
Gerard: “I’ll probably do it somewhere in Ohio tomorrow morning.”
Me: “Really? Will you be able to get away with that?”
Gerard: “Yeah man, my coworker Kenny drove down to South Carolina with his company car.”
Me: “Yeah I know, I just wanted to see if you’d tell the story again”
Briggs: “You been zapped!”

3:45 - Sleep for the rest of us

Friday
10:08 - I’m driving now. Updates will be infrequent.

1:20 - ” ‘Inferiority breeds contempt.’ That should be Ohio’s slogan.” - Gerard

1:30 - Briggs: “I can’t believe we made it this far.”
Gerard: “Yeah seriously dude.”
Amish: “So is this the furthest you’ve taken this car?”
Gerard: “Yeah man. Its pretty nuts.”
Amish: “What’s the furthest someone has taken their car at your company?”
Gerard: “Well, my buddy Kenny took his car to South Carolina one time.”
(Briggs and I are in the front trying our hardest not to laugh)
Turner: “Gerard, I think you just got zapped.”
Gerard: “What? Oh shit. Well played.”

2:00 - We pull into Ann Arbor. With some time to kill, we head to a disc golf course a couple of towns over.

2:30 - We kicked off a game of disc golf. Briggs and I vs Gerard and Turner. Losers buy a pitcher of sangria at dominick’s.

4:30 - Gerard and Turner take the first few holes. We decide to reset the scores, and play for double or nothing. Briggs and I take the next set of holes. Not happy with a tie, we decide to go into a 3 hole playoff, upping the ante to two pitchers of sangria, with both lowest individual score and overall team score deciding the match. Gerard and Turner choke miserably and end up owing us two pitchers.

5:07 - It wouldn’t be a road trip without a stop at Taco Bell. While at the drive-thru, the cashier has to interrupt our order and ask “Are you serious?” All four of us shout “Yes!” in unison.

For those that care, Leo the manager no longer works at the State St Taco Bell (according to the girl in the drive-thru window). For you non-Wolverines, yes, there was a time in college where we were on a first-name basis with the managers at Taco Bell.

Yes, our motel was also next door to a Taco Bell.

7:39 - We’re at dominick’s now. On the way to intoxication-ville. This might be the last entry for a while.

7:47 - “Turner is like a geometry professor. He’s always working the angles.” - Gerard

“Gerard is like an old fisherman. He smells a little funny but casts a wide net.” - Briggs

“Briggs is a slugger. When he makes a joke, he swings for the fences. He might strike out, but at least he doesn’t go down looking.” - Turner

“You been zapped!” - Me

8:30-10:30 - We move over to Charley’s to fill the time between Dominick’s and Rick’s. Sachin (who had flown in) and Nitin and Mitesh (who are still at UMich Med) come meet up with us. Sachin is wearing a wierd wrinkled military-looking blazer thing, which Gerard, Briggs, and Turner have a FIELD DAY with. Sachin got zapped!

10:30 - We head over to Rick’s. The good thing about Rick’s is that the only thing that will prevent you from getting in is if its too crowded, or the line is moving too slow. Even if you’re with a group of 10 dudes, you’ll still get in eventually.

10:31 - This place is FULL of dudes.

2:00? - I might have gone to panchero’s.

10:32-2:00 - The bar evened out a little, and we stick around and get shitfaced. I don’t remember the timeline at this point, but I recall leaving the bar to get Panchero’s with Sachin and the other Indian friends. Then, I think I met up with some other friends and ended up back inside Rick’s for a few minutes. Somewhere in there, I found Turner and Gerard and we went to Pizza House. According to them (I don’t remember), after ordering food, we decided it would take too long to make, so we chugged our waters and walked out to go to Jimmy John’s. How we got back to the motel is beyond me.

Saturday
8:00am - Briggs just brought in a case of Busch Light. I love football Saturdays.

There are about 8 guys crashing in our room the first night. Gerard finds this out the hard way when he wakes up and steps on someone.

Gerard: “What the fuck was that?”
Piscatelli: “My head”

8:10 - I have lost my credit card. I should be a lot more concerned but I’m still drunk from last night.

8:30 - Round 2 of Turner being the opposite of fun this weekend. After attempting to drink a couple beers, he heads to the bathroom to start heaving. What he fails to realize is that I “got rid of my Taco Bell” in there at about 8:28.

9:08 - Turner threw up already. Not sure if he’s gonna make it to the game. Wow. What a pussy.

9:10 - Not gonna lie. I’m pretty happy I can spell words right now.

[Update: This is where the live blogging fell to shit. I was pretty much drunk for the next 24 hours and didn't remember or care to blog. Everything after this point was written after I got back.]

9:15 - We [at this point, a bunch of dudes] are prepartying on central campus. We’re standing outside a friend of a friend’s apartment building with a case of beer at our feet. Asking “Want to come to our sweet preparty?” to any passing girl yields zero yesses and 7,462 rejections.

9:20 - “You got zapped!” is said somewhere between 7,461 and 7,463 times.

9:25 - Briggs mentions something about Sachin’s nickname for Anushka.
Sachin to me: “Amish, why would you say that?”
Me: “Why would you say that?”

9:30 - We realize there’s a good probability that Turner will not make it to the game, and wisely sell off his ticket and head over to the SigEp house. Music is playing, beirut games are in full force, one of my old buddies is dressed like Wolverine from the X-Men cartoons. A bottle of Jager is passed around. Briggs throws up in his mouth a little. Oh yeah, its only about 10:00 at this point.

10:05 - Although there are a fair amount of girls at the preparty, I ask a buddy still in school there why there aren’t more . His reply: “We’re prepartying with Chi-O this year. We went over to their house to wake them up this morning, but only like 6 of them were there. The rest went home for Rosh Hoshanah!”

11:45 - We start walking to the game. The Walk. One of the things I miss most about school is The Walk.

11:55 - Bongo guy! I give him a dollar.

12:15pm - We’re in the stadium and it is glorious. We made friends with some sorority chicks sitting behind us. I was wearing a hoodie but took it off because I got warm. At this point, some Asian girl nearby saw my white t-shirt and started bitching.

Her: “Didn’t you know that today is a Maize Out? You’re supposed to be wearing yellow!”
Me: “Jesus, calm down! I just drove in yesterday. How was I supposed to know?”
Her: “It says it right on your ticket!”
Me: [looking at ticket] “Well played.”
Gerard: “You got zapped!”

12:45 - Turner miraculously showed up out of nowhere.

“I actually got to campus around 10:30.”
“Then where were you till now?”
“I fell asleep behind a car.”
“How’d you wake up?”
“Someone threw a football at me.”

1:30 - It was still too warm to wear my hoodie, and since we were standing, I got tired of carrying it. I tried to get Gerard to hold it for me, but he denied, so I turned around to the girls behind us and jokingly asked “Hey, anybody want a free hoodie?” Amazingly, one of the girls said yes. I didn’t really want anyone to actually take my hoodie from me, but at the same time, I really did not want to be carrying it anymore. I handed it over. Probably not the best of ideas.

2:00 - The hoodie is giving me an excuse to keep talking to these girls throughout the game.

2:30 -
Me: “Gerard, want the rest of this popcorn?”
Gerard: [takes popcorn, tosses it on the ground]
Me: “Well played”

3:30: The game ends. Another Michigan victory. Turner, Gerard and I walk back toward campus and meet up with a friend of theirs who is also in town. He’s staying with his girlfriend, so we walk over to her house. We don’t know the girls that live there that well, but they let us (and a couple more guys that were also in town) in to come hang out and offer us beers.

5:30 - Gerard and I leave to get burritos from Panchero’s (that’s #2 for anyone keeping count).

6:00 - We come back (with more of our friends). I don’t think the girls were too happy with us at this point. I pass out (and supposedly start snoring loudly) on an armchair. I’m sure they were thrilled to see that.

7:00 - The girls living in the house all have various plans for the evening and get ready to leave. They kick us out.

We sit on their porch for the next hour.

8:30 - Back to Charley’s for some more food. At one point, a girl approaches Turner.

Girl: “Hey, what are the chances that your group could switch tables, cause our friends are sitti-”
Turner: (rudely) “Zero. Not to be rude or anything, we just want to watch football.”

Later, while retelling the story, the girl’s boyfriend comes over and yells at me, saying “We’re sitting right next to you and she can hear you talking about her”

Me: “Dude, I was making fun of my friend’s response, not your girl’s comment.”
Gerard: “Hey man, weren’t you my host during soccer orientation?”
Dude: “Oh yeah, hey man how’s it going!”
Everyone else: “What the fuck just happened?”

11:00 - By the time we get a table, order our food, and eat, we’ve missed our opportunity to get into Rick’s before the line gets long. Not having any better alternatives (there were lines everywhere that night), we get in line, hoping that it will move fast.

11:05 - A slight drizzle begins to fall.

11:30 - The drizzle turns into an all-out rain.

11:45 - Giving my hoodie away was the worst idea ever.

12:00am - We finally made it into Rick’s. I didn’t even bother trying to dry off because it was hopeless. Any water I tried to dry off my hands or face was quickly replaced by more water from my hat and shirt, which were completely soaked through.

12:15 - Side story: At some point during senior year of school, I was introduced to a friend of a friend who was a bartender at Rick’s.
Me: “Hi, I’m Amish.”
Her: “Wait, Amish? Amish what?
Me: “Um, Shah.”
Her: “You leave your credit card at Rick’s a lot, don’t you?”

(Can you see where this is going?)

Back to this weekend…
Me: “Hey, did I leave a credit card here last night by any chance?”
Bartender: “Let me check…yup, here it is.”

Some things just never change.

This is a good thing though, because I am running low on cash.

12:30 - Gerard is holding two full beers by the neck in one hand, while walking up to the beer tub girl for more. He lifts and tips his hand to take a sip of beer, and in doing so, causes beer from the other bottle to spill over his shoulder. He looks up, makes eye contact with the beer tub girl, turns his head, and walks away.

12:45 - Briggs never made it to Rick’s (he went to a different bar). I have no clue what happened to the extras crashing on our floor from the night before. Turner and Gerard, the remaining two people from my motel room, were with me at Rick’s but they wanted to leave (on account of Turner being a bitch, yet again). Logic tells me I should go with them.

12:46 - Booze prevails. I stay behind.

1:00 - Hey! The girl who took my hoodie is here. What are the chances?!

[Actually quite good, since she told me during the game that she'd be at Rick's later.]

1:05 - “I thought the plan was that you’d bring my hoodie back” [wink]

1:10 - “Wanna dance?”

1:15 - “Damnit, sorry that I keep stepping on your toes. [looking down] I like your boots.”

1:20 - “Can I put my tongue in your mouth?”

1:25 - Giving my hoodie away was the best idea ever.

1:45 - Finding my credit card turned out to be not so great. All of a sudden I’m buying shots for this girl and her friends.

2:00 - After a round of shots and a terrible rendition of ‘I Love This Bar’ and ‘The Gambler,’ the bar closes down.
Her: “Want to come to Pizza House?”
Me: “I’m gonna go to Panchero’s.”

Wait what?

At this point, two things have happened.

1. I have lost all of the people I am supposed to be staying with this weekend, I’m out of cash, and our motel is not near campus, so I’m not sure if I’ll be making it back there tonight.

2. A girl has asked me to join her after the bar. True, any late night activities are pure speculation at this point, but nonetheless I chose not to play the odds and instead opted for a burrito. The same burrito I had already eaten twice before in the same ~24 hour period.

I’m not sure if this is a testament to my stupidity, or how good these burritos are. I’m going to go with the burritos.

4:00 - I actually went to Panchero’s with Mitesh and Nitin, who still live in Ann Arbor, as well as Sachin, Rishi (UMich Rishi, not NYC Rishi) and some other random friends. We somehow got back to their place, hung out for a while sharing stories from the weekend, and then passed out.

Sunday
10:00 - Mitesh: “What are you doing?”
Me: “Sleeping.”
Mitesh: “Why are you on the floor and not on the couch?”
Me: [looking up] “I’m…really…not…sure. But, uh, do you mind driving me to Motel 6?”

10:30 - I get back to the motel to find that Briggs was the only one to actually make it back there that night, and that I was the first one to be back this morning. Everyone else crashed at random places around campus and were still finding their way back.

I hopped into the bathroom to shower. As I undressed, I realized I hadn’t showered in almost 40 hours. I hadn’t shaved since Thursday morning. The white Michigan Football shirt I had put on before the game on Saturday was about 6 shades darker, reflecting the heavy drinking, torrential rain, ridiculous eating, and insufficient sleep I had been partaking in during the previous 24 hours. The shirt went straight in the trash can, while I contemplated how fun a weekend could be while looking like absolute shit. The feeling was soon lost (well actually, it just became more literal), however, as the three visits to Panchero’s suddenly needed to be taken care of.

11:30 - Once everyone was ready, we headed to Pizza House for one last meal before driving back to New York. I was so hungover that I couldn’t eat the breadsticks I ordered, and kept my head down on the table almost the entire time.

Just about all of us were incoherent, and although we were trying to make jokes, they were not really coming out right.

Gerard: “Briggs, not to insult your intelligence or anything, but out of all of my friends, you’re the most like Homer Simpson.”

Briggs: “Amish, you know why you’re gay? [spoken like the two guys from The 40yr Old Virgin]. You can’t even keep your head up.”

Amish: [lifting head up] “Briggs, you know why you’re gay?”

[silence]

Briggs: “Great comeback, Amish.”

Everyone: “You got zapped!”

12:30 - We eventually get back on the road for New York. Turner demonstrates his fucktardedness yet one more time by releasing gas that creates crop circles in Ohio.

The drive was long and I was in and out of sleep. While awake, we shared stories and jokes from the weekend, including “Man, I wish Sachin was around so we could make fun of his jacket.”

Somewhere in New Jersey, Gerard pipes up to try to make a witty comment about all of us at once.

Gerard: [mumbling something incoherently]
[all of us sit in silence]
Amish: “Gerard, did you just zap yourself??”
Turner: “Haha, the self-zap.”
Briggs: “That was the best end to this weekend.”

Related: For Love Of The Game, Turner’s personal account of the moments leading up to game time