Mardi Gras Recap: Part 1

I realize this is somewhat late in coming, but I thought I'd at least write up some things about the Mardi Gras tournament.

To start, it is a long, long drive to get to Louisiana. Of course, as we were leaving, there was a major storm system weaving through the whole Midwest. So basically from Terre Haute to Memphis we were going between 45 and 60 mph. Faster than that simply was not possible because of snow accumulation and poor plowing. So that slowed down our overnight journey considerably. On the way I learned that Vertical and TardBang, having grown up in the same area, were once part of a pig-wrestling contest, in which they placed second. To quote TardBang, "we dominated that pig!" Of course that was said with a little southern twang/flair which made it all the funnier to hear. Their hometown is 20 minutes north-west of Bloomington and apparently, in that town's fair, they have an event where you're in a pit with a lot of mud and a little pedestal in the middle. You're supposed to wrestle the pig, tie it up (?) and hoist it onto the platform as fast as possible. So yes. They dominated that pig.

I would like to take a moment to recognize TardBang as one of the best copilots I've ever had in a car ride. The navigation part was super easy, but this guy was a champ in terms of keeping me awake, making good conversation, and taking care of copilot duties like music selection, opening my soda bottles, fiddling with the heat, etc. etc. Well done, sir.

And of course, it wouldn't be a tournament without my car having some kind of trouble. This time, like the Missouri tournament in November, the culprit was yet another faulty tire. All of a sudden, somewhere near the exit to Tickfaw, LA (yes folks, TICKFAW), the already-shitty roadway that is Route 12 started to feel a whole lot shittier. This was not particularly alarming at first because hell, the road is already riddled with potholes and cracks and whatnot. But, sure enough, before I knew it, I was riding on my rim. We pulled over to the side of the road, and the tire corpse comes flying off the wheel, landing in a pool of stagnant water, smoking. Nice. We're in the middle of bumfuck Louisiana, having just driven 14 hours through a crazy snowstorm, and now the four of us were just standing around on the side of the road, gradually losing our hearing from the whoosh of passing tractor trailers. TardBang ran down the highway to get a closer look at a distant signpost to figure out where the fuck we were.

My car is so awesome that it has wheel locks, which are essentially odd-shaped bolts on the rims so that people can't yoink them easily. Each wheel has one, including the one that got pwnt, so of course that bolt won't come off. You have to use a special socket in conjunction with the tire-iron in order to get it off. I only have one of those clown tire-irons that looks like an L, rather than one of the good tire irons that looks like an X. So basically, when I tried to take off the wheel lock, the socket would just slip off to the side rather than actually torque the bolt. Eventually, a cop came and used his good tire iron. He was very helpful, and this was one of the few instances where I actually appreciated traffic cops.

After calling Pep Boys and yelling at them about their crappy tire, we determined that it was okay to pop on the donut and drive to Baton Rouge, which was another forty miles or so. We got there safely, and the Pep Boys was actually within walking distance of our incredibly seedy hotel. Of course, what would any tournament be without a ridiculous hotel. This place was absurd. Example. Some of our teammates saw a group of Mexican men hanging out on the balcony laughing, smoking, and hooping it up, while a naked woman lay on the bed in full view through the open door. Clearly, a bunch of Mexicans were riding train on some girl and proud of it. Additionally, on the second night, one of our guys was napping on the floor when he woke up and heard some noises. He looked around the room and some random guy was rummaging through our stuff. He apparently made off with one kid's phone and possibly Boner's wallet (though he has a Tim-Naylor-like propensity for losing things, so the wallet may be anywhere). Anyways, yeah, the hotel was weird to say the least.

We went to the tournament-sponsored party/dinner on Friday evening and enjoyed some free cajun food and local good spirit. This was probably the drunkest I ever got at a tournament party (not that drunk really but still much more drunk than I've ever been at a tournament party). We boat-raced the shit out of pretty much every team there. Except when it came to boat-racing Arkansas, who were in our pool and could actually roll with us boat-race-wise. Basically, an IU alum who was playing with Texas decided to step in for a cameo and ruined our shit. We were undefeated prior to that, with a finishing differential of probably about one-and-a-half cups on average. We may be a little iffy on the field at times, but damn we've got five clowns who can put down the "nectar of the nitwit" like nobody's business. I am proud to be part of that unit, despite my well-publicized disdain for non-high-class suds.

I'm going to leave off there for now, since I have some materials to procure for our prank war with the Calamity Janes (our women's team aka Chlamydia Janes aka Calamity Cumdumpsters). This may even be a three-parter, but I'll try to write them up rapid-fire over today and tomorrow.