Your best story

[lethe]

Glad you made it safely lethe.   Sounds like I've passed on my recent vehicle karma to you, sorry.

Nah, it's not you. This is something right along the lines of my typical luck.
<---------hence chaos
I've driven a a car home with no clutch (throwout bearing failure) in heavy traffic but no brakes is a new and not nice experience. I tell you, a hand operated emergency brake is a lot easier to use than that foot POS.

[Ddan]

Along a similar but not so extreme line, last year on the way to The Painters house with the dimby boat, I lost most of the brakes in the truck.  Pedal to the floor gave me a degree slow down power but nothing too confidence inspiring.  Given the trailer full of junk boat I had I felt calling a wrecker was not a good idea so I carried on, refilling the brake fluid every so often.   No real drama but a fun ride.

[Monsterlover]

Your dedication to our need to burn things is very much appreciated.

Can we burn the truck this year?

[lethe]

Your dedication to our need to burn things is very much appreciated.

Can we burn the truck this year?

Asking me, no but if my wife were asked yes. Thankfully driving it there would be enough of a pain in the ass that it ain't gonna happen.

[El Matador]

Since most of the stories here are about getting drunk in college, I thought I'd add my contribution. I'll call this one: The day I passed out and woke up in another state surrounded by boobs.

My birthday is February 17. I share the day I was kicked out of the womb with such illustrious characters as Paris Hilton, Larry the Cable Guy, and Michael Jordan. Fortunately for me, my birthday usually lands during a much more intellectual event: Mardi Gras. 

Through a pretty strange turn of events, I had to leave my country and apply for college 2 weeks before most universities started classes in August. I guess I should consider myself lucky that I had a somewhat respectable institution take me at all within that time frame. The near perfect SAT score I managed to pull out of my ass while completely hungover probably helped, but that's another story. Anyways, I ended up taking my first year of engineering classes at Texas A and M, Galveston.

A and M Galveston is one of the country's leading institution in Marine Engineering and Marine Biology. With a whopping 1800 students, about three quarters of them are females studying Marine Biology. I did not know this at the time, but apparently it is a requirement to BE a whale in order to STUDY whales. The median weight of girls at the campus is probably around 250# and I'm being generous. Coming from a country where there is basically no obesity I was awestruck by the sheer gargantuan size of the land based cetaceans I had to pass on the way to physics class every day. Being an 18 year old male with raging hormones and absolutely no acceptable outlet, I took up two activities to dull the pain and take the edge off, Drinking and Rowing.

The A and M rowing team is notorious for being a drinking team with a rowing problem; showing up to different regattas in varying degrees of drunkenness. Anyone who has been a part of crew knows that you practice at 430 am every morning, so we would just usually head on over from whichever house we had been actively trying to destroy. My 19th birthday started off no differently. It landed on a Saturday, during Mardi Gras in Galveston. Mardi Gras is galveston is like riding a MotoGp track in a push scooter, could be fun, but deep down inside you know it's not the real thing, and you feel all the more disappointed because of it.

So on the eve of my birthday, we had an upperclassman buy us inordinate amounts of Alcoholic beverages in exchange for keeping a couple of bottles. To make matters worse, I had just been named captain of the novice crew, so were in a celebratory mood. The night started off slow, with triple Jagerbomb shots, but quickly descended into bourbon chugging contests. My boat and I were all trying to hit on the two decent-looking girls in the entire school, which happened to be coxswains in team, and needless to say, I was making an ass out of myself. At some point during the night, I had decided that I would no longer communicate in english, so my friend would have to translate my drunken spanish. By the time 12 am rolled around the general consensus was that we were too drunk to be inside a house safely, so we drove to the big party in the Strand, where a sad excuse for a Mardi Gras celebration was taking place. Somehow we made it to our destination without any major accidents and proceeded to mingle with the crowd. By mingle I mean shamelessly hit on anything with a skirt. I remember telling a girl that was flashing for beads that I'd seen better breasts on obese men. In another episode I walked up to a random girl and started making out with her, only to have her considerably larger boyfriend pull me away and start beating on me. Backed as I was with a 7 person entourage, the fight broke up shortly afterwards.

I think it was at that point that we all looked around and realized that the night would not end well. Certain as we were that we would die promptly, we decided to make the best of the time we had left. Somehow we managed to convince a group of UTMB girls to go back to an afterparty at our place, where even more alcohol would be imbibed. The last thing I remember was doing shots with one of them.  It must have been around 4am.

Have you ever woken up in a sidewalk? I have.

The next memory I have is of breasts. Many of them. I woke up late afternoon laying on a sidewalk staring a slew of women with their breasts covered in beads flashing the balcony directly above me. I thought I had died and gone to heaven. But I was alone in this heaven. I also realized that I had no cellphone, no wallet, and no Idea where I was. I was also dressed in my crew uniform, which was composed of a pair of short shorts, underarmour shirt and a crew jacket. The smart thing would have been to stay in place and wait for a familiar face to go by, but I lured into the crowd with the promise of more drinks and boobies. My attire made me quick friends with some LSU crew members that happened to be nearby; these fine folk didn't hesitate to offer me beer and a sandwich. They also confirmed my suspicions as to my surroundings. I was now in New Orleans, in the REAL Mardi Gras. I decided that it was best not to try and figure things out until my body had a more adequate level of alcohol. After a couple of hours partying with them, a new buzz had been happily achieved and I was in full on Chipo-needs-to-get-laid-mode. It is infinitely difficult to score when you are wearing short shorts BTW. I managed to find a girl as drunk as I was, who proceeded to try to eat my face off. She must've been the worst, sloppiest kisser ever. No matter how hard I tried to detach myself from the face-sucker I couldn't shake her off. I finally managed to distract her with the promise of more alcohol and quietly exited stage left.

Now I was faced with another problem. I couldn't get back to my new found LSU friends for fear of the mouth-monster, but I was also alone in a fairly hostile environment. My realization sober me up pretty quickly and forced me to make the first intelligent decision of the night, go back to the place where I woke up. Thankfully, after a few minutes of searching, I was able to identify the piss stained wall I woke up next to, and to my surprise, I also identified seven concerned looking friends, who were busy calling hospitals and police stations to find my whereabouts. I told them of my recent ordeal, and they told me of how we had arrived at this fair city.

Apparently, I passed out at around 4 in the morning the night before. We had practice at 4:30. They woke me up and helped me dress for practice and headed out the boathouse. They arrived to find our coach too hungover to properly operate the launch. He dismissed the morning's practice and told us to take the team's van back home, seeing as only a couple of us were sober. They had better plans and immediately got on the road to new Orleans.

The rest of the weekend proceeded in pretty much the same fashion: Drink, try to pick up girls, pass out, Repeat ad infinitum. We ended up getting back to Galveston sometime tuesday of the next week. Thankfully our coach was understanding, even though he did relieve us of van privileges.

I have never binged like that again. I must have been drunk well into thursday.  All in all, it was a good birthday

[DoubleEagle]

Since most of the stories here are about getting drunk in college, I thought I'd add my contribution. I'll call this one: The day I passed out and woke up in another state surrounded by boobs.

My birthday is February 17. I share the day I was kicked out of the womb with such illustrious characters as Paris Hilton, Larry the Cable Guy, and Michael Jordan. Fortunately for me, my birthday usually lands during a much more intellectual event: Mardi Gras. 

Through a pretty strange turn of events, I had to leave my country and apply for college 2 weeks before most universities started classes in August. I guess I should consider myself lucky that I had a somewhat respectable institution take me at all within that time frame. The near perfect SAT score I managed to pull out of my ass while completely hungover probably helped, but that's another story. Anyways, I ended up taking my first year of engineering classes at Texas A and M, Galveston.

A and M Galveston is one of the country's leading institution in Marine Engineering and Marine Biology. With a whopping 1800 students, about three quarters of them are females studying Marine Biology. I did not know this at the time, but apparently it is a requirement to BE a whale in order to STUDY whales. The median weight of girls at the campus is probably around 250# and I'm being generous. Coming from a country where there is basically no obesity I was awestruck by the sheer gargantuan size of the land based cetaceans I had to pass on the way to physics class every day. Being an 18 year old male with raging hormones and absolutely no acceptable outlet, I took up two activities to dull the pain and take the edge off, Drinking and Rowing.

The A and M rowing team is notorious for being a drinking team with a rowing problem; showing up to different regattas in varying degrees of drunkenness. Anyone who has been a part of crew knows that you practice at 430 am every morning, so we would just usually head on over from whichever house we had been actively trying to destroy. My 19th birthday started off no differently. It landed on a Saturday, during Mardi Gras in Galveston. Mardi Gras is galveston is like riding a MotoGp track in a push scooter, could be fun, but deep down inside you know it's not the real thing, and you feel all the more disappointed because of it.

So on the eve of my birthday, we had an upperclassman buy us inordinate amounts of Alcoholic beverages in exchange for keeping a couple of bottles. To make matters worse, I had just been named captain of the novice crew, so were in a celebratory mood. The night started off slow, with triple Jagerbomb shots, but quickly descended into bourbon chugging contests. My boat and I were all trying to hit on the two decent-looking girls in the entire school, which happened to be coxswains in team, and needless to say, I was making an ass out of myself. At some point during the night, I had decided that I would no longer communicate in english, so my friend would have to translate my drunken spanish. By the time 12 am rolled around the general consensus was that we were too drunk to be inside a house safely, so we drove to the big party in the Strand, where a sad excuse for a Mardi Gras celebration was taking place. Somehow we made it to our destination without any major accidents and proceeded to mingle with the crowd. By mingle I mean shamelessly hit on anything with a skirt. I remember telling a girl that was flashing for beads that I'd seen better breasts on obese men. In another episode I walked up to a random girl and started making out with her, only to have her considerably larger boyfriend pull me away and start beating on me. Backed as I was with a 7 person entourage, the fight broke up shortly afterwards.

I think it was at that point that we all looked around and realized that the night would not end well. Certain as we were that we would die promptly, we decided to make the best of the time we had left. Somehow we managed to convince a group of UTMB girls to go back to an afterparty at our place, where even more alcohol would be imbibed. The last thing I remember was doing shots with one of them.  It must have been around 4am.

Have you ever woken up in a sidewalk? I have.

The next memory I have is of breasts. Many of them. I woke up late afternoon laying on a sidewalk staring a slew of women with their breasts covered in beads flashing the balcony directly above me. I thought I had died and gone to heaven. But I was alone in this heaven. I also realized that I had no cellphone, no wallet, and no Idea where I was. I was also dressed in my crew uniform, which was composed of a pair of short shorts, underarmour shirt and a crew jacket. The smart thing would have been to stay in place and wait for a familiar face to go by, but I lured into the crowd with the promise of more drinks and boobies. My attire made me quick friends with some LSU crew members that happened to be nearby; these fine folk didn't hesitate to offer me beer and a sandwich. They also confirmed my suspicions as to my surroundings. I was now in New Orleans, in the REAL Mardi Gras. I decided that it was best not to try and figure things out until my body had a more adequate level of alcohol. After a couple of hours partying with them, a new buzz had been happily achieved and I was in full on Chipo-needs-to-get-laid-mode. It is infinitely difficult to score when you are wearing short shorts BTW. I managed to find a girl as drunk as I was, who proceeded to try to eat my face off. She must've been the worst, sloppiest kisser ever. No matter how hard I tried to detach myself from the face-sucker I couldn't shake her off. I finally managed to distract her with the promise of more alcohol and quietly exited stage left.

Now I was faced with another problem. I couldn't get back to my new found LSU friends for fear of the mouth-monster, but I was also alone in a fairly hostile environment. My realization sober me up pretty quickly and forced me to make the first intelligent decision of the night, go back to the place where I woke up. Thankfully, after a few minutes of searching, I was able to identify the piss stained wall I woke up next to, and to my surprise, I also identified seven concerned looking friends, who were busy calling hospitals and police stations to find my whereabouts. I told them of my recent ordeal, and they told me of how we had arrived at this fair city.

Apparently, I passed out at around 4 in the morning the night before. We had practice at 4:30. They woke me up and helped me dress for practice and headed out the boathouse. They arrived to find our coach too hungover to properly operate the launch. He dismissed the morning's practice and told us to take the team's van back home, seeing as only a couple of us were sober. They had better plans and immediately got on the road to new Orleans.

The rest of the weekend proceeded in pretty much the same fashion: Drink, try to pick up girls, pass out, Repeat ad infinitum. We ended up getting back to Galveston sometime tuesday of the next week. Thankfully our coach was understanding, even though he did relieve us of van privileges.

I have never binged like that again. I must have been drunk well into thursday.  All in all, it was a good birthday

J,
You must have 9 lives ...........and a Stomach made of cast Iron !

Dolph     

[il d00d]

Chapter III:  TU NO PASARA!

As Chris and I made our way to the door, the door guy, to whom we had just spent the half hour explaining in semaphore and slow, loud English that we did not have hand stamps and could you please let us back in anyways, stopped us.  By this point, getting stopped by door guy fatigue had set in.

He motioned to our hands. My god.  OK, see?  No stamp.  Nein stamp on hand.  

He turned around, produced a stamp and ink pad and stamped our hands.  He looked pleased to have solved the mystery of annoying people at his door.

Chris and I just stood there looking at our hands for a minute, then we shimmied out the door as the door guy held an increasingly hostile line at bay for us.

The plan up to this point had been this:  make our presence known to a door guy, return with people that looked like us, get in.  We were relying on the element of confusion to pull this off - we chose the door guy that we couldn't communicate with thinking he would rather let in a few more then spend several minutes fighting the crowd while scrutinizing our credentials and listening to loud, slow English.  Things had gotten slightly more complicated now that we had to explain why two of six of us have stamps.  make the beast with two backs.

We had to forge the hand stamp - we rushed to find the group, found them, licked our hands and pressed them to theirs hoping they would confer some of their magic Oktoberfest-admitting ink. Nothing.  The others stood there wondering where we had been and by the way, what the make the beast with two backs are you doing to my hand.  We explained the old plan.  Once again we were met with what was an entirely realistic level of skepticism, which pissed me off.  Also, our party had grown by one.  A German girl who had immediately announced that she would rather go back to hotel and watch TV.  No.  No, Fraulein Yoko.

I didn't fly hundreds of miles, land in a really interesting airport, risk stupidity-induced hypothermia, promise to name my first child Mohammed, and then leave the goddamn tent for you assholes only to give up now, I remember saying inspirationally.

HERE IS THE NEW PLAN.  Find some pens.  Or a marker.  Ashes. something black.  Make it look like, I don't know, you had a stamp and sweat it off or something.  German letters, make the beast with two backs, I don't know.  GO.

They quickly scrambled to find what they could, got to work and then we huddled around the hands as we compared actual to makeshift stamps.  Their hands, despite my very specific instructions, looked like they smeared a bunch of shit on them.  Some had smeared shit on their left hand, others on their right.  I figured we only had so much time before the door guy's short term memory of us faded, so it was probably now or never.

PERFECT.  THOSE make the beast with two backsING HANDS LOOK SO PERFECT.  LET'S GO.

We lined up.  Chris with the legitimate stamp in front, the German girl in the middle in case she had to translate, or invite the door guy back to the hotel to watch TV, me, then the rest.  We knocked on the window of the door, and it opened half a foot, as much as the door guy who seemed to recognize Chris could push against the line, who were now singing a song in German that was probably about killing the door guy at Oktoberfest.

I watched as Chris disappeared into the door in front of me a third time.  A fake stamp guy got through.  Yes.  I rushed to the front as the door guy made a move to start looking at hands.  HEY ME!  Remember me?  I squeezed through, as the signing began to sound more like chanting.  I ran in a few steps, then turned to watch our progress.  

The German girl, and the guy from our group she would later blue-ball were attempting to squeeze through next.  A hand from someone from the line had implicated itself in the tangle of door guy, friend and German girl.  It was furtively patting her torso.  It was looking for tit.  My friend looked down at the hand groping its way around.  Not now Jay, goddamn it.  In one invisible push from behind, they were both through.

There were now two inches of daylight, and, among others, two sets of hands with shit smeared on them attempting to make their way through the door.  Things were looking and sounding more like a zombie movie with unmatched body parts sticking through the door.  It it looked like a fight that broke out outside.  I started to run back to the door, when I witnessed the most remarkable feat of strength I have ever seen.

I heard a great moaning at the hinges of the door, as Ivan, our friend from Mexico City, had somehow managed to get enough leverage to shove the door open fully open.  He stood, withstanding the weight and the will of the assholes trying to ruin our plan to get in, like Gandalf before the Balrog.  Get the make the beast with two backs back!  Daylight burst into the tent.  I am pretty sure I heard the sound of trumpets. The of the group collapsed into to door way,  the door guy scrambled in, and Ivan let the door slam behind him.  We were in.


Epilogue:
We spend the rest of the afternoon attempting to fulfill our promise of dying of German beer, singing, making friends, and acting the goddamn fool.  It was a tremendous day.  I have been to a number of Marti Gras and other drinking festivals, and this was the best by a large margin.  I would go back in a fraction of a heartbeat, and I would recommend anyone go.  Early.

Also, in the improbable event someone read the entirety, apologies for length, but not girth.

[RAT900]

Bavarian Dance-Off

[KnightofNi]

i never had that much trouble getting into a tent at oktoberfest. not even on opening day at 11am.

then again we also found a few spots to sit outside so our beers stayed cold a night or 2. spots near the heaters are prime.

glad you got in. it really is the best party i have ever been to. you get a spot at a table and have 8 new friends within 5 min.

[cyrus buelton]

Which much displeasure we have been in country (Costa Rica) for almost a week and have yet to report any crazy stories.

However, we do have 2 more nights, so something could come of it.

I did share several cocktails with a former Delta Operator this morning which was pretty cool.

He was actually on super six-eight (SAR Bird) at the Wolcott crash site.


Very interesting encounter as I am reading Durant's book again.

If this guy is bullshitting me, he sure as shit knows a lot about that battle and pilots involved. I am sure Kopjager will chime in.

[Speedbag]

My first engineering job out of college was with an electronics component manufacturer. I worked closely with several electrical engineers in a lab setting, determining build procedures for production. One EE, whom I am still friends with to this day, shared my penchant for the occasional prank or bout of general silliness.

Part of the engineering lab consisted of a vast stockpile of various and sundry electrical gadgets. One day we selected an electronic project box measuring 8x8x6" from the pile; these are plain black plastic enclosures with circuit board slots in them, and consist of the box itself and a screw-on lid.

In center of said 8x8" lid, we placed a large red nuclear-doomsday-type pushbutton. Beneath it a decal, custom-made for the occasion, that read "DO NOT PRESS".

Inside the box we deviously assembled a large AC solenoid and a 120db siren, along with a very basic control circuit. A simple black AC cord completed the ensemble.  

We placed The Box on a corner of the workbench and plugged it in. Several days went by, and natural curiosity finally got the best of one of the production floor leads, who pressed the button.

Immediately the solenoid fired, which had enough force to cause the box to jump up and fall over onto its side. The siren triggered simultaneously, utterly terrifying the hapless victim and alerting anyone within earshot. She grew monkey-assed red in the face, shrieking, while frantically stabbing at the button with reckless abandon, to no effect.

You see, the only way to defuse the trap was to unplug it. And simply unplugging it never registered in the ensuing panic.

We almost died laughing. She was not amused. The Box of Death was reset for its next victim, which never came once word got out. It eventually was put on a shelf and forgotten.

I wish I had kept it.  

So many other stories, but this one didn't involve booze....

[Triple J]

Here's another work one...same workplace where the "priceless" story from above happened.

As part of the geotechnical department we had a materials testing lab where we tested soil, concrete, and asphalt. One procedure for testing asphalt is to take a sample of the asphalt before it is placed and compacted, bring it back to the lab, heat it up to laying temperature, and hand compact it into a small mold...forming what are called "biscuits". A variety of tests are then run on these.

One day we got in a mix that didn't have any large aggregate, all of the aggregate (rocks) were pea gravel size or smaller...pretty odd. Whatever though, we made some "biscuits". Upon pulling the first biscuit from the mold one of the techs. commented on how it looked a lot like a black rice krispy treat. Hmmm...interesting observation! 

We took some of the leftover asphalt, and pressed it into a standard square baking pan (which we had for drying soil samples)...then quickly cut it into squares. After they cooled (and thus quit smelling so bad), we stacked the squares on a plate and put them upstairs in the kitchen with a sign that read "black licorice rice krispy treats".  They really did look authentic, but we didn't expect anyone to really fall for it.

Wrong...within about 30 minutes the company owner's personal secretary had attempted to take a big bite out of one.  We were quickly visited by her (and she was pissed), followed by the company owner. He actually thought it was pretty funny, but told us to knock it off. 

[cyrus buelton]

We about just got run over by a Tico on a moped while walking back to our room on the grounds of our resort.

What a shock.

Driving school down here I presume is optional.

[Duck-Stew]

High-School hi-jinx:

I used to skip High School.  A LOT.  In fact, if you counted up the classes...I actually missed an entire YEAR of my H.S. education. 

Anywho, I had been ditchin' class pretty hard at one point and came home @ the right time w/my books as per usual.  Went downstairs to my room and not long after, the phone rings.  For no explainable reason, I answered the phone in a high-pitched voice.  Whatever, right?  It wasn't anything I hadn't done before and heck...I still do it sometimes.

Well, turns out it was my H.S. guidance counselor calling to rat me out to my parents for ditching class.  He thought I was my Mom.  I figured if he bought a little bit...he was likely to buy a LOT more so I kept up the act and assured him that Stuart would be severely disciplined at home!  I faked a thank you (my voice was beginning to break up by this point in the conversation) and quickly hung up.

Mom called downstairs, "Stuart, who was that?"
Me, "Just one of my friends...".
Mom, "Ok.  But you were talking in a weird voice..."
Me, "Yeah...."   


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

College antics:

My good friend Chris P. & I went to the local engineering college and it was time for final exams.  We used to study at his house b/c his Mom & Dad were better about noise at late hours than my folks were.  It was somewhere around 1am or so and we decided it was 'Slurpee Time!' so we piled into my 1985 Ford Tempo 4-dr and motored to the local 7-11 for the frozen beverages.

I walked in and saw it.  I **KNEW** I had to have it.  It stood over 6' tall and it wasn't technically 'For Sale'. 

I muttered to Chris, "Dude, I'm going to buy Ray."  Chris just stood there trying to comprehend what I just said in it's full meaning...

You see, 'It' was a huge cardboard stand-up of a Diet-Pepsi ad featuring Ray Charles.

1am in a 7-11 in suburban Detroit in a world before bullet-proof glass and 24-hr surveillance cameras you could pull off shit like this:

Me: "Hey, how much for Ray?"
Clerk: "Huh?"
Me:  "Ray Charles.  How much for Ray?" (pointing this time)
Clerk: "I can't sell that, we just got it in today."
Me (more determined this time): "I'll give ya $10 for it."
Clerk: "I don't know..."
Me: "C'mon man.  Ten Bucks..."

I don't know why the clerk looked around to see if anyone was looking as we were the only two fools in the place...

Clerk: "Deal, just if anyone asks...you didn't get it here."
Me:  "Yeah, sure."

So, there we were walking out of a 7-11 with a (damn near) brand-new Ray Charles Diet-Pepsi cardboard cut out. 

Chris:  "You think he's going to fit?" (motioning to the Tempo)
Me:  "Sure!"  (I had NO idea if he would or would not, remember the whole 'I **KNEW** I had to have it' bit above...  I wasn't about to let simple physics get in my way!)

We ended up removing the only removable part on the display.  Ray's left arm came off and after it did, the display --barely-- fit across the back seat of my Tempo.  Didn't care...Ray was MINE!

I climbed back into the drivers seat only to realize I never did get my Slurpee.  Told Chris to keep Ray company and strolled back inside for my 32oz Slurpee.  While I was in there, several cars and about a dozen people showed up.  One of those cars and one of those people was a policeman.  I paid the whole thing no mind, got my Slurpee and got in line.  Clerk dude was sweatin' bullets...

Sucker...

I kept 'ol Ray for about 4 years in the basement room of my parents house until the cardboard had had enough of the dampness and would barely stand up.

Good times... 

[Popeye the Sailor]

We about just got run over by a Tico on a moped while walking back to our room on the grounds of our resort.

What a shock.

Driving school down here I presume is optional.

That's your best story? That?