College Friends

This is a picture I took last Sunday down New Point way. I know nothing about it at all but liked the way it looked. It would have been better if those two posts weren't in the foreground, but beggars can't be choosers, and if I had moved in for a better angle that would have been considered trespassing, and we all know that I don't do that.

This weekend, I am traveling to Northern Virginia to meet my two roommates from college, Icey and Finnish Friend. (FF was born in Finland , now resides in England and struggles a great deal with the English language even though she is fluent. She also folds her socks and underwear, but that's a story for another time.)

My friend Icey has written about a trip we made one Spring Break from Charlottesville to Key West. I'm going to leave this post up until probably Sunday night or Monday since I'll be out of town, plus it may take you two days to read it all. (Just kidding Icey! My posts are longer than Route 66.)

WARNING: CBW does not condone any of the juvenile behavior described herein. The actions outlined below can be attributed to teenager hormones and stupidity, plain and simple.

Here is Iris. I mean Icey.

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A Key West Story
by Chesapeake Bay Woman's College Roommate Iris. I mean Icey.

Some of you readers may recall a post from several months ago wherein CBW alluded to a college Key West trip during spring break and offered one of her former roommates the opportunity to write a guest post. I volunteered and said I would get to it “soon”. She said no rush as she would not post it until after her vacation.

However she made the mistake of not specifying which vacation and then school started and schedules got crazy again and I continued to give myself an extension on my assignment. (Yes, like CBW, procrastination is a top 5 character flaw.)

Then the other week an obituary caught my eye. Captain Tony Tarracino, “former mayor of Key West, bootlegger, gambler, saloon keeper, fishing boat captain, ladies’ man and peerless raconteur” died at the age of 92 and I realized I’m not getting any younger either!!

For those of you who can’t remember back that far, CBW started as follows: “Once upon a time, three girls, with no fear and not a lot of common sense among them, drove from Charlottesville to Miami in one session. “

Our mode of transportation was my bright yellow diesel VW rabbit with no air conditioning and a top speed of 75 miles an hour. On the plus side, it got 45 miles to the gallon, for a round trip cost of about $65 (yes we were green before being green was cool). Also, it was our only alternative since Chesapeake Bay Little Sister had pimped CBW’s ride over the summer, electing to fill the back seat (of a VW bug) with two giant stereo speakers, precluding a third passenger.

And also a brief word on our travelers – First there was CBW, tall and blonde, with a loud laugh and a hollow leg. There was FF, which in prior CBW posts has been short for “Finnish Friend” but could just as easily stand for “Finnish Fantasy” - as in every man’s fantasy. And there was me, Icey (so named by CBW son because my real name was too hard for a one year old to say), a geek from the engineering school with living habits sloppy enough that only CBW would share a room with her.

So how did we come to think that driving in one long session would be a good idea?

The drive from Charlottesville to Key West is around 20 hrs and most people elected to spend a night in a cheap hotel along the way. However wanting to maximize our beer/food budget, we did not want to allocate any more of our limited funds to lodging than necessary. Over the long drab winter months, one of our friends had introduced us to a medication called “No Doz” . The night we tried No Doz was a glorious night … we floated from fraternity party to athlete party to after-party with ease. We laughed, we made new friends, and even though the sun was rising, we had no trouble mustering the energy to hike up the hill to get our 7-11 burritos.

Remember in the introduction, we had no common sense.

As a result we came up with the bright idea that if we were to procure more No Doz, we would not need to sleep because we could stay up all night. Sure, we would get to Key West a day early, but we could nap poolside during the day and then we had some friends who had left a day early and were there already and we could just sleep on their floors or something.

For the first 16 hours, it was a great plan. However by the time we got to Fort Lauderdale, we had a crazy paranoia incident inside a Wendy’s bathroom which caused us to realize that maybe being awake and being alert and safe drivers were not quite the same thing.

After another couple of hours we hit Miami and decided we’d better stop. We found a cheap roadside motel, checked in and tried to sleep. Unfortunately that was impossible due to the medication so then we had to start drinking to counter the effects. At least we kept to our original plan of lounging poolside. After scaring all of the other hotel guests with our splash dives, water ballet and other pool stunts (we needed to drink A LOT to counter the effects) we finally got to sleep and drove the last 2 hrs of the trip in the morning.

Our time in Key West was roughly spent as follows:
Drinking: 75% of the time * (see CBW's note below.)
Eating: 5%
Sleeping: 25%
Sightseeing: 1%

Highlights of the week included:
• Multiple visits to most of the available watering holes
• One trip to the beach (Zachary Taylor Park – too rocky and too far from the bars)
• Hitchhiking on a stranger’s boat**(See CBW's Note below.) at the sunset festival so we could get to a little island (sand and one palm tree) across the way (remember, no common sense!) Thankfully he was not an axe murderer and he was kind enough to also bring us back.
• Learning the Mike Cormier method of cheap dining (hang onto your Wendy’s salad bar plate and you can reuse it at restaurants up and down the eastern seaboard)
• A house boat trip with FF’s boyfriend and his fraternity brothers. They sent us to buy beer at the Winn Dixie so they could kick off the snooty sorority girls. For some reason we all remember FF farted very loudly in Winn Dixie.*** I also remember that a guy slept in the bathtub so I could sleep in his bed (yes, I was that hot … or maybe he was that chivalrous …)
• The St Patrick’s Day Suds Run. Sure, it meant missing Monday classes (and is the reason we went a day later than other folks) but none of us were well known for missing parties or turning down excuses to skip class. Besides, for only $15 we got a t-shirt and a beer in 10 bars around the island. We could not afford NOT to participate! Needless to say we competed in the “Pub Stroll” division.
• Met, flirted with and had a few beers with Captain Tony. Again quoting the obituary: “He told his stories with great zeal, especially to the ladies, at his bar, Captain Tony's Saloon, where bras hang from the ceiling … “ Not content to be just like all the other women, we left our underwear stapled to the wall. Captain Tony, RIP
• Got stuck behind an accident on one of the mile long bridges between the Keys. Got so hot we had to take of our shirts. We did not know it at the time, but we had just started the tradition of the “Bra Ride”
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CBW's Comments and Clarifications:

* - The drinking referenced is of course water and iced tea. It was hot down there.
** - Warning: Do NOT try this at home. Hindsight in the rear-view mirror is much clearer than it seems. Getting into a vehicle or a boat with an utter and complete stranger who happens to have a tooth missing (not that there's anything wrong with that) and who also happens to have some fish cleaning knives handy is hazardous to your life.
*** - It never ceases to amaze me the details we remember. But it's true. She was squatting at a magazine rack and it accidentally happened. We could NOT stop laughing and I believe management was a bit suspicious of what was really going on.

Also, as you can see, we did not end up saving any money by driving straight through to Miami in one session because we ended up stopping at a hotel anyway. Stupidity, plain and simple.

And finally, I'd like to say once again that the contents of this post represent the antics and poor judgment associated with youth.

This is in no way representative of the highly responsible lives we currently lead.

Otherwise, I'd be dead. Or in jail.