best weekend of the year! PART DEUCE

so i've pretty much covered Thursday, Friday and Saturday of the holiday weekend - give or take some events that i may have overlooked (the gay bar with "Shameless" and rowdy Ran and the rest of the Texas transplants) not because they weren't important, but because so much fun occurred over this 3 to 4 day period that i cannot possibly remember it all, but have no fear i still have Sunday to cover :)

the day started out nice and calm enough. i woke up to a flock of birds screaming their heads off directly outside my window like the sky was falling at 7AM. given this somewhat exciting awakening, i decided to go to early morning mass - i mean if the sky is falling i better get my ass to church! i found a new church that is right by my place so if i want to beach cruise it over now that i have one, i can and not even sweat in the process. i had my morning coffee afterwards at the little organic cafe on the way and relaxed until my phone rang and the day really got started.

Dana called to inform me we were going to a free flowing champagne brunch at Bali Hai and because we were both extremely lazy and quite worthless this weekend with our no-work-out-selves, we were going to beach cruise it there...hills and all. so we are going to ride our single gear beach cruisers alongside massive amounts of traffic to Harbor Island, up some pretty dadgum rollers all to get there and drink free flowing champagne...does that seem like a really bad idea to anyone else but me? i mean we do have to get back the same way we came...? of course not, Dana was sure of it. so sure in fact, that i happily pushed my worries to the side and eagerly agreed. i mean prime rib, seafood and mimosas - who could say no? and who would want to for that matter?!

the great thing about this part of the story is as we were leaving my place, we noticed three cyclists going in the direction we were about to take and i commented to Dana that we were going to have to follow the traffic rules this time because there weren't going to be sidewalks for us to ride our monstrous contraptions on. so as we're riding along - huffing and puffing, out of the saddle, back in the saddle, up again and laughing so hard our stomachs hurt - we found ourselves right along side the three riders!!!! i mean who catches up with people on road bikes when they themselves are on 50 pounds of welded steel?! well, rock stars i tell you, that's who and quite apparently that is what we are.

we finally made it up to the restaurant where the rest of the party had already begun and we commenced eating, drinking and being merry. i don't know at what time i passed that buzz point to the drunk point, but one minute i was commenting on how i already felt my one glass of champagne to commenting on how drunk i was. Lord have mercy. we took so many pictures it was ridiculous. i mean we looked like out of town college kids on spring break. we took pictures from every angle, view and position possible. the staff and our table neighbors seemed to be amused. we never made any sort of scene or got belligerent, we just looked like good friends having good fun...and you know what? we were. i haven't had fun like that in years and it was fantastic. poor Bri was so tired, he was having a hard time keeping his eyes open, but we knew it wasn't too bad seeing as he was still eating :-P as we were leaving, i had this thought - BUI. i mean biking under the influence goes on your driving record if you get caught...the thought must have been fleeting because before i knew it, we were headed off to our tri shop to tell JT we had traded in our tri bikes for the beasts underneath us. great. at least he offered to help us make them aero.

i won't get into the ridiculousness that transpired in my apartment, but suffice to say i was acting pretty "special" if you know what i mean - and unfortunately there's proof.

so the afternoon consisted of me being completely wasted and trying to sleep it off on the beach. so many damn embarrassing pictures were taken of me that i just don't know what to say except that my half naked body has been strewn all over the likes of myspace and facebook. one thing is for sure - katieb is not allowed anywhere near a camera when she has had even the slightest amount of alcohol in her system much less an entire bottle of champagne and some of Bri's homemade-knock-you-on-your-ass sangria. if you so happen to fall upon any of these pics (i have added some for your laughing enjoyment), just know i had no idea what i was doing and you should take it up with Dana and Brian on the appropriateness of our behavior in my apartment, on the beach and in the restaurant (FYI: it was all good, clean fun - G rated, except for me doing body building poses -oy vey!). i mean friends shouldn't let friends take pictures drunk. that being said, i laugh my ass off every time i look through them and thank God we have something to commemorate the awesomeness of the weekend with. i literally cannot remember having this much fun in such an incredibly long time. thank you Dana and Brian for always making me smile and being my very trusty partners in crime.