Then later that night, I went up to Mt. Arlington to drink beers and shoot pool with Scott at the incomparable Pat's Bar. (PS - Hey Scott, that's a nice pee stain on your shorts. Hahahaha).
Afterwards we all piled into the Probe (not wanted to risk our lives for the return voyage across the still very chilly lake) and headed back over to Scott's house for a deck fire and some s'more roasting!
After we heard the bad news, we rerouted our course for the other side of the lake and met up with everyone at the colorfully local lakeside bar "The Tidal Wave Bar & Grill." (Which you may remember as being the site of the infamous "Midget Madness incident" of 2001)
Friday night. We headed back into Oranjestad. It was early evening when we arrived and the town was still dead. I decided to nap in the car while Scott set out to explore. We agreed that we'd meet up back over at the Paddock at 9pm. I got there to find he'd already made some new friends.
Then we decided to check out the resort's beach. Oh, hello there bath-warm, turquoise water. How are you doing today? Me, I'm now fine as well. Thank you for asking.
We went over our packing checklist and got some three dolla Chinee foo from across the street and the hung out shooting the shit with my roommate Victoria. Around 2:45am, we were still wide awake and decided we should go out and grab a drink before settling in for the night (that and the fact that Scott was getting my roommate to talk about dirty stuff - I mean, c'mon, do you really need to know your roommate's got a penchant for shaved nuts - and I needed to get him outta there before I lost my mind. Hahaha).
Get a load of this fuggin' guy. I love how Scott has a perfect lipstick kiss-mark right in the middle of his forehead for pretty much the rest of the night.
...karaoke sound system! When he heard of our propensity to rock the karaoke mic, he fired that bad boy up and came around from behind the bar to sing with us.
Here's us with Scott and Eric, two guys that we met that were originally from Boston. Eric, the guy in the JERK shirt, moved to Aruba for good and is a lawyer there.
So Scott got back from the bathroom and after being introduced to the group we all went out to Ramses car. We figured that he'd drive us around or something but he was like "Aruba was a Dutch colony - nobody here cares if you smoke pot."
After the parking situation was settled, we headed over to a tiny bar sandwiched between the main drag and the water called "The Paddock." Scott had scoped it out earlier in the night when we were walking around town and said that he thought it might be a fun place at night. Here's Scott posing with one of the raptors outside. Hahah.
We went inside around 10:30pm and managed to snag a table right before the place started to fill up. From our seated vantage point, we spotted a really cute local girl with a bunch of her friends and spent the next few minutes watching the group and looking for an opening. Mid-way through our planning, Scott left to pee and while I was sitting there alone at the table, I decided that I was just going to go over and try to talk to the cute girl. Before I even got near her, I was ambushed by the cute girl's gay friend Ramses. He introduced me to the cute girl, Alexandra, and then asked me if I wanted to smoke some pot with him. I told him "Sure, but can we wait for my friend to get back from the bathroom?" Ramsey's said "Oooooh! The big bald, one? Oh, we can wait for him...mmmmmmhmmmmm." Hahaha.
So by this point in the night, we'd told everyone that we'd flown in without a place to stay and that we planned on partying ALL NIGHT our first two days and sleeping in the car for a few hours each morning. So when when the Paddock had last call at 2am, the group (still clearly riding high from our Jersey-pride fueled rendition of Bon Jovi's seminal hit "Livin' on A Prayer"), was only too happy to indulge the "crazy New Yorkers," and suggested we all head to an all night karaoke afterhours club. ("An Arubian all night karaoke afterhours club." Is there a sweeter phrase in the world?)
By the way, as we were getting ready to leave the Paddock, the bartender put a stack of plastic cups on the bar. When I inquired what they were for, our new friend Inge explained that they were "to go" cups for your drinks. She mistook my blank stare of disbelief and explained further, "You know, in case you're not done with your drink - you pour it in one of those and then you have it with you for the car ride to where ever you're going next." Me: "Um, but isn't it illegal to drink and drive?" Inge: "I don't think so. Wait, maybe it's illegal for the driver to be drinking, but it doesn't matter. Everyone does it anyway." Me: "Isn't that dangerous?" Inge: "Not really, there are only a few roads and the speed limit is 35mph everywhere - so even if you crash no one really ever gets hurt." Um. Yeah. O-kaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay.
After dinner, we drove out of town and checked out the resort that we'd eventually be staying at. After driving around aimlessly for a few (cranky) hours we decided to head back into Oranjestad. When we got back into town, we spent a long time looking for a place to park. We needed to find a really safe place to park the car (Keep in mind, we didn't have a hotel to check into, so all of our luggage, everything we'd brought with us was locked in the trunk and we couldn't risk a break-in). After almost an hour of fruitless searching, while driving on the busy main road that runs through the middle of downtown Oranjestad, we noticed that people had parked their cars on the five-foot wide cement island that separated that two lanes. At the very end of the line of cars, there was a space that was just big enough to fit our car into. After several failed parallel parking attempts, a frustrated Scott got out of the car, and LIFTED THE BACK END OF THE CAR UP off the road and onto the island. Viola! Instant safe parking.
We scored a rental car and headed to check in to our...oh, wait, did I forget to mention that our resort check-in date wasn't until Saturday and we'd decided to party the first two nights and sleep in our rental car? Hahah. Ok, so here's the story. Keep in mind, we went on this trip because my Uncle Bruce had a week at a luxury resort that he wasn't going to be able to use. That meant that we had a free place to stay from Saturday to Saturday. When we went to buy plane tickets, we found out that if we flew in on Thursday (instead of Friday or Saturday), our flights would be almost $600 cheaper. Considering we were both trying to save money (neither of us were working at the time), we decided that we take the cheaper Thursday flight and and just sleep in the rental car until Saturday when we were able to check into the fancy resort.
Despite what this story would otherwise indicate, Tobias must actually have a really good sense of humor. At one point during the five minutes he spent trying to get us to hit him, he pointed at me and said "Fuck you." then slowly turning to point at Scott said, "And fuck you." And then to further illustrate his point, he took his lil' marker back out and wrote this on the wall complete with arrows clarifying who he was directing "the fucking" at. That shit ruled. THAT should be his new tag. Tobias, if you ever read this, I'm sorry we gave you a hard time. Maybe we just caught you on a bad night?
PS - The fact that I'm sorry doesn't change the fact that you're tag is GAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY! Hahahahaha.
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