It was a pretty long week, definitely too long for what I got out of it. I can help support sales, but at end of the day I'm not managing a pipeline. Personally, I did get some good stuff out of it. We were teamed up with people from different companies and I ended up in a group with a Canadian, Pakistani, Colombian, and a Zonie. I was the youngest of the group so I figured I'd defer and try to learn a little. The first order of business, they nominated me team leader. Whoa. You know what though, I'm here and I may as well make it a challenge, what the hell, let's do it! We did really well and all the guys (all fairly older than me) came up afterward and thanked me for my leadership. Badass.
By the end of the week I was pretty burned out and maybe should have gone home. Since I'm here though, let's call up my old college roommate, Cal.
Cal tells me he's got tickets to the A's game Friday - tailgate, beers, the whole 9. During the conference, the other product manager asks me who the A's are playing, so I look it up. The A's aren't even in Oakland that weekend. What? I call Cal the next morning to see what I missed. It went something like this:
Me: Hey Jackass, the A's aren't even in town this weekend
BJ: [super-groggy]
Me: The A's are in Anaheim.
BJ: [pause, waking up]
BJ: Ahhhhhh, Epic Fail!
Haha, dumbass.
Well, never let a broken plan get in the way of an awesome weekend, so we instantly swing into Plan B mode and decide to invent a BART Bar Crawl. Cal lives a 2 minute walk from the BART station by his house, so to prevent DUI situations and $100 cab rides, he wanted to have a drinking map guaranteeing him to maximize partying while still making it home on the last train of the night. Works for me. We did some research throughout the week and found every bar w/in a quarter-mile of every BART stop from his house to Berkley and the Embarcadero. When my seminar wrapped Friday I hopped on the BART and cruised to Cal's pad.
Upon arrival Cal had a new twist - gotta have a game of Bingo to go with the BBC. This isn't your grandmother's bingo, rather it's a set of objectives to achieve by the end of the night. Examples include:
- Spy a black thong on a chick leaning over the bar or a pool table
- Get a girl to talk about eating organic
- Get a hippie chick to prove she doesn't shave her pits (Berkley only)
- Get a cougar to tell you her real age
There were many more I can't remember, but we have a master list (somewhere). Anyway, achieve any of the above and you instantly have to yell "Bingo!" and you get to choose who buys the next round. Brilliant!
We hit a chill local bar in Pleasant Hill, Pyramid Brew House in Walnut Creek, the bar in Lafayette we'd been to on the previous trip, and ended up at a Irish pub in Orinda. Bingos so far: 1 - Cal got a chick to talk about eating organic meat at some restaurant. We acquired 3 additional friends in Orinda - Charlene, Charlene's bro, and Katz. We were out on the patio drinking and Cal ended up placed next to two girls so he struck up a conversation. Turns out they were lesbians - not that there's anything wrong with that - expect that this spun Cal in a whole new direction. Cal is an ultimate people person and so he had to know all kinds of facts - who asked who out, who paid, who went in for a kiss first - the girls were pretty shocked which was hilarious. The kicker though is I know he was driving to ask them about their sex life - which he thankfully never achieved. Every question however was prefaced by a "Uhhhh, ummmm..." like he was thinking about how to phrase it, but really he was just stopping himself from asking how they get it on. "Ask lesbians how they get it on" is now part of the master list.
Charlene and her brother took off after that and Katz, Cal, and I pushed on to Berkley. By this time we were pretty smashed. We ended up at a bar that was OK; mostly college kids in clicks. We only had about 45 mins to get back on the BART so we lost momentum pretty quickly. We also decided that whoever can get the last bingo gets to pick the guy who buys beer on the way home.
On the way down to the platform we came across a drunk pack of students and one of the girls - we'll call her that - grabbed Cal and tried to molest him. Watching Cal breakaway was like a gazelle escaping a lion - zig, zag, zoom. I pointed out after we'd rounded the corner that he had a chance to score a "Get a fat chick to tell you her real weight" bingo. He stopped, looked back that direction, took and moment, and simply said "Not worth it."
We got on the BART home, Katz switching trains to get back to Man Jose, Cal and I back to Concord. We were having a riot on the ride home, holding court with the people around us. As the train thinned out we ended up chatting up an older woman who was on her way home from hanging out with friends. After a little sweet talk - I was drunk, so I know I sounded good - she gave me her actual age. BINGO! Cal is buying a 30-pack. Cal went to work trying to get the woman to come home with us, but she wasn't having any of it. As we were in line at the store Cal goes "I should be hitting that. She owes me for this." Haha, yeah, whatever drunkey.
The next morning I decided to make a run to SFO to get home a bit early. Cal and I agreed the next run has to happen in SD. Start preparing yourself now...
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