My wife got me a great birthday present this year. Ashley and Kerri, my buddy Jim's wife, made plans before Thanksgiving to send us to St. Louis for a hockey game. Jim's birthday is a week before mine and he's a big Blues fan, too. They got us tickets, made hotel reservations and sent us out for Guys Weekend.
When we found out, it was all we talked about. Guys Weekend was going to be filled with poker, booze, cigars and strip clubs. We joked about how anything that happened in St. Louis stayed in St. Louis.
I think that's what separates guys in their twenties from guys in their forties. We didn't do anything even remotely like that.
Don't get me wrong... we drank a lot, but we didn't puke in a parking lot. We ate crap all weekend. White Castle for lunch on the way in; chili dogs and beer at the hotel Happy Hour before the game. The healthiest thing we ate was nachos, I think.
We even went completely the opposite way of any Guys Weekend when we escorted a lady and her son from the hotel to the arena. They were from Indiana and it was the kid's first NHL game, first time in St. Louis. She asked if they could walk with us. She was a little worried that maybe something would happen, not knowing that the area around the arena is probably the safest spot in the entire city on game night.
No problem, we said, in essence violating every Guys Weekend rule about gentlemanly conduct.
The Blues won big over the Rangers and we hit an Irish bar to celebrate. A DJ started cranking out dance tunes and we left, what with all the women dancing and all. We headed to the casino.
We played poker until the wee hours. I drank till last call. The chili dogs disagreed with Jim and he quit drinking much earlier. (What a girl!) We were definitely more sober than our cab driver who kept moving into turn lanes that were actually oncoming traffic.
We only slept about four hours and made it to a poker tournament across town. The drive back to Kansas City involved a lot of caffeine and sunflower seeds to keep us awake.
All in all, it was a good weekend, albeit a pretty tame one. We're pretty sure we need to make it an annual birthday event. Maybe in your forties, that's what you need instead of craziness. We don't have to tell the wives it wasn't the wild weekend we made it out to be. But I think they have their suspicions, though.
They're asking to go next year.
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