Josh's Bachelor Party. Yeah!

First weekend in June. Second weekend out of Chicago in a row. Josh's bachelor party. Wow, I guess this means its finally happening...

So I only have a few pictures and a few stories but its always a great occasion to have old college friends together- and there are those that I see frequently, those I see occasionally, those I see once a year, and those I've seen like none in 4 years or something. We had all of the above.

Our friend Joey, who falls into the last category, was nice enough to ask his parents if we could use his lake house. The last time I'd been there was 5 years prior (I think) for HIS bachelor party, and the last time before that was in grade school! It was a short drive north of South Bend so not too bad.

First though, we had a Friday night in Chicago. Those that were flying in made it in time to meet us out- Scott (Unca Smooth) from Texas, and Josh's brother-in-law Chris (Martha's husband) from New Jersey (it'd be funnier if it was called Jew Nersey). I had seen him a few months before when we visited NYC so it was good to see him again. Our friend, one of my closest friends from college, Rob, flew in earlier, had lunch with a friend I didn't even know worked blocks from me, and then him and I went and saw X-Men: First Class after I got out of work a bit early and high-tailed it over there. Then we walked to the bar and met up with those local and from afar.

I was the sole person in charge of getting everyone back to my apartment, and up and out the door in the morning, which was a bit tougher after a few people thought it was funny to order Josh shots :) We were half an hour late getting up (first warm day meant air conditioner was overpowering my alarm clock volume) and then we were half an hour later leaving. So we got to the lake an hour late. Oh well.

Josh's brother, and two other brothers-in-law, and dad were there, and his brother had done a great job of gathering food for us all- burgers, dogs, chips, lots of crappy beer (requested by some as "nostalgic" from those college days) and BACON WRAPPED FILET MIGNONS. He did good.

Joey came down all the way from Toronto- I hadn't seen him since his wedding. Justin, who only lives in Ohio but we also never see, drove straight to the lake. Great to see him- though I'd been lucky enough to see him twice in a month in South Bend during football season.

Anyway, here's some pictures to tell the story. We mostly sat around, ate, drank beer, ate, drank beer, burned stuff, drank beer. We didn't even do that much stupid stuff, though we shoulda cause Joey said the lake house was getting razed in a month and rebuilt brand new...

The nice swing people were chilling on. I'm not sure I ever sat on it actually.

There was some cornholing. I warmed up real bad, and then dominated for a bit. We went swimming in the lake, and also toured around in canoe/kayaks for awhile which was fun. We didn't do any creepy late-night pitch-black swimming or anything.

There was also some burning of stuff. The fire started in the middle of the afternoon cause someone decided it was time to get it started. Silly. By the end of the night we were cold cause we didn't have enough fuel for a proper fire.

We did have enough fuel to burn Rob's sandals though. Apparently they were the same ones he'd had since college, which then he'd had since high school. They were even his shower sandals. Crazy. He said they were ready to go, and Justin had been trying to get someone to burn something. It only took Justin promising to give Rob his own sandals if Rob burned the old ones. Done.

We watched them flare up and melt away. Of course Justin then tried to convince Rob to take them out of the fire and put them on :D

Then Justin convinced Smooth to burn his shirt. Sleeveless old tshirt from college. Done. On the fire. This is it in flames on the end of a stick...

And after we were tired of sitting around and drinking beer and getting cold and scrounging for firewood, we called it a night, and everyone covered the floor of the place with blow-up mattresses and sleeping bags. And then morning-person Dave woke up at like 7am and started walking around and playing Nintendo. We were all up and at-em by 8:30. WHOSE IDEA WAS THAT???

Before we left though I played dad, knowing that while it felt lame at the moment it'd be worth it, and said we should take a group photo. Josh's family members except Chris had left the night before, but the rest of us got in it, for memory's sake. And actually other people said it was a good idea so there you go.

The nice thing is Rob, Scott, and Chris didn't fly out till that afternoon/evening, so we went back to Chicago and played Wii Mario Kart, had some beers, went to a bar and sat on the rooftop patio and had some beers, came back to the apartment and had some beers. So we got the most out of the weekend which was great. It was nice to have friends in from out of town and obviously means a lot to have em all together. I hope I can draw people from Texas, Minnesota, New Jersey, and Toronto for MY bachelor party someday :) Which I'm still hoping will happen before ten more years has gone by I'm old enough to have a movie made about my mid-life plight.

Savannah for the first time.

Fourth and final weekend in a row out of town, Second wedding of the summer, still traveling with Josh (and Andrea again)- we road tripped to Savannah with Josh's parents for a high school friend's wedding (Candace Reilly). She's been going to SCAD (Savannah College of Art and Design) for a couple years during summers, and I guess decided it was a pretty place to have a pseudo-destination wedding. It was 16 hours, and we met up with his parents in Indianapolis at our friend Rachel Blauvelt (Berzai)'s house to leave Andrea's car and continue down (and save a couple hours of travel by not driving to South Bend).

Josh's mom was great about packing delicious snacks and beverages for the ride down, and we took their minivan. I love minivan road trips :D I did my share of driving, and got a few things done on my computer (I'm big on not wasting time doing nothing and I brought my laptop, as I am doing now, typing this on the way back from SB for the 4th of July).

We also crashed that Thursday night at a hotel in some town outside Chattanooga to get 4 hours of sleep, conveniently when it started storming like all hell. Still by the time we got there the next day, after a nice little breakfast at our brief hotel, it was 5pm Friday.

This was the first thing we saw when we parked at the hotel. I thought it was awesome, cause he whited-out the "U" to make an umlaut (the dots over the U)- Funf means five in German. Maybe it was his fifth Porsche.

Here was a view of Savannah from our room. There was a pool on the 3rd or 4th floor also. The city was smaller than I thought, and full of trees and parks, and a few churches.

Our hotel. And lots of trees.

Some little pub in town. The whole of downtown seemed quaint and like it could be walked in about an hour. LOTS of little parks- the "squares"- 24 of them in total.

It was unbelievably humid, and very warm. But I didn't mind cause I was already prepared to sweat. We had plenty of time that evening before a post-rehersal-dinner party, so we walked to the river walk, through the squares. We saw lots of these great moss-covered trees, and English sorta architecture, which reminded me somewhat of New Orleans I guess (though obviously thats French).

One of the squares, and the giant trees therein. Gnarly, huge, sprawling, great shade. Cool little parks to sit in and walk through. I imagine people give locations and directions based on the squares in this city.

Just thought this was a nice composition of old-timey looking stuff.

One of the squares had some civic building next to it. Which had a HIDEOUS giant air-conditioning unit sitting on top of it. Just awful.

Another square, more trees. Really beautiful and quaint, but also much smaller of a city than I expected- no real downtown, no high-rises, only a quaint main street with like the movie theater and some small restaurants on it :)

Once we got near the river walk it got very touristy but very nice too. The interesting thing was that you had to walk way down some steps to get to the river walk. But then there was this whole other cobblestone road down there, and overhead were walkways like this going to the buildings, as if they moved the whole level of the town a couple hundred years ago before they built the rest of it. Not sure, but very curious about it.

It looked very castle-y.

Here was the river walk, and Josh's head. A trolley went down the street, and there were lots of old buildings with little balconies, and lots of touristy shops making candy and selling trinkets and stuff.

Like this guy making salt-water taffy! Apparently popular here. Old-fashioned candy making in general, in fact.

Wrapped taffy, and candy apples...

Then we found one of the rumored "to-go" bars that had giant smoothie machines making frozen blended fruity alcoholic drinks, like one that was called "Call A Cab"! So we got some of those and headed back out- they'd keep us cool if but a little more dehydrated... Not sure where Josh and his dad (Papa Smurf) were looking.

This is what I meant by balconies. This dude just sitting on his chair. Looked fun. Good people watching for sure.

More balconies. Old buildings.

Some big war vet monument.

They also had palm trees, which immediately made it feel more exotic. I guess it IS near the ocean and not that far from Florida so what the heck. Andrea liked the spiny-ness.

We had dinner and drinks on this rooftop restaurant (I think Josh's parents had been there before, cause they HAD been to Savannah before) and we could see this huge bridge there, which later we'd drive on to get to South Carolina on our way out of town. Some pretty big barges were heading down the river toward the ocean, and blowing their foghorns.

And it looked cooler at night. We had time to chill and talk and sit, which was nice as it got cooler when the sun went down.

Finally it was time to head back to the hotel en route to the party before the wedding that we wanted to stop by. There were lots of hearses with the tops chopped off giving ghost tours- apparently a big thing in Savannah. Its an old war-torn town after all...

This was a cool and very new building, belonging to SCAD I realized as I took it.

The walk was longer than we thought but I liked seeing the city. This was a whole residence, which couldn't have been more than a couple rooms, over a two-stall garage. Very weird, especially because it wasn't a super dense town so not like they needed to cram something in over a garage...

After LOTS of walking we finally got to the party, at some rental houses near the park where the wedding was. The houses were old, with HUGE ceilings, and these hinges on the doors I thought were awesome.

Another long walk back to the hotel, a late night to bed, but we slept in decently in the morning and then headed out to see the town more before the afternoon wedding. Second story balconies/entrances on lots of the houses again reminded me of New Orleans.

Fantastic trees. We went in this super old cemetery.

And this guy died in 1795. Wicked.

Obviously this headstone had seen hard times, but the fence still seemed kinda silly.

The movie theater downtown.

John Wesley, and Papa Smurf. Founder of Methodism.

Near the river walk, again with the sunken cobblestone street and the walkways overhead. Pretty wild, pretty cool, really wanna know what they did here. Josh thinks maybe the river used to come up that high...that wouldn't quite make sense, but it looked like something LIKE that.

It was almost like a moat used to be there. Crazy.

Another architect picture- old cobblestone meeting brick, which is also patched with asphalt. Eclectic.

The salt-water taffy maker-wrapper. That giant squishy tube on the right that is swirly and red, got rotated and squished down, chopped off, spun into a wrapper, and dumped in a little bin, like once or twice per second, and...

then the bins would fill up and go up to a conveyor belt overhead that carried em and dumped in a big bin where you could fill up your bag :)

This guy was making giant puddles of caramel stuff for the pecan-turtle things they were making that looked ridiculous good.

Rows and rows of the things. Yum.

These were the stairs that got us up from the river walk to the level of the rest of the city.

In the afternoon when we got back everyone was bushed but maybe me- Josh and I went for a swim in the pool and sat out by the pool and read, and then I walked a block to see the local Cathedral- they had a great baptismal font with this interlocking Irish-looking thing at the bottom.

The coolest part is when I realized they used two different kinds of gold tile to make it look like there were shadows, so the thing looked like it was weaving in and out, up and down, and had depth- genius, and beautiful. Gleaming.

Another giant amazing tree.

At this point in the afternoon we were walking to the main park, Forsyth, for the wedding near a big fountain. I didn't bother showering especially since I'd swam, but I also knew I was gonna sweat real good in dress clothes. Long-sleeve shirt and tie, walking through the city, when it was like 85 and crazy humid.

But it was still neat, the row houses, and we saw someone else who looked like she was en route to her own wedding?

The water fountain, Josh and Andrea getting a picture after the ceremony, before we walked to the reception.

Down this giant tree-lined lane.

At the reception, Candace and Jay saying a few words. It was a very small reception, fun, a few people there I knew who it was good see.

They served sweet tea and seafood and carrot cake they made themselves, and even had alcoholic Arnold Palmers, and great Italian meats, cheeses, and bread for appetizers. So I was satisfied :) Afterwards Josh and Andrea and I walked back through the park. Here was some other pavilion.

The hotel lobby- we were gonna go head outside and smoke some cigars but a CRAZY storm started with amazing lightning, and the streets were flash flooding. I stood outside under the awning and watched.

And post-storm there was a nice little accident that was surprisingly quiet for being like 50 feet away.

Finally up in the room for the night, I saw the employees cleaning up after the storm- fishing the chairs out of the pool- ha! I mean, bummer.

Last view of the city's river front as we drove out that Sunday morning, headed back after being in Savannah less than 48 hours, for a 16 hour drive back, and then work the next morning. Ouch.

We got to cross the cool bridge, because I said we should take a different route back than we took down, and go through South and North Carolina (which was fun)...

...aside from the blinding rainstorm that briefly hit, that Andrea got to drive through. Oops.

All in all it was fun though and totally worth it for a friend's wedding, with friends, in a city I hadn't been to. (I always feel the need for wrap-up statements).