Bay To Bachers

So I haven't blogged in a while, and I want to get back into it. And when I say get back into it, I mean me and Trocano got up at 0300 today to make sandwiches for EMS Week thinking it would take us 8 hours (?!) and by 0530 we were done. So now I have some free time as I make a futile attempt to avoid morning traffic.

I wanted to talk about Bay to Breakers 2010, or as I like to call it, Bay to Bachers.

So this year we decided to go as Jersey Shore, which I find quite entertaining due to the fact that I have never seen the show, yet know who all of those bitches are. After recruiting Christie and Ian Branyan, we decided to go big or go HOme.

Preparation for the costume began about 2 weeks ago, when I realized that I lacked the genetic malfunctioning in the height department to be Snookie, so that left only JWOWW for me to be. We actually have a lot in common. I like to get drunk and fight people, and, like her, I find it imperative to go to the gym in a bathing suit top and booty shorts with some clever slogan like 'PINK' or 'LUSH' engraved on the anus.

I began dieting about 2 weeks in. It is really hard to diet when most of my meals are consumed out in the field, and seeing as how the majority of my time is spent in Oakland, my options range from Boston Market to KFC. So I dieted, and I worked out like a mother, and the only six pack I had was staring at me from the fridge with the words "dont drink you alcoholic" plastered across their label.

Then the big day came, and for fucks sake it came early. Who decides Bay to Breakers needs to start at the ass crack of dawn? I'm sorry, but I am not one of those crazy Kenyans who flew in here to run this race. I am a drunk American looking to dress up and get lost in San Francisco. Unfortunately, the week prior, I had worked several early shifts, and sleeping in to me had consisted of waking up before 6 am. I was going in with one foot in the grave.

So we headed to Branyan's house at about 0845...roughly an hour after the race started. I had my alarm set for 6. Shit happens.

We were armed with non-toxic craft paint, wigs, sunglasses, attitudes and fisting. Fist pumping. I should really clarify that. Fist pumping. Not like fisting someone's anus, although that totally wasn't out of the question. When you fist someone do you like do it like you are gonna punch them? Or do you the more subtle, like open hand reaching into a closed chamber. WHAT THE FUCK AM I TALKING ABOUT.

We got there and painted up. Now this was the problem. I decided that our base paint should be brown, and despite my attempts to counter the half of bottle of brown with an entire bottle of orange, we looked like white people trying to be racist. Well I did. Christie and Branyan managed to wait it out until the color had settled so they got their orange complexion. Me? I looked like Tiger Woods taking refuge in a tanning bed for 3 weeks.

So we dressed up and made it to Bay to Breakers and walked and talked and fist pumped and took pictures with random people. We by far had the best costumes. Where was the creativity this year? If I saw one more goddamn skank ho dressed in booty shorts and a slutty clevage shot pretending she was Susan B. Anthony, I was gonna kill. I'm sorry, but I think Hellen Keller a bonnet, not a breast enhancer.

Now this is where my adventure home begins for those of you wondering. LONG story short, I end up at my friend Kim's house after getting kicked out of some random house that I was hanging out in. So I am hanging out at Kim's house as she is trying to move it and I am trying to be helpful. By being helpful, I decide to busy myself by countering all of the progress she had currently made with moving in, all the while trying not to get brown paint all over her new bed nor explain to her that I didn't know where my wig, hat or sunglasses went. I was a mess.

At this point, I am wearing a bathing suit covered in specks of brown paint, so it looked like someone with blast ass used my swimwear as toilet paper. I have on pink booty shorts that say JWOWW on the ass, well kind of the ass, I didn't know her name had two W's, so I had to add one on the side because I ran out of room. I am covered in flakey bits of orange/brown paint, and a combination of the sun/booze had led me to acquire what I like to call 'meth face'. In a matter of 3 hours, I had aged approx. 30 years and developed a drug addiction in the process. Seriously, I looked BEAT.

So after bothering Kim for several hours, I decided it was getting dark and I should begin my journey home. Branyan and Christie had both safely made it back to Oakland, and as I now call it, 'left me for dead'. Kim lived out in the Panhandle, which I couldn't show you on a map, but somehow she convinced me it wouldn't be a bad walk to the nearest BART station. I have come to the conclusion that one of us has a poor sense of what it means when someone says 'its not that far'.

Alas, I began my journey in flip flops and the outfit noted above. It was dark by this point, and there were no cabs, people, animals or buildings. It was that desolate. So I just kind of started walking with no real direction or sense of what was around me.

About an hour later I called my friend Lianne so I could get Christie's phone, which still doesn't make sense why she had it in the first place. She lives by the Castro, so I started walking over there. FINALLY I arrive at the Castro about 30 minutes later, where she then tells me she lives 8 blocks up from it. She somehow thought I was driving, so when I arrived at her door quite a while later severely persperating and oozing pus from the sores on my feet, she became quite concerned.

Being the amazing friend that she is, she took me to the Mission and 16th Bart station, where I proceeded pause by a trash can and pondered why there was a dead pigeon smashed into it. The pondering cost me about 2 minutes, which is exactly how much I missed the train by, which equated to me waiting for 30 minutes for the next train. If any of you have ever taken the Mission and 16th BART station, then I will leave it at that: I waited there for 30 minutes, cold, alone and in my outfit.

When I boarded the train, I began to frantically text Branyan and Christie (even though I had her phone) to get me from Rockridge BART. I am waiting for a reply and I hear nothing. I assume they will get me, and as I pull in a little after 11...I see nobody waiting for me at the station. In fact, there was nobody at the station.

So here I faced a moral dilemma...what do I do in West Oakland at 11 pm dressed as a Jersey Shore wash up with no place to go and nobody to get me.

You walk aimlessly. DUH.

So I embark on my journey, and I think I have a general idea of where Branyan lives. I walk, and walk and walk. I'm not remembering any of these streets. Hmmmm this is weird. The neighborhood is turning a bit darker. Oh good! A main street! I walk up to it. I am at 51st street in Oakland.

Rule of thumb: Any street named after a number system = ghetto.

Then panic begins to set in. I start to walk and walk and walk until I find where I am going, and then I realize I have an even longer walk ahead. The sore on my foot looks like something straight out of Paris Hilton's panty line, I'm severely dehydrated and the elements were not being kind to my outfit that was fit for a summer's day in the Florida Keys.

As I'm walking down Telegraph, I pass a gas station, where an African American woman filling up her car spots me. She then says:

"You better run."

..................................................

I don't know what that meant, nor why she said it. But when I'm walking alone in the ghetto and some black lady tells me to run? I'm fucking running.

I immediately disengage my flip flops and bolt down the street. The whole time I'm running I'm thinking, "thank god I worked out so hard for this costume so now I can run forever and outrun whatever is chasing me."

I run, and run, and run, and run. I see a Taco Bell, I'm tempted, but run further.

I make it to Branyans house...finally. I later used the odometer on my run...1.3 miles. Barefoot. Through the ghetto.

I manage to get my car keys, which were cleverly hidden in case something like this happened (as well as sleeping supplies and water in my car) but I did not want to sleep in my car. It was frigid, I needed to pee and I needed a shower. So I began knocking. Nobody answered. I knocked for DAYS and nobody answered. Fine. I'll sleep in my fucking car.

So then I go, and I drink all of the water, and I go to get the sleeping supplies I packed, and then I realize...wait a second WHERE ARE THEY. My sweats and sweatshirt somehow made it into Branyan's house earlier in the day when I was cold, so I was left to sleep with a balled up cardigan and my EMT jacket that is covered in MRSA.

I can make this work.

I fall asleep for about an hour and then people come by and begin fighting by my car. Not like ghetto fighting, arguing fighting. It wakes me up. I am pissed, but cozy back into my cheaply upholstered trunk, and begin my slumber. Then I have to pee, so I squat behind this dumpster, and some of the pee gets in my open sore and I want to scream but can't and then I started to get frustrated.

So then I go back to sleep more. And then some fucker calls 911 and a fire truck drives by with its sirens blaring. That's it.

I go back to Branyans house and find his bedroom window, peer in and see a figure curled up on the floor. I then frantically bang on it, and he finally let's me in.

I then lay down next to a completely passed out Christie, who begins to throw up, some of which is on my arm as I try to watch Avatar which I have never seen and somehow contort my body to fit on an ottoman for the night to sleep.

Between Christie's barfing and the ottoman supporting 1/8th of my body, I decide to sleep on the floor. Just as I am getting to sleep, Branyans fucking ferrett comes up and whiskers in my face status starts to inspect me. I was so confused and stressed that I almost started to step on it for fear it was an Avatar person.

After being up every hour for Christie's vomiting needs and the random sounds of the house (snoring, farting, ferrets, puking, creepy haunted noises), I manage to wake up in time to call in sick to work, which is not allowed when you are hungover, so I go into work anyways.

I work an 11 hour day, hungover and on no sleep, only to get a call from Branyan and Christie that its like genocide status in the house and reinforcements are needed. So I stop by CVS and pickup one of those rug cleaners, and stop by Boston Market for a family meal for 3.

When I arrive in the house, it is like a scene from D-Day. Anarchy. Bodies everywhere. Body fluids everywhere. And before me, are two of my closest friends, comatose and shaking with weird patches of hair stuck to their faces and looks in their eyes that make me feel some sort of emotional connection to their suffering.

After all was said and done, everyone survived and all was made well. The sore on my foot is leaking a green fluid that sticks to my sock and is extremely painful to walk in. My calves feel like I ran a marathon barefoot through West Oakland (oh wait I did) and the stains on my teeth from not brushing them for two days show my weakness to the cause.

So, after two days...I finally made it home from Bay to Breakers. I feel like my whole experience can best be summed up from my mother, Carol, and her wisdom:

"I thought a cop was going to come to the door and tell us you died at Bay to Breakers because you just...you just never came home."

I know Mom. I know.