No Retreat, No Surrender

Saturday morning finally catches up with me, and I awake to find myself sleeping in bed next to a girl.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. Let's start at the beginning. The journey to Myrtle Beach was fairly uneventful, only almost losing control of the car once, and running one red light. We stop at a random Wendy's, meeting three other car-loads of our group who also decided to stop there on a whim. We also have to stop to buy drinks, which is slightly more complicated than it sounds.

Apparently, North Carolina law prevents spirits above a certain strength from being sold in normal shops. Instead, this type of alcohol can only be bought from a state-run chain (ABC). This probably explains why Smirnoff Ice here is made with vodka flavouring instead of real vodka. Rishi and I are given the task of buying the alcohol, as we're the only ones who are legally old enough. I should have realised there and then what sort of weekend this was going to be.

When we arrive at the hotel, about an hour from midnight, the drinking begins in earnest. Somehow, our room becomes the focus of the night activities. Everyone makes up for the reasonably late starting time by drinking as much as possible.

Maybe it's just my lack of experience, but I don't seem to remember drinking games being a big part of student life in Manchester. Most likely because we could all go out and get drunk without facing arrest. Unless you attempted to steal a traffic cone, but that's another story for another time.

Anyway, people got very drunk, very quickly. I'm coaxed into joining a game called 'Circle of Death', during which I'm glad I mixed myself a rather weak drink. Then it's 'Have You Never Ever?', which is a wonderful game for people looking to start a blackmail racket. By the time this ends, it's almost four o'clock. We now have a few mean drunks, people being sick (in our bathroom. Oh, and in the bath as well. Nice), and a call from the front desk complaining about the noise.

At this point, it's time to think about going to bed. That's when things really start to fall apart. Some are locked out because the person with the key has already gone to sleep. Others go to their room only to find that some people have decided to use the room for...other activities. So at five in the morning, we have to come with a new sleeping plan that gives everyone a chance to sleep in a bed that hasn't already been slept in. Space rapidly becomes short...

Which brings us to the start of today's entry; for your benefit, I'll skip the hour-long discussion searching for the meaning of life (thankfully it ended just before the sun came up). People start to wake-up around midday (as ever, I'm up much earlier than that), and we go to a local pancake house for breakfast.

A pancake house which has quotes from Numbers (1:1, if you're interested) on their placemats. Still, nice pancakes.

Saturday seems to end quickly; a trip to a local mall and returning to watch the end of the UNC basketball game eats up the daylight hours. Dinner is at the Carolina Roadhouse, which is pleasant enough, and then the drinking begins again. This time, I'm cajoled into playing more of the games, but no-one watches me pour my drink, so I play just with Coke (yes, I'm boring. But I didn't really fancy getting drunk. And this way, they don't feel as if they're leaving me out). This goes on until about two in the morning.

After again waking up before everybody else on Sunday morning, I decide it might be an idea to go to the beach. As it would be rather silly to drive for five hours and not actually see the sea. Stupid, stupid, stupid idea. So cold.

I wonder what the legal limits for drink-driving are in North/South Carolina. Because I'm sure that every driver taking the group back home would have been breaking the law back in Britain. Thankfully, everybody gets back safely. And we have Monday off, so we can use that time to recover.

It was a very short trip, especially as most of Saturday was spent waiting for everybody else to wake up. But I had a good time, and I now know everybody's name. A few months late, of course, but better now than never.

And that, Class, was how I spent my weekend. What was your like?