Welcome to Bowmerica

This recap will be updated as the truth is unburied…The story that follows is merely an interpretation (“high as a kite”??? Whatever that means???) of the events that occurred from August 29th thru September 1st of 2008. And yes…this really just happened.

Dave Matthews Band at the Gorge 2008

On August 29^th, 2008, a group of thirteen individuals embarked on a trip to the Gorge to enjoy the annual Dave Matthews Band concert weekend. Our fearless leader, Justin Bradberry, organized a rental RV for the group to ride up together and use for camping throughout the weekend. The majority of the group began arriving in high spirits between noon and 1 PM at Justin and Cali’s house to pack up the RV. As everyone arrived, it was for certain that there would be enough alcohol for the weekend. Not long after all had arrived the drinking commenced in Justin’s driveway; initiated by Big Bear, Ryan Waage. I believe his quote was, “I don’t see why not.” Katie dutifully marked the RV with window paint to establish our purpose and destination, while Drake retrieved his tickets he had surprisingly forgotten. Despite the troubles packing and prepping the RV, we finally managed to snap a picture and be on our way. Right from the get go, we all knew this trip would go down in the history books.

FRIDAY:

With Justin at the wheel, his lovely fiance, Cali, at his side and the rest of the crew in the back, we headed out on I-84 towards the Gorge. Things started out slow and the mood in the RV was not fully lightened until Dr. McGillicuddy’s Fireball liquor was opened to pass around for shots. Soon a lackluster game of “asshole” began using Dustin’s Grandma’s cards. Waage quickly won but failed at saving Mitchell from becoming the asshole. This appeared to foreshadow what was to come for the rest of the weekend. The drinking continued as did the card games, and the first bottle of Fireball had been polished off nearly half-way into the trip. The rest of the trip up was relatively tame compared to the rest of the weekend. A number of people slept or sat and talked most of the way. We only lost our way once, but that small mishap can be blamed on Map Quest. The highlight on the ride up being John and Drake eventually passing out 2-3 hours before arriving. Drake blaming this on his previous nights antics with his girlfriend, Amber.

            Upon arriving at the campground the Abos left for the concert while the rest of the group set up shop. (Fill in). Mark and Waage met the neighbors from Seattle and partook in a game of flip cup. This of course led to a heated political debate (Fill in).

            After returning from the concert Katie and I tracked down the campground with the help of an inebriated Mark Tate. We arrived to a silent campsite with everyone asleep besides Waage, Carr, Bradberry, Mark, Megan and Katie Hacket. Prior to Katie and I going to bed, Drake rallied once again. (Fill in) The late night conversation involved spray-on condoms and the campground kite with a flash light on it. As a result, Drake was given the nickname “Magnum,” and the rest of the Fireball supply was ingested.

SATURDAY:

The group awakened Saturday morning around 8:00 AM. John Mitchell volunteered to cook up some tasty scrambled eggs. Bradberry soon established that the generator had broken the night before and was not going to work for the rest of the weekend. So Bradberry, Carr, Waage, Cali, and myself walked to the General Store for ice to keep the food cold.

            In the morning our group began to settle in to the campsite. We set up the Billy-balls to play while we drank and set the lawn chairs around the area to watch and relax. Megan pulled her car around and started up some tunes. The Billy-balls entertained us for a good portion of the morning as everyone steadily drank. Eventually, the Frisbee-stick game was setup. Waage and Carr won all of them leading to a number of people chugging beers. A Billy-balls 8 team tournament later ensued, resulting in Waage and Carr as champions and the Abos as runner ups. As the day progressed, the campsite became more populated with other groups coming and going. Our group eventually became spread out amongst other campsites, talking to other groups.

            Our campground neighbors, Doug and Tina, had been effectively absorbed into our group and were properly initiated late in the afternoon. John Carr instigated the situation as he went outside the RV to get people to take shots (I am not sure which beverage). When he approached Tina, he began chanting, “Shot or boobs!!” Well, we all know how that ended. Soon after, someone entered the RV to enthusiastically tell of the event. Drake, immediately responded, “What!!!?? I have to go see those things.“ and left the RV on a mission. Bri had made friends with the neighbors with the kite, which was the topic of discussion the night before. She had ended up flying the kite by the time we left for the concert.

            Late into the afternoon, we setup Doug and Tina’s badminton net to play a game of volleyball. Given the makeshift teams and the lack of sobriety, nothing but pure comedy came out of the games. On each side of the net there was great comradery taking place between the players with chest bumps, back bumps, high fives, and straight-up victory dancing. There was also a lot of trash talk taking place across the 4 foot high net between the teams. No one could ever agree on the spiking rule, other than when Cali would slam it home. Not to mention my own teammate Drake, smashing me in the baby-maker with the volleyball.

            By the time the volleyball game had subsided, it was nearly time to head to the concert. It took a solid hour for everyone in the group to dress and get ready to leave. As a number of people gathered in the RV to get ready, it was formally concluded that Dustin was the “smelly kid” to his and Mel’s dismay. Another 30 minutes later, everyone was on the 5 mile hike to the concert. The group in the front stopped multiple times to wait for the rest of the group, but they never caught back up. Carr and Waage went ahead and were never seen until we met back up at the campsite. The Abos, Bowman and Bri, and two of Cali’s friends were together in a group, while the others went their separate way.

            Before the concert commenced we had found all the others except for Carr, Waage, and Bowman. Bowman was high as a high as a kite and lost, while Carr and Waage were flying solo. Within our group, Mitchell had two choices of girls to entice for some muscle milk lovin’ later that night. When we had initially sat down, he was flirting with Jen quite a bit, but asked Katie and I which girl to go after. We recommended Kelsey and he soon obliged, ignoring Jen for the rest of the night; she was pissed. The Saturday night concert was good, but it was unbelievably cold. The wind did not stop blowing the whole concert.

            After the concert ended, everyone eventually met back up at the campsite. When Katie and I arrived, Waage was out cold in the Taj Mahal. Justin was sitting by his side Indian style with the lantern by Waage’s face, claiming that he had died. More and more people gathered in the Taj to memorialize Big Bear, later to find out he was only in a deep sleep. All this occurred while Bowman and his lovely lady made sweet sweet love in their humble tent right next door. Since it was too cold to talk outside, a group of us sat and talked in the RV for awhile. Mark retold his story of hippie dancing and smoking some ganja, along with some drama that we won’t recount in this written record. John Carr had almost died himself from the cold weather especially after Katie Hacket had stolen his sweatshirt and ditched him. Our group had miraculously all made it back to the campsite alive and well. Most of them had lost their way for an embarrassingly long amount of time, but nothing out of the ordinary. The night soon came to a close, as the neighbors rocked a Dave Matthews Band album in their truck to Dustin’s pleasure.

SUNDAY:

Sunday was probably the most epic day of them all. It began with a feast of Honey Nut Scooters and pancakes prepared by Katie. Drake kicked off his most fabled day with some old hot dogs and wine. A group left for the general store to retrieve more ice and coffee and Dustin and Mel headed for the showers. The morning started slow similarly to Saturday. A couple of games of BillyBalls were played while people sat around and talked.  Soon people began to shotgun beers and chug glasses of wine, mainly Drake. Within 1-2 hours, 2-3 bottles of wine had been consumed, again mainly by Drake, and John Carr had introduced the group to Idaho Silver and Gold. John, once again, went around to give shots to everyone, but this time he chased it with a little sprinkle of corn nuts in the mouth (Good call John). The corn nuts were a hit with everyone and even provided some entertainment value. Waage and Mitchell were captivated by trying to catch corn nuts from a long distance in their mouth for a good 10 minutes, while Drake broke the world record for the most corn nuts in a belly button (5). He ended up eating those corn nuts immediately following the event. Drake had finally stumbled his way back to his tent to pass out (who knows if he made his noon pass out goal), showing Tina his dick and balls on the way. He even made it twirl in a helicopter type fashion to add to the show.

            Drake’s downfall continued as he was awakened by me sprinkling some fresh water on him. Justin followed suit and disassembled his tent while he lay inside. Drake eventually made his way back out of the tent to lay in the middle of the group under the Easy-Up to pass out once again.

            Carr, Waage and the Abos headed to the gates to save decent lawn seats for everyone else in the group. We ended up being shafted by the early admission line, which took all the terraced seating, but we still managed to save a decent spot. We also had to endure a vicious ran storm, but it gave Waage and I an excuse to cuddle under a blanket. (Fill in back at campground)

            Serendipitously I had run to the bathroom and ran into our group on the way back to the seats. This time our group was nearly all together; Drake hadn’t made it to the concert. By the time OAR had started our group was well on their way to a good time. The Sunday night concert rocked all our socks off; unfortunately a couple of people, mainly Katie, may have been too far gone to recall the concert with any certainty (I guess there is always next year). Besides the music, the highlight of the Sunday night concert was the many falls that were taken by Mitchell and Doug. Doug probably ate it 3-4 times during the concert, and Mitchell probably matched that count.  Although, Mitchell probably took the cake when he, “barrel-rolled into the beer stand,” as told by Waage.

            By the end of the night we had all once again miraculously found the campsite. Some had gathered in Tina and Doug’s palace of a camper, while the rest of us sat in the dark in our disheveled RV. Some went to bed early, while the rest of us sat and watched Mitchell for 10-15 minutes, “Blllaaahhhh.” Doug had also wandered into the RV looking for trouble and trying to blend in. He was probably making sure the stunt-cock (Mitchell) didn’t get away. After Mark had passed out sitting up and woken up instantly, him, John, Drake, Waage, and Doug left to go find adventure in the campground. Who knows what happened beyond that point because the group sleeping in the RV took a vote to lock the doors and call it a night. After about 20 minutes Drake was pounding on the window to get in, I proceeded to pretend like I couldn’t understand him, turned the light off and he went away. 10.5 minutes later Waage begins pounding on the window yelling my name for 5 minutes straight. I finally let him in to sleep. Once again, the truck next to us was playing a Dave Matthews Band album for Dustin’s enjoyment.

Mitchell’s version of him and Mark’s excursion:

Blue text = Mark’s Update

Upon gazing at Tina’s twins and eating all of Doug’s taco salad (ewwwwww) (mmmmm), Mark and I headed back toward camp to call it a night (that is after Doug came back and grabbed me to tell me that his wife wanted to show me her boobs again!!), then Doug insinuated that he was ready to call in the stunt cock.  We heard some ruckus behind our tent and decided to see what was going on.  We discovered a bunch of dorks drinking, weird, beer and various other types of booze.  A portion of said group was leaving to go somewhere else and we have no idea where or why we decided it would be a good idea to leave with them.  After realizing that the people we were with were obviously killing our game, and several drinks later, we decided we weren’t ready for the trip to be over, even though we had consumed enough beer in the last 12 hours to intoxicate the German National Rugby team.  At about 1am, we wandered the campground partying with numerous (I estimate the number to be around 5) fellow groups of concert goers.  Mark informed me today that he remembered drinking about 3/4 of Miller High Life and threw it on the ground.  He said he went and picked up after he’d realized what had happened and continued drinking it.  He was not sure why he did, but remembered that he was not even mad.  Another group that we walked by had a large parachute as their tent and about 12 dudes, 2 of which were playing guitar.  Rather than stop by this group, I’m pretty sure I let them know they were having a sausage fest.  **sidebar memory**  As we would walk up to various groups of people that were all in different stages of drunkenness sometimes we weren’t met with open arms like we should have been.  In order to break the ice, we had a couple of strategies.  The most prevalent strategy was to exclaim “YAAAAAGGAAAA BOMBS!!!”  repeatedly.  15 drinks later, we miraculously found our way back to the camp (probably at around 5:00am.  We decided to pay a visit to Eileen.  She was still up, but very quickly realized how drunk we were and said she was going to bed.  We were not going to let that happen…we jumped in her tent and gave her one of two options, come sleep with both of us or come sleep with one of us at a time.  She did not like that and kicked us both out.  With our heads down and tails between our legs, we proceeded to make it back to the tents.  I still didn’t want the night to end; Mark had had enough and went to bed.  I grabbed one last beer and sat next to Drake outside of the tents.  Drake had passed out there earlier because he took down his tent, 911 style earlier in the day and The Taj Mahal had been flooded by Hurricane Katrina.  While Drake came in and out of consciousness, I slowly, but surely drank my beer and told him about the adventure Mark and I had.  I didn’t want to go to bed, but was forced to do so when my eyes began twitching so bad that I began to see Tina’s boobs over and over.  I did not want to make any bad decisions so climbed into the Taj and passed the fuck out.  That was the greatest night ever!!

MONDAY:

Katie and I awoke on Monday morning around 7:30 AM to clean up the campsite and pack up to leave. The scene was more than laughable. Drake was in a sleeping back passed out in a chair, while Mitchell snored like a buzz-saw in the Taj. It took a couple hours to clean and pack up, and to corral Mitchell and Mark who were still drunk from their excursion in the wee hours of the morning.