Heafy Gets Married: Part 1

Max Baer: It's no joke, pal. People die in fairy tales all the time.

”Cinderella Man”

So much has happened, I hardly know where to begin. I guess it would be easiest to just tell everything in the order it happened. This will take several parts I imagine, in 3 chapters – Heafy gets married, Heafy goes on a honeymoon and then Heafy moves apartments. The final chapter, Heafy starts a new job is only half finished so far (I mean in real life, not in the writing). If you are looking for poker content, come back in a week or so. I haven’t played a hand in nearly a month, and that is unlikely to change for the next week at least. So without further rambling, lets get to the first instalment of Heafy Gets Married:

My lovely distraction and wife to be has had the wedding organised from the day we got engaged, 12 months ago. Everything has been meticulously studied, researched and planned with dates and times and little regard for a budget (although there was one). She then left for the place of marriage a week in advance to finalise everything, while I had 4 days of bachelor hood to contended with. So what did I do? I went to work and slept, I had no time to do anything else.

On the night before I was due to leave I had 3 of the guys over, as we were all due for a 4am pickup to make it to the airport. We would fly to Adelaide at 7am and then pick up a 12 seater bus and drive that (along with more passengers of course) the 6 hours to my home town.

We had a few beers because they were cold, and were watching a brand new sketch comedy show on TV were we actually knew a few of the actors – and surprisingly, it was pretty darn good. Anyway, after that finished, we put on Triumph the insult comic dog, and then Family Guy, Futurama and so on and so on. It got to around 1am when I thought I better start packing.

Yep, 1am Thursday morning - 3 hours before I was due to leave for the wedding, I started to pack. It took me 30 minutes and I didn’t leave anything behind. That’s called efficiency, children.

I grabbed 2 hours sleep, as did the rest of the house. It’s amazing how sober we felt at 4am in the morning when our shuttle bus arrived. We had to pick up a few more punters on our way to the airport, and then 6 little chickens boarded the 7am flight to Adelaide.

We had to pick up 2 more people that had flown in from Brisbane, and then we stocked the bus full of snack food and alcohol. I was looking forward to the bus trip, even though I quickly realised that there was only three people on the bus who could actually drive it – and I was one of them. Looks like I won’t be getting drunk this morning, Ill have to wait until I hit home.

The drive from Adelaide takes 5 hours and a bit by car, so an easy 6 in a mini-bus. But this mini-bus was AWESOME! Even with the trailer, we were cruising at 120 mph. I thought we would make good time. However, the boys in the back were hitting the beers pretty hard. One of them in particular has been known for having the worst bladder you have ever seen. It took a little while for him to get going, but once he “broke the seel”, it was pure hell. Since I was driving, I kept note of how often we needed to stop – every 30 kms (about 18 miles) he needed a toilet break. Man, that got boring really quickly. Me and my co-pilot (the only other sober person on the bus who I shared the driving duties with) had an over/under bet for the number of toilet breaks at 15. Each time a toilet break occurred, we kept count like The Count from “Sesame Street”

“12! 12 Toilet break, ah, ah ,ahhhh.” In a crappy Transylvanian accent. It was quite fun actually and this practiced continued for the entire weekend. I guess you had to be there to fully appreciate it.

At one of the pit stops that occurred at an actual petrol station (we call it petroleum, not gasoline so we have “petrol stations” not “gas stations”. This ends this weeks segment of “Know your Australian”) in the middle of nowhere, the owner said we could only use the toilets if we were a customer. Since it was already pretty hot, ice creams were the go. Our toilet break master left his wallet in the bus (yes, that old trick) and I was standing next to him so I spotted him the $2 to get a damn ice cream. He made his selection and headed back to the bus.

As we waited for the smokers to finish before we re-boarded, everyone was comparing their purchases. Our toilet-breaking hero had decided to buy a delicious ice cream with an unfortunate name – he bought the “Golden Gaytime”. Yes, that was it's real name. It's made by Streets, look it up.

“I just stopped for a toilet break, and I had a gaytime!”

“Yeah, and I had to bloody pay for it!”

You make your own fun on the road.

The toilet breaks continued relentlessly, until about 200 kms out from my home town when all the drunkards fell asleep. The final 2 hours were blissful. The end count was 15 toilet breaks, and the 6 hour drive took over 7 and a half hours.

I took all the guys to the best pub in town for a feed, and the girls had a hens night to attend that my mum had organised. I guess it gave all the local 50 year old women something to cluck about, and give them a chance to meet my Distraction. This meant though that all their husbands would be free for the night, so they all headed to another local pub, ready for us to meet up with them. Finally I was able to get drunk, and the bartender kept the place open 90 minutes beyond closing time for us which was more than rewarded with out patronage. The hens night broke early and the few survivors made it out to the pub anyway to join in the carnage. The memory is a little shaky, but I do remember drinking Ouzo and shots of sambuca – both of which I detest. Full enough, we headed home in the early hours of the morning satisfied that the 5 day event had got off to a good enough start.

Friday was a low key day, being the eve of the wedding and all. I took all the visitors to the fine city on a mini tour to show what we had to offer – which really isn’t much in a small country town. We did head out to a small town called Silverton, population of about 20 or so. There is a really famous pub out there though. A heap of movies have been shot in the area, and out the front of the pub is none other than the famous “Interceptor” from the Mad Max movies starring Mel Gibson, which I think was called “The Road Warrior” in North America.

We also went to one of the art galleries in Silverton, where the artist is famous for painting in Vegemite. My older brother decided to buy 6 of these crappy beaded necklaces for $10, which was kind of convenient because there was 6 guys on the bus. These little pieces of “Bling Bling” were carried everywhere except the church for the entire weekend and beyond.

Lunch was then at the best damn chicken and chips shop in the entire world. I have been talking the place up to all the visitors for weeks, and I was glad that it didn’t let me down. With little else to do, we headed back to a different pub again (current pub count at 3) and playing pool and darts for a few hours. Both were free of charge as I knew this publican too.

Now this is where things got a bit tricky – even though we were all in town for my wedding, most of the revelry and merriment occurred without me and my Distraction. The group continued on at the pub and later at another pub while we went to the rehearsal and then dinner with my brother-in-law to-be.

The rehearsal was interesting. We started off with my two little cousins, aged 5 and 3 who would be page boy and flower girl respectively. This was their first trip down the church and we had no idea how they would go tonight let alone on the day. It’s a really big church too so that just made it more interesting. About half way down, my younger brother put $10 on the flower girl to win the race on the day.

My Distraction was visibly nervous, shaking all the time and she swore in front of the priest a few times – nothing too major, but it gave everyone else a laugh at least.

After dinner with her brother, I was supposed to go out and catch up with everyone else at the pub but it was 11pm already and I thought I better make one sensible decision for the weekend and went to bed. The others kicked on and most came home around 5am that morning, so I think I made the better decision for the sake of the rest of my life.

Thus ends Thursday and Friday of the weekend – Saturday through to Monday to come!