Sunday, November 06, 2005

Heafy Gets Married: Part 5

Angela Dodson: She was a patient at Ravenscar. She... jumped off the roof.
John Constantine: I thought you said she was murdered?
Angela Dodson: Yeah, well, Isabel wouldn't have taken her own life.
John Constantine: Yeah, what kind of mental patient kills herself? That's just crazy.
”Constantine”

After the long day, we had planned to have all the left over food and alcohol set up around my grandparents place for a late lunch and recovery session on the Sunday. We had planned to drive back to Adelaide early Monday morning, so this fit perfectly into our plans.

The new wife and I were around there pretty early, all things considered. It wasn’t until around 1pm, about 3 hours after we had arrived, that everyone else joined the group. Slowly they came, showing the signs of a good night and even slower, recalling the events of said good night. The stories came, and we pieced together all that happened once the wife and I left the reception.

If anybody reading this has seen the movie “Road Trip”, there is a really funny part where the boys go to the sperm donors. The nurse says anyone who has had sex or masturbated in the last 48 hours can not donate sperm, and nerdy looking DJ Qualls says “Well, that’s me out, because I had sex last night – WITH A GIRL! UHHH!”. Remember that bit? Anyway, I was dared and oh so tempted to walk into this recovery party and say “Well, I had sex last night – WITH MY WIFE! UHHHH!” but discretion got the better of me.

We sat and drank the day away, having a pretty good time of it. A few of the party goers were playing ten pin bowling using stubby coolers as the ball and empty bottles as the pins. They played for 3 hours or more, despite the fact that it took nearly 10 minutes to reset the pins each time due to the uneven lawn. The wife decided to wait until they had finally set them up, and then run over and knock them down. This quickly turned into what we call in Australia a “Stacks on” affair, which to be honest is also a bit of a family tradition.

When the sun started to disappear, we moved back to the local pub and stayed for about 90 minutes past closing time – playing pool, an 8 person darts tournament and spending way too much money on the video juke box. The one and only barman on duty kept the place open because we were spending, and then even offered to do multiple trips to get everyone home – how awesome was that? Unfortunately, we were not headed home. We all went back to the basement at the best mans house and drank until approximately 3am. The remaining men were arguing about why you can’t just go up to a girl at a bar and ask if they are interested in sex – if they say no, you don’t have to waste your time. If they say yes, then you can go and buy them drinks and try your best, so on. They devised that there was a secret code among all women to keep men on their toes, and the code goes by the name “Coo-Whack”. It really is quite hard and complex to understand (and explain) unless you are very drunk.

In the morning, we rounded everyone up and headed off a little after our scheduled star time, but all was ok. We the return trip was very quick as no alcohol was consumed due to there being a set time to catch a plane in Adelaide that we had to make, and the amount of flack the offending bladders copped on the way down.

With my younger brother now joining us, we got to Adelaide without much time to spare. The plan was to drop him and his flatmate off and then go to the airport where we would return the bus. Unfortunately, because we were running out of time I said we would have to go straight the Airport and then I would pay for a taxi for my younger brother. He said yes, and then had to direct us to the airport as he was the only one in the bus that knew Adelaide. Abuot 25 minutes later, in his only tour guide moment for the weekend, he said “And if you look out to the left, you’ll see my place”. Well, if I knew we were going right past it anyway then I wouldn’t have made the other arrangements. We dropped him off and got ot the airport with about 30 minutes to spare.

The flight home and taxi from the Sydney airport to our apartment was uneventful, and welcomed. During the final taxi stretch home, one of our friends who left his car at our place over the weekend said probably the biggest compliment we could have received. He said words to the effect ”Well you’ve done well to surround yourselves with the right people. I didn’t meet one person this weekend that I didn’t like.” Obviously we kept all those wrong people away from our friends, but this more than anything else I remember. I felt very happy and proud at that moment, and it finished off the weekend for me perfectly.

We got home at about 11pm, and we had an 8am flight in the morning for Phuket and the honeymoon – which will be my next post and more than likely in far fewer parts.

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