Normally the airport experience after the vacation is a bit of a downer, but even with the basic facilities in Cancun (the Patron Tequila Boutique with free tasting was one exception) we managed to play a few rounds of cards before I left mom, dad, and the boys to head off to Wisconsin (Chika has already left at 6am to make her connection back to Europe.)
This time, I was able to enjoy an upgrade on the way to Chicago — nothing exciting, but at least you were able to get food and drinks. We arrived at Chicago O’Hare more than 30 minutes ahead of schedule, which gave the option to catch a bus to Madison instead of the Uber. But my brother Mike (who had flown in on his fraternity brother’s private jet and had been drinking since noon) called for the Uber approach.
I almost thought everyone had gone to bed when I pulled into town around 10pm, but Mike again suggested to meet up for “a drink.” Our cousin Aaron and his crew had been eating at Naples 15, an Italian restaurant in the area, so we decided to make that the rendezvous point. It seemed that a few of Mike’s fraternity brothers had the capacity for a few more drinks, or maybe they had missed me after the long while, and so our crew of six arrived at the restaurant congregated near the bar looking for signs of Aaron or his son Daniel.
What happened next was a healthy lesson in humanity. The owner of the restaurant, seeing us quite lost and confused, comes over to welcome us and starts offering us some wine. Time went on, we found our cousins, there was more wine and some pizzas, and then at the end of the night a check arrived… for $600?! i wasn’t privy to the interactions, but I don’t seem to recall anyone ordering up $150+ bottles of wine. Luckily the bill didn’t come to me, as I probably would have been thrown in jail (or beaten up) for refusing to pay. But maybe being in enemy (i.e. Bagder) country, the other guys decided to take the loss.
The next day was an amazing fall day and the campus was fully alive with weekend festivities. I walked out to meet Aaron and Uncle Allan (who had driven in from Milwaukee) at Memorial Union where we soon discovered we were missing at least one of the tickets (I am not sure I would be using Stubhub after this experience). We circled back to town to meet up with Daniel’s crew and Michael for lunch, and then it was time to get the pre-game started.
One of Mike’s friend’s son was also at Wisconsin, so we started at the first house party along fraternity row. Was was suprisingly refreshing was that even with Penn State emblems blazing, we were all treated like everyone else (although the signage hanging from the frats did not suggest such friendliness and there was the one girl who gave us the bird in the photo below). Mike and I made a solo journey over to Daniel’s fraternity house which had a huge lakefront beach party — I can only imagine how difficult life must be with all these kinds of study distractions.
Finally it was time to roll on to the game. Due to the Stubhub issue, I went with Mike’s Penn State group as they had an extra ticket. While our seats were about as high up as one could possibly get in the stadium (Section AA), we were able to enjoy the game with the help of the local $10+ beers sold at the stadium. It was a solid first half, and I took the opportunity to join the Wisconsin crew down at the 17th row. It was a great game with the Nittany Lions victorius 28 to 13. Afterwards we ended up in the one bar where we were able to get some food and drink.
As it was quite expensive to fly from Wisconsin, I chose to fly back from Chicago and with the help of my old Nokia/BMW colleague Randy, we were able to round up some of the old crew. We had a fantastic dinner followed by drinks and more drinks. You can’t seem to go wrong in that town. Monday was spent flying back and recovering from the weekend — thankfully dad offered to pick me up at the airport.
Tuesday, the boys and I took the train down to Philadelphia (giving mom and dad a break after the long weekend with the boys) to meet Mike and with an extra bonus of Sydney joining. We tried a new dim sum place followed by matcha ice cream cones and even some arcade play time followed by dinner at Mike and Melanies’. While we had planned to hit Great Adventure one last time on our seasons passes, they ended up dropping Wednesday night off the schedule so we just did our usual things of shopping, gym/pool, and eating mom’s food and dad’s fresh grilled burgers.
Finally, it was time for the big Halloween day. As the weather was so perfect, we decided to make a trip up to New Hope for lunch on the terrace at Havanas — a great choice. Then it was time to head on down for the festivities. Times seem to have changed since my childhood of walking around the neighborhood collecting candies. Our first stop was a neighborhood party in Mike’s area with a home built maze (those who finished the maze got an extra large candy bar) as well as food and drinks. Then we jumped into cars going to the second neighborhood with more food and drinks. Then we jumped into the car yet again for a third party (after a stop with Sydney and Kai for $6 bowls at Chipotle for those wearing costumes) complete with a firepit and an Asian Freddy Mercury belting out Queen tunes. With 3 parties down, it was time to call it a night.
It was a big agenda and we did it all (less the Great Adventure visit). It wouldn’t have been possible without such a great team making it all come together so thanks to everyone who helped make it happen. We all had such a great time, planning already started thinking about how to do it all over again, but for now we will simply have to return to our civilian lives.
