1st Annual Crawl for Cancer, part 1

Yesterday I participated in the 1st Annual Crawl for Cancer downtown with some friends. There were 10 of us on the team: Sarah, Michelle, Kristy, Jenn, Brenda, Jillian, Krista, 2 of Kristy’s friends from the gym (Derek & Matt), and of course, me. It was a pretty neat setup. For a mere $400 per team we got a total of 20 pitchers of beer at 5 bars, t-shirts, taxi vouchers and more free beer at the after party. There were 51 (?) teams total and 10 or so participating bars, so each team had a different bar schedule.

Our team (cleverly named The Random Hi-Fives) got maroon shirts. Us girls (-Jillian) met at Sarah’s house before hand and chopped up our shirts to make them more feminine and all around awesome. Actually I did mine the night before, but that’s another story. The plan was to leave by 12:30 so we could get to the first bar at 1:00 when it started, but the shirt reconstructions held us up a little bit seeing it was rather impromptu.

The Lodge Bar
The first bar we went to was The Lodge Bar. We arrived at about 1:20. We met Jillian and the guys there. There were only a few teams in there when we arrived. I think our shirts got us a lot of attention. There was this one dude in a hot pink shirt with another shirt draped over his shoulder. He kind of stood out seeing that he was a guy in hot pink and there weren’t any other hot pink people in the bar. We drank our first 4 pitchers, got to know Matt & Derek a little better, gave each other random hi-fives and got free stickers. We were also joined by Kirk, a guy that Sarah knew somehow. He was shirtless. Well, not shirtless shirtless, but he didn’t have a maroon Crawl for Cancer shirt. Somewhere along the line someone decided to Sharpie tattoo me with “Random Hi-Fives” so that people would know why we were acting like such dorks. No one else would take the plunge though… yet. Matt wanted to trace his hand on my open back, but I vetoed that. We finished up our beer at about 2:00. Perfect timing, we headed to or next bar.

Bootleggers
Our second bar was Bootleggers (also the after party bar). It was a short walk. We were random hi-fiving other teams that we passed on the street. Kristy even got denied a hi-five. Who does that?? No stickers at Bootleggers, but we did manage to get a fifth pitcher for free. Krista also got us a round of shots. Sarah took one for the team and drank most of mine. I’m such a wimp. The guy in the hot pink shirt was there too. I asked Hot Pink why he was the only one with a hot pink shirt and he said it was because his team hosed him. I asked him why he had an extra shirt and he said he was meeting someone but now they weren’t coming. Perfect. I told Hot Pink that Kirk didn’t have a shirt and pointed to him. Next thing you know, Kirk was wearing a hot pink CfC t-shirt, and we completed the look by popping the color of his blue polo shirt he was wearing underneath. By this time the “Random Hi-Fives” tattoo was sweeping the team like wild fire. We even got Matt to tattoo the back of his neck. We had been complaining the entire time that there was no patio, when finally someone noticed there was a patio out back. We spent the rest our time at Bootleggers outside. Pretty soon it was 3:00, time for bar #3.

Champps
Finally, a bar with some food!! We went straight to the outdoor bar and Jenn ordered some zza. Best. Zza. Ever. And I’m pretty sure I burnt the roof of my mouth, but at that point I didn’t care. One of the guys from another team asked us about our shirts, how we found the time to do it, how long it took, if it was hard, etc. We ended up getting quite a bunch of compliments on them. Hot Pink’s un-hot-pink team was there too. Somehow Matt and I discovered we both went to schools in the same school district, until I moved anyway, but who’s keeping track. I’ll tell you who wasn’t keeping track at this point. Me. It was 4:00 before I knew it and we were off.

Lone Tree
The next bar on our list was the Lone Tree. Walking in I immediately had flash backs of my first official bar visit after turning 21. We played some flip cup game with the chocolate colored team. That was pretty fun. Kirk had to leave us to go to work. That’s about all I remember from the Lone Tree, other than all of us going to use the bathroom, a couple girls going into the men’s room (the guy who needed to use the facilities was a good sport), and our guys leaving us because they thought we left them. But it was ok, we were all going to the same place.

Rosens
We got to the bar and found our guys near one of those giant windows that opens all the way to the floor of the bar, which is about 3 feet off the ground. They helped us into the bar and I guess got yelled at from the bouncer. No harm, no foul. This bar was a lot of fun. There was much talk about going to a George Michael concert, and my feet were pretty soaked from all the beer being spilled. A fire truck full of firemen pulled up. Kristy and I jumped out of the window to five them random hi-fives. It would have made for a perfect photo op had Brenda been sober enough to operate her camera. The other thing I remember about this bar is more tattooing. I talked Derek into tattooing “Random Hi-Fives” on his forearm. Then I attempted to touch up the illegible tattoo on Matt’s neck, but it ended up being a big blob of sharpie. NOT because I was too drunk, but because he wouldn’t stop dancing to “Gimme More.” Then Matt brought up wanting to trace his hand on my back again. I told him no, but Kristy said I he deserves it for how bad is neck looked (not my fault). We agreed that Kristy could trace his hand on my back. Soon it was 5:00. Crawl officially over. After party officially begun. We headed back to Bootleggers.

Watch for part 2 and photos coming soon…