About six months ago, I asked Erik to go to Stu's with me. He said he was busy. I asked him to check his calendar. He said he would be free in August. So we set a date in September. We left work at 2:17pm on Thursday. Suggested arrival time was 5:17pm. We stopped once for gas and Swedish Fish. After exactly three hours, we arrived at Stu's place at 5:17pm. He met us at the end of his drive with his son, Oscar. Oscar is about 16 months old and a bundle of fun. We grabbed our bags, headed inside and sat down for a few beers.
Ann-Marie on the stairs with Erik and Stu below.
We had just searched the toy chest for Ann-Marie's missing wallet.
Ann-Marie with Oscar. Stu and Annmarie are expecting again in a few months.
In Indianapolis, you cannot buy beer cold. You have to buy it warm and either drink it warm or wait 45 minutes for it to cool down. Stu mentioned that in high school, his buddies would "roll beers" in a pan over a hot stove to cool them down quicker. It sounded just plausible enough to be bullshit, so we tried it out.
Test materials.
The rolling technique.
Scientific equipment.
We realized that unless we had a control, this experiment would be for naught, so we ended up drinking half cold beers (or half warm beers if you are British).
As we drank, we discussed what opportunities we had for the evening. Basically we were going to head to the Broad Ripple area and drink. That sounded like a plan. Stu mentioned that we would be taking bikes as to avoid drinking and driving. So we went down to his garage, selected three bikes (mine was called "The Mule") and we headed out.
Stu's bike for the evening. Made up of parts from four other bikes.
Three men and three bikes. It's hard to tell from this photo, but Erik's pedals were so close to the ground that they scraped when he turned.
Heading to town.
A photo for the insurance company to prove the bikes were actually there.
We started things off at the Broad Ripple Tavern. We initially pissed off the bartender when I offhandedly said "son of a bitch" until we realized he was fucking with us. We sat at the bar and ate wings and drank cheap beer. We called Shorty to apologize that we forgot to stop by and pick him up.
Stu talks with Shorty.
Doug and Stu. Stu's hat was obtained by trading hats with a prison sanitation worker.
In the back of the bar they had a Golden Tee 2009 on a huge screen. We waited for the two pros to finish up and I solidly beat Stu (who claimed he hadn't played in a while) and Erik (who claimed he had masturbator's wrist).
Cute waitress.
We were now completely loaded with beer and should have walked around the strip, but instead we got on our bikes and circled around for five minutes before Stu had us pull up to the back of some building. He said, "The Bikes are here!" and walked right in the back door. Erik followed. I followed.
That back door belonged (I found out later) to the Vogue Nightclub. A well known concert venue in Indianapolis. As I pulled in, Stu was putting his bike against the wall. Erik and I followed suit. There was a huge crowd of people in the place. It felt like they were in between acts. The guy at the back door politely asked us what the fuck we were doing. Stu said that we were told we could put our bikes back there and that they would be kept safe. The guy asked where our wristbands were. Stu said that we didn't need wristbands because we were with the band. The guy asked us who told us this. Stu turned to Erik and said, "What was the guy's name." Erik replied, "George." We were told that we would have to leave. And we did.
Our bikes in the back door of the Vogue Nightclub.
The bouncer wasn't having any of our bullshit story.
We grabbed our bikes and headed out, realizing that maybe we should have had a better story. Stu suggested that he could have used my HolyJuan business card to say he was a reporter. Because we didn't think we were ever going back, we told Stu that that sounded like a great idea.
Stu took us down some back alleys and we parked our bikes outside a, literally, back alley bar.
Back alley bar insurance photo.
There were a few very nice ladies coming out who took our photo.
Erik, Doug and Stu. I'm bending down so that Erik and Stu don't feel so short.
Inside this bar, we were greeted with an angry mob of people watching the IU game as they barely scraped by Eastern Kentucky. We were also greeted with a girl wearing a bra, so we sat down. There was some promotion going on that night and for some reason this chick had her shirt off to win a shirt. She did win the shirt and put it on, only to remove her pants. We hoped it was going to get very interesting, but that's about where it stopped. Stu bought $20 worth of pull tabs and we won $2.
Note that the girl on the far left barstool is not wearing pants. It was uncomfortable more than it was hot.
Douglas brand addiction.
We left the back alley bar and Stu took us back west again, this time to the front door of the Vogue Nightclub. Stu wanted to try the business card idea. Before he did that, we stopped and got photos of the bratwurst girl on Erik's bike.
Wait... is that a girl's bike?
Stu, once again, rode his bike in the door, this time in front. Erik stood by the door while I rode off in circles waiting for him to get kicked out. For a minute, it seemed like he might have succeeded, but soon he appeared, rejected, but not dejected.
Stu then took us off on a tour of the neighborhood he grew up in. We stopped at some tennis courts and rode around in circles for a few minutes. At one point, Erik and Stu dismounted to pee. A group of people walked by in the distance on one girl yelled, "Go suck dick in some other park!"
We left this park and during the next part of the ride, Stu's pant leg got caught in his chain. In trying to pull it out, he managed to tear the pants all the way up the seam.
Torn!
Underwear or nutsack?
The bike that I was riding, The Mule, had 15 gears but only one of them worked. I'm assuming it was 11th, because I had to pedal 170 times to Erik's 1. This meant that I was great on hills, but slow on the straight away. After the pant rippage, Stu and Erik took off and I was left in the dust. I actually lost them for a few minutes and caught up with them only after hearing their laughing in the distance. I followed their voices and suddenly I was entering a stadium with a track which was currently being raced around by Stu and Erik. Erik won.
Stu showed us some places he had graffiti-ed as a kid and then took us back to the bars. We stopped in a very popular place called the Mine Shaft, but there were way too many hipsters, so we went to Average Joe's, the bar next door.
Whole lot of hipsters with a whole lot of keys that don't open shit.
Average Joe's had an open front so we parked out bikes in front of the open front and ended up sitting in the open air portion right on the street. We planned on watching the bikes get stolen.
The next two hours were spent with Stu greeting and saying hello to everyone walking by us.
Hey!
How are you doing?
Looking good!
Hey pal!
Howdoyoudo?
And oddly enough, everyone either ignored us or were very pleasant in their response back.
Also in the bar were two ladies who did not run off as soon as we entered. We chatted them up a bit and we actually able to get them on Erik's bike for a photo op.
Lady friends.
Ladies with Erik on the bike. They feel special!
At some point, two of the people Stu said hello two walked by again and were very chatty. They were your run of the mill homeless punk teenagers who were having the time of their lives. Earlier when we saw them, they were carrying a stack of pizza boxes and said they had got them for free out of the dumpster. When they stopped by again, they were pizza-less, but Stu inquired about the pizzas. The homeless guys were a bit put off by the current status of the pizza as they left them lying in the street. Stu said he would give them $5 if they would get a box. They reiterated that the pizza was on the street. Stu reiterated that he didn't care and would give them $5 for pizza that even homeless people wouldn't eat.
They ran off.
They returned a few minutes later with a box, filled with a lot of pizza.
Homeless Pizza Delivery Service
Before the homeless guys took off with thier cash, we made sure to get a photo of them on the bike with Erik. While the homeless guys thought this was awesome, the chicks sitting behind us were put off that they were about as special as the two homeless dudes.
Oh my f'ing god that's disgusting!
DON'T DO IT!
Lucky for all of us, the bouncer told Erik that outside food was not allowed and Erik took the box away.
Sorry.
Happiest dudes in the world.
We ended up pawning our girls off to two other guys who had been standing in line for the Mine Shaft. I said, "Why stand in line when there are two ladies right here?" And the two dudes checked them out, shrugged, came in our bar and swept these girls off their feet.
Our job done, we headed home back to Stu's. By now the beers were actually cold and we sat on his porch and re-lived the the nights events and past nights long gone.
In the end, this trip matched all the others. Drunkenness. Spontaneity. Laughs. Random shit. I'm not sure if you have a Stu in your life, but I highly suggest you get one.
I hope that we do not wait three years to do this again.
Thanks, Stu.
