Mr. Yuk-Yuk’s bachelor party had me waking up at 4:45 AM on a Saturday morning. It was dark out, very dark. I swung by Wes’s to pick him up then we heading to the Tropicana to meet up with the rest of the crew and head out to the West Virginia vs Rutgers game in Piscataway. We just pullled into the parking gargage and ran down a stairwell drenched with urine that mysterioiusly emptied into some street in AC. As it was a little past 6 AM and we were running a few minutes late, neither of us paid much attention to where we had parked.
Next we met up the crew that would be embarking on this truly epic journey. Seemed like a good bunch of guys, all decked out in their West Virginia attire. I kept the fact that I’m not much of a fan to myself, the numbers were greatly in their favor. We then boarded the rental vans and our journey towards Piscataway began.
Ride wasn’t all that bad. Many a stories were exchanged, with a few mentioning alligators. Can’t say I recall the stories, but the memory of alligators does stand out. Passed a pair of accidents on the Parkway, with one involving a massive truck that went completely off the road. Can’t imagine how they pulled that one out of the forrest.
We arrived in Piscataway around 8 AM, home of the Scarlet Knights and would now stake our claim for land suitable for our tailgating endeavors. We eventually found a nice spot close to the poor port-o-potties, nothing would deserve the fate that they fared on this day. We set up both the tents and fired up the grill.
The food and drink were plentiful and the elements were growing worse as time wore on. This was my first time tailgating, so all was new to me. West Virgina must have quite a following in New Jersey as it seemed that almost half the fans in attendance were sporting their colors.
Some of use departed to actually go watch the game, while the rest of us including myself stayed under the tents and weather the monsoon. The guys outside were really enjoying listening to the game on satellite radio, that was until the Shepherd destroyed the reception. I’ve never seen a wire take quite a beating as to what the Shepherd did to this poor wire. With no game updates, morale took a major hit. The vans did possess a radio, so the poor quality of sound coming from the vans would now how to suffice.
It was around this time that the weather really picked up. I’ve seen some angry weather in my day, but this day was amongst one of the angriest these eyes have ever witnessed. A heavy, steady wind was attempting to make us take shelter elsewhere. In fact, the winds seemed determined to take out tents from us on numerous occasions. Each man was forced to take hold of a post and hold on for dear life if we wished to keep our shelter. Eventually the storm did subside and the weather turned out to be quite pleasant. Apparently West Virgina had won and that brought smiles to all.
Exhuasted from our early start to the day, we were finally going home. We boarded the vans and lost a couple of soldiers in the battle. The grill and one of the tents were so badly damaged that they had to be left behind. We will all remember the sacrifices both made for us all on this day. Thank you grill and thank you green tent, thank you so much.
When we finally arrived back to Atlantic City, we were shooed off the bus and left to fend for ourselves. Wes and I were now faced with what would turn out to be our most daunting task of the day, where the hell did I park in the morning? We spent a lot of time entering parking garages, and riding various elevators until we finally decided to go outside and walk around and hope that something stood out as familiar and it might come to us.
We walked around and recognized the parking garage we had pulled into. For some strange reason we thought it would be a good idea to enter the parking garage on foot where cars enter it. This in fact is not a good idea, in fact this is a very bad idea. Cars aren’t expecting two fools to be running up the ramps, increasing the odds of us being struck by a vehicle for each second we spent scaling the ramps. So we ran, and we ran fast.
We had scaled the ramp and turned the corner so happy that we were now safe, but sadly we weren’t safe at all. Instead we were now greeted by another ramp three times the length with an much steeper incline. So me mustered up all the remaing strength we had in our fatigued bodies and sprinted up this ramp as well, just hoping that we wouldn’t get struck from behind. Legs sore, catching our breath we finally found our car and managed to get home alright. Yes, today was quite the adventure.
