I think this is my first attempt at a trip report... I had some free time in the hotel this afternoon... this is how far I got... Like Dennis, I will probably post the first couple days and stop and then hope nobody remembers... Thursday night I drove out to the airport to pick up my sister. I dropped her back at my place and we decided we’d go out for a drink or two before I took off for the weekend. Headed out around 10:30pm to the local pub… ran into a few people… a drink or two turned into a few… a few turned into many… 10:30pm turned into 4:30am. I had to leave for the airport at 6:45 and needed an hour to get ready and pack. It was pointless to try and sleep it off for an hour, so we decided to get some food. We obviously consumed more than we had thought, because even though my car was home, my driveway was empty. Run off to Rotten Ron’s for some Big Macs… Bring food home to eat… Fall asleep for what seemed like 2 minutes on the floor in the dinning room. Woke up and it was 6:40am. Jumped in the shower and starting rushing to get ready. As luck would have it, the clock in the dinning room was the only (hopefully) clock not changed back from daylight savings time… It was really only 5:55am… Jumped back for a proper shower and got ready and left for airport. Get into CT and have an hour to kill… Walk around airport looking for a comfortable place for a nap. Can’t find one… but find an internet connection. I spent the hour trying to finish a bottle of water… Even though I knew one bottle wouldn’t be enough, it was already too much. Get a call from Carole, she’s on her way. I let her know I changed terminals looking for a place to nap and I’ll be the first person at the curb outside. Wait 20 minutes, no Carole. Call her back… then realize my hunt for a place to nap not only took me from Terminal B to Terminal A, but also from the Arrivals level to the Departures level… Walk downstairs, meet Carole and we’re off to our first bar. Carole was ready to get the weekend started - she knew the quickest way to get to the bar was to only stop at every other stop sign… that’s why we love her… The problem was I consumed way too much alcohol the night before, hadn’t been able to sleep and sobered up while awake… I was definitely in no mood to drink. We sit down at the bar, order our drink. Carole orders a glass of wine, I try for a healthy serving of a local brew and our CT adventure has officially started. The first sip just stayed in my mouth for a while… my throat was like a rusty drain plug… it wouldn’t open to let anything down. After forcing the first few sips down, I noticed the beer was a much better lube than the water I tried drinking at the airport. Mid way through my second beer, Carole needed to run out for a few minutes… She came back about 2 beer later (25 minutes) and I was suddenly physically and mentally ready for a what I thought was going to be a great weekend of adventure, a personal game of Survivor where our minds would have to outwit, outplay and outlast our bodies. We have about an hour left before Ian arrives, and I’ve started a good buzz. With a great meal and few drinks in us, Carole decides it’s time to relocate for the last hour. We jump in her car and drive off towards the airport. Half way to the airport, she pulls off into the Ramada parking lot. As she pulls into a parking spot, I cough a few times to get her attention. Nothing. I ask straight out. Carole? Really? Here? She replies that we can’t go to the airport now, that Ian doesn’t arrive for another hour. I’m just a tourist, and not wanting to be rude, I nod and smile and follow her in to the Ramada. We pop out an hour and ten minutes later rushing to the car to pick up Ian. I have no clue what the fat bastard looks like, and Carole vaguely remembers his avatar from a while back. As we pull up to the international terminal, there must have been 30 people standing outside. As we drove got closer to the pickup point, it only took us a second to pick out the one person we were going to party with… Above all others, only one person stood out. We drove right up to him, opened the door and told him to get in… luckily, it was Ian. We said our hellos, loaded him up and took off to the next bar. One must realize that we spent a lot of time in bars this weekend. We would use any excuse, most of them were very lame… this time was traffic was going to be bad, let’s stop off and get a drink or two and let traffic pass. I’ve driven in many different cities… I’ve seen traffic… Hartford doesn’t have traffic… Again, being the good tourist and not wanting to offend the host… I happily agreed and to the bar we went.
