austin

Austin
We have a first time host in Cousin Helen. In all of my travels I have never made it to her house. She had a three day weekend for Presidents Day and was willing to host so I said come on with your bad self.

Saturday
Really couldn’t afford to take off any additional time as this was my 6th weekend in a row on the road so that’s why I didn’t leave work any earlier than I did. Flight was early early, slept through the first one and managed to wake up just as they were serving breakfast. This was one of the rare times where I had a heterosexual male flight attendant. Some old classy dude who had his initials on his cuff links, gold jewelry and a Rolex. He served me up some wicked Crispix. I should purchase Crispix more often, it’s a tasty cereal. A little bit manlier than Chex I say. Quick hop down to Austin, sat next to this smoking hot lady who had a jawbreaker for a wedding ring, she was rocking those tight fitting yoga pants. Mmmm mmmm get some. I freak love hot legs in yoga pants. So we land and Cousin Helen picks up Cousin Jakey. And were off to stuff our faces with BBQ. We headed down to Lockhart, TX for what has to be some of, if not the best, bbq I’ve ever had. We went to Smittys and I had the best fatty brisket I’ve ever had. Soaked up all the fat, grease, and gristle with white bread and washed it down with Red Cream Soda. Man Alive I fucking love Texas!! Also saw Harry Connick Jr. I gave him the cool guy eye brow raise, what’s up, he acknowledged it, didn’t reciprocate, but that’s because he was with family and his hot ass wife. He ordered $92 dollars worth of bbq for them. Don’t know why I remember that, but it maybe has to do with him pulling out his wallet and all I see are dollar dollar bills ya’ll for days. So we make our way back to Austin. We had some good conversations in the car. I’ve never really hung out with Helen much. At least not where we had our undivided attention before. She was delightful to talk to. We stopped in Spec’s and I was in alcohol heaven for awhile. Bought a new flavor of Shiner. AND they had our favorite Tequila on sale. Centenario Reposado normally goes for about 55 dollars; it was on sale for 18 a bottle. Don’t know why it was, but I picked up three bottles to bring back to the AZ cousins. Score one for the good guys. Then we headed out to the original Whole Foods, some giant multi stored behemoth. It was packed chock full of hippies, buying their hippy products. Then we went home, chilled for awhile, and were back out to destroy the town. We went to the Alamo Drafthouse; it’s this theatre with bar sitting kinda sorta. You sit in a regular old school movie theater seat, but in each row is a bar, so you can order food and drinks. Pretty ingenious if you ask me. I had some local dark beer, Helen had green chile baked macaroni and cheese. I was still pretty full from the bbq, but I managed to take good couple of spoonfuls. The movie we saw was Cedar Rapids. It stars Ed Helms and John C. Reilly, who play insurance guys who attend a conference and hilarity ensues. It was freaking hysterical. Then we met Laura and Bryan, they were at this old time bar slash speakeasy. They make old school cocktails there, it was pretty awesome. Had a drink and chatted with them for awhile. Headed back early because Helen had to run a half marathon the next day, no biggy. As testament, to one of the finest hostings I ever been a part of, she offered her bed and then basically demanded I take it. I was perfectly happy being on the sofa but she insisted. So I got upgraded to her double bed which was way more awesome then the couch. Everyone should take a lesson from her; let the Jakester stay in your bed its cool.

Sunday
Woke up to an empty apartment because Helen went to a half marathon, so I was forced to fend for myself. I have to say I was a little bit out of my element because Helen only has all natural foods and vegetarian foods and vegan foods and gluten free foods. So I ended up having an organic banana, tortilla chips, fancy cheese, purified water, and I think that was it. She came home about noon and was exhausted. I was hungry, so I said get showered, get dressed, we need to feed the tape worm. We were off to some schmancy pants Tex mex restaurant. It was muy delicioso, I don’t remember what I had; one fancy chicken taco and one fancy beef taco, but what I do remember is that I was able to pop my Dublin Dr Pepper cherry. I picked up two bottles and knew instantly that these were gifts from heaven. I never want to go back to corn syrup dr pepper, even 125th anniversary dr pepper is garbage compared to this pure cane sugar concoction that comes out of the heart of Texas. Fuck you coca-cola and Pepsi-cola and all other inferior soft drink beverages. After lunch we headed down to congress which is hippy central. We went into a lot of eclectic boutiques and fun and fancy shops, with very high end prices. Most of these garments and gifts were of the used and second hand nature, yet seemed to have rodeo drive type prices. Maybe that’s why hippys are a poor sort. In order to stick it to the man they have to stick it to themselves. Helen was drained so she said very kindly, dear sir, lord eggemeyer, might we go home so that I may rest my feet. I said sure. We went home and played some buzz tv, it’s a trivia game. I think I went 2 for three if memory serves me correct. Helen had to be reminded of her place in life; a woman in my family is inferior when it comes to trivia. Save for this Christmas, but all other times, the eggemeyer knowledge of bullshit reigns supreme. Later on in the afternoon we met Laura and Bryan and the draughthaus it looks like an old timey Swiss chalet and they have lots of great beers on tap. Beers I’ve never even heard of and they were all muy delicioso. They were also a little high in alcohol content so I left soberville. Since one can never get tired of Tex mex we went to another Tex mex place where I proceeded to have a Mexican martini. It’s a margarita that you can liken to the Hudson’s milk shake. Meaning it’s a lot of damn liquid. It seemed to take forever to finish, but I managed to do just that, cuz that’s how I rolled. Next we went to red box because I was wide awake and still needed to be entertained. So we got Easy A and Get him to the Greek. I think Helen might have drifted off during Easy A, but she was awake when I decided it to be a good idea to start drunk dialing people. We call Cousin Paul, but because he doesn’t answer the phone, he didn’t answer. Then we drunk dialed my mom which was fun, because I had to shout the entire weekend of fun and hijinks Helen and I shared. She was moderately impressed, Helen was partially blushing, but like always she’s a good sport. Then it was off to bed.

Monday
Helen and I were off, most of you weren’t so fortunate. I got up about 8, Helen had been up since 6, living her life, reading, walking the dog, crocheting, growing a friendly freedom garden or who knows what. When I got up she proceeded to make me a hearty hippy breakfast of real bacon and cage free eggs, again it was muy delicioso. Then we watched get him to the Greek, Helen read a book, a big book, like 1200 pages. I’ve never read anything that long in my whole life. We had some more time so we played some more buzz trivia and I managed to win YET again. Then it was time to go to the airport but not before we got some lunch which consisted of you guessed it, Tex Mex. We stopped at this place and got some tacos and Mexican coke. Which Helen proceeded to spill all over her cup holder. We’re going to have to get her trained on the ways of multitasking whilst driving on the interstate. Got on my plane and headed back home.

And that’s how I spent my Presidents day weekend, yeah it was better than yours.

Thanks for everything Cousin Helen,

Jakey

Mountain Men 11

Yo, time for the Coors Light Ski Team to make their annual trek to the ski slopes. This year we had two new participants who in the end were initiated and made whole members of the Mountain Men and the Coors Light Skit Team.

Thursday

I wasn’t sure if I was going to be able to make it to this trip. It was the same week of a proposed Australia trip and I wasn’t sure if I was going to be going on that trip. Luckily or Unfortunately, depending on who you are talking to I wasn’t selected for the trip and got to go hang out with my boys. Flight was fine to Salt Lake City. I was flying through Phoenix and as I was the first to arrive so I was the car rental guy for this trip. Through discussions it was determined that we would get a large SUV, in hindsight we should have gotten a luxury SUV or a minivan. So we picked up our car and it was this GM thing, we nicknamed it the menopause because it was a vehicle lacking power, it was small, and basically all things equaling it to being on the rag. The rest of the crew, 6 in total, got in within about 1.5 hours of me. We had set up this group phone number where we could have conference calls and group text messaging. From the outset the messages were all basically gay-sex related messages and calling each other out for having sand in their vaginas. As it turns out, we all have lots of sand in our vaginas according to each other. We picked up a couple of guys, made a trip to the state liquor store, so we could get some alcohol and some full strength beer. The beer there is only 3% in the store, if you want full strength then you have to go to the state liquor store. Since we are the Coors Light Ski Team we go through about a 30 pack a day. We were hoping to get full strength Coors there but no such luck they only sell the pussy version in Utah. Luckily, the two cowboys from Texas brought two 18 packs in their checked baggage. One Light and one Regular, it was pretty epic, all were drinking in my car except for me. You should be allowed to drink while driving there if the beer is that weak. Our tradition is to go to Red Iguanas the first night every trip. Its this place that serves up Tex Mex and it is always packed. We had to wait about an hour but its worth it, had some margaritas, chips and salsa, guac, tacos, beans, rice, and chile con queso. Killed some parking lot beers and made our way back into the car. And then the two cowboys from Texas thought it would be a good idea to go to a titty bar. In the weeks prior they had been searching the google asses off to find a strip club in SLC. Well that shit basically doesn’t exist, if they have 3% beer, then you can bet they don’t have strip clubs. What they do have is bikini bars. Bikini bars don’t server alcohol and the girls wear pasties. Its really quite funny. We had cherry cokes and watched a bunch of girls not shake their junk. White girls usually don’t have asses, some do, most don’t. The ones that do are awesome and keepers. We hung out there for awhile, made it rain, got some lap dances, and then headed back to Park City where we would be staying for the long weekend. We got there about 11 or so and then went to the grocery store and did some major damage. For four days we bought 300 dollars worth of groceries and Im happy to say that only about maybe 10 bucks of it we didn’t consume. Yeah, Mountain Men eat a lot of shit, we shit a lot, then eat some more.

Friday

This was our first day of skiing and we went to Deer Park. It was pretty good skiing most of the trip, unfortunately it got above freezing everyday so it was kind of slushy and icy. Skiing went well, from what I can remember. Lines weren’t too long and I didn’t fall down. After skiing we invade the hop top, it turns into a hot liquid mass of man soup by the time its all said and done. This first night there were about 6 dudes in their when we joined them. They were about 20 years older than us and kind of douchy. We talked and they said we were them 20 years from now, if we are them 20 years from now we will kick our own asses. They were talking about Porsche 911s, bonds, and their wives, and AND sharing cigars. If that’s not he crem de la crem of douchy I don’t know what is. We decided to pay wisest wizard that night. Basically everytime you drink a beer you duct tape the last one to the bottom of your new one. The idea is to create the longest staff. In laymens terms, he who has the biggest dick, wins. I think Ian had the biggest dick, 10 or 11 beers. With the killing of each 30 pack we usually kill two bags of Tysons Anytizers. Anytizers are the sweet bastard lovechild of chicken nuggets and other ingredients. My personal favorite is the chicken nuggets infused with pepperoni pizza, talk about the ultimate. After we finished off pre dinner and then all showered, a feat that takes only 1 hour for 6 dudes, yeah girls you suck, we made our way to this brewery. The place was pretty crowded and we were waiting in the entrance way. We were there standing, talking, and minding our own business. As we are standing there, talking, minding our own business this big group of people is walking out. This guy with a stroller asks one of my friends to move, but he does it kind of rudely. Im guessing said friend maybe saw him in his peripheral vision and moved within time, but it wasn’t quick enough for this guy. So my friend walks into our group and this guy passes. This guy is saying goodbye to all his friend and he keeps looking back at our group. We were right in front of the glass doors so he could see us just fine. He looked perturbed and seemed to be getting more upset. Well the whole time, one of our Texas members is basically mean mugging him and dogging him out the whole entire, every time this guy looks back our guy gets a little more chesty. Finally, said asshole walks back in and gets in my friends face. I think this guy is our tallest member, he and I are about equal but he may have better posture. So this guy is like who do you think you are, you think youre bad, you want to go outside, yadda yadda yadda. Well I don’t know if its because he was with us or because hes just awesome he starts to mouth off to him. Says why don’t you take your stroller and go home, go take your baby for a walk. This guy responds with do you know what I did with guys like you overseas. Said friend asks him politely if it involved sodomy, or maybe something more graphic than that. We all start laughing like hyenas, both guys are straight faced, the rest of us are eyeing the situation, hes not going to be 6 of us if anything should happen. Eventually, his wife comes and makes him leave. We all remind him to go take his stroller home. For the rest of the meal we recount the tale and cant fathom why some dude, a family man would come back in and challenge guys much younger than him and outnumbered. I mean no matter how strong or brave or proud you are, youre old and you have a stroller, go back to your minivan, get some froyo and go to bed. You probably have to get up early for a game of golf or crossword puzzles.

Saturday

Was kind of sort of our day off. We went back to salt lake city because of one reason and one reason alone. To go to the Olympic park and do the skeleton and bobsled. We got up that morning and I baked about a pound of delicious pork stomach. Mmmmmm bacon. Along with that we had our traditional cinnamon rolls. Ian insists on the nasty ass orange icing ones, this year 5 guys vetoed him. Fuck that shit, icing should be vanilla and vanilla only. Come que orange!?!??!?!?!?! So we headed out to the park and went through a quick tutorial and soon enough it was our turn to go. We got a basic crash course. Keep your elbows tucked and your shoulders down. Lean with your head. The course is 16 turns I believe, a little over a mile of track….I think. We were starting from the last quarter, the last 4 turns, maybe there are only 12 turns……irrelevant. So, when the Olympians do it, they take off running and jump on the sled mid air. Tourist get a slight walking push. You think it would be lame but its not, after turn 1 thanks to our fun friends physics and gravity you are hauling ass. Nothing like frictionless metal on frozen water. So Im going down and my helmet is kind of fogging and Im not flexible enough to look up and try to steer with my head. So I kind of put my neck down, Ehhh wrong choice joyce, I start to edge closer and closer to walls, bump the inside wall ricochet up the side wall going into the next turn, slam into the wall. Managed to get a scrape even though I had a jacket and padding over my wrist. Ice is not forgiving. The last turn I was just hoping it was over soon and eventually you go up hill to stop. I think my time was about 30 seconds. It didn’t last long as Im one of the lightest mountain men, I have to watch my girlish figure. We all take our turns and watch each other going down the track smoothly. Smoothly = uncontrolled banshees, everyone is dragging the feet or banging wrists, I thought Ian was going to come out of the track. It was pretty epic. Its another check mark that you probably haven’t done. We went down town and had some food and beer. I drank some dark beer from hell called Devastator. It was good just alcoholic. One of the guys had this nasty ass jalapeno cream ale. It tasted like someone poured jalapeno juice into a miller lite. Something Im sure the Mexicans of El Paso would love, just like they love Clamato Michelada Bud Light, yeah grandma Im talking to you. That shit is disgusting. Same goes for Miller Chill. So we headed back to the house and started to play Adios Amigo. And before you start with some sick Spanish butt sex game, its not. It’s a board game involving math and banditos. What else would you expect from a bunch of nerds. You have your bandito and you basically try to kill the other guys whilst doing subtraction or addition. We did this for awhile and then made our way back to the Olympic park because now it was time for one more check mark. Das Bobsled!!!!!! In Das Bobsled, you get to start all the way from where the Olympians start. You are one of three passengers and you have an official driver. It would be too dangerous if they let us drive. We would have had no problem, but regular people might have. You also don’t get do a running start. You get a push off, not a walking push off like in skeleton, just a slight nudge. So I was in team UT vs. Rice, put another way Team Public school vs. Private. The privates had the coach of the famed Disney classic Cool Runnings. We really wanted to ask him about the scandal but we lamented. Anyways since the fatties from private school weigh more than us they had a smoking time. Next was our turn. I was sitting third. Doesn’t really matter, you cant see much anyways. So in our training they tell us to hold onto the side rails, shrug your shoulders and keep your back straight so you can protect your neck. As we are coming out of turn 1 im thinking eh, no big deal, turn 2 and 3 are a horsehoe and then my friendly friends gravity and physics come back to play. Now in the class they said we would hit about 5 or 6 G’s and do about 80 mph. I was like yeah, bring it on, thinking it may come linearly. Nope, not gonna happen, that shit came digitally. We went from about 10-80 in .5 seconds, we went from 1 to 5 G’s coming out of turn 3, my next slammed into my chest, my shoulders crumpled, I felt like I was being put into an anchovy tin. It was all I could do to keep my head up. As we would come out of the next turn the pressure would ease and then BAM, more pressure and was smushed again. It was the longest 50 seconds of my life and I never want to do it again. Oh im happy for my check mark, but fuck that shit. I was sore for the next day or so. That night we headed down to our sushi shop. Last year we had this douchey white guy making our sushi, he kept talking about how hot he was going to make that shit. He just kept adding more and more Sriacha sauce. Well this year he was there again, but I don’t think he recognized us. We proceeded to go through about 200 USD of sushi and beer. Once we were fat dumb and happy we made our way back to hotel to pass out and play some more board games. You would think we would have gotten chicks, babes, and snow bunnies, but what would you expect from 3 engineers, 2 marketers, and 1 IT guy. Ehh whatever, are salaries are probably bigger.

Sunday

Woke up with much pain in all parts of my body. I think every joint was rocked and I was kind of walking around like Frankenstein, as were the rest of the Mountain Men. Everyone had a bruise or was sore on some part of the body, even with the amount of Coors we drank in the hot tub. Today we went to the Canyons ski resort which is the biggest ski resort in Park City and one of the biggest in the US as well. This thing has something like 4000 skiable acres. Needless to say you cannot tackle the beast in one day. We skied a good chuck of it. Ian had his camera as always and who better than me to pose for the camera. I took some nasty falls but all were in the vain of looking super sexy and fine that and I was trying to impress the new guy. I had one fall where I slid for quite a while and one that sliced my pants. Thank goodness ski boots go half way up your calf. More importantly why are my skis so sharp???? We had our typical lunch. I consists of big manly sandwiches, a box of tomato basil wheat thins, a box of little debbie oatmeal creme pies, and a 6 pack of gatorade. We are so hood!!! That night we went to dinner, our last night of over excess calories consumption. Beer, pizza, chicken wings, and dr pepper. Burp burp fart fart, off to bed.

Monday

This was our last day, but we werent leaving until the late afternoon. So we skied half day at Park City. I took one more epic fall, slid down the mountain about 100 feet. Felt like cliff hanger where I just couldnt get any traction, mildly shit my pants. Its almost as if the helmet makes me take more risks. After that my legs were pretty much jello, so we stuck to easier runs. I worked on getting more air. I have to get used to not flailing around when Im in the air. And Im not talking big X-Games air, Im talking like 4-6 inches, which feels like 4-6 feet sometimes. But we did that until about noon, and then we were pooped. Came back home and devoured anything that was edible in the house, had a few last Coors, packed up all of our shit and made our way to the airport. I was glad to get rid of the Chevy Menopause. We got a large SUV to haul all of our shit around, we wanted to get a Surburban, but they were all rented. I actually dont even know the name of the car, but it got nicknamed Menopause quickly in the trip because it had no power, we were all uncomfortable and it had loads of blind spots. The guys at enterprise gave us a free upgrade for next time, but I dont think we are going back to Salt Lake any time soon.

So that was our trip, that was the Coors Light Ski Teams Adventure for Eleven.

Hope you all enjoyed.

Sincerely,

Khiones Lover