Silflay Hraka

You really haven’t lived until you’ve seen 5 drunk….somewhat inebriated…white guys singing along to Let’s Go Down To The River To Pray from O Brother Where Art Thou at the top of their lungs.

No to mention A Man Of Constant Of Sorrow.

Yep, we’re a little weird.

Thanks, T-Bone.

16 clear nose skates, 2 puffer fish, innumerable spiny dogfish, a few coaker and a flounder. Not really all that much in the grand scheme of things, or even in the less grand scheme, but it was diverting enough for us.

Greetings from Cape Hatteras, North Carolina. Bigwig, author of yesterday’s posts from the beach, has informed me that he is officially too hungover to blog and that it is my duty and responsibility to tell the story of our beach gathering from a different, sober perspective. Being the dutiful, responsible and relatively sober person that I am, here I sit.

We got here to the Cape at around 2:00 p.m. yesterday afternoon and have been enjoying some great weather, a great house and a great deal of alcohol ever since. We fished, drank beer, watched TV, drank beer, watched Venture Brothers cartoons, drank beer, played cards, drank beer & single-grain Scotch, sat in the hot-tub and passed out cold. All-in-all, it’s been a full trip so far.

This morning has been relatively slow. We crawled out of bed around 9:30 and began the search for something to take the edge off the headaches. Some turned to Excedrin and coffee. (Me.) Some turned to sausage biscuits. (The Oxymoronic Scotsman.) Some turned to the hair of the dog that bit. (Bigwig, who was the worst for alcohol last evening and consequently the worst for wear this morning. After leaving the hot tub last night, he roamed the decks of the beach house carrying a towel . Did he wrap it around his naked person? No. He just carried it while running around starkers before passing out. Bigwig started the morning with two fingers worth of Scotch.)

(Dawg, who nearly drowned after he started taking water into his hip-waders yesterday evening, is surprisingly fresh this morning. He’s got a lot more practice at being a drunk than the rest of us, evidently.)

Several newcomers have joined the party this morning. Friend John, who we expected late last night, arrived just after we arose. He actually did get here late last night but couldn’t find the house. Actually, he did find the house, but he didn’t believe it was the one we were occupying. Oxy Scot’s Land Rover persuaded him that the house was occupied by people with more money than we could possibly have. This line of thinking led him to a neighboring house where he approached a group of guys in a hot tub of their own that he expected to be us.

Uh…no. John slept in his truck last night, several hundred yards away from his final destination. Why didn’t he call us, you ask? Well, he did. 37 times. Thirty. Seven. Times. In our advanced state of alcoholic decay, none of us heard Bigwig’s phone, which he’d accidently switched to vibrate. Not only were there 37 missed called on Bigwig’s phone, but three emails from John’s Blackberry in my email this morning. Sleeping in his truck is what he gets for assuming we’re all dirt-poor rednecks.

John’s doing his best to catch up with the rest of us. He’s had two fingers of scotch and at least one extra large Bloody Mary since his 9:30 arrival. I expect to post several more stories about him later on. Stay tuned.

Friend David has also shown up. He’s actually already out fishing. He won’t last.

The latest and last arrival is the guy we almost killed on the last fishing trip, Curtis. I assume he’s got his gallon of Jim Beam. I assume there will be more stories to tell about him later as well. Hopefully they won’t involve dialing the poison control center.

At this point, it’s time to get up and starting getting ready for the beach. The house seems to have recovered enough from the early morning hangovers to start the process of rigging up lines and changing into fishing gear. I better go and start getting myself ready before they leave me. Be sure to come back later. We’ve got two solid days left in the house and I just can’t imagine that we won’t have stories worth telling by the end of the day.

My head hurts just thinking about it.