Heading back home... notes on Boise

After an extra week of hanging out on friends couches and in affordable hotel rooms it was time to go home.

The RV had a lot of shit in it so we rented a 2010 GMC Yukon, filled it with said shit and headed out of Idaho very disappointed to be ending the trip but very excited to be heading out of Idaho.

Some notes on Boise:
- Days in Idaho: 14
- Nights with RV in Wal Mart lot: Pendleton, 1 Boise, 4
- Nights in hotels: 6
- Nights on couches: 3
- Incidents involving the Police: 3
- Average number of alcoholic drinks consumed daily: 10.5
- Days without drinking at all: 2
- Hotel rooms trashed: all of them
- Boise is a (small) city but there are drink specials every night.
- Dollar beers! Quarter beers!
- Boise has the dumbest waitresses in the WHOLE world.
- The speed limit is too slow so I broke it whenever possible.
- Everyone loves BSU, theres nothing else though.
- Boise has one of the largest Basque populations in the world.
- You can smoke in some bars. Some of these bars have no ventilation. Gross.

RV is dead...College Gameday in Boise

After going to a mechanic it was determined that fixing the RV was going to take a lot more money than we hoped. New engines are expensive. Instead of going home we stuck around Boise because ESPN's College Gameday was coming in for the Boise State vs Oregon State game.

Some friends from Portland were coming to in town for the game and they arrived at all hours of the night. We went by the stadium at about 5:30 AM and there were 13,000 people in line for CGD so we went back to sleep. Eventually we hit up the game (which I watched on tv, no tickets) and tailgated in the hot ass parking lot until I felt sick. The Beavers ended up losing, which was too bad since I was actually pulling for them a little bit.

Free Budweiser

Tuesday night we were sitting at some restaurant downtown when Matt got a phone call about some event with free beer. Curiosity piqued, we wandered over to the Knitting Factory which is a small concert hall that I can only assume used to be an actual knitting factory.



Turns out there was a Budweiser event being hosted there called Battle of the Buds. It is a contest pitting teams of "buds" against each other, all vying for a trip to Vegas and the ultimate grand prize of $100,000. I didn't really give a shit about it but there was more free beer than we knew what to do with. Afterwards we stumbled over to Bad Irish and got down on some beer pong.

Stuck in Boise... party in Boise!

We had already been out drinking a few nights in Boise but since we've been stuck here we've been out pretty much every night. Good thing this is one of the cheapest towns to drink in. Every night seems to be dollar beers or 2 for 1 specials. We've been out with my cousins Ryan, Anthony, and Shane a few times and also with Matt's TKE brother Shawn.

So far we've been to:
The Endzone (x2)
Suds (x2)
Hannah's
Mack and Charlies
The Office
Cafe Ole'
The Red Room


This Mexican chick was harassing bar patrons and handing out free condoms.

We broke down... AGAIN.

So about 10 miles past where we broke down the first time, it happened again. It figures we would since we don't know shit about fixing cars. A nice lady cop stopped to make sure we weren't camping on the side of I-84. Eventually we got a big ass tow truck to haul us right back to Boise.

We broke down... I climbed the mountain

Last Thursday we had a long night of drinking so we didn't hit the road until around 1 PM. We were cruising along when all of a sudden the engine started getting real weird. We pulled off the freeway and found out there was coolant spilled all over the engine. We let the engine cool down and refilled everything and tightened all the caps. While we were letting it sit I had a nice adventure climbing the nearby hills. After an hour or so we hit the road again.

Off I go...



I made it!

Crashing the golf tournament

Our dude Jesse from Wal Mart advised us that it would be a good idea to try and sneak in to the tournament he was working at. We had nothing better to do with the afternoon so we rolled up to the gate with clipboards and matching polo shirts and told them we needed to go in and get our media credentials. They drove us up to club house in a golf cart and we were in. It really wasn't that exciting but I did get some free Tillamook cheese and drank a few beers and I got to catch up on PTI and Sportscenter in one of the tents.




This old guy was heading to the bars after he got done working the tournament.


I'm sitting on the front of this dudes golf cart while he tries to drive.

Bud Light Lime, don't mind if I do.

Party in the parking lot!

Did you know that at most Wal Mart stores they allow you to stay overnight in the parking lot? Its a pretty interesting place filled with some pretty interesting people.

Last night we met Jesse, who is in town to caddy for the PGA Nationwide tour. He was pretty cool and he introduced us to some of the more "interesting" people in the parking lot. There was a trio made up of two guys age 24 and 21 and their 38 year old girlfriend. Yeah thats right, they shared a girlfriend and the three of them lived in a van. Another interesting character was Richard, the 41 year old disabled Desert Storm vet who claimed he could squat 850 lbs in high school.

Boise State University

I've been at Boise State since Monday checking out campus. Its actually a pretty nice place and there is even a river running right next to it. I took a tour the other day and got to check out Bronco Stadium, home of Legarette Blount's shining moment. Theres not much to say so here are a bunch of pictures.

Seattle... Lights out... Pendleton Round Up.

I got to the Seattle area late Saturday afternoon just in time to catch the Ducks game at Matt's house. Alex and Rob joined us and we polished off several pizzas and a case of beer. The night was still young however. We rolled
down to the University of Washington campus and met up with some rowdy dudes and my cousin Marshall. After several hours of drunken mayhem involving beers, zombies, blood diamonds and gyros, I finally crawled into bed (couch/floor) around 4:30 AM. This led to us hitting the road several hours later than we had hoped which of course led to some complications.

Sunday night we were cruising down I-84 in "The Monstrosity" when we noticed the headlights went out. No problem, we simply drove the next nine miles down the freeway with only our hazard lights on. We had to stop in Pendleton for the evening at the Wal Mart parking lot which was full of RVs since the PBA tour and the Round Up were going on this week. We haven't fixed the lights yet but we did wander around Pendleton and saw some weird shit. In my book that counts as a win. Unfortunately our stay was brief since we left immediately at sunrise.