Subject: I Survived New year
From: Yopu
Date: 1998/01/08
Newsgroups: alt.drunken.bastards

I'm almost back to feeling right again. Fuck. What a great holiday. I
don't even care about the fact that Jesus wasn't born on December 25, or
that Christmas isn't even a religious holiday. Every year at the
quarry, the big Boss sends us all away from Christmas Eve until after
New Year because he knows that we don't do shit for work because we're
either hungover or sick or whatever, and nothings gonna get done anyway,
so it's vacation time.

I got a call from a pal that's building a cabin in the mountains, and he
just got a snowmobile 2 weeks ago and he says Let's go. So we headed up
the mountain. I kept looking for the snowmobile and food and booze and
shit, but Andy said it was already there and everything is all set. He
had some skis in the back of the rig and said we'd ski in and the sled
was there at the cabin. Its only 3.5 miles in from town he says, so I
figure we can do that OK.

So we get there and it's pretty nice and we go to work on a keg of Beer
that he'd brought up a few weeks before the snow started, and the beers
cold now and tasting pretty good. Fuck, his cabin doesn't have any
heat. He only got the roof on like three weeks ago, and there's no
insulation in the walls or anything, but he has the dish antenna up so
we can watch some football. We get the sled out of the basement and
fire it up and do a couple of laps around his place for practice. KICK
ASS! Snowmobiles RULE!

About dark, he says lets go over to another cabin, and this sounds
pretty good, because it's colder than shit in his place and these other
folks have a built up place with a fire and furniture. So we get there
and they have fire and every kind of booze and wine and beer there, and
there's a bunch of food on the table, and this thing's starting to
really look good. We start drinking, and his friend's old lady starts
shoving food at us. The next thing I know, I'm pretty fucked up,
because of the heat and the glasses of JD on top of the beer.

Andy says we better go out for some fresh air, so we head out on the
deck and another guy is out there and he says Stand back and check it
out, so we get out of his way, and he launches a skyrocket off the deck
straight up. BOOM! Fourth of July, big time. The guy keeps setting
these things off for probably 20 minutes, and we're drinking every time
he lights one off. Happy New Year! The sky was pure black, and there
were billions of stars.

After a while, Andy must of said lets go, which I don't remember, but I
woke up at his place so we made it OK. Then we spent the next two days
drinking and eating over at his buddy's cabin, and I don't remember too
much of that either, except that we were riding the sled everywhere.

Oh yeah, one guy up there drove his truck in from town. Then it started
snowing Friday pretty good. Saturday he went to leave, but the snow was
too deep for his truck, so it's still up in the woods. He'll get it
next spring I guess.

Saturday was Football day, and we were at Andys because he has the dish,
and so everybody came up there and it was like watching at Green Bay, we
were all wearing coats and gloves and hats and watching football and
drinking beer and booze and its snowing pretty good outside, and it was
maybe 35 degrees inside the cabin. I remember watching most of the
first game and parts of the second game, and then the game was over and
somebody said we'd better spend the night at their place because it was
gonna really fucking snow that night, and we'd probably die if we stayed
at Andys.

So we went with this other guy to his place and there were like 6 other
people there, and he started making pitchers of Martinis and we had
dinner and wine and I don't really remember much about the dinner.
Fucking Martinis were gin right out of the freezer into a pitcher with
some lemon. I guess they stuffed me in the sleeping bag, because that's
where I was in the morning.

There was two feet of new snow on the ground. The sled was mostly
buried and they had to dig out of their door a little. They were kind
of worried because they had a couple of little kids and they needed help
to get to town with all the new snow. Andy was one hurtin unit. I
guess he was getting the flu, and he was pretty slow from the hangover.
I felt like shit myself. We went out to get the sled moving while they
started making a big breakfast. I was thinking that a couple of
RedBeers would be a good enough breakfast with all the new snow on the
ground, and maybe a tomato and vodka and about 6 Irish Coffees would get
things right, and the next thing I had a red beer and a stiff coffee and
about half a fresh heater going.

Andy got the sled stuck like 10 times trying to get down the hill to the
main road. The first time he walked back up to get me, and then I just
walked along behind and kept helping him get out, and I kept sinking in
the snow and falling on my ass. I was getting numb by the time we got
down the hill to the road. Then we had to screw around while the others
had food and got their shit packed and whatnot. It was snowing like a
little bastard the whole time and the tracks kept getting covered. We
started trying to get those guys going, since we had to help with the
kids and all.

Finally Andy gave out. He says You got to get them out and into town.
I was hung pretty bad and colder than shit, and tired from digging and
pulling the sled, but what the hell, somebody has to do it so I started
strapping their stuff on a couple of crappy plastic toboggans they had,
and saying who's ready to go to town. So it took 4 loads to get those
folks out, and they were pretty happy about it. The little kids were
crying because they were scared they might be stuck there, so the
parents were all happy when we were done. We made the last trip in the
dark with the headlight.

I got back to find Andy laying in his sleeping bag in the tent he has
set up in the basement, shivering sick. Well hell, I didn't feel much
better at that point, and the place wasn't much warmer than freezing,
and my coat and pants and gloves were pretty wet. So we stoked up with
a bunch of shots of Jack, and stoked up the little fireplace in the
basement with wood and laid it in for the night.

The next morning we had to ski out to town, because Andy didn't have any
place for the sled except the basement at the cabin. I felt like
roadkill, because I didn't sleep much during the night because of the
shivers. It took 5 hours to go 3.5 miles, between the snow and the
altitude and the hangover from not eating. I was working on one of
those squirt bottles filled with Jack, just to keep energy going. We
finally got to town and I made Andy drive, because all I wanted was to
have some more Jack and wait for the heater to kick in.

We made it home because I woke up at my place, and I called Andy
yesterday. He said he had to practically carry me in the house, because
I guess I finished off the squirt bottle on the way down the hill.

5 days in the snow at high altitude in a frozen fucking cabin with no
food or heat except what other people gave us and near constant
drinking. At least there was plenty to drink at the cabin. It's going
to be a great place come summer.