Well the Kids Are All Hopped Up and Ready to Go

So, this weekend was kind of a roller coaster. Friday night was hard for me for reasons I won't go into on here, but the weirdness carried into Saturday and I wasn't at all sure that I was in the mood to drive to the Quad Cities for the pool tournament.

As I've said before, I went for a four year period where I rarely went out and didn't date at all. Part of it was that I can be a bit of a homebody, but most of it was that I was scared of putting myself out there and getting hurt. Last year I vowed to just suck it up and make myself go do stuff. And yes, I have been hurt since then, but it's easily been overcome by the crazy wonderful experiences I've had. So, I decided to keep on keeping on, and made myself drive to the tournament.

As usual, the pay off was huge. State pool tournament land is different than the normal world. I walked into the hotel room and all my favorite girls were there, along with some new amazing women I hadn't yet met. The Ramones were on the CD player, and there was every kind of junk food imaginable, as well as lots and lots of drinks.

All of that sounds great, right? But not in comparison to the company. These women are awesome. They are total straight shooters, they don't backstab or stir shit and they are always there when you need them. They also respect their own relationships, and if they aren't in one, they respect everyone else's too. It sounds impossible, but they really are that cool. Plus, they had a strict no woman left behind policy for the weekend, so you didn't have to worry if you got too drunk or couldn't keep up.

The girls were done playing pool by the time I arrived, but they took the time to show me around the tournament, and even pointed out the woman who offered my friend T. a lap dance after their game. Then we decided to venture out into the big city of Davenport.

The first bar we entered was called Buzzie's, I think. The downstairs area was crowded and not very inviting, but there was the promise of cheese fries, so we soldiered on to the upstairs area where we found this large banquet table and decided to take a Last Supper inspired photo of the team. I think it turned out more than a little awesome.

The other side of the upstairs area was full of pool playing boys in kilts. For real. I know, we were all amazed by our own dumb luck too. They were from Cedar Rapids and there for the tournament. They told us they weren't allowed to wear their kilts during the tournament. When we got all up in arms about how sexist that was, one of them said, "Yeah, but we also don't have to have periods or go through menopause, so we can't get all that upset about it." Okay, they were our new best friends.

Because state tournament world is different than the real world, these guys were all cute and goofy and not the least bit creepy. They were all about having fun and they not only weren't intimidated by our bawdy, rowdy ways, they actually thought we were charming. See what I mean? This would never have happened at any other place or time.

The boys finally left to check out other bars, but not before one of our girls was smart enough to give them her number. They called and texted to let us know where they were at each new bar while we stayed a little longer to play pool, or in my case, to act like a total fucking idiot. Hey, I gotta go with my strengths.

Since this is already too long, I'm going to call this part one, and finish with part two tomorrow. Night night.