Valuable Lessons in Shooting Your Mouth Off

All these years of poor diet and under-hydration led me to believe that I knew what cramping was. Little did I know that I didn't know squat, until Saturday, August 30th, 2008.

Wait, too much too soon. Let's go back to where it all began.

It was August 9th, the beautiful union of two wonderful people. A little pre-wedding drinking, and a whole lot of post-wedding drinking left me staggering like a stunned prize fighter before the reception even began. Vodka, Triple Sec, Sparks+, Jim Beam, Jose Cuervo, champagne and ole' faithful, Mr. Bud Light, were all locked inside my bloodstream holding a royal rumble on the alcohol concentration of my blood. I was left stumbling around yelling "HEY!" at and shaking hands of people I thought I knew. One of these people was the bride's father. Sitting at a half-empty table talking with one or two people, just taking in the events, I plopped myself down beside him with beer and chicken in hand. What happens next is the subject of much speculation, like the JFK assassination. And like Oswald seems to have been an uniformed pawn, I too was about to become an unwitting accomplice in a sad and tragic murder.

The murder of my pain threshold.

Apparently I volunteered to help move over Labor Day. I vaguely remember this. It's the only reason I manned up and followed through on my word. Or what I believe to have been my word. Friday afternoon, on a beautiful day, when people went home to start barbecuing and drinking and sleeping in hammocks, I was choking down some indigestion-inducing McDonalds and en route to Kansas City, Missouri. I had no idea I-70 was the road to hell. We arrived in KC around 11pm, visited a little, and went to sleep. So far, so good.

Saturday started inauspiciously enough. A late wake-up time meant we didn't have to start moving until around 9:30. I have had tremendous problems with cramping in recent years - I blame it on too much coffee and too little anything else. Of the seemingly nine times I've helped people move in the last two years, I'm a perfect 9-for-9 at cramping up at some point. I was determined to buck this trend. I downed three bananas and three 12oz. Gatorades before lifting one iota. My final tally ended up at four bananas and six Gatorades. A 10' x 30' storage garage packed to the gills was our first hurdle. Five grown men, one boy, two large Ford trucks, a Uhaul trailer and a flatbed trailer allowed us to knock out the storage garage in a matter of hours. More impressively, I didn't cramp once. Never even felt the twinge of a cramp's insidious beginnings.

Food was sparse, mostly snacks during the day. It was these little breaks that I supplemented my banana and Gatorade totals. After moving the big stuff, we went to their townhouse they had been temporarily living in to get the heavy items there, before calling it a day. It was during this time that I felt a minor bark in my left forearm. It's always the forearm or the calves. If the Arch is the Gateway to the West, my forearms and calves are the Gateway to Pain.

I brushed aside the warning sign, and we finished up the load. They day was almost done. All we had to do was drive back to the house and unload the trucks, then viola!, day over. Oh, but wait. What's this here? Three bicycles. Some playful taunts of a bicycle race back to the house, about three and a half miles. My competitive nature, flaring up, made brazen and reinforced by regular bike rides.

On the seat I went, speeding off down a hill, determined to go all Lance Armstrong on whoever was jumping on the two remaining bikes behind me. It was in the low 90's and the humidity was bad, but not St. Louis bad. Two-thirds of the way into the ride, the trucks passed me as I was clicking along at about 24 miles per hour. Only one competitor had donned a bike and was lagging well behind me. The homestretch beckoned like the Siren's call to sailors. Pumping up a hill, my legs firing away like pistons, my left forearm again flared up. One quick, sharp pain and then nothing. Like someone clearing their throat, or the shark in Jaws bumping into the boat and swimming off, the message was crystal and simple: hey - take it easy.

I rushed onward undaunted. I widened by gap on the boy behind me. I worked the gears, I pedaled downhill instead of coasting. My heart pounded and my lungs fought for clean, breathable air amongst the humidity. I must've beaten him to the house by six or seven minutes, minimally. I stumbled inside gasping for oxygen and unable to talk clearly. Danielle's younger sister, Alicia, was waiting by the refrigerator with a cold Gatorade in hand. Bless her.

I sat down and chugged half the Gatorade, pausing only for air. Within three minutes, I didn't want to feel like a slacker, so as my vitals leveled off, I went downstairs to move the furniture into the basement. It was then I was shot with pain. As soon as I got to the basement, in front of all the guys, I was immediately greeted with the cramps I'd fought to stave off. First it was just the index and middle finger on my right hand, contorting into a claw with cramps. I pressed up against a wall, bending them back to a straight position. The treatment did not take. When I release the pressure on them, my forearms and biceps on both arms followed suit, simultaneously voicing their displeasure with the strain I'd placed on them. The bicep cramps forced me to try to straighten out my arms to find comfort, while the finger/forearm were cramping in such a way that I wanted to bend the arm to relieve tension. It was impossible to find a position that soothed both sets of muscles.

The closest I came was a position where I bent over fully at the wait and put my hands down toward the ground, straightening the arm muscles and bending my wrists backwards. I guess this helped blood flow. It seemed to calm all muscles down for a few minutes until I felt a creeping pain up my left hamstring and in my left buttock. Realizing this would be way worse than either of my arms, I straightened up, and went to lean against a retaining wall, like I was holding it up from falling. I was pretty much able to stretch everything out in this position. After a few minutes, I felt well enough to carry a few small items from the truck to the basement.

If only it had ended there, all would have been swell.

But it didn't end there. Lord no, not even close. I had apparently stressed myself into a migraine headache. Wonderful. So within short order, us kids were scurrying back to the townhouse to clean up for dinner at a well-regarded Italian place. I'm doing all this with one side of my face, my right side, all scrunched up. Squinty-eyed, mouth contorted, mumbling...I'm sure I looked like a stroke victim. I vaguely remember traveling to the restaurant...we got lost. I started to perk up again when we got out to walk. I had cooled down and was a perfect evening, and the walking seemed to help, but I have to guesstimate the biggest factor was the mad pussy walking the streets of KC. It was insane. I don't know if it was Saturday night date night or if it's always like this, but it was insane. Insane I tell you. I almost got whiplash following all the hot tail walking in different directions.

We go inside, and our reservation got the special room. By special I mean totally fucking creepy. It's this little round room that barely sat all fourteen people in our party. The roof of the room is low, but concave, so it echoes - loudly. The walls are covered, almost every square inch, with memorabilia of all the Popes throughout history. Photos, sketches, signed Pope posters (who knew?). The roof of the room was a mosaic of angels or something. But hands down, the biggest thing that broke the creep-o-meter, was the foot and a half tall bust of the current Pope staring at you and folding his hands. It's like having a child molester watch you eat dinner. Luckily, the place is a family style restaurant, with a six foot lazy susan in the middle of the table, so the thing would periodically be spun away from you.

I have a feeling the food was good, but I had no taste with my headache feeling like I had a freight train driving through my right temple. I choked down what I could in all it's bland glory, drank a huge beer to try and take the edge off, but that wasn't working. So I took 3 Tylenol on the way home and went to sleep.

Sunday was great. I woke up refreshed and since I wasn't religious, I didn't have to wake up to go to church. I plugged away on my laptop doing a little work, checking in on some football highlights and at about 11:15 or so, I got picked up and taken to breakfast. I forget the name of the place, but the Turkey Melt sandwich I had was probably the best I've ever had. I'm ravenous with hunger just thinking about it now. We got back to moving a little after noon with a brief clean out of the townhouse. That went quick. Then Danielle's uncles left and Pat, Danielle's dad, and myself took a trip to Lowe's to get some lumber. It took us awhile got get all the measurements, but we got in a good flow of cutting and nailing and put up a couple of shelving units in the basement. If we had another hour, we probably cruise to the desired number of five or six shelves, whatever Wally was shooting for.

Around 5:30, six o'clock, we were released for the day and cleaned up. Pat, Danielle, Alicia and myself ventured off to a place called Granite City Food & Brewery for chow, which is located in a part of North Kansas City with a ton of bars and restaurants in a few square blocks. The place had magnificent food, enough to almost induce a heart attack right at the table, and since they were a microbrewery, they gave out free samples of their custom brews. I started out with some sort of dark German lager, Brother something or other, and decided to stick with the dark beers all night. I don't think I've ever had anything other than your typical Budweiser or Miller products. Maybe a Heineken here or there, or some indie brewery's beer comparable to a Budweiser. My old man used to sample all these weird beers, but I never got into it. I think dark beer is going to be my thing for awhile. I had a couple of these things and a massive cheeseburger and waffle fries.

From there we walked to an Irish pub & grill, O'Dowd's I think was the name. The mail level was pretty empty, but they have a cool rooftop scene and with the weather still tip-top, we sat outside for awhile. I had a pint of Guinness. There was some British-sounding guy playing an acoustic guitar. Normally, I hate people like this, but this guy was mad-good. He did a beautiful solo version of "Honky Tonk Woman" by the Stones. I feel bad now, because I forgot to throw some bread in his jar before we left. He did a nice job with The Cure's "Just Like Heaven" too. From there we went to a place a block down called Tomfoolery's. They had some loud-assed band jamming away inside, so we sat at one of the patio tables out front. About four pints of Guinness later, we were on the move again.

On the way to the next place, we were walking along this alley and I was just smacking doorknobs. No reason, just something to do. All were locked except "Stairwell C." When the place that we were going to was closed down already, we turned around and decided to go back to Tomfoolery's. Along the way, I was dared to go into Stairwell C and do something...knock on a door with light coming from under it on the other side. I should probably now mention that I was really feeling all that stout Guinness by this point. I walked in, and noticed a wall full of boxes. I snagged the first one on top.

Normally, I'm not into committing crimes. In my defense, I didn't think I was. It felt light, but there was something in it...I figured they were empty boxes waiting to be broken down and taken to a dumpster, so I assumed it was just packing material on the inside. So I'm walking down the street with a 3x3x3 box in my arms. For some reason, I found this hysterical. So hysterical that I started in with my mental patient laugh where I almost pass out because I laugh so hard for so long I pull a ribcage muscle and forget to breathe. I was wailing up and down the street. Not knowing what I was doing my initial reaction was to get the box to the car and secure my prize. Between fits of laughter, I walk by a guy coming out of the parking garage and he's so scared of me he walks thirty feet down the side walk to continue his phone call. I'm screeching as I try to fit this box into the back of Pat's car. It wouldn't fit, so I started doing elbow drops on it to wedge it in. I actually broke a part of Pat's car. And of course, I found this even funnier, so the shrieking continued.

With that mission accomplished we went back to Tomfooleries. I started in on what would wind up being another three pints of Guinness. We had a brief text-messaging mistaken identity war in between drinks. Then we started with the shots. First up was a kamikaze that may have been a little on the citrusy side. Danielle started feeling sick and went to the car. Pat quickly followed, but not before we'd ordered three Jaegerbombs. I downed two, Alicia did her one, and we were off to call it an evening.

Monday morning I got up around 7am and went out on the porch to fiddle on my computer. Wally is crazy like me and wakes up ridiculously early when he doesn't have to so we sat out sipping on coffee and talking hunting, moving and jobs, among other things. One by one the rest of the gang woke up and came out. We had some cantaloupe, Pat and Danielle showed pictures from their honeymoon and we hit the road around 11:30.

All in all it was a quality weekend. Little work, little play and when we got back to B-town, I got a free stove. Suck it terrorists! Let's see you have three days like that in your god-forsaken sand countries.