You did What to a Goat?! Getting’ Down at Playas, Record Breaking “Lengths” and Embarrassing More Family and Friends

After the excitement of “Taylorpalooza” at Auburn, we got a late start out of Alabama Thursday morning. And if you’ve been following our blog thus far, you already know the drill with our ability to judge distances- we told Lori’s cousin Willie at UNC that we’d be in Chapel Hill around 6pm. Psych! After navigating through Atlanta and the Carolina’s we rolled in somewhere around 10pm.

An exciting weekend, a big night in New Orleans, the party at Auburn and a long drive would not stop us from making the most of another night in a new place, especially with the knowledge that we were back east and our journey would be concluding in a mere two days.

After classy drinks on a rooftop bar with cousin Willie, he departed for an obligatory event with his frat’s pledges and we hit the town to continue the night. We wanted to go dancing, our favorite late-night pastime, and, to continue the classy kickoff to the night Willie had suggested a bar called “Playas.” Given our directional abilities, we did not find Playas and ended up at the end of the line of bars at a spot with hip-hop pumping and co-eds grinding. Left only to dance with each other, we grabbed drinks and hit the dance floor unashamed. After a few dances however, we decided the bartenders were the hottest catches in the bar and the music and crowd inhibited our getting to know them better. “On to Playas!” we decided.

We finally found it, and it was quite the scene. Again, we were the only two girls that hadn’t arrived with male dance partners, and since we were rocking the “I-just-spend-the-entire-day-in-a-stuffy-car-without-washing-or-even-brushing-my-hair-before-I-left-look” and were the only ones without short skirts and high heels it looked like it would stay that way. Not to be daunted, we got right to the middle of the stage and if nothing else, provided some entertainment for the paired up onlookers.

The night ended at what was supposed to be another “classy bar” where we sipped our nightcaps antisocially in the corner and, for whatever reason, spend the better part of half an hour fixated on the various shoe choices of the boys at the bar.

Willie kindly picked us up at last call and we enjoyed an amusing slumber party conversation that included joking about the rights of passage in a frat (think the uptight Omegas in Animal House on initiation night), speculation over the size of a certain male appendage among Tar Heel athletes and whether they might break the Guinness Book of World Records (when we checked the book the next day we discovered that it is PG-rated and therefore omits such categories), and realized it was a good thing no one had asked our names at any bar or on any dance floor in town because had we admitted that we were Willie’s guests we may have embarrassed him beyond social repair.

San Pedro's... No Wait, We Mean Pat Obrien's

As we drove out of New Orleans on Tuesday morning Lizzy asked “What was that place called, San Pedro’s?” referring to the piano bar we’d visited the night before. “I think it was called Pat O’Brien’s?” Lori thought aloud, checking to see if she still had the napkin from the bar, which had the recipe to their delicious, and deceptively strong Hurricanes written on it. Yea, it was Pat O’Brien’s, only like, the most famous bar in the French Quarter. Forgive us our cultural confusion, we were hadn’t yet recovered from the daze Austin City Limits had left on us, and we’d been spending a lot of time almost south of the border recently.

Thanks to the great company of Meg, Willie, and Mellow, we spent Monday night in the French Quarter, hanging out in Meg’s amazing apartment and seeing the best of what Monday night in New Orleans had to offer. Which was, eating gumbo, having the amazing discovery that open containers are totally okay on the streets of the French Quarter, dancing on Bourbon Street, seeing topless women, and almost getting Lori to do karaoke… New Orleans kept us up and up, pushing back any slump the post-Austin weekend could have otherwise imposed on us.

We Left Our Hearts...

Welcome to San Fransisco! It’s no wonder Tony Bennett left his heart there- we drove over the Golden Gate Bridge in the fog with the water below and the city before us and felt like we were on a movie set. Once we’d bid farewell to our moms we headed to sunny Pacific Heights to see Linnea, our hostess with the very mostest. We entered her beautiful apartment to find not only the one thing we were really looking for in San Fran (her) but typed itineraries of a perfect weekend in the city.

After making dinner, we hit “the Mission” where Linnea, our classy city girl, had checked out the best bars in the area. Coincidentally, one of the bars happened to be celebrating Slovakia with music and a performance. Too cheap to pay for the show, we opted for the bar downstairs to rub elbows with Linnea’s cute and employed friends. Maybe there was a job opening? Somewhere?

Though we were slowly getting over our fear of strangers, our mothers, having been with us for the past 72-plus hours, were close in mind. On the initial drive west, we had discussed who we could safely talk to after learning that by our mothers’ estimations most of the people we would encounter on the journey would be psychotic killers. We like to meet people and traveling the country would give us that chance, but who could we safely talk to? Then it came to us- gay couples. If they were in happy relationships, not interested in the female sex, and as stylish and friendly as we were willing to stereotype them to be (we also watch a lot of Kathy Griffin) they were definitely our “men to befriend.”

To Lizzy’s joy, she thought she spotted such a pair that night. The safe, “gay” couple turned out to either just be playing the gay game to get girls or they couldn’t help how very metrosexually European they were. What seemed like the chance to make a set of lasting friends that we could look cool with and start a coast to coast friendship with turned out to be one big headache for the rest of the night as we stayed on constant watch to keep Lizzy away from the lovesick, forty- something year old Slovakian man who kept “bumping” into her all evening.

The rest of San Francisco was awesome, from the next morning at the farmer’s market where we met the coolest bee keeper on the west coast, to the aquarium where we visited the rain forest simulation, saw beautiful fish, got a hankering to see a shark in the wild, got uncomfortably close to a stuffed version of the bear that almost killed us mere days ago, and had lunch across the courtyard at the de Young. After broken farrow and Blue Bottle coffee for breakfast the next morning on the pier we bid farewell to lovely Linnea and headed down the coast to Big Sur for a night.

A Bouchon is a Bouchon!

Two full days of sun, wine, and mother-daughter bonding time found us at our last dinner, and though it was hard to pull away from our routine at Hurley’s Restaurant, we decided to branch out and try a French restaurant that allegedly served good cosmos in deep glasses. So Sex and the City of us, right Brüno? Leave it to us not to learn our lessons though- Lori forgot her ID and was grilled by the bartender, forcing her to run back to the room to prove, yet again, that she was legally allowed to drink. Once served, however, the drinks let us down. They were pretty, but not very strong. As Lizzy aptly put it, someone thought they could trick us and serve the contents of a kid’s juice box in a martini glass and get away with it. We like our Cosmos leaving us cross-eyed, not pre-diabetic.

The night was saved, however, when we discovered the mantra that we would adopt for the rest of the evening and that we will probably never really move beyond, though no sane human will ever really understand why. We were served our menus once we were seated which were printed with the restaurant’s name, Bouchon, on the cover. “What is a Bouchon?” Eileen was prompted to ask. Lizzy sagely replied, “A bouchon is a bouchon.”

Obviously John (who was our wine guide at Rombauer, the second, and may we add, better vineyard who taught us to taste wine based on personal olfactory memories and held, we strongly believe, the keys to the universe and it’s secrets), his wisdom and the wine had rubbed off on us. It’s also just a really fun and expressive word to say (try it!) which meant that we decided to substitute it into every saying and expression we’d ever heard. “That is the bouchon’s pajamas” or “Bouchon unto others as you would have them bouchon unto you” and, “I am so bouchoned” or “Wow, she is such a bouchon!”

Needless to say, whether anyone but us gets that joke and the universal usage and brilliance of the bouchon, which, in French, technically means “cork” (but if you believe in the power of wine then the bouchon, door to a bottle’s contents, truly is the gateway to the universe) we had a blast of a night, and another excellent champagne brunch for a third morning in a row before heading off to San Francisco where we dropped off our mothers, leaving them to fly home in what looked like a white pleather party plane courtesy of Virgin America as we hit the city for a weekend on the town with Linnea.

Welcome to Napa!

We have often written about how words are not enough to describe the natural beauty we’ve encountered along our way from east to west coast- the Badlands, Grand Teton, and Yellowstone are just a few of the places that have left us lost for words. This past week we also learned that words also don’t do justice to the hills around Napa, and they really aren’t enough when it comes to our mothers, who flew out to visit us for our three day stay.

Eileen and Betsy arrived in Napa several hours before we did. By now you’ve learned, as we have, to estimate our arrival time at least two hours past what it should be. After taking a very worthwhile detour through the Redwood National Park where we hugged trees, hid in their hollows, ran around their trunks, stared at the utterly beautiful quality of light that falls softly through the air and branches to the forest floor, and took turns doing our best impressions of Gollum among the trees, we headed to Napa, allowing our mothers plenty of time to catch up and relax over a “glass” (realistically half a barrel was tackled that afternoon) of wine by the pool. We had the pleasure of getting to the valley on our way to Yountville at sunset, affording us the chance to see vineyards lit up with that unique California hazy glow.

Pulling into the Villagio Inn and Spa (now, it’s no Grand Gateway in South Dakota, but it will do) blasting “Hey Mama” in honor of the two lovely ladies who came out to see us, we reunited with our wonderful mothers and got down to business- showering, dressing up for real, and hitting the town for dinner and drinking. One three-hour dinner over seafood, salad, and bottles of white wine later, we were immersed in good conversation, laughing so hard our stomachs hurt the next day. It is cool to get to the point where you kind of become a fellow “big girl” and your mother can treat you not just as her charge but as a friend. That and the fact that we made a point of getting enough wine in all of our systems that it seemed acceptable to ask about dirt from when they were in their twenties. Being our mothers, of course, they didn’t disappoint, and we had a great night acting like we were all young, crazy, and ready for a three day party in California wine country.

Portland - False Identities, Fake Accents, Financial Stability, and Fun

We rolled into Portland after driving all day and were more than ready for a shower (which we skipped and decided to instead change our clothes and put on some mascara), a drink, and a taste of the city itself.

We were staying at the Ace Hotel and decided to hit up their bar, the Clyde Common. We were warmly welcomed by our bartender, Ansel, who bellowed "Hello mateys ! What can I get you to drink tonight gals?" in a very Aussie type accent. We had fun and giggled at Ansel's accent and his supposed 'foreign' charm as he made our drinks, some sort of house special made of gin, bourbon, and god knows what else (Lizzy also couldn't get his name and called him both Antel and Antler before getting it right).
When Ansel came around to ask us for our next round, his accent had mysteriously disappeared. Further conversation led us to finding out that he was not in any way foreign and had grown up in Pittsburg before moving to Portland. Really Ansel, really? Fakeness aside, he was an absolute doll.

That was round one of false identities we encountered.

Following Clyde Common and Ansel's contrived Aussie charm (we're willing to bet he was trying to get lucky), we headed to Kells, an Irish Pub in town. It was 10 PM on a Sunday night, and we were two of the few people who were out. Our bartender, Jake, turned out to be yet another fraud. After carding us for drinks, serving us his favorite local on tap, chatting it up and giving us his number on a place mat, it became quite apparent that he was not only younger than us (which he initially denied) but was also not Irish (which he had originally claimed). However, the lack of foreign appeal and underage status didn't change the fact that we loved the man.

Now based on these two encounters it may seem like we are in some way hating on Portland and we want to make sure to point out that this is not the case AT ALL. We came home after our first night doubled over in fits of laughter and proceeded to then spend two awesome days exploring the city.

Looking back on Portland, we find the accents and false identities both hilarious and endearing and quite honestly, if copping an accent and lying about your age like that has led both Ansel and Jake to some sort of employment and financial stability, then we had better start working on our accents and pick up lines.

Seriously.

The Not so Smooth Exit

We got up early Sunday morning in Seattle, having slept on the downstairs couches in our sleeping bags in an attempt to be polite and discreet. Polite? After having made ourselves comfortable in not one but two beds belonging to our hosts, who we'd known now for less than a grand total of 48 hours, and having drank their alcohol, ate their food, accompanied them to concerts and sporting events, and to top it off then nearly burned their home down after forgetting to turn off our hair straightener we were trying to be less noticeable guests. Yes, sleeping downstairs may have, on top of all that, been a polite attempt to pay them back or at least stay out of their hair for the last night that we were in their care. Polite we may have been at the eleventh hour. But discreet? No, discreet we were not.

Lizzy had set her alarm for 8am so that we could be on our way by 9. Unfortunately, though we had packed our things the night before, we did not think to move them downstairs with us so that we could make a quick and quiet exit. No, we had to return to our kind host's room, risking waking him up in the process of moving out. Too late.

Lori had long given up on her finicky alarm which would sometimes forget to go off or simply go on silent, therefore being no help. However, as we crept up the stairs, we heard the all too familiar sound of a Blackberry alarm that had chosen, on this of all mornings, not to be silent. Lori, mortified that her phone was disrupting the sleep of our already too generous and tolerant hosts, ran to open the door behind which her phone lay until- the angry voice of a girl came from behind it. She was, understandably, sounding very peeved and upset that a phone she couldn't find was waking her far too early after what we had to assume had to have been a late night. But what are you going to do, right? We looked at each other, took a deep breath, and ran in- however, Lori, in her desperate attempt to turn off her phone, forgot completely to get anything but the bag containing the phone. Which meant that when we'd composed ourselves downstairs, Lizzy had all of her bags and Lori had a cell phone and wallet. Her clothes, laptop, and dignity remained scattered in the room upstairs...

After a five minute pump up from Lizzy, Lori crept back upstairs, ready to knock, enter the room, grab everything, make no eye contact, mumble a thank you, and run. Fast.

All things considered, both members of the rightfully offended party took Lori's re-entrance well, joking, passing it off as no big deal, even cracking a joke about the pink butterfly pajama set her mom had sent her for Valentine's Day that she was wearing, the color of which was blending with the her rapidly reddening cheeks. Needless to say, between the fuchsia cover of her phone and the raspberry color of her pj's, Lori will never look at pink quite the same again.

Because we hadn't already made a stellar enough impression on boys we'd barely known for more than a day, we dragged and ran and generally made a ruckus as we exited, then, still in pajamas, ran through the neighborhood until we found our car, changed in the backseats, and grabbed coffees down the road, hightailing it for more rural, anonymous ground.