My Favorite Pictures From The Last Month Part 1 - B2B 2008

I am a TERRIBLE blogger. I have no excuse... except that I've entered the land of a thousand weddings... or ten weddings... but it feels like a thousand.

I don't even have a coherent story to tell... but I do have lots of pictures.

For part 1 of my catch-up I give you: Bay to Breakers 2008 - a weekend of debauchery in pictures.

My friends and I went as Breakfast of Champions, it was a good time.

Here we are building the floats:




Here we are getting serious about some math:


Here I am building my hat... it was a bit big at first, dontcha think?


Here I am demonstrating the adjustable feature on the wheaties box (snazzy no?)


Here we are asking for a hangover:


Really a terrible idea:


Here's the whole gang at the start of the race:


Here's Kyle dressed as the Honeynut Cheerios Bee and me dressed as Cap'n Crunch.


Our beautiful breakfast table (the whole thing flipped up to reveal a cooler filled with beer inside the shopping cart! What do you expect from a bunch of engineers!?)


Our awesome carton of milk:


Here's the sign that we accidentally attached upside down (yeah, we're awesome!)


The back of my shirt:


Jason and Ben dressed like toast:


Pit stop along the race route to play rock-band:


You gotta love the tiny wings on Kyle:


My neck was pretty sore by the end of the day from that hat!


Did I mention there was some drinking...





Here's proof I made it mile 4 (out of 7):


Unfortunately I didn't make it much further... (photos too incriminating for the interweb so I'll just leave it at that.)

Stay tuned for part two... Wedding 1 of 10 for 2008... in Florida!!!

Pictures Pictures Pictures!! B2B 2006

As promised!

The whole Boone's Farm Posse!

See all pictures here: B2B 2006!
Warning: There are a LOT of pictures! Best set aside 15 minutes or so for this...

Enjoy!

With Functional Udders And Everything

It's Sunday morning. It's 5:45 AM. It's 5:45 AM and I'm awake. I was up till 3 AM the night before. I DO NOT want to be awake. The Stanford boys are trying their best to be quiet, but they are failing. Miserably. Why am I awake?

Saturday was spent costume making with Christine till 2:30 in the afternoon... at which point we decided that if I didn't get started on the barn float soon, we'd have no beer-mobile. So up the street we went and barn raising began.

My friends and I must come from a long line farmers... because I'll be damned if we didn't raise an entire barn in one day. Wow.

Now some people may have just wanted to give the *appearance* of a barn - engineers with tools are not "some people". We designed and built a BARN! A serious 4 x 4 x 8 ft barn. It was huge (for a barn on wheels). And structurally sound, thank you very much - with a hay loft and everything. :)

So like I said, the barn building began around 2:30pm... I planned on being finished by 7. HA!!! We sawed... we painted... we bolted... we engineered... around 12:30 in the morning we FINALLY put the finishing touches on it! TEN STRAIGHT HOURS! Ugh. And while some of us were working on the barn, the rest of the posse was busy build a cow. Yes a cow... with functional udders and everything!!! Basically they sewed together some black and white material, attached a stuffed cow head, and then stuffed the body with pillow stuffing. They then attached several "straws" to the udders... the straws went through the cow and fed into three buckets of liquor below- Pina Colada, Fuzzy navel, and some cranberry-gin concoction that should never be created again. IT WAS AWESOME! I so love my over-achieving friends!

So at 12:30am we loaded up my roommate's truck and drove the carts and a few bails of hay to our friend's house - he lives right by the starting line of the race. After we dropped everything off I left to return the truck but made a wrong turn and ended up ON THE BAY BRIDGE ON MY WAY TO OAKLAND!!!!! NOOOOOOOO! Luckily I was able to get off on Treasure Island, and after 10 minutes of driving around aimlessly I was finally headed back in the right direction towards SF.

Around 1:30am I arrived back at Kyle's house... but did I get to go to sleep??? NO! I still had like 400 cotton balls to hot glue!!!! A few burns, several tears, one clump of glue in my hair, and some much appreciated help from Kyle later, I finished the FRONT of my shirt. Who knew gluing cotton balls could take so long!!?? Partly because I ran out of cotton balls, and partly because it was 3AM, I decided to leave the back of my shirt un-cottoned... I would tell everyone I had been sheared.

So at 3 am, I go to sleep... and that bring us to 5:45 am. Three of our Stanford friends slept over and were VERY excited for the race to begin on Sunday... So they got up at the BUTT CRACK of dawn to begin the festivities. They knew I'd be bitter... so they brought me breakfast in bed - croissant, strawberries, and a mimosa - which was so beyond cute that I couldn't be upset. Kyle got up and made bloddy marys for everyone... and I slowly dragged myself into the shower.

By 7:30am we were out the door and headed for a train to take us downtown. From there it gets bit fuzzy... and by fuzzy, I'm mostly referring to the fuzzy navel filled cow udders...

I know we drank a lot, I know the barn and cow were amazing, and I know we saw MANY MANY naked men. The race can really only be described through photos... and they're coming... I swear.

But you want to know the coolest thing? It didn't rain a DROP. Not all day Saturday while we were float building- even though there were menacing looking storm clouds looming over head - and not all Sunday morning while the race was taking place.

(Incidentally, I think I owe the good weather to a little prayer said on my behalf by my Mormon friend, Margie... and I also think I may have to go to church with her on Sunday in return.)

Anyway, so like I said, no rain during the race... YAY! But as soon as the race ended... oh the flood that fell from the sky! It's like we got a day and a half's worth of rain in 2 hours... and I was walking around outside for both them. Kyle and Brian decided that we should go to bar and watch the Piston's game. Seriously guys!!?? A BAR!? I'm dressed as a lamb, hello.

So we walked and walked and walked - in the POURING rain - until we found a bar. Where I proceed to fall asleep. Freezing, I woke up and decided I was DONE. TOTALLY AND COMPLETELY DONE. There were NO cabs to be found (62,000 other people were also trying to get home at the exact same time) so Kyle put me on a bus (he couldn't leave our very drunk friends at the bar alone... and they were NOT leaving till the game was over) and told me where to transfer. 2 buses, a train, and a 2 block walk and I was HOME SWEET HOME!!! I showered, ate, and went to bed.

What a day!!!

Whew... the best part of the story (the actual race) to follow as soon as I upload all zillion pictures... stay tuned.

Soggy Poodle

:(

Weather update for Sunday: "Mainly cloudy and rainy. Highs in the mid 50s and lows in the low 50s."

:(

The pictures may be less than optimal this year, as I'm not entirely sure I want to drag my pricey camera around in the rain all day.

Please please please don't let me catch pnemonia...

And On This Farm He Had A Poodle?

Hmmm... So I started making my sheep costume last night for B2B... I'm hot gluing 500 cotton balls to a white tank top and a white skirt (I hope 500 is enough). Anyway... so mid way through the process I tried the tank top on to see how it was coming along.

Well... it's coming. I suppose.

But I sorta look like a poodle.

Hmmm.

Hypothetically Speaking

Hypothetically speaking, if a person were to go dumpster diving in their company’s garbage to, ummmm, “re appropriate” several dozen used cardboard boxes for use as building supplies for an AWESOME Bay to Breakers Beer-Mobile (think giant cardboard structure, painted red and white to look like a barn, zip-tied to a shopping cart, filled with beer) … could said person get fired??

Why?

No reason, just checking.

Happy Cows

IT'S THAT TIME OF YEAR AGAIN!!!

Bay to Breakers 2006 will be here on Sunday May 21st.

I have been counting down the months, weeks, and days since… well, since Last Year’s B2B. Check out my post from last year…
B2B 2005

If you are unfamiliar with B2B… here’s the gist:
75,000 or so people get together and “race” (slow drunken crawl is more like it) for 12 kilometers through the streets of SF… from the San Francisco Bay to the Pacific Ocean. Hence "Bay to Breakers"… on the third Sunday in May every year. :) Read this guy’s account of the festivities as I just could never do it justice like he does… http://www.pubclub.com/specialevents/breakers.htm

Seriously, read it!

This year my friends and I are going as Boone’s Farm (as in the makers of Strawberry Hill). We’ll be dressed as farm animals… farmers… scarecrows… stalks of corn... You Name It!

And we’ll have two floats – A Barn and a Drunken Cow. (And by float I mean pimped out shopping cart to haul our beer around with us)
See Plans here...
http://www.chopstork.com/wordpress/2006/05/11/bay-to-breakers-the-carts/#comments

Yours Truly will be covered in cotton balls – I’m going as a sheep. :)

All week we have had STELLAR weather… so of course I got myself all amped for great weather this weekend too… but alas, as is so often the case, SF has a mind of its own. Weather.com tells us that it’ll be cloudy with a chance of rain.

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!Publish

I spent the whole morning blue – see how excited I am for this day??? My whole mood was altered because I found out it might rain.

Well luckily I have great friends!!
AJ pointed out:

Did it rain on our lab at last year's Urban Iditarod? Heck no!
Did it rain on our volcano at last year's b2b? Heck no!
Did it rain on our fire engine at this year's urban iditarod? Heck no!
Did it rain on our syphillis at the Go Games? Heck no!
Did it rain on our big wheel at the Bring Your Own Big Wheel? …… yes, but only for the first heat and it wasn’t much.

Great cheese comes from happy cows. Happy cows come from California. This is California - we'll be happy cows. (and sheep and farmers and corn and roosters).

:)

And my friend Christine reminded me that rain will lead to mud… which will inevitably lead to mud fights…. And who doesn’t love a good mud fight??

:)

I heart them! And I CANNOT wait till Sunday.
Rain or Shine!!!

Bay to Breakers Pictures - Finally

The results are in... and we didn't win... I'm not even sure we finished... But we definitely had a good time!
Here are some pictures to prove it!
http://share.shutterfly.com/osi.jsp?i=EeANnDRw4cs2zGTA
Enjoy!!

Spring: 1; Me: 0

Ok, so score one for Spring. This temptress of a season kicked my butt this weekend. I wanted to play in the sun - I got a raging sunburn. I wanted to run, childlike, through a park - I got lost and totally separated from my friends. I wanted to wake up to something other than my alarm clock - try waking up to a volcano full of liquor. (Oh ya, 8 am is a GREAT time to start drinking.) I couldn't stand my cubicle (well I still can't) but sitting in a comfy chair all day sure beats the 10 or so miles I walked on Sunday.

Ugh - Bay to Breakers was an absolutely OUT OF CONTROLL day. The floats, the costumes, the naked men, the absolute mayhem - did I mention the volcano full of liquor!!?? Craziness. But I think good times were had by all.

We decided to go Hawaiian style - complete with giant, paper mache, liquor-dispensing, volcano and tiki torches... yes they were lit, yes I managed to survive the day without catching my hair on fire, but just barely. We started at a quarter to 8 and boarded the 19 bus fully decked out in Hawaiian garb, carrying 2 five gallon buckets of jungle juice that would later become our "Hot Molten Magma". Apparently our fellow bus riders didn't get the Hawaiian theme memo... Quote from Christine - "Hey look, those people are dressed as runners!" :) We then got off the bus and were on our way... Unfortunately, pushing a paper mache volcano down the streets of SF is not quite the speedy endeavor we hoped it would be... the guy from Kenya finished the race before we even got our lazy butts to the start line... Quote from Linden "Well, I came to win, we may as well go home now." :) We convinced him to stay and started the race. It was long, it was grueling, it was a blast !!! The vibe was amazing, everyone was in a great mood, the floats were spectacular, all and all an awesome experience. I've never peed in a parking garage, a park, and a stranger's house without permission (twice) all in one day. My only downfall (except for the mass quantities of Magma I consumed) was playing all day in the sun wearing nothing but a bathing suit and a grass skirt and no sun screen... what WAS I thinking???

My friend, AJ, made up a casualty list... I think it helps shed light on the ridiculousness of it all.

Lost: Red Nalgene. Status: Still missing. Anyone happen to end up with it?
Lost: A.J.'s phone. Status: Returned, but destroyed. How kind of them to get it back to me though.
Lost: Kilauea. Status: Last seen as a pile of newspaper after a crash in the Park. Naked chicken wire in Luke's trunk.
Lost: Palm tree. Status: Deflated by random bite. Left in cart on the Panhandle.
Lost: Three tiki torches Status: Tiki torches are flammable. Grass skirts are not.
Lost: Laura. Status: Ditched while peeing. No phone, no money. Found way back to Dave Zazoni's. Kerylyn made her a sandwich, which was better than Dom's sandwich.
Lost: Courtney. Status: Went all the way to the ocean. The rest of us stopped at mile 5. Walked back to Noe Valley from the Ocean. That is far. Massive sunburns.
Lost: Rachel. Status: Still unknown.
Lost: Luke's car. Status: Drove home without Luke. He was busy chatting with random ladies. He made new friends on the bus.
Lost: Luke's phone. Status: Had it in my pocket the whole time.
Lost: Christine's lunch Status: In the bushes somewhere.

*Sigh* What a day! I can't believe I have to wait a whole year to do it again. Pictures to follow...