JJO's .10k Walk/Run

So earlier this week during an e-mail conversation with Barney, I was brought to light of an event that was to take place on Saturday. The rock station out of Madison, and one of my all time favorite stations to boot, 94.1 WJJO was having their annual .10k walk/run to celebrate St. Patty's day.

Yes, you are reading that right, .10k, which apparently is the distance between Brother's Bar & State Street Brats. Yes, it is an organized, yet somewhat chaotic, barhop. I first heard of this event when it first started several years ago over the radio, but paid little attention to it as I had my own St. Patty's Day to celebrate in Whitewater, and nothing could top that I figured. Well, Bernard had participated in that first event, and told me the glorious details upon his arrival back to Whitewater from the big race. He had a racing number, a T-Shirt, and it struck me at that point, that it was a really neat idea.

The Route

Anyways, back to last week's conversation. Bernard kindly sent me a link to the event's website so I could further investigate and decide if it was something I would like to participate in. In a rush decision, I immediately say that I am in. The next day I have a bit of 'Buyer's Remorse' about my snap decision. I was planning on taking off this weekend from drinking, and looking forward to not spending any cash. I have a lot of expenses that will be occurring in the next month, and an all day drunk could not be easy on the wallet. I wrote Barney back saying that I was in turmoil over my decision, then shortly after the Badgers lost in the Big Ten Tourney I e-mailed saying that my answer was going to have to be a no. He understood, but promised I would spend little money as he was planning on selling T-Shirts that he had made, and those profits would specifically be for the purchase of drinks for all members of his party.

That night, I thought about what I was doing. I always complain that I want to do something 'different', and out of the ordinary....and here I was with the opportunity and was passing it up. I then make the decision at that point that if a party develops that night, I don't go, if not I stay home Friday night and early Saturday morning depart for the Mad City. The party for Friday night fell through, so I inform Bernard that I am in fact in. Trumpets sounded, choirs sung, Dustin made a decision.

The Big Day
My alarm sounds at 7 am, not an ideal wake up time for a Saturday, but having taken the night off, I was still recharged and ready to go. I grabbed my drinking gloves (batting gloves), my safety glasses, and my green tie in homage to my last Whitewater St. Patty's celebration and leave for Madison shortly after 8 am. I jam out, listen to some of my Pat McCurdy songs on my iPod to gear up for partying and Irishness. I park my car in the garage downtown, and met up with Barney. I threw my shirt on, and we started towards Brothers, by walking the race course backwards, to get a feel for it. We were determined to be the winners.

Ugh, Brother's, possibly one of the worst bar franchises in history. That bar (all locations) seem to attract the douchiest of the douches (I heard one guy took his pants off in the Milwaukee location), and the workers themselves often are jackasses as well. I have been a part of/witnessed many a arguments with bouncers/bartenders. I always get the feeling that Brother's establishments consider themselves to be a higher class than they actually are. Not to mention the Madison location is a great place to go if you want to have no place to move or breath. The design of the bar is stupid.

We try to go upstairs to get our race number, but were denied access because we were not pre-registered and they sold out. So, we get our mugs, order up some drinks and find a corner to stand in while we slowly inibreated ourselves. I saw some old friends, Kevin and Luke, from Highland and briefly said hello. An old AFS buddy, Whitney was also there and working as a Miller girl. So, she updates our attire with the necessary flashing promotional items and Leprochaun ears. The ears had to go though, as I basically have no earlobes and they kept slipping off. I later come up with the idea that they were not checking people if they were registered, they just asked. So Bernard went and sure enough got up and got himself a number, and kindly gave it to me. I was officially racer #858. The number had good flow, so I was pleased.

Then at 10:00, the Golden Keg was tapped after some dude dressed as a leprochaun and Greg Bear from the Jonny and Greg morning show did some Irish accents and played some Irish music, it really carried on for far too long. Speaking of Johnny and Greg Morning Show, Johnny Danger officially shows what many years of partying can do to a body, I took note. Oh, so, the keg was tapped, and I shouted Happy Oktoberfest (since they stole the golden keg idea).

Tapping of the Golden Keg

11:00 am - Everyone is asked to go outside to a parking lot for the start of the race. We finish our drinks and proceed. After some brief discussion on strategy, we were off like two fat drunk guys running .1 kilometers. Barney had the brilliant idea to record the race, I also decided I too was going to take video, and like a drunk Blair Witch Project we made film history. After turning the corner, I realized that I was behind, and I was not going to stand for that, so I reach in the tank and kicked it up a notch passing Bernard for the win, over him at least.

Please watch the race at the BDogSchneeby Times, click this link, TRUST ME

So, I wanted to throw up after that experience. It was exhausting, and we raced at a pretty good clip for being drunk out of shape dudes. But, by time I got to the door, I was settled down and good to go again. There was a problem though, I did not hit record on my phone, I had no personal footage of the race. This was traumatic to me, as I was sure I had some good one liners in there. This would be a topic that would come up many times throughout the day.

Being a wonderfully beautiful day, the outside patio was prepped for bargoers, and we make our way outside to enjoy the day. I had this weird feeling though. My face, felt warm, like, the light from the sun was making me feel warm. I liked it, seems like a feeling I felt before, last October was probably the last occurence of this event. So, as I mentioned, sun, I needed my shades. I go to the parking garage which was next door and little did I know a new adventure was about to occur, I got lost, in the parking garage.

Back to the bar with my shades that came from Australia, I was ready for some serious daydrunk. T-Shirt sales, slow at first, picked up when the executive decision was made to lower the price to $5. This was sort of fun, and helped us meet and talk with a lot of people. Met some girls who went to Whitewater, we try to do some sort of connection to relate with, but had nothing. I was saddened to hear though the bad news from one of the girl's letting me know that the Blue House was resided, and is now a gray color.

So, there is a cow statue, why wouldn't I go sit on it for a while?

That's me taking the bull by the horns....its a metaphor. But that really happened

Ok, food needs to happen. We head down State St. to eat at my latest obsession, Buffalo Wild Wings. Apparently I saw an amazing photo opportunity.

Then, we were back off to Middleton, for some rest. I reawoke around 7:30, and we went back downtown to recover my vehicle, and I headed home for new adventure. I went from an amazing city in Madison with smoke free bars and many young faces....to a dump of a city in West Allis at a bar that possibly gave me lung cancer, and shared my evening with many local townies. Both were fun, but the latter was back to the normalcy.

I'll be back in 2010, Fo' Sho'