Best Laid Plans

this is not where we stayed.

.

.

or... St. Patrick's Day Getaway, 2006

As mentioned earlier, my co-worker and I got a wild hare late in the day last Friday and decided to hop on down to Savannah, Georgia for their St. Patrick's Day festivities. We were going to be arriving late at night, but no worries - bars are open 'til 3 a.m. in Savannah. We'd have at least two hours, if not three, to be out and about before everything closed up and the crowds went home.

or so we thought.

We arrived in Savannah at around 12:30 that night, and stopped in to visit S, a friend of hers. The plan was that we (Corbie, me, and Corbie's dog Sage) would crash on S's couch that night, and head back home the next day. The thing was, we couldn't get in touch with S in advance, because he doesn't have a phone. So we arrived on his doorstep, With A Dog, after midnight. Surprise!! Well, S quit drinking a few weeks ago, and has been having trouble sleeping lately, so he'd taken something to help him sleep, and he was less enthused to see us than we had expected. And he couldn't go out to play with us because the sleeping pills would kick in any second and that just doesn't mix well with bars. AND, there is a random guy that sometimes sleeps on his couch, and he never knew when random guy was coming or not, so we couldn't stay on his couch and be certain that random guy wouldn't show up at 3 am and try to sleep on the couch with us.

ohhhkayyy.

No worries. She also knows J, who doesn't really get along with S, but that's okay, because S isn't playing with us anyway. No problem. J's working at a bar downtown. ...Somewhere. Some bar with the word "lizzie" in the title.

So we leave the dog with S, and make our way downtown. We should have known something was up when it seemed like we were swimming upstream. It seemed that everyone was slowly ambling away from downtown. ...hm.

We turn the corner onto a main street(River St.), and notice that a lot of the street vendors are closing up, the doors to some bars are closed and the lights in their windows were out. But it's only about 1:15 now. ...hm.

Well, we thought, maybe they've just run out of beer here, and instead of risking a riot breaking out, they just closed up shop. We found one place whose doors were still open, and went inside to inquire about a bar called Lizzie-somethingorother. Before we could say anything though, we were greeted with a warm, "We're Closed! We're not serving ANYMORE!" When we explained that we were looking for J, who worked at lizziesomething, we were directed down the block a little way.

As we were walking further down, we realized that None Of the Bars Were Open. There were hundreds of drunk people in the street, just milling about, with nary a drop more alcohol to be had. I shall never forget the twenty-something male, with one foot on the sidewalk, and one in the gutter, swaying slightly, looking at the two of us through beer-crossed-eyes, slurring "Yerrrr HOTT!" Such a romantic charmer, that one. And clearly with very discriminating taste. ahem.

So we get to One Eyed Lizzy's. But the door's closed. And locked. And people inside are trying their hardest not to make eye contact with the riffraff outside. But we manage to get the attention of someone who comes to the door, and we ask if J is working. He's not sure, but he thinks there maybe someone there by that name, and he goes back inside. And stays gone. So we wait. Corbie has a cigarette. And we wait some more. Finally, Corbie gets out a pen, and makes a sign that we can hold up to the window. Eventually, we get let in, and they say that J will be out in a second.

So we take a seat and wait. At this point, it's just funny. I'm in my mid thirties, and I've made a trip with a friend that's a decade younger, to two states away to stay on the couch of someone I've never met. On one hand, I'm congratulating myself for doing something a little out of the norm, but at the same time I'm wondering What Was I Thinking??? We drove all this way, and there's nothing open. The party's over. Everyone's going home - except us, because we don't know where we'll be staying.

...mmmkay.
At this point, one of two things could happen. Our luck could change, and we could start to have a great time completely off the map, away from the plan. Or, we could end up at a complete dead end, and try to find a hotel somewhere.

Fortunately, our luck changed.

J came out of the kitchen, and his somewhat bedraggled eyes lit up at the sight of Corbie. He couldn't get off work just yet, but they managed up hook us up with a Killian's Red each while we waited for him to finish. So we struck up a conversation with some of the remaining staff, and by the time we'd finished, we'd made a couple of friends who invited us to a house party a few blocks away. Being in Savannah, we were allowed to take drinks away from the bar in a plastic cup, so we took full advantage (when in Rome...), and walked out with a frosty cup o' very green margarita.

The rest of the evening gets a little fuzzy here, but we went to Parker's Gourmet Market to get some food, then to the party for about half an hour, and then headed over to J's house to wait for him to arrive from work. We stayed up for another hour or so talking, eating our market food (where else can you get chicken curry and some kinda basil pasta with HUGE olives at 3 a.m.??), and playing with Sage and J's cat Aslan.

We finally got to sleep on J's futon (I just may be getting to old for that) around 4, slept 'til about 10:30, J made us some coffee, and we headed out for breakfast. J had to go back to work (ouch!), but we met back up with S, who apologized for not being more enthusiastic at our arrival the night before. He lives right across the street from Clary's (featured in Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil), but there was a giant crowd of people waiting to get in there, so we went to their other location. I was achin' fer some bacon at this point, but when we got to the other Clary's, there was a line there too, so we ended up getting sushi. Yummy sushi, but sushi nonetheless. About as far as one can get from bacon.

Anyway, to sum up this extremely long post, NOTHING we planned worked out. But all in all we had a fantastic time. It was the first time I'd felt remotely human in a week and a half, and it was really nice to do something completely different and get away from home for a little while. Corbie and I had fun, and Savannah's even more beautiful than I'd remembered.

We had to leave to get back home just after lunch, after only about 12 hours in Savannah, but we agreed that it was totally worth it. In fact, it was probably better than anything we could have planned, or perhaps it was better because it was not planned- we just rolled with it.