NIU Homecoming 2006

The tail end of tailgating, rugby game, practice swords and ping pong with a jug.

We tried to arrive early for tailgating this year with a couple gallons of warm apple cider. When we got to Ross', we figured we'd warm up the cider. Mark thought it would be a good idea to save some time and put the giant glass jug right on the stove. Ross agreed and so it was fired up. This was by far the worst call of the day. I eventually figured it was time to get it off the burner before it broke. So it broke as I was moving it and cider filled the entire kitchen and stove. Maybe if I had just let it cool off... oh well, all 3 of us get the dumb award. Ross now calls us the "Apple Brothers." Fortunately we still had another smaller jug with a bit of cider to drink while we got out the mops.

After an hour or two of cleaning, we finally headed out to tailgating with two ape suits and the Pooh suit. It was fairly cold, so they came in handy. By that point we had drank quite a bit and were just trying to catch up since tailgating was about to end. I didn't get a chance to bring out the camera until then and there was no time to set it up properly or get the dust of the lens... doh! Since we missed so much of the tailgating, we stuck around until the last possible minute to get the most out of it. This meant staggering around with the drunks that were obviously also not going to the game. At some point I got blamed for stealing some dude's case of beer. I suspect it was Ross that did, and since we both had ape suits on, I was just as likely the culprit to the hazy eyed tailgater.

After playing cat and mouse with the cops trying to get everyone to leave, we eventually went for a walk around the stadium. We found some porta-poties since Mark had to go. He was having some trouble because of his Pooh suit. Ross had fun with the stall by shaking it, running into and drop kicking it. It appeared we were getting some unwanted attention at that point, so we headed back to Ross'. On the way we came across a rugby game and decided to watch for a bit. Finally we went back to continue drinking. The practice swords came out, so Mark and I did a few rounds until I got a sword in the sack. We then took on ping-pong while Ross used a glass jug as the paddle. So, things didn't quite go as planned, but we made the most of it as usual.