Day 130

130/365, originally uploaded by Aaron LaRue.

Friday night on Halloween weekend in IV can't be easily described... People flock from all around, and when I stop to think about what it must be like for them, I don't really get it.




It's like disneyland for college kids. You hear about how great it is, how you have to experience, how much fun it is. 
 When you get there, you're pumped. You've got everything you need and you're ready to go.
At first it's fun. This usually lasts for a few hours, it's your honeymoon stage. You drink, you see your friends, you get dressed in your costume (which is, in your mind, the best/funniest/sexiest costume ever) and you feel good. You get drunk, probably more drunk than you've been in a long time. You pester and pester your friends to hurry up, and finally you go out into the world.


Then it starts wearing on you. Your costume isn't comfortable. It's cold outside. If you're a girl, and you dressed like a prostitute, you get groped. You get swallowed by the crowds, which are full of belligerent and often disrespectful people. Your phone doesn't work. You may even lose your group for a bit. There are cops everywhere and horses freak you out. Eventually you decide that being in the thick of it is stressful, and you start getting hungry. There's this awesome burrito place you've heard of that you really want to try, so you try to find "FREEB!RDS". 

By the time you walk through the drunks, through the cops, and through some yards, you find what you're looking for. It's midnight and there is a line around the block, but you're hungry and you don't know any other place to get food, so you decide to wait. The guy in front of you is really drunk, the girl behind you is crying because her boyfriend is "such a prick". Her best friend comforts her. "It's fine, he never deserved you anyway, let him hook up with all those other whores on DP." Way to go best friend, that really helped things. After an hour, your patience is thin and your buzz is waning, and you finally get to the front of the line. The guy at the register rings you up, and it's $16.37. You have no idea how it could cost that much, but you've spent so much time waiting you don't fight it and hand the guy a $20 bill. You sit on a ledge (because all the tables are taken), chowing away while people try to bum bites off of you. After eating enough food for two people, you stand up and start walking with no particular destination in mind. 

By now it's one in the morning. You are very full and totally sober. You realize that those stripper heels are actually incredibly uncomfortable and your feet are killing you. You start to shiver from the cold. After some deliberating, you decide to go home. 

It feels good to kick your shoes off. The mass of food in your stomach is working it's magic, and you can barely keep your eyes open. You bust out a sleeping bag, or maybe your friend, who was nice enough to let you stay at their house and babysit you for the night, has a blanket for you. If you're lucky, you get a couch. Most likely you'll get the floor. You feel a headache setting in, and it's loud outside, but you lay down and try to go to sleep.

The next morning, you have the worst hangover you've had in a while. Your stomach hurts and you start to think that burrito might have been a bad call. You desperately search for some water to help your throat, which feels like an angry cat clawed it's way up from your stomach. You find some motrin for that headache, which is now a thousand times worse than when you went to sleep. You talk to your friend, maybe get some breakfast, reminisce about your night. You have work (or some other responsibility) at home later that day, so you get your things together. You pack your bags, say your goodbyes, if you're nice you leave the rest of the beer for your host. You carry your stuff for a few blocks, trying to remember where you parked your car, before you finally find it. You drive one, two, three hours home and suffer through your shift at work. 

When you get home, you update your facebook saying how awesome Halloween in Santa Barbara was. You post a thousand pictures. When anyone asks, you tell them it was awesome, one of the best times you've ever had. You tell them it's like Disneyland for college kids. You can't believe they haven't gone before, they have to experience it. You tell them when they go to check out FREEB!RDS, too, because it's the best burrito they'll ever have.