The Weekend Edition (now with couch surfers!)

What a crazy weekend.

Going into this weekend, it was looking like it could be a very good one. Good plans and entertaining ventures were within my grasp, and then a mild natural disaster reared its ugly (although in reality, strangely cool and definitely epic looking) head. Mount Redoubt erupted and sent ash into the Anchorage area, causing Brand New to cancel their show and my big Saturday plans to go up in ash (see what I did there?). I was distraught, no Saturday plans? What's a guy to do?

Have significantly more fun doing something else entirely.

What did I do?

• Dinner with Hannah at Kim and Josh's in the valley (Italy planning, great music, great times - thanks Kim and Josh!)
• GCI event at our Elmendorf store with the AK Wild and all kinds of ridiculousness
• Trip clothing shopping with Joanne (hello future man jacket!)
• The Humpy's dinner trip heard 'round the world with Hannah, Amy, Jason, Joanne, and myself
• Enter the two irish guys
• Wait a second, these guys aren't irish - enter Ben and Dan
• Puma Circus world tour at my apartment
• WHOOP WHOOP! The Crewnit plus their New York transplant friends taking over downtown Anchorage
• Snow City with everyone for breakfast
• Coffee with my sister to recover
• The Conference Call of Conference Calls to finalize Hannah, Kim and I's Italy plan
• Word that CHUCK KLOSTERMAN DIDN'T CANCEL! Suck it Redoubt!

So yeah, I had a good time this weekend. Definitely the highlight of the weekend was going out Saturday night with Joanne, Hannah, Amy, and Jason, and the two strangers we met and the explosion of fun that ensued.

Amy, Hannah, Jason, Dan, Balto, myself, and Joanne - not pictured: Ben

So Saturday night we had an epic "Crewnit Reunion Special" planned, with everyone in our group planning on meeting at Humpy's for dinner, drinks, and going out on the town. Of course, that ashy bastard started spewing on Anchorage, causing Colver and Lorna (plus all flights to and from Anchorage) to cancel, downtown to go into panic mode, and the entire night to start having a distinct air of uncertainty to it. I have to admit, I was really looking forward to my party night.

However, Hannah, Joanne, Amy, Jason and I still went down to Humpy's, had a delicious dinner and had a great time.

While we were sitting though, a point of frequent discussion were these two guys who were sitting opposite of us in a booth. They had all of their suitcases with them and laptops out, and one of their suitcases had what looked like an Irish flag on it. Plus, it seemed as if they were a huge hit, with everyone in Anchorage seemingly taking interest in their table. We of course remained unimpressed, sitting on our high horse from 9 feet away, as we planned a movie night at my place given the fact it sounded like downtown may get shut down due to ashfall.

Then, after a little while and a table switch, Joanne (she of the fabled overtly forward nature) went up to the two guys and introduced herself. Thirty minutes later, she came back to the table and said "I hope it's okay, but I invited them to stay at your place and come to movie night."

"Sure!" I said out loud, as inside my head alarms went off.

All alarms turned off within five minutes though, as Ben snuck by, introduced himself and said "by the way, we're not from Ireland."

Turns out he and his brother Dan were on a heliskiing trip from New York City, and that we were in the presence of celebrity. Ben was actually what may or may not amount to the Wii Tennis champion of the nation, winning a 1,000 person tournament in Rockefeller Center in New York City. He won a year lease to a Lexus and two VIP passes to the U.S. Open finals. How's that for a slice of fried gold?

Anyways, we all went back to my place and I managed to coerce everyone to go out instead of having a movie night, but not before we all had a great time with Rock Band and our new Alaska/New York fusion band "Puma Circus" got together. Bad news was I was amazingly terrible. Good news was it was incredibly fun.

As was the rest of the night, as the seven of us went downtown, dominated the Anchor's dancefloor, inducted Balto into our group, and had a blast at the Avenue. Not only that, but we managed to even expand the party to outside the Avenue, as we were a force of nature walking away from the bar, assailing everyone with our "whoop! whoop!"'s and jointly singing some 80's song that no one seems to remember. Then we ended the night with twelve double decker tacos and How I Met Your Mother and that was all she wrote.

All in all, it was another great night for the Crewnit, and a great first experience in the arts of inadvertent Couch Surfing. You guys are welcome on my couches any time Ben and Dan.