It's a nice day for a white wedding. ( and how to lift a car)
This weekend was Maria and Craig's wedding. Elizabeth was the maid of honor, so Friday We went to the rehersal dinner. It was fun, even though I pretty much stood there and held everyones purses while they did the rehersal. The rehersal was actually really short, they just went through the ceremony once. Then we went to Bertha's Mussels in Fell's Point for dinner. It was pretty good, and everyone was surprized that Elizabeth and Meghan actually tried and liked mussels. We then went back to the Hyatt hotel where many of the wedding guests were staying and they had a suite where we hung out and had a few beers.
Saturday morning I drove Elizabeth to Maria's Mom's house in Perry Hall (North of Baltimore) to meet the rest of the bridal party for hair and makeup and all that girly stuff.... We were like 30 minutes late getting there. Then I drove home, ran some errands, and then went to the wedding. The wedding was very nice. It was at the Baltimore Museum of Industry, which might sound like a weird place for a wedding, but it has a beautiful view of the inner harbor(who knew it could be beautiful?), and a lot of cool displays in and around the museum. The ceremony was pretty short (it was Lutheran I think... not as long as our Catholic cermony will be.). They had Shakespeare and Frost readings instead of bible readings, which I liked. After the ceremony (which was in an outdoor pavilion), there was an outdoor cocktail hour. Then we went inside for the reception. The inside had all sorts of cool displays of rustic trinkets and stuff which made for a very nice atmosphere.
After the reception, we got in a limo, which was shuttling people to and from the hotel, and went back to the hotel suite. All the doors in the suite automatically closed and locked whenever they were opened, so we put the bolt used for locking the door on the inside in the way of the doors so they would not lock. Unfortuantely there is a piece of metal on the wooden door to protect it from getting damaged in just this situation, so everytime someone opened the door it would slam shut and then the metal on the door would bounce off the metal of the bolt causing repeated echoing slams. We ended up getting a couple of stern warnings about being too loud due to this retarded feat of door engineering. Who makes doors that are imposible to shut softly in a hotel? I mean, if you let the door close on its own, the pneumatic mechanism causes it to slam shut, if you slowly close the door by hand, it makes a loud noise when the latch catches, and if you try and keep it from locking, you get a cacophony of echoing bangs... Who would put a block of people attending a wedding into a suite like this with unrelated people trying to sleep in rooms around them and not expect them to be a little loud?
Anyway, in the middle of the after-party, most of the groomsmen, myself and a few other guys went to perform the ceremonial trashing of the grooms car. I had been in charge of acquiring the supplies for the trashing, and there was T.P., silly string, soap, shaving cream, streamers and many other supplies in copious ammounts to be used in the trashing. So we head down to the parking garage and find Craig's car, but before we can do anything, Dave (Craig's brother) decides to move the car to further infuriate Craig when he tries to find it (I thought this was a stupid idea). So, he backs the car out into the driving lane of the garage, and suddenly it stalls out. We get some people we know who were leaving the garage to jump us, but no dice. Furthermore, at some point the steering column, ignition, and gear shift all lock. With the gear shift locked, we can't even push the car back into its space (reason number 763 to drive a manual). Luckily I remember that most automatic cars have a shift lock override that is hidden under a little plastic cover by the gear shift. After a lot of prying with keys and even a golf tee that we found in the car, someone produces a pocket knife which lets us get the cover off. I then use the golf tee to depress the lock override, and suddenly we are out of gear and ready to roll right into the parking space. Now, two things should be mentioned here. First, remember that I said the steering column is locked? We were assuming at this point that Dave had simply turned the steering wheel and held it at a constant angel while he backed out, and that we could simply push the car at the same angle and it would go back in... makes sense, right? Wrong. Secondly, by this point, Garage security has shown up, and told us to toss our open beers, and threatened to call a tow truck (which would ahve ruined our fun). Luckily, other cars have been able to get by us, so mostly the two security guys just sat in their golf cart watching a bunch of drunk, half dressed up (I was wearing a dress shirt, rolled up dress pants, and adidas sandals at this point... pretty ridiculous looking) guys try to move an immobile car, I bet they had some interesting stories to tell their friends thanks to us. Anyway, we start pushing the car, and we were all feeling pretty confident until we realize that we are turning too sharply and are going straight for a giant concrete pillar. "Fuck" we all said, "what are we going to do now?". At this point, I, still proud of my knowledge of gearshift unlocking, thought I could get the steering column unlocked as well... no luck. I'm out of ideas at this point, but someone else has the bright idea to lift the back of the car and move it a few feet to the side in order to get a better angle of attack. Now, I think I'm a pretty rational person, but to me this sounded like the insane idea of a drunken lunatic. "lift a car? you must be insane!" there were probably 7 or so grown men there, so in retrospect, I guess it isnt that insane to think that we could have lifted a car, but at the time it sounded crazy, so I stood there while they tried to lift it, and holy shit, they were able to get it a few inches off the ground and move it a few feet. I felt like a dumbass now, and in the subsequent 5 or so lifts, I carried my weight, including the one lift of the front of the car, complete with engine block. I'm not sure how we lifted it without damaging the body, because I found it hard to find anything to grab that was not plastic or fiberglass. Anyway, We eventually got the car into the space. We figured at this point that even though Craig had enough to worry about with his broken car, we had been though too much to give up now. So we put crap all over his car and threw crumpled newspaper and packing peanuts all in the car, and then went back up to the suite for some much deserved beers. Evidently when Craig's Dad looked at the car in the morning, he was able to unlock the steering column by turning it all the way to one side really hard. But the car still would not start. Man, is that car going to look funny on a tow truck. Anyway we spent the night on the floor of the suite and then came home in the morning.
Last night Elizabeth and I went to see Dave Matthews Band in Virginia Beach, which is 4 hours away from here, so we got home at 4:30 in the morning, which was not cool. I'm pretty tired now. The concert was good, but not too much different than the previous two times Ive seen them. Nevertheless, it was fun, even if we had to drive 4 hours to get there.
Saturday morning I drove Elizabeth to Maria's Mom's house in Perry Hall (North of Baltimore) to meet the rest of the bridal party for hair and makeup and all that girly stuff.... We were like 30 minutes late getting there. Then I drove home, ran some errands, and then went to the wedding. The wedding was very nice. It was at the Baltimore Museum of Industry, which might sound like a weird place for a wedding, but it has a beautiful view of the inner harbor(who knew it could be beautiful?), and a lot of cool displays in and around the museum. The ceremony was pretty short (it was Lutheran I think... not as long as our Catholic cermony will be.). They had Shakespeare and Frost readings instead of bible readings, which I liked. After the ceremony (which was in an outdoor pavilion), there was an outdoor cocktail hour. Then we went inside for the reception. The inside had all sorts of cool displays of rustic trinkets and stuff which made for a very nice atmosphere.
After the reception, we got in a limo, which was shuttling people to and from the hotel, and went back to the hotel suite. All the doors in the suite automatically closed and locked whenever they were opened, so we put the bolt used for locking the door on the inside in the way of the doors so they would not lock. Unfortuantely there is a piece of metal on the wooden door to protect it from getting damaged in just this situation, so everytime someone opened the door it would slam shut and then the metal on the door would bounce off the metal of the bolt causing repeated echoing slams. We ended up getting a couple of stern warnings about being too loud due to this retarded feat of door engineering. Who makes doors that are imposible to shut softly in a hotel? I mean, if you let the door close on its own, the pneumatic mechanism causes it to slam shut, if you slowly close the door by hand, it makes a loud noise when the latch catches, and if you try and keep it from locking, you get a cacophony of echoing bangs... Who would put a block of people attending a wedding into a suite like this with unrelated people trying to sleep in rooms around them and not expect them to be a little loud?
Anyway, in the middle of the after-party, most of the groomsmen, myself and a few other guys went to perform the ceremonial trashing of the grooms car. I had been in charge of acquiring the supplies for the trashing, and there was T.P., silly string, soap, shaving cream, streamers and many other supplies in copious ammounts to be used in the trashing. So we head down to the parking garage and find Craig's car, but before we can do anything, Dave (Craig's brother) decides to move the car to further infuriate Craig when he tries to find it (I thought this was a stupid idea). So, he backs the car out into the driving lane of the garage, and suddenly it stalls out. We get some people we know who were leaving the garage to jump us, but no dice. Furthermore, at some point the steering column, ignition, and gear shift all lock. With the gear shift locked, we can't even push the car back into its space (reason number 763 to drive a manual). Luckily I remember that most automatic cars have a shift lock override that is hidden under a little plastic cover by the gear shift. After a lot of prying with keys and even a golf tee that we found in the car, someone produces a pocket knife which lets us get the cover off. I then use the golf tee to depress the lock override, and suddenly we are out of gear and ready to roll right into the parking space. Now, two things should be mentioned here. First, remember that I said the steering column is locked? We were assuming at this point that Dave had simply turned the steering wheel and held it at a constant angel while he backed out, and that we could simply push the car at the same angle and it would go back in... makes sense, right? Wrong. Secondly, by this point, Garage security has shown up, and told us to toss our open beers, and threatened to call a tow truck (which would ahve ruined our fun). Luckily, other cars have been able to get by us, so mostly the two security guys just sat in their golf cart watching a bunch of drunk, half dressed up (I was wearing a dress shirt, rolled up dress pants, and adidas sandals at this point... pretty ridiculous looking) guys try to move an immobile car, I bet they had some interesting stories to tell their friends thanks to us. Anyway, we start pushing the car, and we were all feeling pretty confident until we realize that we are turning too sharply and are going straight for a giant concrete pillar. "Fuck" we all said, "what are we going to do now?". At this point, I, still proud of my knowledge of gearshift unlocking, thought I could get the steering column unlocked as well... no luck. I'm out of ideas at this point, but someone else has the bright idea to lift the back of the car and move it a few feet to the side in order to get a better angle of attack. Now, I think I'm a pretty rational person, but to me this sounded like the insane idea of a drunken lunatic. "lift a car? you must be insane!" there were probably 7 or so grown men there, so in retrospect, I guess it isnt that insane to think that we could have lifted a car, but at the time it sounded crazy, so I stood there while they tried to lift it, and holy shit, they were able to get it a few inches off the ground and move it a few feet. I felt like a dumbass now, and in the subsequent 5 or so lifts, I carried my weight, including the one lift of the front of the car, complete with engine block. I'm not sure how we lifted it without damaging the body, because I found it hard to find anything to grab that was not plastic or fiberglass. Anyway, We eventually got the car into the space. We figured at this point that even though Craig had enough to worry about with his broken car, we had been though too much to give up now. So we put crap all over his car and threw crumpled newspaper and packing peanuts all in the car, and then went back up to the suite for some much deserved beers. Evidently when Craig's Dad looked at the car in the morning, he was able to unlock the steering column by turning it all the way to one side really hard. But the car still would not start. Man, is that car going to look funny on a tow truck. Anyway we spent the night on the floor of the suite and then came home in the morning.
Last night Elizabeth and I went to see Dave Matthews Band in Virginia Beach, which is 4 hours away from here, so we got home at 4:30 in the morning, which was not cool. I'm pretty tired now. The concert was good, but not too much different than the previous two times Ive seen them. Nevertheless, it was fun, even if we had to drive 4 hours to get there.
posted by Unknown | Wednesday, July 05, 2006
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