Wine, Beer, and Wichita - A Cautionary Tale

It is a warm Sunday morning in Wichita and I am sitting here in the courtyard of a Best Western, basking in the warm sunlight blazing in through a window and wondering one thing.

Why did I forget everything the folly of my youth taught me about the foolishness of mixing beer with wine last night?

It all began innocently enough. It was the second day of our ten day trip to the mid-west and earlier in the day we made a beer and wine run to a local liquor store. A sign outside advertising "The Beer Cave" was too inviting to resist so we went in empty handed and came out bearing an assortment of bottles and cans. Got back to the hotel and had a bit of time to kill before dinner so The Wife and I cracked open some wine and had a glass..and then we had another while we visited with her uncle and his family in their hotel room.

When the time came, we loaded into our cars and drove out to Granite City Food and Brewery. Granite City is a spectacular place. The food was excellent and the beer was amazing. There were fifteen of us gorging, drinking, laughing, and generally having a good time in that unique way that you can only experience with people you care about that you only get to see once or twice every other year. Two tall beers and an incredible burger later and we were rocketing back to the hotel (no, I was not driving).

The hotel we are staying at has a huge open courtyard in the middle of it, with the rooms lined up for two floors on each side. There are pool tables, ping pong tables, an air hockey table, a shuffleboard court, a putting practice green, several arcade games, a big screen TV, and many tables spread around for people to sit and play games or just chew the fat. When we got back, we took over one of the tables and spent several hours playing cards (NERTZ!) and drinking more wine.

You got that, right? Wine...then beer...then more wine. I did this a time or two when I was a younger man and  regretted it deeply each time. A wine/beer combo buzz is amplified in its intensity and duration from a buzz obtained strictly through consumption of just wine or just beer. The world goes soft around the edges. Everything becomes desperately funny, even things that should not be funny, such as discussions about the gulf oil spill or election year politics or the moral implications of the Tiger Woods saga or Sarah Palin's woeful vocabulary (ok, those last two are pretty funny either way).

After a few hours of hanging out and playing games The Wife, The Peanut and I retired to our room. They both fell into an immediate sleep but as I lay in bed, the ceiling doing gentle revolutions above me, the wine/beer buzz went mean. I discovered in my youth that this is a characteristic of combining these two beverages. It happens quickly and with the vindictiveness of a jilted lover.

What had been soft, gentle revolutions of the ceiling above suddenly picked up speed, as if someone flipped a switch on a record player from forty-five rpms to seventy-eight. My stomach, which up to this point had been fairly cool and relaxed, suddenly started to complain, sending the advanced guard of what I knew would be a full frontal assault of nausea up my esophagus and into the back of my throat. I knew that to lay still in my hotel bed would be a sensationally stupid idea so I got up. I thought some fresh air would aid me through the worst of the meanness so I made my unsteady way down the hall to take in some air.

As I walked out, I passed the conference section of the hotel where a raucous wedding reception appeared to still be going strong at 12:30 AM. On the other side of the hallway is a bar that was also still going strong in the throes of weekend karaoke madness. There were small groups of people, all in obvious states of alcoholic impairment, staggering back and forth on the carpeted hallway between each event. Were I in a more solid state of mind, I would have put two and two together and realized this was probably not a place I should be. But the nausea assault was increasing and the first tentative caress of an impending headache was working its way into my head.

I opened the door and found a patch of curb upon which to seat myself to ride out the consequences of my unfortunate drink choices. As I sat there a steady stream of alcohol soaked wedding guests and karaoke warriors beat a path between their respective parties and the spot around the corner where they were going to smoke. The unique odor of something being smoked that was most certainly not tobacco made its way to my nostrils, another warning to beat feet that my wine and beer soaked brain ignored.

After sitting on the curb for about fifteen minutes, playing with my phone and debating the possibility of doing a little late night (woozy) geocaching, three people approached my curb and had a seat. Two girls and one guy, early twenties and so inebriated they made my own state of mind seem like the stone cold halls of sobriety. They sat, cigarette butts hanging from their mouths, chittering away for several minutes.

After some time passed, the guy looked over at me, noticing my Phillies hat. He fumbled the cigarette out of his mouth. “Phillies fan?”

I told him I was and where I am from. At that point the three of them turned their attention upon me, full of questions and conversation. I made an attempt at polite dialog, even though my head was still spinning and all I wanted was to lie down in the grass field until it stopped. The conversation went on for about five minutes (“Yes, I live fairly close to New York. Yes, I have been to the Jersey Shore. No, I have never met Snookie.”) and then the girl sitting closest to me shifted closer. It may have just been a move to make herself more comfortable, but when she moved closer to me that tiny voice that had been screaming at me to get my behind away from this group and back to bed finally broke its way through the wine and beer spun cocoon my mind was in.

I was about to bid these fine youngsters good night and take my leave when suddenly, from the smoker's pit around the corner came a string of angrily screamed obscenities in a high pitched female voice. Another female voice fiercely returned the sentiment and there was a fairly loud thud. My three new friends looked at each other, giggled, and shot off to join in the festivities. As they rounded the corned the guy turned back and looked at me.

“Dude…you coming? It’s a CAT-FIGHT!” (As god is my witness, he actually used the term 'cat-fight')

I politely begged off, citing a need to possibly slide into the men's room and pay homage to the porcelain god Ralph. He shrugged in a very 'your loss dude!' kind of way and ran off to watch the show which, from the sound of things, was really heating up.

I made a quick retreat back into the hotel, down the hall, and into my own room.

The moral of the story?

Don't mix beer with wine because you never know when it will lead to the possibility of arrest in the company of pot smoking young adults who say dude too much and whole heartedly embrace the notion of girl on girl brawling on a warm, uncomfortable Saturday night.

It also wakes you up with a killer headache, which in retrospect, is completely deserved.