60 Epic Hours, Part I

Hey, y'all -

Lordy, Lordy, look who's 40: my dearest/oldest/bestest friend, Karen. Karen lives in Los Angeles, so as a fun birthday surprise, I bought her a ticket to Missoula. She got in the Thursday night of St. Patrick's Day and left at 4am the following Sunday morning. We packed an INSANE amount of activity into just 60 hours. The itinerary is even more ludicrous if you stop to think that we're both middle-aged moms who like to go to bed at 8:30pm.

Cleaning out my desk a few weeks ago, I found this picture of Karen:

As I recall, we were in our mid-20s in Key West. Danger, danger. I like to joke that if she dies before me, I will have "What Time, And Who's Driving?" engraved on her tombstone, because I feel like I spent most of my 20s and early 30s pitching her ill-conceived getaways, and she never once said, "Why, no! What a terrible idea!" Instead: "Hey, Karen - want to go to Laughlin, Nevada? It's like Vegas's ugly little brother, but the Ramada has a mini train you can ride!" Or: "Wanna go to Bakersfield and see Buck Owens at the Crystal Palace?" Or "Ever heard of the Zucchini Festival in Hayward? There's a bull we can ride at the local honky tonk after!" Her response? Always: "What time, and who's driving?" Once, we didn't even make it to our destination because we drove past a county fair and thought it would be more fun to have some beers and ride the Zipper.

As a callback to our well-spent youth, I thought we simply MUST go out on the town for St. Patrick's Day. But because we're moms, we MUST do it at 4:30pm.

Yes, my head is perfectly round. You'd need a compass to draw that sucker. I blame my father. 

Karen and I went out on the town (in the snow) and had a great time. At our first stop, we spotted this guy with the beer can helmet across the bar and instinctively knew we'd like that guy, in the same way we appreciate anyone who's in full-tilt party mode while the bank is still open. 

We saw an Irish band called Malarkey. We watched Irish dancers perform crazy jumps. We passed a parade of bagpipe players, and when Karen tried to covertly take their picture, one of them yelled "Go ahead! We don't get this dressed up for nothin'!"

We ate a ridiculous collection of fried things and danced in the street until your dad came to get us (note that it is still daylight out because we are MOMS GONE WILD...at 6pm. 

Your dad joined us for one last party stop, which is when we got the crazy idea that we should all go downhill skiing the next day. "We can get there and back before the kids get out of school!" I said. "This is a perfect plan." True to form, Karen did not point out that she'd never been skiing or that getting to the Idaho border and back by 3pm was a harebrained idea. Instead, she was up for the adventure. What time? 8:00am tomorrow! Who's driving? Thor!

On our way out the door, we spotted the guy from our first establishment and insisted on a group photo. By then, it seemed like we'd been everywhere in Missoula. My fitbit said I'd walked 15,000 steps at that point, and it was fun to bring the night full-circle. We went everywhere! We did everything! We were home by 9pm!

What I REALLY wish I had a picture of is the look on Karen's face the following morning at 8:00am when I gently woke her up and whispered, "Hey Karen...you ready to go to Idaho and do some skiin'?"

Spoiler alert: We went skiing. Tune in tomorrow to see how that went!

-Brooke