One
score and five years ago, I was in kindergarten and happened to meet a fellow
named Christopher Portella. Three years
later, Richard Kupselaitis moved to Howell and joined us at the still charming,
Ramtown elementary school. Years later,
we are now all married and have been in each other’s respective wedding
party. The three of us + our wives decided
to meet up for the first time since my nuptials this month. How’s that for summing up 25 years of a
lifetime in one paragraph?
Dorothy
and I agreed to pick up the Portella’s at their house and head to Philly
airport in one car. The night prior we
decided to try to jump on an earlier flight to get to NC before potential
storms hit. We were actually on time in
leaving both our house and theirs to get to the airport. This is an accomplishment in and of
itself. Bonus points for actually being
able to get on the earlier flight as well.
However …
We
booked our flights on United’s web site.
What United failed to tell us at ANY point was that they sold the seats
to the flight, but it was on a US Airways plane. Somehow, this makes sense to them. (Can JetBlue and Virgin please start picking
up more gates around the country?) So we
wound up parking in terminal 4 (United’s terminal), walking over to terminal 3
to check in, and then walking over to terminal 2 for our gate. Have I mentioned how this makes absolutely no
sense yet?
The
closest we got to JetBlue was the Jet Rock Bar & Grill in the
terminal. $200 later we were ready to
board the plane – just assume this wasn’t all food. Without a hitch, we landed in NC on time and
were on our way to dinner at Café Caturra - http://www.cafecaturra.com/ . Advice: try their pizzas. Afterwards, it was back to the Kupselaitis house
for a few adult beverages and a late night of BS’ing on the deck. One quick note; on our way to the restaurant,
we were told of a broken, upstairs bathroom that we would try to fix on
Saturday (to no avail). Well, if we
weren’t close by now, this was going to be the weekend.
Our
Saturday was full of food and alcohol – this was quite the trip that was
needed. We started with lunch at The Q
Shack (http://www.theqshack.com/), based off of a recommendation
from my employer. The ladies failed to
mention, actually hid, that they serve breakfast so we didn’t leave the house
until the afternoon. If you read the top
of the Q Shack home page, you’ll find the story behind the local movement from
the owner. Good atmosphere and good
food. We were then off to the Cloer
Family Vineyards (http://www.cloerfamilyvineyards.com/)
for a wine tasting, where we wound up purchasing one bottle of red and another
of white. We sat outside, in the 100
degree heat, listened to some local music, and played cornhole. However, at some point, the music stopped and
it became a poetry reading for 15 minutes.
Let’s just move on.
After
a quick return home to freshen up, it was off to downtown Raleigh for the
evening, which started with dinner at Beasley’s Chicken & Honey –
apparently they don’t have a web page (?!) so here is a link to their
foursquare page, https://foursquare.com/v/beasleys-chicken--honey/4e091acc1f6e21103396e069. (I’m actually baffled by this. Who doesn’t have a web page at this
point? If I can set up a blog for
ridiculous write-ups on travel, a business should be able to handle this without
a glitch. (Steps off pedestal)) After dinner, which was good by the way, we
bar hopped for a few hours before heading back to the house, stopping at Fox
Liquor Bar and The Busy Bee, Cabs are
nowhere near as frequent in Raleigh, so we set up the ride to and from before
leaving for dinner. That wound up being
a bit of a nuisance for the ride home given that we forgot to call ahead of
time to check in (I think).
Sunday
rose but we really didn’t. It was off to
a late brunch at Rockwell’s American Grill (http://www.rockwellsamericangrill.com/). The Sunday Brunch was phenomenal here and I’m
glad I live nowhere near it because it would easily tack on another 15 pounds
if I did. Afterward, we decided to
have a few hours of guys only time and girl only time – this only makes sense
to you if you are married. “Trust
me”. The girls chose to go to a spa (“The
Spa at Mitchell’s”) and that’s where this part of the story ends. The guys chose to go to Frankie’s Fun Park - http://www.frankiesfunpark.com/home. As the scorecard in the picture below will
prove to you, the round of mini golf in excessive heat was a dominant
performance from yours truly. I also
took the crown in the batting cages, on Rollerball, and won 100+ tickets on a
football throwing game in the arcade.
Rick took the crown in the basketball and baseball games in the arcade,
and Chris … well; Chris had a few good second place finishes. It also dawned on me for the 700th
time that if I ever have a basement, a pinball machine is a ‘must own’.
After
sweating out a few pounds, it was back to the house to eat and shoot some
cornhole in the backyard. Rick made some
pretty snazzy boards with Jets insignia all over them. We wound up staying at the house for the
evening to sit around and do some more BS’ing.
Then we opened up a game called “Telestrations” - http://www.telestrationseffect.com/#/home. This is similar to the (very old) game of
telephone, only combined with Draw Something (or Pictionary if you were born
before 1975). The absolute absurdity
that comes out by the end of the round is/was hysterical. Between some god-awful drawings and some off
the wall (and sometimes dirty) guesses lead to pure entertainment. I’ll keep it clean and leave the vocabulary
out of this write-up.
Before
our flight home on Monday, we watched a few old school videos that Rick has
managed to move over to DVD, at least somewhat successfully. There are grade school and high school videos
that you can’t put a price tag on.
To
quickly wrap up, here are two key phrases from the weekend that we all ‘went
home with’: “Just the tip” and “No house parties”. You’ll never know …
Until
the next time the Super Six get together, which may be in Las Vegas and
supported by a 25 year anniversary for Chris and I. Pretend you didn’t just read that
actually.
Do
you have any thoughts or recommendations for the Raleigh, NC area?
