The Night of 1,000 turns

Sunday night of the conference is traditionally "client dinner night." The conference organizers do not schedule any formal activities after 6:00pm to allow the vendors in attendance to entertain their customers and potential clients. There are so many vendors and so many dinners or receptions that many times a person has to choose between all the invitations. I opted for my food vendor's dinner which was down at Newport Beach. I always enjoy going out with this group, and seriously who's more qualified to find an excellent restaurant to entertain than a food vendor.

So... my 120 closest friends and I pile into three coach buses to make the trip down to Newport Beach. After arriving, we made our way into 21 Oceanfront Restaurant. The view of the beach and Pacific Ocean was spectacular. The wonderful cocktail hour featured three new California wines that have not made it to market yet. This event was the first time they've been served to the public. I can't comment on the Chardonnay, but the Cabernet was fantastic. As the night wore on the wine continued to flow, the dinner was outstanding, and the dessert has heavenly.

And this is where the night got interesting. As a majority of the guests hopped back onto the buses for the trip home, a few intrepid warriors chose to stay behind. To be more specific, myself and the company's two Bay Area reps decided all the wine we drank just wasn't quite enough for a Sunday night. So Homer, Bart and myself stumble our way two blocks down to a little hole-in-the-wall bar while Homer's wife (and designated driver) Marge went to get the car. I'm guessing this was just a short stay as I can only remember drinking three beers. The plan from there was for Marge to take us all back to the hotel.

Let me backtrack a little. Homer and Marge used to live in Southern California. It had been a few years, so Marge was not as familiar with the route back home as Homer. Hindsight being 20/20, putting the highly polluted Homer in charge of navigating was clearly not the wisest choice. Anyway... Bart and I talked and laughed in the backseat while Homer was directing Marge. "Turn right" was followed by "turn right" and then another "turn right" had us hopelessly lost. I know we were lost because all I could see was trailer homes, plastic pink flamingos, and palm trees. Eventually, "turn right" ended us up on a dead end street. I think we ended up sacrificing one of those plastic flamingos when we turned around.

Eventually Homer kept up the "turn right" routine long enough for it to actually work and Marge found a road she remembered. So down the road we traveled when, "pull over, pull over, stop here" bellowed Homer at Marge. There we were at the doors of really sketchy Irish pub. This was the kind of place I would normally be fearful of going into, but a few bottles of wine and a few bottles of beer made this seem like a good idea. Walking in, the first thing I notice is the bartender looked exactly like Sully Erna from Godsmack. I tend to believe it wasn't actually Sully, but it was SoCal so you never know. Marge, obviously the wisest of the group, stayed with the car. This stay was even shorter and one round of black and tan's later we were back on the road.

At this point Homer was asleep in the passenger seat which left Bart and I to help Marge pick the right highway exit. For future reference, this is not an enviable position to place two drunken conventioneers. Well, we find the "convention center" exit so we decided we had to be close. At the bottom of the off-ramp, we chose to tell Marge to "turn left" as "turn right" hadn't worked out too well earlier in the night. We drive, and drive, and nothing is looking familiar at all. At this point, Marge is so pissed off at the whole situation that she pulls into a gas station to get directions. While this is a good idea to find the hotel, the stopping of the car awakens Homer who's now equally pissed that Marge stopped for directions. Bart and I were convinced we were witnessing the end of a marriage right in front of us. It ends up that we were on the right road, but should have "turned right" at the exit. A quick loop around and a few minutes later we arrived at the hotel. A stumble through an empty lobby and trip up the elevator landed me in my hotel room at the ripe hour of 3:30am. Needless to say, the 8:00am session on Monday was out of the question. And so it goes.... the Night of a 1,000 turns.