California (Post #2 of 3)
When I left you after Post #1 we were driving the 70 miles from San Francisco to Morgan Hill.
If only it was actually that simple. In order to drive we needed a couple of cars. Stuoobs & Paulie had checked this out and booked a couple of vehicles from the Hertz hire place over the road from our hotel, Paulie had booked himself a funky cabriolet for himself and Karen whilst Stuoobs, Easty, Pezza & I had hired one of those GMC SUVs that make our very own Chelsea Tractors look like toy cars. Paulie foresaw sadness here but was fortunate enough to get his car, the rest of us had to wait whilst Hertz scratched around their San Francisco depots looking for something vaguely similar to what we had ordered. We were lucky in the end and got the GMC which was slightly better than what we had actually ordered, nonetheless it had set us back a bit of time.
We were due to be at Morgan Hill in time to check into our hotel and make the 20 minute drive to Eagle Ridge for 3pm for the wedding rehearsal for the wedding that was due to take place the day after and as we had in the car the best man, an usher and one of the readers it’s safe to say we may have been missed! We rocked up at Eagle Ridge about 30 minutes late and got proceedings underway without further ado.
That evening was the Rehearsal Dinner. This is something a bit alien to us Brits. Bill & Laura (Erin’s parents) had hired out a really strange venue which was essentially a massive games room (pool, shuffle board, an indoor-American version of Crown Green called ‘bocce ball’). The games room had a bar! It turned out to be a brilliant venue as it offered everybody, many of whom were from 8000 miles away, the opportunity to mingle and meet everybody so that you’re not strangers at the wedding. Another purpose of the rehearsal dinner is for the groom’s father to say a few words and for the bride & groom to thank everyone involved, again a good idea!
I particularly enjoyed the evening as Graham & I can rightly say we are the World Series of Shuffleboard champions 2008!
After allegedly having an early night we got our final beauty sleep before the big day. It was an early start as a few of us played golf (Foe, Easty, Graham, Si, Finchy & Finchy’s kids). I was faced with the choice of going off with the younger generation but I thought that they would probably have a better time without me; as my inclusion was a bit of an afterthought there were five of us, the most that can be in a group is four so I chose to ignore the actual golf and just drive around in a golf cart, enjoying the banter and Californian sunshine. The morning only got better from there; I had no doubt that there would be alcohol involved at some point during the morning but what I didn’t expect to see was some fitty approaching us in a golf cart converted as a bar. It was brilliant, if this was done in the UK it would simply be an ice box on the back of a lawnmower but this girl had many beers and a fridge full of shorts. By the time we’d approached the back nine we were having a lot of laughs and I had invented a new sport called ‘Andy Golf’. It’s like normal golf but the shots are counted in bottles. All of the pictures are on Graham’s camera and I’ll try and get hold of them once he’s lost all his money in Vegas.
The afternoon was time for the main event and aside from sweat running into places I didn’t think was imaginable it was what can only be described as the perfect Californian wedding.
(1) The girls (2) The boys! (3)Bridesmaids (4)The reading (5)Down the aisle (6) doing the deed.
After the photos and mingling it was time for the meal, after the meal it was the speeches with Easty doing a sterling job at making Foe cringe and Americans whinge!
Rule #28: Make sure there’s an open bar.
It was then time for the night do and the happy couple were generous to lay on an open bar so many Jagerbombs were on the go and Stuoobs did the Kev thing of invading the dancefloor with a bottle of sambuca. Foe had briefed the DJ with a list of essential songs and the evening was set. We were booted out of there at around 11.30pm but a facility had been laid on at our hotel to carry the evening on there. This is where the real carnage began with many beer bongs and Stuoobs’ iPod on the go. I think the last of us retired at approx 4.30am.
Our final act in Morgan Hill was a brunch at the Duricas’ which was a really good wind down following the previous day’s merriment, carnage and, of course, golf.
As you can see, there’s not a whole lot of meat on the bones here, largely due to beer bongs and golf, so here’s a link to all my Morgan Hill pictures.
From there we drove to the coast and onto Santa Cruz. I’ll pick that one up later in the week once it has been heavily edited.
Andy
xxx
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