LABATT BLUE GAMES

One-Shot

I want everyone reading this to know that if you need two more people for any beer-related activity you can give my wife and me a call. If there is only room for one person, don't worry I can keep a secret. When someone called me saying they had two extra spots for their team of six in The Undomesticated Games presented by Labatt Blue. I was more than happy to oblige. The event would affectionately be called The Beer Olympics all weekend. Because who calls stuff by its proper name? Nerds. That’s who. So I wanted to thank the kind people at Labatt Blue for hosting this wonderful event in Erie, Pennsylvania.

At the time I was living in Pittsburgh, so travel to Erie wasn't too much of a hike. I would have traveled anywhere for a similar event— seriously call me, but Erie was as good a place as any. We decided to camp instead of finding a hotel. The hotels were further away, the weather was beautiful, and my wife, liked nature and bugs or whatever. We had to wrangle a six-person tent for the 3 couples, but we were all comfortable and happy with the decision.

The best part of camping is the fire. So we got that baby roaring. The kind of fire that really defines a man and nature. You know high enough to reach the frying pan. The pan was also cast iron, so flashback to the masculinity. We already went shopping to get the essentials. Burgers. Let’s get cooking.

So far 4 of the 6 people at the campsite have been more than helpful. I am not sure what the other two are doing in the tent. I guess pre-turn up napping. They busted out of the tent and wanted to take-over cooking. Well, we aren’t having it. My wife decided that I am to do the burger cooking and that’s final. I jumped up to support her. “Yeah, that’s right. I’m doing the cooking. Wait, who? I don’t want to cook.” Bamboozled. THUNDER NOISE! POURING RAIN! ADDITIONAL THUNDER NOISE (this one is really echoey). It started to rain so hard that the cast iron pan (that according to a woman on MasterChef should never touch water) was filling with water as I was cooking. I guess that meant I was boiling cheeseburgers. That seemed taboo. With my scuba diving cheeseburgers coming off the heat and onto paper plates we now had a new issue. We started moving everything into the tent immediately as it was ready. Everything tasted great and so far, no one died.

Let’s get to the reason why everyone was beer, I mean, here. The Beer Olympics. (The Undomesticated Games presented by Labatt Blue.) They consisted of Human Hungry Hungry Hippos, Human Bowling, Obstacle Course (also involving humans), a keg race, and a giant 3 person bow and arrow. The entire time you were there (Like 9 am to 3 pm) you could buy all the $2 Labatt beers you want. They had normal, light, some kind of extra light, smokey variety (Labatt Premiere Extra Light Lager). The last one I drank the whole time and I have never had or seen it anywhere else. And I may or may not have drunk a good amount of beer. You can find the two of us on our joint account— #truelove, on The Untappd App. Our name is BenTayTay (our celebrity couple name).

The Obstacle course (Undomesticated Challenge) was our first event. I love a good obstacle course. I’m always trying to break the world record for that particular course. No one ever keeps track, so I just assume I always do. This one had a “judge” for whatever reason. I assume he was put there to annoy me. You had to do 3 dizzy bat spins, “Nope. That wasn’t 3.” Then jump into a ball pit. “Nope. Your feet hit the ground.” OK. Bye Bro. Took off and ran through some net yelling “I can’t hear you” with my fingers in my ears. Probably set a world record. Everyone else took their turn and this ended up being the mildest event.

The next event spiced things up. On to the Keg Race (Keg of War). There were 6 kegs. 2 heavy, 2 medium, and 2 light. The course was also straight uphill. I spent several hours trying to figure out the science behind the best way to do this. Should the keg start right at the line? Should I have a running start and time my tag-in perfectly? Should— oh my goodness who cares! Where’s my beer? So, I started running and got rubber-band-snapped back when I realize how heavy the keg actually was. It was more of a dragging kind of thing than a run as fast as you can like a dog in the Iditarod kind of thing. *3 hours later* I crossed the line and tagged in my wife. She got out of the blocks so fast that her keg rolls off her cart. In the heat of the moment, I screamed my entire opening argument in a would-have-been court case. “They can’t hold you at fault for the equipment they prepared! RUN!” So she got to run across the field with no added weight. Probably set a world record.

We were doing pretty well at this point. I didn’t think we are going to get first place, but I thought we might be drunkenly pleased with our results. Then came giant 3-person slingshot archery or whatever it’s really called (Oversized Slingshot). Now, it was my friend’s time to shine. Archery had been his obsession since he was like 5. He was obsessed with the Middle Ages, wants to learn bow hunting, and when we played Humans Vs Zombies in college [you kill each other with nerf weapons] he used a nerf bow and arrow.) Every other team was taking turns being the shooter. He gave us a Braveheart speech about how he needs to be the only shooter. He would do anything to make sure that he got this honor. He wouldn’t let us down— he let us down. He hit 1 of the 25 or so targets.

We had a break between this event and Human Bowling (actually called Human Bowling). We took this time to drink heavily and scowl at our archer and former friend. After that performance, we were pretty much guaranteed to finish near the bottom. The bright side was that this is the event for which I was most excited. I wanted to go first so that I could wait at the bottom of the hill and push everyone else back up. You had to reset your own teammates and they said if there was enough time you might get to send an additional person down the hill. This ended up being a trick to get us to pick up the pace since there were lots of people still waiting. Bamboozled again.

I went first and got into the giant hamster ball. I ran as fast as I could inside to get it really rolling. Then when I approached the pins, I did a front flip inside the ball. This extra momentum paid off and I got a strike! I tried to explain this to my not-listening teammates. They all did their best. I pushed them back up the hill as quickly as I could to keep things moving. Finally, someone else got a strike and I stopped the ball to start pushing it back up the hill. Nice work, teammate— wait a second. This isn’t anyone on my team. Who is this? Why is he in my… It’s Terrell Owens. Terrell Owens is apparently here to present the trophy to the winning team, and they needed video footage of him participating in some of the events. As exciting as a random celebrity encounter is I still had to push him back up the hill…

The last event (and our last hope at not finishing last) is the Hungry Hungry Hippos (Roller Dash). One person has to lay on a flatbed like at Home Depot and another has to push them in and out of a circle containing ball-pit balls like at Mcdonald’s. The person laying down has to scoop as many balls into the bucket as possible. Since 4 people do this at once they have to wear helmets. Everyone was doing fairly well at this event. We had good pushing, we had good grabbing, and we are all working well together. I decided I wanted to be the team’s anchor. I wanted to go last. I see everyone else planning to save the biggest guy for last. Everything so far had been civil, but I assumed things were going to get physical in a drunkenly competitive way, so I let the team know I was going last. So here was my time to shine. I got situated and it looked like I had the advantage against my competitors. These anchors didn’t look so tough. I did pretty good and got almost a full bucket every time. Then I stood up proud and ready to see if we won this whole event. Then I heard, “OK final round. Get ready.” What’s happening? My wife didn’t go. I went in the fourth round. Not the fifth. I saw the real anchors laying down. Oh no. My wife looked at me like she can handle anything. I tagged her in.

I at least got to push her for the anchor round. She started off great getting all of the balls in her area. Then her bucket got caught on something and spilled out everywhere. I clearly saw it get caught and didn’t blame anyone. She had a different opinion. I guess she thought the guy to her right spilled her bucket. The next grab she didn’t even go for a bucket of balls. She was after a bucket of blood— just kidding. But she did deliberately reach out and grab his full bucket and spilled it everywhere. He didn’t even look at her. He looked right at me. A look that said, “Bro, like can you talk to her?” I looked right back. “Not today, buddy. I’m just as scared as you are. “

We got through the final competition without getting a disqualification and move on to the ceremony. We finished in a position that I like to call Not Dead Last and were more than happy with it. The ceremony was fun. Yes, Terrell Owens presented the trophy and there was so much more Labatt Blue. By the way, our team name was The Labastards. We were trying to get screentime with a label-out kind of name. There wasn’t a competition for best name, but we assume we would have won.

Until I get dragged somewhere else,

A Lazy Husband.