There’s nothing quite like a wedding to force a reunion. For a few days late last week it was like old times with so many friends who’d graduated back in town. They’d all returned to State College to celebrate Vic & Lindsay’s wedding.
The fun started with Vic’s bachelor party on Thursday the 18th. Eight of us (Vic, Vic’s friend Joe, Jeff, Robert, Rob, Bob, Walter and me) went over to Clearfield to have dinner at Denny’s Beer Barrel Pub. Why Denny’s? Because they have the world record for the largest hamburger, and while it’s obviously far from a world record, Vic wanted to order a 6-pound burger for all of us to attack. And yes, it was as ridiculously as it sounded, although it would be more accurate to call it a six-pount meat loaf on a bun, with a plate on the side full of condiments. We cut the burger into eight equal 3/4-pound segments, and each of us finished ours except for Vic. That was rather surprising to all of us because in the past Vic has downed a one-pound burger and fries all by himself in just ten minutes. We made sure to give him grief for that.
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After dinner we all drove back to Bob’s house in Pine Grove Mills to watch some of the late-evening first round NCAA games, and have a special wedding edition of the Bad American Swill Festival, the fourth one we’ve had. We didn’t have enough of each beer (often just one can or bottle) to do both a warm and cold taste test, so we did just the smell and warm tests. As an indication of the quality of beers in the contest, a previous winner, La Crosse Lager, finished 8th out of 9. There was some truly awful beer. The winner was Clear Creek Ice, in second place was Schlitz, in third place was Steel Reserve, and then Koch’s Golden Anniversary once again finished in fourth place. There was a lot of variance in this BASF compared to previous editions of the BASF. There were two beers that were both ranked best and worst by different people. It was still a fun time, even with the lingering aftertaste/aftersmell of all the bad beers. 🙂
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On Friday the 19th the weather was so incredibly gorgeous that a bunch of us took some time off in the afternoon to go play 9 holes of disc golf at Circleville Park. I think we had a nine-some and even a small gallery following us around, haha. While the wedding party was at the rehearsal and rehearsal dinner, I played some tennis with Ben and watched some more NCAA tournament games. Later at night we all met up at Bar Bleu. The really neat thing about that is that there were probably about 30-40 meteorologists at the bar. Quite a few of the younger grad students were out to celebrate Caroline’s birthday, and a bunch of others were out because of Vic, and then a bit later on Lindsay’s bachelorette party bar tour made a stop at Bar Bleu also. It was cool to have so many meteo grad students in one place, from first years all the way up through alums. That was fun, I’m glad I decided to go out.
Vic & Lindsay’s wedding was on Saturday the 20th at 4:30pm at Eisenhower Chapel on campus. The day couldn’t have been nicer, sunny and close to 70 degrees. The weather was far nicer than I’m sure any of us ever imagined it would be when we found out they’d scheduled a wedding for mid-March in State College. I guess Vic & Lindsay just had one heck of a long-range forecast! Anyway, the ceremony itself was nice and pretty small (about 70 people in attendance??). I was also taking some mental notes of the setup since I’ll be playing piano at Eisenhower Chapel one month from now for Dan & Kerrie’s wedding. After the ceremony we all provided a “bubble tunnel” outside for Vic & Lindsay to walk through. Of course several of us had plenty of fun playing around blowing bubbles.
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The reception was at Toftrees Resort, with people assigned to tables that had pictures and stories of different locations that were significant to Vic & Lindsay (Grand Forks, ND, Barrow, AK, Grand Rapids, MN, State College, PA, etc.). They also had one-pound burlap bags of Moose Lake wild rice with a mini-recipe book of Vic’s favorite wild rice dishes. Very Minnesotan. 🙂 After the meal and before the dance floor was opened up, Vic & Lindsay presented a fun slideshow about their lives from when they met in Walker Building until their lives now in Minnesota (they now both work for Wind Logics up in Grand Rapids). Then there was lots and lots of dancing (the sappy ballads were kept to a minimum, but even Dr Lamb came out onto the dance floor for one or two songs!). I was even out there dancing about 70-80% of the time, by far the most I’ve ever done that. I was pretty worn out by the end of the night, but I had a blast, and so did everyone else, it seemed. It was fun to see so many people again too, who had come from all over, including Hawai’i, California, Texas, Oklahoma, Illinois, North Carolina, New York, New Jersey, and even Scotland. Like I said, there’s nothing quite like a wedding to force a reunion!
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Then on Sunday morning eight of us (Dan, Kerrie, Chris, Amber, Caren, Kent, Walter & I) went out for breakfast at Waffle Shop, always a favorite place. I think I’ve been to Waffle House way more frequently since people started graduating and moving away, because now whenever people come back into town we try to get breakfast there one morning. Then after church I watched some more basketball with Kent over at Walter’s, and then had lunch with Kent & Walter on Monday before Kent flew back to Oklahoma.
It was so much fun to hang out with everyone again all weekend, it was just like old times! I wonder if we’ll ever be able to get such a big group back together again. I sure hope so! Maybe someone else will just have to get married. 🙂