Saturday, a gaggle of my friends and I are heading to downtown Chicago for the St. Patrick's Day parade, or, as Mr. Steve Delahoyde calls it, "the celebration of my culture's drinking problem". To commemorate the driving of the serpents from Ireland's shores, we will get insanely plastered and hoot at the '200 Years of Plumbing Fixture Engineers' float.
Now, I've gone to the parade every years since I've moved to Chicago. There's two things I never miss: the St. Patrick's Day parade and White Sox opening day. The great tradition of getting wasted, cheering the IRA, freezing our asses off, desperately trying to find a bathroom, and stumbling around in an alcoholic haze until we can eat something will not be interrupted; if I can't polish off an entire Thermos full of Irish coffee before the Trinity Dance School comes by, the terrorists will have won.
I am slightly trepidatious this year, though, because I'll be bringing the
Trav-L-Bar. This dandy little vintage item is made for a freewheeling drunk like me: it can hold three bottles of liquor, a party worth of glasses, and all sorts of other boozehound accoutrements. However, it also looks like the sort of thing you might put a decent-sized bomb in, and I am slightly worried that the police will take it, and possibly me, away.
Now, this is probably just paranoiac vaporing on my part. I brought the Trav-L-Bar to the parade LAST year -- only 6 months after 9/11, with law enforcement hysteria at something of a peak -- and no one gave me any hassle. And that was with George W. Bush "marching" in the parade. Still, having recently discovered that the Executive Office of the President reads my website, I am feeling a little delicate.
The only real question is, what to stock in the Trav-L-Bar? Irish whiskey is a given, of course. Possibly Bailey's or Dooleys could be bottle #2. But what should be my bench liquor? Cask & Cream? Frangelico? Cinnamon schnapps? More whiskey? Brandy? The choices I must make, my friends. Do not envy the weight I carry: it is all for you, all for love.