B365V3.40 - Good thing I wasn't chewing gum

So Friday after work I came up with what I thought was a splendid idea, i was on point most of the day and looking to get out at a decent time, so perhaps I would head over Greenfield way and visit my friend Rich.  It had been a couple of years since I had been over there, but i know Rich to be a creature of habit, he normally stops at his local watering hole on the way home for a beer or two, my plan would be to meet him at the bar, since i had an extra shekel or two and then see where the day takes me.

I het to his bar before 4, i get a Yuengling, and proceed to not make a spectacle of myself, just sitting there playing on my tablet while some of what i presume are regulars are yakking it up at the bar.  Some people leave, others come in including a guy named Colin.  He and I struck up an interesting conversation ti say the least, when Colin gets ready to leave he asked if i had been there before, to which i said yes, just waiting on my friend Rich to arrive.  Colin and the bartender both say that Rich only works Monday thru Thursday, he isn't there on Fridays.  So my plans were not coming to fruition after all.  But since i know where Rich lives, i figure i will just head over to his place.  The next bartender came in and i realized i am now the only guy in the bar, so i felt it my moral obligation to stick around for one beer, in case no one else came in.  I have another beer, by now it is after 8 and i realize i have put in a solid 4 hours drinking, all beers and a shot (with Colin) and i better stop myself if i am still going to be functional in public.

So i head back to Rich's place, see his wife Cindy and his daughter Jessica but no Rich.  Turns out he did work on Friday after all and was just getting off at 8, so back to the bar i go to meet him.  We probably drank for a couple of hours, bringing my solid drinking time to 6 hours or so before walking back to his place and calling it a night, where we sat around and bs ed some  more, talking about our respective computers and shit we do on them.  I think i lost my coolness factor when i mentioned i don't even play Diablo anymore (I beat Diablo I ( who didn't though) and Diablo 2 before they started coming out with all kinds of crazy patches to make it more difficult). Diablo 3 i was geeked for playing until it took Blizzard a damn decade to develop the game.  I bought it and played it a few times but in the back of my mind i was always like, i waited 10 years for this?

Anyway we chat for a bit then i have to head home, he has to get his wife ready for a trip to the hospital in the morning (lots of transplant and dialysis issues there, but that isn't my story to tell) so i headed out to the bus stop across the street, hoping to catch a 58 that would get me to Oakland, where i needed to be or downtown, where i could transfer buses to get to where i needed to be.  That was when the alcohol started hitting me, i stood at the bus stop for maybe 5 minutes before i got tired of waiting, so i started walking down Greenfield Avenue, figuring my odds at catching any bus would be better along 2nd Avenue than where i was.  I make it to the bottom of the hill, passing one road that would have been the back way into Oakland, but in my drunken reasoning that road went up hill and i was being too drunk and lazy to climb hills, who cares that my drunken route downtown would add probably 2 miles to my walk if i didn't see a bus.

I get further down 2nd Avenue, where there is a ramp up to the Eliza Furnace Trail, a pedestrian trail that runs parallel to 2nd Avenue all the way into town.  I decide i will take the trail, so i go up the little ramp type thing connecting the trail to the sidewalk.  Once on the trail i decide i better make sure i am on the far right side, the weather was nice and i didn't want to be run down by anyone on their bicycle late at night, or anyone out doing any late night Pokemoning.   I start down the trail, when my foot slides off of the side of the pavement and into gravel.  My drunken cat like reflexes kept me from falling but i made myself a mental note to be more careful.  That lasted about 20 feet or so before i did the same thing again.  Funny thing when you fall down, there is that brief moment in time where you realize there is no saving yourself, you are going to eat dirt and like it.  And sure enough i did, my right leg breaking most of the fall, my tablet went flying, as did my backpack (with jetpack and laptop in it), my glasses clanked to the ground and i popped one of the lenses out.  My inner common sense had to fight my drunkenness at this point, because if drunk Matt would have won i would have just laid down right there and called it a night.  Instead i managed to get my disheveled self back together, including fixing my glasses and decided maybe climbing a hill and cutting significant time from my walking wasn't such a bad idea after all.

I made it home, my knee was bleeding but i wasn't feeling much pain, we would save that for the following morning, where it took 5 attempts to get my shoe on over my ankle.  And now you see why i don't stray far from home with my drinking.