My First St. Patrick's Day as a Chicagoan

Chicago takes St. Patrick's Day very, very seriously. I kind of understood this from my junior year of college, in which I was here for the B1G Tourney over St. Patrick's Day and saw the River dyed green as well as took an Irish Car Bomb in the lobby of the Marriott Mag Mile...then we went to Rainforest Cafe, but that's a story for another day.

This year I took the same approach to St. Patrick's that I took to New Year's--I was going to take it easy on the revelry and focus on self-care. I bought tickets to Bull and Bear with Jenn and signed up for an early morning long run with NRC. 

Well...the run went great! We had an amazing pace and finished a solid 3.5 mile run off with a final mile at 8'55"/mile and food and beermosas at Roosevelt University. I made new friends and felt awesome as I went outside to grab a cab and head to Bull and Bear.

It was after this point that things started to go awry. I caught a cab pretty quickly, but I could see that at 10:30 am, things were starting to crumble into a visage of chaos already. My poor cabbie nearly hit a dozen people...who were just kind of dancing in the streets. I kept wondering how they ended up *that* drunk that early, but then again, I did go to IU. It was pretty much like a giant Little 500 in the streets of Chicago. 

Long story short, running speeds up the alcohol processing through the body and I didn't know it, so I got way too drunk really quickly at Bull and Bear. Jenn and I stumbled our way to Bottled Blonde, where I wasn't allowed in with my backpack. We had to empty my backpack, shove it in Jenn's purse, and I had to carry my stuff into the bar. Somewhere in the scramble of refilling my backpack inside, I lost my wallet (though I did recover it Sunday), took pulls of Veuve Cliquot and nearly chipped a tooth, then came home and fell asleep on my closet floor with the shower running. I have one photo as evidence of the day.

Do I have regrets? A couple. My ventra card was stolen and I had to replace my credit and debit cards, which was a bit of a hassle on a Sunday. But honestly? I don't do that kind of thing ever, so all in all I would call it an awesome St. Patrick's Day with great friends. 

I'm really hitting my stride in Chicago, and surviving St. Paddy's with only a few cancelled cards was a rite of passage to becoming a true Chicagoan.

--B