Sunday, June 29, 2008

Readathon: Twentysomething!

Oh, Readathon...I remember you when you were just a little tyke. Now you're all grown up and can marry, vote, drink and gamble. If you've got plans, you'd better hurry, because you're finished at 24. Sounds tragic, doesn't it? I'll try to be sad after I get a little sleep.

Eva is hosting the mini-challenge this hour. She would like conscious participants to post pictures that somehow relate to their Readathon experience.


While most of you had duly gotten a good night's sleep, and were just crawling out of bed, I was crawling as well. Pub crawling! This is the group that poured my beer and saw me to the fringes of the Readathon much in the same way that the Munchkins saw Dorothy to the Yellow Brick Road.

I had started out with good intentions. I would do my meeting in Seoul late in the afternoon, have a short drink with the pub crawlers, then leave on the ten p.m. train. This would put me back in Gumi at one-thirty a.m, and ready to rock, roll and Readathon. When nine-something rolled around, I knew I couldn't make it to the train station. In fact, I had but the vaguest and wooziest of notions about how to find the subway station again! So I said what the hell and burned my train ticket. Mitzi took photos.


When the flames died, I knew there was no turning back. My Tough & Cool Inner Bookworm went to the bathroom to puke. Fortunately or unfortunately, depending on your point of view, Mitzi didn't get a picture of that.

Later, after a late evening repast at Burger King, the group splintered. Some had to get subways back to their section of Seoul. The ones who were planning to continue on decided to get wild at a place called the something Monkey. They piled into a couple of taxis and roared off. I really wanted to keep socializing, but I wanted my Readathon as well. In the end, the bookworm part of me won out. I found a place to begin reading and caught an early morning train out of the city. This is the first book I finished.

9 comments:

trish said...

I don't think I could do any reading after a night of drinking. You're amazing!

Bybee said...

Well, it was an evening of drinking. I had a couple of catnaps on the train.

Ana S. said...

It sounds like you had a good time. And you're back now, which is amazing!

Care said...

WHAT A REBEL! wow. I had a couple of drinks, too. Call the standards committee! One of the cheerleaders has liquor on her breath!! (well - that was about Hour 8 or so and I'm fine now.)

Eva said...

LOL I'm so glad there are pub crawl pictures! And look at you burning your ticket! Seriously: you're much more hardcore than I can ever hope to be. :)

Susan said...

Hardcore! hee. I love the Grizzly attacks book - must find that. Having grown up in BC - where grizzies are routinely seen - and having black bears actually wander into the city here!!! - wildlife is not so far away here in Canada. I bet the book kept you awake on the train for the first part of the challenge. Good for your inner bookworm! She might be tough and cool, but she got you to do the readathon even though you make her puke!!!lol hmm, the grizzly book wasn't petty revenge on doing the readathon, was it?? how does your T&CIB feel about that? :-P

Bybee said...

Susan,
T&CIB and I really battled that night. She didn't say much about the grizzly book. She liked the cover and her/our eyes were too bleary to tackle a classic.

darkorpheus said...

I'm still trying to figure out why you burnt that train ticket. You must really be drunk. ;p

Did you remember anything that you read while you were drunk?

Bybee said...

Dark Orpheus,
Didn't you ever do something that didn't make a lick of sense? This is my irrational act for 2008. And it looks good in photos.

Yes, I remember what I read, but as I held the book up close, my beer breath kept bouncing off the pages and back up to me. Ew.