Crusty, Old Sausages

What's up, kids.

Well, it had been over a year - before the pandemic hit a year ago - since the Sausage Pad last unfurled its war banner, and we felt that it was high time that we did so once again.  Zack and I settled on this particular weekend a month or so ago, and, after a day of wrangling teenagers and forcing American History down their throats, I set off for a two-and-a-half hour drive downstate towards my old stomping ground of Kalamazoo.

I gotta say, I'm a big fan of my new route down.  Opposed to the route I usually took from Kalamazoo to Clare back in my college days, my new one is about a half hour shorter, since I'm coming from Saginaw, which is farther to the south.  I can cut across the state diagonally, too, which makes things a lot easier, and half the trip is down empty country roads with lots of scenery.  Pair that with a solid audiobook - I'm re-reading The Lord of the Rings, for, like, the 9,000th time (currently wrapping up The Fellowship of the Ring), and it makes for a pretty painless trek.

Anyway, I rolled in to Zack's driveway around 7pm, and established headquarters for the weekend.  Our itinerary for the weekend was identical to what we had done in 2018 and 2019:  a chill first night, sitting around Zack's for the most part, then, the following morning, we kick off a day of brewery and restaurant hopping throughout our old stomping ground.

Just what the doctor ordered, folks.

Check it out. . .

After a fairly-uneventful night before - that saw Zack and I make a beer run to Meijer, grab some appetizers and drinks at a local Applebees, and then retire to his house to watch some NCAA Basketball for most of the evening - we awoke and put on Ep. V - The Empire Strikes Back (my all-time favorite Star Wars movie, and probably by second favorite movie period.)

Zack doesn't drink coffee, so this is what they have on hand for a morning caffeine boost.  When in Rome, kids.

While we sat around waking up to Star Wars - and waiting for Damon to show up (he said he'd be over by 8:30am, buuuut it's Damon - we knew he'd be running a few hours late), Zack broke out his Bloody Mary supplies.

Say what you will about this piece of shit, but the dude makes one hell of a Bloody Mary.

Breakfast of Champions.

(Zack wanted to rub it in Damon's face that we were starting without him.  Sometimes you gotta spur that dude into action.)

Zack's dogs (I took this pic solely to send to Alayna, who's obsessed with dogs.)

When Damon finally got his ass over to Zack's, we figured we'd take a picture to mark the start of our day's adventuring (this gem was from my setting up process.)

The Sausage Pad's Alpha Team, ca. 2021.

Setting off for Kalamazoo. . . in Zack's stepdaughter's SUV (she left the keys in it while her and her Mom, and Zack's other kids, stayed in a hotel for the weekend. . . they always vacate the premises when we roll in to town.)

What used to be Arcadia Ales, a great Michigan brewery that sadly went under a couple years ago.  We hit that joint up in 2018, but they couldn't compete with other craft juggernauts like Bells, Founders, and Shorts.

Entering downtown Kalamazoo.

Bell's Brewery

Zack wanted a picture of us with his kid's car, if only to teach her a lesson not to leave her keys in an unlocked vehicle.  Needless to say, she was not happy we were joyriding around in her vehicle.

Starting out

We wanted to kick off our day of escapades with a couple beers at Bell's, but due to Covid (ugh), their indoor space was limited, and consequently there was a line wrapped around outside the building by the time we got there (shortly before noon.)  So we decided to skip it for the time being and circle back to it at a later time.

In the meantime, we decided to advance on to our lunch spot, right across the street - Hopcat.

The weather - thank God - was nice enough to allow us to eat outdoors on the patio, next to these 1950's Sci-Fi-ish igloo deals that lots of restaurants use to heat outdoor dining areas in these bizarre pandemic-stricken times of ours.

Enjoying a beer before our food arrived.  This is a Founders Rubeus Nitro - super awesome.

These fries are hands-down the best I've ever eaten, and I make it a point to grab a basket whenever I'm in Kalamazoo.  Damon picked up some corned beef sliders for us as well - a damn fine lunch, if I do say so myself.

Nothing at all healthy about these two.

Leaving Hopcat, off to our next stop. . .

A lot of places were shuttered as we walked around downtown, so we wandered about aimlessly for a bit before saying 'screw it' and heading back to the car.

After making a pit-stop at the Bell's merchandise store (the brewery's line to get in was even longer by this point in time, so we sadly had to skip it all together for this year's outing), we saddled back up and headed off towards the western part of town - deep into the heart of our old college days.

The old fitness center at Western, that I didn't go into nearly as much as I probably should have back in my college days.

On familiar ground.

I suggested that for this year's tour we hit up a bunch of the old nostalgic bars that we used to hit up all the time back in the day, and that we had neglected the last few times we had done something like this.  Our first stop was the legendary Bilbo's.

They moved to a new location back in, like, 2006, but moved over a bunch of the old building's decor.  It was cool being able to gaze upon this familiar, battle-worn sign again, after nearly 20 years.

They don't brew as much of their own beer as they did back in the day - sadly, there was no Wizard Wheat to be had anymore, but we all ordered this Honey Brown of theirs.  Which, regrettably, was f***ing terrible.

The other two were pretty pumped that their was March Madness bullshit on the TVs wherever we went.  Personally, I could've cared less.

Zack's one creepy-ass dude, all right.  These guys ordered more food, but I was still full from my lunch at the last place.

Another relic from the old days, preserved on the walls.

Passing under the footbridge that I utilized to walk from my car to campus the last three years of college.  They've since then installed fencing along the sides, you used to be able to sit right on the edge of the bridge back in the day (which, looking back, wasn't the smartest thing to do.)

The Den - arguably the most recognizable party store affiliated with Western's campus, has since changed locations, but inside they still sell the same old stuff as they used to back in the day.  They no longer have a giant CD section, though.

The Wayside has since closed down, since some guy was stabbed in the parking lot about a decade or so ago.  Whatever, I was never a huge fan of that place anyway.

The pinnacle, for me, of this year's Kalamazoo trip was hitting up Waldo's, my all-time favorite bar from my college days.

The last time I had set foot in this old haunt was on my very last day in Kalamazoo, the very last night before I left for Clare, before leaving for Ghana and the Peace Corps.  My farewell party was so epic that I was kicked out of the bar for being too drunk - a fitting end to my college experience, for sure.

We had to get a picture in front of the old sign.  The last few years of college, we went here EVERY Thursday, because their special was $5 pitchers of mixed drinks - you would get annihilated every, damn time.

Damon gets creepy.

Kalamazoo, WMU, and all the other bars we'd frequented up to this point had changed dramatically over the nearly twenty years or so it's been since college, but it was beyond refreshing upon stepping into Waldo's and finding that it had NOT changed AT ALL.

This was like walking into an immersive time capsule - literally everything was just the same as it had been when I last stepped foot inside the place.  Same carpeting, same tables, same decor (though their were flatscreen TVs on the wall now, instead of the old box jobs.)

Physical graffiti.

They even had the same, old trusted change machine.  Gotta love it.

Indeed.  F*** the Chips.

Behold - The Captain's Table.  This prime-location table (right next to the bar) was incredibly hard to nab on Thursdays, and in order to do so you had to show up at, like, 8pm or so (we generally didn't roll in until 10pm, so this was unheard of.)  You can bet your ass we grabbed it this time around.

I have stories and memories from, literally, every square foot of this establishment.  I've sat at every table, hung out in every corner, and was beyond thrilled that the place was left exactly as I remembered it.

Kimmel jumped down these stairs our senior year and broke his arm, for example, and I had to help him limp out of the establishment once security ordered him out.

I took a dart to the side of the head once, thrown by a drunk girl, in this section of the bar.  Good times.

Zack drops off some beers and Jagermeister shots to the Captain's Table. . .

Heading down the old familiar stairwell to the lower level, where the bathrooms are located.

Still the same, disgusting floors.  The old perceptible change in the entire place was on this lower level, where they have since painted the walls and freshened them up a bit.  A welcome change, though - it used to look super shady down here, with stained paneled walls and flickering lights.  You'd have expect people to be sitting along the floor, shooting up heroin.

They kept the old, paneled walls, but added a fresh coat of paint and some cool quotations.

So Mote It Be.

The old condom dispenser in the men's room is still there, but it looks like they don't keep it well-stocked anymore.

An outdoor patio area has since been added, which was kinda cool - wish they would've had that when we were here.

Finishing up our beers, planning our next move.

Booya

Designated parking out back, behind the bar (which I never used back in the day - you didn't want your car anywhere remotely near that bar back in the day, lest someone crash into it or puke/piss on it, etc.)

Crossing the street, leaving Waldo's back to our car, I caught a glimpse of the old campus security building, where you had to go and pay your parking tickets, and where I got fingerprinted for the Peace Corps.

You can see WMU's stadium in the background here.

We decided to head back to Zack's later in the evening in order to use the facilities, recharge our batteries, and chill for a bit before heading out later that night.  While we sat around and had a couple drinks, I showed Zack how to stream my newly-edited and uploaded videos via a shared Google Photos album.  The guys got a kick out of this, so we watched a couple installments from our ongoing Sausage Pad video saga (this chapter centered around our year at Jefferson St, and you can spot Kimmel on the TV during our first annual Keg Race.)

After awhile, Zack decided to pull a prank on his wife.  She, like every other wife out there, is obsessed with redecorating their home in every, conceivable Pintrest-y way possible (copious amounts of signs, family pictures, etc.)  She had two multi-image frames hanging on their living room wall that don't have family pictures in them yet, so Zack thought it'd be best to print off some pictures of the Sausage Pad and stick 'em in there.  If only to see how long it would take before she discovered them.  So, we ventured out to Meijer, right around the corner from his house, to print a few off that I grabbed from my Google Photo library, and to grab some more beer.  Here Zack shows off his golf swing while contemplating buying a hat to use while golfing (he didn't end up getting it, though.)

Gotta grab the Oberon, folks.

Mission Accomplished.

Our objective complete, we set off for the car, once again.

Zack and Damon were both gunning for steak for dinner, so we hit up a couple different restaurants down Westnedge Ave, but due to Covid (yes, again), the wait times on account of limited seating was over an hour at every place we stopped at.

So we finally settled on sushi (my suggestion) at this joint that we stumbled across.

Waiting for our food.

Ultimately, this proved to be the wrong choice, folks.  After drinking all day, fried shrimp and sushi was a stupid, stupid move.

Zack would end up getting pretty sick, and we had to return to his place after dinner.

We closed out the evening watching more of our hey-day videos, including the one documenting our road trip down the East Coast (Niagara Falls, shown here.)

The finished product.  From Left to Right: DeMay, Smitty and Zack at Cotter's Wedding (Dec. 2005), Yours Truly, Zack and Damon at my dad's house (Christmas 2009), and the one from me and Damon from earlier today.)

From Left to Right: Zack and I, from my wedding (Oct. 2006), me, Smitty, Zack and Damon at Clingman's Dome in Gatlinburg, TN (June 2014), and Zack and Damon at Niagara Falls (June 2002.)  We'll see how long it takes Zack's wife to notice. . .

- Brian