The beautiful, Maui morning started out at Fred’s, the bar/Mexican restaurant our friends frequented for breakfast due to their buy one, get one drink specials. The food was mediocre, but the bartender kept everyone coming back for more with her generous pours. We all downed some really bad coffee, and those competing in the events prepared their stomachs with a hearty base of carbs and exactly one drink on the hour, every hour. The atmosphere of excited competition was tangible. After missing out on the gold for the past two years in a row, Matt and his team were ready to conquer, and had been busy practicing various drinking games since our return from Kona.
The Maui Beer Olympics was a yearly tradition that we had strategically timed our Hawaii visit to coincide with. The reasoning was originally that Dave’s team needed some additional players, but the team fizzled and Fletch and I were just as happy to observe, neither one of us being big drinkers. Add to that my complete and humiliating lack of any ounce of hand-eye coordination, and I was pretty much doomed to make any team lose. We instead volunteered to referee and run beers for the sake of taking part in the fun.
We rented the epic camper jeep again, and made our way up past Paia, with a caravan of excited beer olympians. The plan was to have a day of festivities, before which everyone’s keys would supposedly be confiscated, and then to camp overnight on the grounds.
We arrived at a beautiful property, away from the cluster of urban dwellings. One lone house sat on a generous lot of land, and was fenced off completely by trees and tall grass. Those with tents were busy setting up within the flora parameter. Beyond the greenery was more open space where those with camper vehicles began to line the paved road. I was impressed that someone was dedicated enough to the event to donate the use of their property to a bunch of people who were about to be highly intoxicated for the sake of sport.
Each team of four people arrived in costumes to go along with their themes. Our friends had chosen the theme, Team Mexico, and had ordered special t-shirts that said, “Viva Mexico, the fun side of the wall.” Other teams included None of Your Business, which had everyone wearing the white button down shirts from Risky Business. The Hungover Boys, a group probably-too-young-to-be-drinking boys in Hugh Hefner robes; Team Germany, the teammates of which were all dressed in very authentic looking dirndl dresses. There was a giant of a man on their team who had brought numerous bottles of mixed drinks he was passing around in an attempt to get everyone wasted before the games began. Team South Park arrived, with one of the girls dressed up as Snow White. And the best group costume of the event went to the Mary Poppins team. They had even dressed the baby up. Surprisingly that wasn’t the only baby at the event.
I must say, that event was some of the best people watching of my life. There were some crazy characters there. One guy offered us some herb, but was so far gone that he was mooning everyone halfway through the games. One girl was dressed in a full referee uniform and prancing around all cutsie one moment, and yelling at everyone like a drill sergeant the next. She was the physical embodiment of Princess Unikitty from the Lego Movie.
To start out the festivities, there was an opening ceremony, where everyone presented their team to a song of their choosing. Whoever was playing DJ messed up Team Mexico’s song, and as they sat in front of the crowd in their lawn chairs and sombreros, we all awkwardly listened to Baby Shark do do do do do do…
The first event was the beer chug. Team Mexico did well, but apparently the same dude wins that one every year.
The second event was civil war, a variation of beer pong that pitted four teammates on each side of the table against their opponents, and three cups in front of each person. This event was played single-elimination, tournament-style. Unfortunately one of the opponents thought that Matt was out of the game when he really wasn’t, and so kept swatting his hand out of the way, thinking that he was throwing for no reason. Team Mexico was eliminated first round, much to everyone’s frustration over the referee failing to notice any foul play.
Next was dizzy bat. A relay race in which each team member had to spin around in circles with their forehead on a baseball bat, and then run the length of the field (after chugging some beers of course). Molly nailed it for Team Mexico, bringing them back into the competition. I got a kick out of watching the majority of everyone run straight into the barrier of spectators along each sideline.
The final event of the olympics was flip cup, which was also played single-elimination-syle. Team Mexico had been practicing flip cup for days. This was their event. Sure enough, they won round after round. With each win, they would all run together and jump, joyously chanting, “Mex-i-co! Mex-i-co! Mex-i-co!” The last round was won, and Team Mexico came away the flip cup champions, but it was only enough to win them the Olympic silver overall. Another year cheated out of the gold.
The day turned to dark and most of the participants were happily stumbling around, doing whatever things drunk people do. A few of us who weren’t quite on their level set up our Tommy Bahama chairs in a quiet corner and made a fake campfire out of a lantern with an orange bandana draped over it. The occasional drunk person would stumble over and engage in conversation for a while, only to exclaim several minutes later, “Oh ***! That’s not actually a campfire!” This happened more than once. In fact the event’s photographer, who was busy taking photos off in the distance, came over at one point to show us what a nice backdrop our campfire had made, only to see it up close and realize he had been using a lantern and a bandana as a backdrop the whole time.
We definitely had the Kumbaya crowd huddled around our makeshift campfire. Everyone was chilled out and relaxed. One of the ladies in the group took advantage of a lull in the conversation to proclaim that if she could be any part of nature, she would want to be a tree. Several moments later she informed us all that she just didn’t like squishy things. When we stood up to go to bed, I saw the Milky Way pop out of nowhere in the night sky above me. The stars were dazzling and breathtaking in a way that no photo could ever do justice to. It didn’t even seem real it was so luminous. Before saying goodnight, I had to show Miss Squishy Things. She would definitely appreciate all those brilliant stars, all that nature, smiling down at us, as if the world were still a beautiful place, worth illuminating.
Fletch and I made ourselves cozy in the camper jeep, and expressed our mutual awe over the day’s events. Never had we seen a drunk crowd so respectful. For such a large group consuming so much alcohol, it was amazing that there hadn’t been any fighting (although everyone had been warned that they would be tied to a tree if they did start a fight), and no one had trashed the property. Everyone respected the event enough to make sure that it could go on happening again in the future. It left us with happy feelings, seeing a community come together with mutual respect for their surroundings, even whilst getting completely obliterated. It’s a rare thing to find that sense of fraternity anymore.
