After spending most of my time up in K2′s season-shack in Glacier, WA it was a cultural shock getting back to civilization. Bars and people to go to bars with was all over the place, basically I felt like one of those golden ticket kids ready for a grown up version of Wonka’s magical world.

My team manager Pete is buddies with one of the Seattle Sounders ball kickers, so he called him up and got Bobby Meeks, Blue montgomery, Sean Tedore and me tickets for the soccer game.

An interesting fact is that no matter where you go in he world, soccer fans look like complete idiots.

Another interesting fact is that it’s close to impossible to go to any sports event sober, especially soccer games (to avoid confusion I call it soccer even though I’m Scandinavian and know that a game called football should probably be played with a ball and your feet).

Here they are, except for Tedore who was out to get more beer. If I happen to be in Seattle, chances are that either Tedore or I is out buying beers for either Tedore or me, most likely both.

Seattle Sounders won, so we drank some more to celebrate that we had cheered for the winning team, kinda like a pat on the back for picking the right side, pretty silly indeed.

Not 100% exactly sure how the rest of the evening went, I remember meeting Peter Line, being in some bars, becoming best friends with some bums, giving bums way too much money, giving the bar too much money and also becoming best friends with a taxi driver that I have forgotten the name off before passing out at Pete’s place.

The next morning I woke up from the laughter of Pete’s roommates, realizing that my hard, shaggy and lets not forget; dusty bed, was in fact the living room carpet where I had passed out on in a graceful face-dow drunken starfish pose.

No idea why this is refered to as breakfast of champs, I definitely don’t feel like a champ when my need for beer in the morning overshadows my need for actual nutrition. Ah, what the hell, breakfast of champs!

Tedore was nice enough to pick us up and drive us to a Mexican place for solid breakfast, this is a shitty photo of Tedore chewing and looking very puffy.

Pete looked a like heap of regretful memories, thank god for Bloody Marys.

And the mix off beer and bloody mary, whatever it’s called, I choose to call it Remedy.

Looks like I was happy with breakfast and signed with something that almost look like my signature.

Believe it or not, the sun was actually shining in Seattle so we decided to sit outside, going for that fantastic combo of sun-rays and mid day drinks. I even found a place that sold Snus right across the street from the bar, and we couldn’t have been happier.

Happy men

We met a Swede, a Brit and some Nevada school teachers, that we kept as drinking company while the sun traveled across the sky. Take a quick look at Pete’s face, fuck sleepless in Seattle, sunburned and mid day drunk in Seattle.

According to the receipt, Allison thought we were awesome and my handwriting was starting to suffering. Thanks you: Allison

The view from Tedore’s apartment

Tedore has seen that view before, so he’s checking out Nicki Minaj videos instead. Look at that creepy smile.

Slayer!

K2′s Hunter Waldron must have joined us somewhere down the road, here with some fist dancing in a car.

And this looks like Tedore and Pete struggling with a kids seat in the back

This is just plain stupid, but yeah, fuck’em.

Completely given up on my signature and gone for the good ol’ spell-out-your-name.

I’m still not certain why I kept documenting my receipts, might have been the fact that I was struggling with my own signature for breakfast, but anyways, this is what it came too.

Failing at spelling out my own name and unable to figure out how much a dollar tip totals to.

I don’t remember much more, other than waking up once again on Pete’s living room floor feeling like a shit’s turd. I wrote down on my phone that Pete had said he wasn’t going home until we got kicked out, uncertain whether that happened or not.

Then I flew home, thank you America.

I guess it’s worth mentioning that the previous night was celebration night, a pleasant good-bye party with our French friends, including the King of Avoriaz, Nico Droz, master of wine glass vacuum.

The dinner-party was exactly how a french dinner-party should be, snails, frog-legs, duck, and wine. Dirks was on a mission to expand his cultural horizons, later claiming that snails might be his new favorite thing.

But don’t worry, he soon snapped out of it and became good ol’ Nick. Beer belly-drumming in the club.

Since Dirks doesn’t really see the point of bringing more clothes for a 2-week trip than a normal person would pack for a weekend getaway, packing took him only 5 minutes and we decided to go get some breakfast. Breakfast might be cereal to you, but to Nick it also involves a 10-pack of beer.

Kronenburg, the French working man’s beer and a chicken dry enough to be called jerky.

After a while in the sun, we realized that we had to head back, since I remembered that I pack like a overly vain teenage girl and half of my stuff was still all over the place. On our way back Nick found a baby hoodie which quickly became his new hat.

“An important aspect of being day-drunk is to find weird shit and put it on” – Nick Dirks

The beer carton got soaked in chicken juice and broke down halfway home, luckily Dirks still had his magical cone head hat and figured out that he could carry the beer if he just drank one of them. Beer has the same effect for Dirks as spinach for Popeye.

We got back to our apartment where I started packing while Nick, who was already packed, found Ben Bilocq’s Gin bottle and a can of tuna.

Then he helped clean up.

I’m willing to say that this is probably the turning point of the day, when stuff went from being funny to a hilariously drunken train-wreck on steroids. Dirks with beer, Gin and Absinthe.

Yup, a bottle of Absinthe.

Our ride down to our shuttle was by horse and buggy, adding some alpine class to a somewhat messy day.

Finally we managed to get in to the airport shuttle, stuffed behind a boardbag, which worked as a great visual barrier between us and the driver who wouldn’t let us drink in the back. Some ingenious drunken stealth drinking right there.

Nothing but water in this beanie-bottle.

When you got to go, you got to go.

Mr Dirks really had to go, so he filled up two bottles.

Which he later managed to break at the Geneva airport.

But who cares when you can pay about 18 bucks for a Burger King meal, Nick is loving the Swiss life right here. See how happy he is!

The blurry vision of a true champ.

Nick managed to quit smoking for a staggering 18 hours but had to give in when he found out that he actually wanted a cigarette more than quitting.

The night continued in good style, including Nick slipping sleeping-pills into Aaron Blatt’s beer, turning him into a hopeless zombie, dangerous urban mountain climbing, red light sightseeing, fake car-crashing, illegal beer purchasing, but unfortunately I forgot my cam, so this is the last one.

Mr. Dirks passed out on the couch, still getting his photo taken.

No rest for the wicked.

I was sitting in a slightly run down Austrian guesthouse where the farmers had recently been busy with their manure spreader and was enjoying a pleasant chat with the people over at Yobeat, when I decided it was time for a beer. When you’re in Austria it seems somewhat impossible not to drink beer, not quite sure why, but over the years I have done extensive research and my conclusion is that it’s just straight out impossible. Unfortunately our nuclear-powered fridge had turned my can of beer into something that had to be melted before I had the chance of pouring it down my throat. Melted beer ice actually sounds a bit disgusting, especially if you have to get it luke warm before you get all the chunks out. That’s when I came up with a great solution — the Beer Slushy aka Grown Up Cereal.

Saying there’s a magic trick to “grown-up cereal” is like saying you have invented a new secret way of slamming, it’s just not true, it’s a matter of pure coincidence most of the time. The recipe is quite simple and neglect and a malfunctioning fridge are your main tools. All you’ve got to do to make this wonderful frozen treat is to forget your beer in a fridge that is way too cold over night. If you happen to be so fortunate that you own a fridge that doesn’t turn your liquids in to solids, you may want to consider a freezer.

The tools of the trade

The next step is to break out a good knife and cut the top off. As you remove the top of the can you will notice that the liquid gold has now turned in to something resembling a mixture of porridge and slush, something that at first sight looks like it belongs in the trash, but throwing away beer is a privilege only extremely rich people can afford, and even then it’s tacky. So take your hobo-opened can of frozen beer, pour it in to a bowl and imagine what your life has come too. At least you’re unlikely to eat your beer while sitting on a broken spring bed in Austria, surrounded by shit smell, so you’re better off than me.

Bring out a spoon, put on some cartoons and feast away. The beer taste is definitely there and at the same time you get to have a wonderful ice-cold treat that you definitely have deserved after all that hard work you pretended to do all day. Enjoy!