2009 Fumblers B Decathlon: Sunday

This was one of those mornings. Your head is pounding. Your stomach is turning. You're struck by a bout of dizziness as you step out of bed. You only remember little windows into last night; details are hazy, if not nonexistent. Clothes are strewn across the floor. Your wallet is nowhere to be found.* You find your friend's credit card in your pocket.** Your phone isn't working.***

*Honors for this went to Short. Hysterically, his phone alarm went off shortly after we woke up with the reminder, "Find your bloody wallet!"

**I reached into my pocket to find Leif's credit card. When I returned it to him, neither of us could remember why I would have had it.

***Short pulled this feat as well. Hey, did I previously mention that he blew a 0.312 BAC? I believe there may be a correlation between that and the havoc he brought upon himself.

Why did any of this happen? Ummmmm, I don't know? How about: Why do I drink, ever? Is it worth it? Should I ever drink again?

Yeah. This was one of those mornings.

Slowly -- painfully slowly -- we all congregated in one of the living rooms to debrief each other on the night's events. Gradually we began to connect the dots here and there. And, well, yeeeeaaahhhhh... I think a lot of us would've been happy for those dots to never be connected again. We did some stupid things.

Before getting to the last event, we revealed the results of the Treasure Hunt, which had been going on in the background throughout the entire weekend. Unfortunately for me, one of the other guys had found my cricket ball, which I had hidden in what I thought was a very safe location outside of the apartment. I hadn't found anyone else's balls (hmmmm, that sounds wrong), so I received zero points in the event. Fortunately, I had company, as four other people were also sans balls. (Still sounds wrong.)

With only one event to go, we did a quick subtotal so everyone knew what was at stake prior to receiving our last points. And it turned out that we had a race on both ends of the spectrum! Short had the lead, with 72 points, but Joe and his 62.5 points had a shot at overtaking him. (My 58 points, good for fifth place, put me just outside of contention.) And although Lam had a pathetic 31 points, there were three others who still had a mathematical shot to overtake (undertake?) him for last place. This was going to be exciting.

Event #10: Fumblers Lotto

What better way to end the Decathlon and decide our winner and loser than with a complete game of chance?

We all placed our cricket balls in a box. First ball pulled would receive one point, second would receive two points, yada, yada, yada. Last ball pulled would win the event and receive 12 points.

The first ball pulled that would impact first or last place was Short, at three points. However, his 9.5 point lead over Joe was so commanding that three points were just enough to clinch victory. And Joe wouldn't even make it a close finish, as his ball was next out, giving him only one more point than Shorty in the event.

As for those in contention of finishing in last, well, there were unfortunately no changes in the standings. Maz was very vocally dreading the possibility, and for a moment, it looked like it might happen, but it wasn't meant to be.

And with that, we were done! The Second Annual Fumblers B Decathlon had been completed.

In first place, with an impressive 75 points,* was Mr. Pete Short. His award? The very trophy, in all its random and lame glory, that he himself had selected earlier in the week! He immediately expressed regret for purchasing that trophy -- how's that for karma? -- although he gratefully posed for the picture to the left.

*Not sure why I think that that's impressive... this was the first time we've actually staged a ten-stage decathlon with 12 contestants. For example, the winner of our nine-stage decathlon last year, with 15 contestants, received 88 points. Was that impressive? I don't know.**

**How about this: Short scored 75 points out of a maximum 120 points possible. That's 62.5%. Last year's winner scored 88 out of a maximum 135 points possible. That's 65.2%. So maybe Short's score wasn't impressive? Maybe no one cares? Maybe I should stop talking?

Congratulations Pete Short, on a job... done.

And in last place, with a pathetic 38 points,* was Mr. Daniel Lam! His punishment? Scull a beer from our cricket trophy -- the very one to which I'd done an unspeakable thing only weeks earlier!** Look at him savor every drip of that beer.*** Yum!

*Maybe I'm not sure about calling Shorty's 75 points impressive, but I'm absolutely confident in assessing 38 points as pathetic. Seriously. That's really bad. 3.8 points per event??!? Come on.

**It should be noted that a few days after all of this, back in Sydney, Short and I revealed to the group that I had NOT, in fact, done the unspeakable thing that we had claimed. I guess I'll just share it with you: here's a link to the video.

Imagine watching that only up to the 1:08 mark, because that's all that we showed the guys before the weekend was over. And under the assumption that THAT'S what I had done, Lam had drunken out of the cup.

***Note that because of the cup's current state, broken in several places, Lam actually drank out of a hole on the bottom. Hey, sometimes you gotta improvise.

And how did I do? Well, thanks to a dominant showing in the Fumblers Lotto, I leapfrogged much of the competition and finished with 69 points... good for second place! That's quite the improvement over last year's sixth-place finish, so I was somewhat pleased with the result. But first place would've been great.

Wanna see the entire scorecard? Look no further than right here. Everything you could want to know about how anyone did in any of the events at your fingertips.

Without a doubt, the Decathlon was an unequivocal success. We were happy. But still hungover. The only prescription? HARRY'S!!!

Capping off the weekend at Harry's, we had our last, unforeseen adventure, which involved some chauvinism, a bit of racism and plenty of bewilderment. It's been over two weeks, and I still can't wrap my head completely around what happened. And even if I could, I'm fairly positive I couldn't adequately capture the moment, in all its absurdity, in words. So I'm not even gonna try to recap it here. Sorry.

We ate our pies -- Pie #4 for me was the chicken pie shown here -- and we departed Newcastle.

It was a great weekend. The Decathlon was an unequivocal success. It absolutely went to 11.