Crashing a Frat Formal in Fort Worth, Texas

I realized that since I haven't been doing much traveling lately, I haven't had many, well… travel posts. I've had posts about New York, sure, but I practically LIVE in New York. I have a (semi) apartment (situation), I have a job, I have friends who I go out to normal non-traveler bars with. It doesn't really feel like a travel situation. I've moved my blog a lot towards Travel Tips and a lot away from Travelogue.

However, this past weekend, I actually traveled. And for the first time in a long time, on the road trip home, my head was abuzz with all of the fun things I was going to blog about this trip. Plus this weekend was just too fun to leave unposted. So here goes.
 

Schmennifer Schmelley
I've found myself driving down to Ft. Worth to visit one of my best friends, Schmennifer Schmelley, (a pseudonym - she has asked to remain anonymous for the sake of these posts because of the scandalous things that occurred this weekend. I guess she doesn't want to be associated with my shenanigans) very frequently so I can get the most visits in before I leave for Spain. This week, my stop in Fort Worth was to be brief. I had originally planned on leaving on Thursday, but due to the 3 FEET of snow that landed in Tulsa on Tuesday, I couldn't get out. Not only could I not get out on Thursday, but I was even more worried about getting out on Friday considering I woke up to more pouring down snow. But I had to try. One of my best friends from college, Natalie, was getting married, and I had to at least attempt to get down there or I would never forgive myself.

What should have been a 4 hour drive max became an 8.5 hour drive. The roads were a mess with even the major highways in Oklahoma and Northern Texas reduced to one lane maxing out at 25 mph. I slid off the road twice and had to get pushed out of a gas station. But I made it to Fort Worth finally early evening on Friday night. The night was spent in our typical Fort Worth fashion. We went to dinner with a bunch of friends at a cute Italian restaurant and then went out to all the bars within walking distance including Chimy's, the Dirty Crow and finally Brownstone.

Crashing a Fraternity Party
We woke up Saturday morning early to get our drive on to Fredericksburg. I only then learned that our bar hits last night were not normal and that "hey remember that last bar we went to last night with the frat party?" WHAT? I remember the bar being fratty. I remember there being a dance floor and a DJ... fratty. Then. I remember lots of boys in suits... and girls in slutty Off-Neimans dresses. Oh. My. God. We crashed a TCU fraternity formal. It all slowly came back to me and I remember getting my grind on high-school style with several barely legal men and suddenly had flashes of sorority girls washing off the x's on their hands in the bathroom. Oh college.

Are We Back in College?
So in true college spirit, we thought we'd live it up a little bit and make a stop in our old stomping ground, Austin. The place where Schmennifer and I's friendship was conceived and consummated. The city where most of my drunken memories lie. The city we tore up, night and night again. After all, this was just panning out to be a frat-tastic weekend. So we drove to Austin and pulled straight into, no other than, Cain and Abel's. The bar that was less than a block from my home the entire 3.5 years I went to college (and the following .5 year when I was graduated but still living in the sorority house, pretending to still be in college). Abel’s contains at least half of my lost memories from those amazing years and also has my favorite burger in the entire world (no understatement). Shannon, Schmennifer's younger sister, and one of her friends Hunter, met us at Abel’s and I proceeded to stuff my face with a Texas Tea and a giant Ranch Burger. Oh and a Coors Light, just thrown in there for good measure.

After Abel's, we still had time to kill, so why not pretend like we're in college even more. We took 24th into Tarrytown and straight into Tarrytown Nails for a little sorority pedicure. It was as heavenly as I remember. This was supplemented with gossip overheard from our neighbors as well as our own, a nice relaxing post-booze rub down and a good old fashioned US weekly celebrity judgment session.

Off to the Hill Country
As we were leaving town to head out to the Hill Country, we decided we were going to have to stop again in Austin tomorrow. There were still several things we had to accomplish in this city while we were here and there was no way we could drive through and not stop. Plus, one of our besties from school who still happened to live in Austin, Ian, wasn't able to meet us at Abel's so we set up a lunch date for the following day.

I was originally really excited for Natalie's wedding, but after the amazing night in Ft. Worth and the preceding day in Austin, I thought there was no way the hype could continue.

But I was wrong.