I was home prior to the trivia contest so I walked the 3/4 mile to the bar. Or I should say "ran" as I was late and the temperature was on the cool side. The temperature was above zero as it was 8 F, but with the wind, the wind chill was -5 F. Fortunately the wind was at my back.
Because I would be spending time in a smoky bar I didn't over dress, choosing to wear the least possible and still be warm. That worked for being in the bar, but made the run to the bar a little chilly. Some people had cleaned this day's snow off their sidewalks, others had not. The snow was light so it didn't make much of a difference.
The contest started just as I arrived. Rod, Austin, and Alan were not at our usual table. They decided to move to another table as they wondered if the usual nearby team was over hearing or seeing our answers. That team's table was a tall table with stools to sit on. This team had been caught in the past texting for answers. Apparently my group's suspicions were unfounded as this other team scored higher than us in both contests, and won the first one.
I thought were were in good shape in the first contest as we had solid answers for all but one question. However we ended up with only 13 out of 20 correct.
For the question, "What is the motto of the United States?", my suggestion of "In God We Trust" was overruled as the others felt that was a saying only on our money. They went with "E Publius Union". I was right. In fact, I just tried to do a search of their answer and came up with nothing. No wonder they could not find it written on a dollar bill when they tried to figure out how to spell it.
I wasn't as optimistic of our chances in the second contest as we had more guesses. I needed one of my former girlfriends as one question was "What was the circumference of a bowling ball?" A clue was that the ball's diameter was a little under 9 inches. I am a rancher now and have left my computer science / math background behind. Rod came up with a formula and I have still enough math skills to run the numbers of a piece of scratch paper.
"Ummm.. I think 61 inches is wrong. That is over 5 ft."
I re-ran the numbers. Still 61 inches. Rod came up with a new formula. Now I got 14 inches. In hindsight that would be too low but by now the contest had moved on several questions into the future, and with no other formulas we went with 14.
We were wrong. The correct answer was 27 inches.
We only got 12 of 20 questions correct in the second game. I wasn't drinking like the others so I had no excuse for our declining performance. Still, in both contests we finished in the middle of the pack.
Rod won one of the "quarters" contests. While I knew that the Tonight Show with Johnny Carson started in 1962, I didn't guess and therefore didn't win. The prizes were one's choice of insulated lunch bags. Upon reflection, one of these would have come in handy to keep my lunch cool when I go on summertime hikes.
Several teams were the regulars (i.e. the lawyers/judges, and the 'cheating' team), with others that were new. No "birthday girls" - with or without cleavage - were in attendance this night.
The host, Ed, came over after the contests were over and chatted. I've yet to write about the trail hike Rod and I did a few weeks ago where we passed by a sweat lodge. Ed has participated in a few of the sweat lodge ceremonies so I had a number of questions about it. Some day I would like to participate in a ceremony for the experience of it.
A short time after the trivia contests were over the lights were dimmed a bit and the karaoke started. The first singer was a late 20-something mild mannered man who sang a heavy metal ballad. I wasn't familiar with the song but Austin thought it was originally by the band, Queensrÿche. The karaoke singer wasn't too bad.
The next singer was an old man. I mean an old man. He must have been over 80 years old. Age wise the bar mainly had 20, and 30, and some 40 year old somethings. I never noticed this old man earlier, and he would would have stuck out from the crowd when I earlier scanned for signs of "birthday girls".
The old man used a cane to walk and it took a while for him to climb the few steps to the stage. The karaoke host had to go over and show him how to turn on and work the microphone as the old man needed to have one hand on his cane as he stood.
We were curious as to what he would sing as we couldn't imagine him singing any pop or heavy metal songs. He ended up singing some old cowboy song that probably came out of the 19030s or 40s. It was fitting as a number of trivia questions this night were about cowboys; their horse names or sidekick names. But, who wold have thought an old cowboy song would be in the karaoke machine?
The old man was a pretty good singer and it was fun to listen to him. He was singing a second song when we all decided it was time to leave. Some of the group had to work the next day.
Rod was giving Alan a ride home in his pickup. I lived out of the way so I declined Rod's offer of a ride and I walked home. Or "ran" as I ran much of the way home only slowing down to walk backwards to give my face a rest from running into the brisk wind.
Walking (normally) the last block allowed me to see the almost full moon high in the night sky. The sky had some high light clouds which acted like gauze to partially veil the moon. The moon's edges were easily seen.
The bright light from the moon strongly lit the clouds in a wide circle. The light changed from white to yellow to orange to red at the edge of the circle of light. I don't know where the colors came from unless it was from ice crystals in the cold night air. At any rate it was quite pretty and I mostly forgot about the cold.
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