Washed Weekly: Bachelor Parties In Your Late 30s
“This city can’t handle us.”
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5 Things I’m Looking Out For At My Kid’s Third Birthday Party
by Dave
My little guy is all growns up. For the first time, we’re doing an offsite to celebrate. Now that he’s in school and putting together a friend group, we have to step it up and move on from a small friends and family gathering at the house and level-up to one of the many Birthday Industrial Complex’s options we have in Austin. I’m not going to tell you where (I don’t remember what my wife booked), but I do know that it sounds way cooler than where I had my third birthday. Since we’re opening it up to his entire daycare class, here are a few things I’m looking out for.
1. Taking my small talk to the next level.
At drop-off and pick-up, it’s all about not making a scene. Limit the tears, and get the hell out of there. Occasionally, I might interact with another parent by holding a door open, but that’s about it. I see these people daily, but we’re all in a rush and trying to mitigate any damages. But now that we’re hosting, it’s time to dig in. Maybe we’ll learn a few names. Can’t wait.
2. My canned response for what I do for a living.
I’m not special, but my job is weird. If I say we have a media company, it invites follow-up questions. That’s fine. I chose this life. But explaining how we make money doing podcasts and blogging in an email once a week can be tough while you’re trying to make sure some kid’s not taking a shit in the bounce house. I’m just going to embrace it and force people to like AND subscribe.
3. Me crying.
I’ll shed a tear on you if you’re not careful. Whether we’re watching the forks episode of The Bear, or Jimmy Johnson’s getting inducted into the Ring Of Honor, Daddy is shedding tears like Freddy Fender. I mean, I fully expected my son to make friends in his class, but seeing a squad develop in its infancy is a beautiful thing. They’ll be roasting me in a group text in just a few years.
4. My friends with no kids being bored as hell.
We’ll toss out some courtesy invites with a major caveat that they are NOT obligated to go, but a few of them will show up. I’ll force beers upon them because that’s what cool dads do, and I’ll say, “You really don’t need to stay.” Some will and some won’t. One of them will parlay it into a dinner and night out with a completely different friend group. He’ll be on mushrooms at my kid’s bday. Sick!
5. I’ll set a record for “Big Dogs.”
I’ve been to a lot of these things over the past few years. At each one, I gravitate toward the familiar husband of my wife’s coworker or friend and talk a little ball or something. At no point, though, do I prioritize learning/remembering any names. They don’t know mine either, and I’m perfectly fine with it. In light of the Big Dog movement, I’m setting the over/under at 8.5 “big dogs” for the day, just from me. Mash that over.
Everything I Did To Protect My Body As A 37-Year-Old On A Ski-Centric Bachelor Party
by Will
“Hesitant excitement.”
There’s the part of you that wants to be the guy who gets off the plane and says, “This city can’t handle us” to the rest of the group. But then there’s the part of you who’s on the wrong side of 35 and knows that three nights of going out may affect you for the next calendar week. It’s bachelor parties in your mid-to-late thirties, and it’s something you need to take seriously.
It begins when you get lumped into the kick-off email chain. But it really begins when you dump your bags in a room and hope no one else has to sleep in the same bed as you. You can feel the excitement coursing through your veins, but you can also feel that nagging pack pain begin to creep in.
Especially when you’re in Breckenridge for a ski-centric trip that’s going to knock the wind out of your sales before even get to the base of the mountain for your first chairlift ride.
These, my friends, are the steps I took to make sure I didn’t leave the weekend physically devastated. Or at least that physically devastated.
Used someone else’s Theragun because I didn’t have room in my bag to pack mine.
Theraguns are the new adderall. You always need one person to bring it on the trip just in case, and it’ll extend the life of your trip in ways that simply can’t be quantified.
There’s always been part of me who rides with the full-size Theragun Pro due to an ad deal we had a few years ago, but the Mini packs the same punch without costing as much as the ski weekend does.
Just make sure to not commandeer it when the hammies are barking from the moguls — there’s enough to go around.
Drink > Rinse Cycle > Drink
“Rinse cycle!”
When I hear this yelled at any family occasion with my uncle, I know it’s time to mix in a water or two — which is exactly what a “rinse cycle” is. If you’re headed to the bar to re-up on that crunchy Colorado IPA that’ll require some Advil in the morning, don’t forget to mix in some waters. Especially when you’re at altitude.
Even in those small moments when you’re back at the house, you find yourself needing to do something with your hands. Sometimes you tap the Rockies, but a bottled water bought on Thursday afternoon upon arrival works just fine too.
Pro Tip: Grab a couple of those water bottles and stock them in your room. I can almost guarantee there won’t be any come Sunday morning.
8 hours of sleep, medicated or not.
While I know this seems obscenely gluttonous for a bachelor party, trust me, it’s in range. Bachelor parties centered around a common activity ( skiing, golf, etc.) tend to wear people out. And those with kids and stressful jobs? Trust me, night nights will be had.
Even if you hit the après too hard, that’s even more justification to go to bed early. After all, you know no one will be up for first tracks. It’s a fucking bachelor party, bud. Get in bed by 1 a.m., toss something on the iPad to fall asleep to, and refuse to leave your room until those 8 hours in bed have been completed.
And if people somehow do make it out for some early fatties in the ‘roy, no worries. You’ll meet them for a beer on Peak 9 soon enough.
Hot Tub Time Machine, but IRL.
Much like a cocktail can only be as good as its worst ingredient, a ski house can only be as good as its hot tub situation allows.
I know, I know, not all of us have it like that and Airbnb renters are notoriously anal about the hot tubs on their properties. But as long as the place you have isn’t ski-in/ski-out, a hot tub should make it into the squad budget. Splitwise will handle all that later, though.
But the second I got in the hot tub after our first day on the slopes, I could feel my muscles patting me on the back. It’s a literal time machine that takes you back to how your legs felt that morning.
Just don’t switch the settings around and put that thing in Economy Mode. We all know that phone call to the management company won’t yield anything good.
A sky-high return flight.
Yeah, you went to the dispensary. Yeah, you overbought because that’s what happens on group trips. While I’ve been told TSA doesn’t give a rat’s ass about having them in your bag, I’ve found that piling one into the dumpster that is my body before the flight will help me forget a couple things:
That my entire body hurts from dehydration spurned by over-activity and drinking.
That I haven’t checked my email since post-lunch on Wednesday.
That I’m sitting in a middle seat because I forgot to check in for my Southwest flight at T-Bar.
Tips up, everyone. Don’t go too crazy with the Fireball on the chairlift.
Decorative Urns at Bass Pro Shop
The boys returned to the studio after a long holiday break off with a banger of a episode. It’s not every day that the owner of the smallest penis in America strips naked and goes for a casual swim in a Bass Pro Shop fish tank, but when he does, you know Will, Dave, and Dillon will be talking about it.
2024 Meet-Up: A Look At The Cities
by Dillon
Our first meet-up was in Chicago in October of 2017, and it did everything and more to solidify my confidence in podcasting as a viable career path for myself, which is weird to look back on since the company we worked for at the time went under. It was also not a Circling Back meet-up, but under our former podcast name, Touching Base.
The “Douchebag Bar Crawl,” as we branded it, was a predetermined bar hopping route to the douchiest (most fun) bars in the city, according to our listeners who lived there and helped us curate the list. The weather was perfect, we caught a Cubs game earlier that day, and the listeners absolutely showed up for us. It was a resounding success and an absolute blast. We even met our video guy Randy on that trip.
Since then, and while at Washed Media, we’ve had Circling Back meet-ups in Austin, Dallas, and Houston. All good times. All well attended. It’s time to leave the state again, though.
Below is a list of cities under consideration. The qualifications we looked for in the candidates was pretty simple: 1) They had to be a major market (or within reasonable driving distance of one) so that plenty of people would actually show up, and 2) it had to be a city that we’d be excited to visit. No offense to all those left off.
Here are the nine finalists:
The Favorites: Nashville & Atlanta
The south loves us. On the list of the top 10 cities that represent our listener base, I believe three are from Texas and the majority of the rest are based somewhere in the south. We have a ton of listeners in both Nashville and Atlanta, and they seem to be the most engaged with us, too. Lots of listener voicemails and social media interaction comes from these cities.
I’d be totally fine with either of these winning out. I've been to Nashville a few times. Great city. A lot like Austin, though. I know very little about Atlanta so I’d be down with experiencing a new city.
The Dark Horse: Seattle
When I asked for nominations on Twitter, I kept seeing Seattle popping up in my mentions. We haven’t gotten much west coast love historically, so it’s nice to see Seattle turn up like that. I’ve been to Seattle. I love Seattle. I don’t think it wins out here, but I’d have zero hesitations about going.
My Hope: Madison
I’ve always felt drawn to Madison, though it’s another city I’ve never visited. It’s hard to ignore the many great things I’ve heard about this city. Not a huge market, obviously, but it’s close enough to Milwaukee and Chicago to hopefully pull people in from those cities.
And as a little treat, we might be able to convince friends of the show KJ and J-Bone to show up.
Be on the lookout for the charity fundraiser announcement. The city that donates the most wins a meet-up.
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Nice Freddy Fender reference, Dave