Beer Olympics
We are over halfway through the Olympics. Postponed for a year, it is a bright spot on the world stage, bringing together our interest into a shared appreciation of athletic prowess, and national pride. This week I pack my bags for a different Olympics, an Olympics which I hold more dear to my heart, the thirteenth annual Beer Olympics (a year off for the pandemic not withstanding).
A core tenet of Pine Island Games is bringing people together through community and games.
I am reminded of how much I owe to my longtime friends for driving home the importance of community, and consistency, and being there for one another. I present to you the story of a tradition that has helped keep a group of friends together despite branching paths, divergent geographies and the everyday happenings of life getting in the way.
MAINE III
Before the Olympics
I wasn’t popular in high school, but I wasn’t a pariah either. I was a regular guy who had some friends, some closer than others, but never felt fully settled and secure socially. Senior year of high school that changed. It was fall 2003 and I had C period off with Matt Boucher. We had just gorged ourselves on waffles as part of the Waffle Off (another story for another time), and he mentioned Friday Night Halo, or FNH.
Every Friday for the next months, twenty something or so of us guys would meet up at John Cadigan’s and battle Halo on closed circuit split screen televisions until half-past two in the morning. We’d load into our beat up cars, haul over to the 24 hour Seven Eleven in Maynard, load up on sugar and soda and head back to John’s to battle Halo until the sun was up.
FNH evolved into the Concord Connection (CCXN) which is essentially a co-ed FNH only without the Halo. After high school and into college it became my closest group of friends from home. We partied together on breaks, had a volleyball team (The Houses), ski trips, UNSAFE (a very safe water tubing excursion) and twenty-four-hour scavenger hunts which spanned from DC to the southern reaches of Canada.
A harrowing moment of UNSAFE
Maine
The first Beer Olympics was held in Wells, Maine summer of 2008 (there is some debate as to whether summer 2009 was the first official Beer Olympics). We were fresh faced college grads with well trained livers. Teams were “randomly” selected (they were and are rigged despite the insistence of the committee), we ironed Olympic rings onto bright tee shirts and commenced a marathon of drinking games.
MAINE IV - dogs are always welcome interlopers
It started with the national anthem. Then a relay race of quarters, dizzy-bat, and beer pong (which we call Beirut in the Northeast). We played cornhole, had an egg toss, and drink ball. At the end of a long day, exhausted from heat, and a marathon of hops, we lit sparklers on the beach and awarded the first Beer Olympics trophy (a taped together assortment of plastic beach buckets and shovels).
It became an annual tradition, a group trip up to Maine to catch up on life, dance, drink, and revel.
Maine not Maine
We soon outgrew the Wells house and subsequent Maines were held at an assortment of non-Maine rentals: Rhode Island, New Hampshire, and upstate New York.
Beer Olympics and Maine is about much more than a day of drinking games. We cook together, we catch up on the past year, we share video clips on our lives, and are treated to an annual highlights video of the prior year’s Maine. This year we have a swimming pool and a lake.
MAINE IX (I think, it might have been a different year, but like the life guard outfits)
People are pregnant, are newly wed, just bought a house, have toddlers, dogs, cats, new jobs, jobs lost, sick parents, parents who are on the mend. Maine is a moment when we can all step away from life and come together to remember and celebrate each other. It is a moment of community, of love, of caring.
This year coming out of the pandemic will be our largest Maine yet, with 40 original CCXNers and their significant others.
We’ll be heading upstate fully vaccinated and with recent COVID tests. We’ll laugh, and sing, and dance.
The People Who Make it Possible
Fourteen years is a long time. Most friendships fade, grow stale and distant. The CCXN hasn’t because of the hard work and dedication of some of my friends. I’m writing this article in homage to them. Thank you Jason, Ryan, Kara, Matt (and Matt), Katie, Maggie, Dan, Ilan and everyone else who is involved in planning and executing Maine.
I think there are also lessons to learn here, lessons on how to build friendship, build community, and keep a group of people together.
Building community takes intentional effort
Maintaining community requires consistency
What traditions do you share with friends and family? What holds you together as life gets in the way?
