Kal smirked at me, sprawled lifelessly across the boulder like a lizard on a hot day, and began heading back down the ravine toward the car. I lurched along after him, attempting to keep up but constantly thwarted by writhing snakes of wood that wriggled unexpectedly out of the rocks and raced across my shins at key moments. I emerged from the ravine, back at the small climbs we had found crowded earlier. One of them was now available and Kal was staring at it.

"Well, should we give it a go?" Kal pointed enthusiastically at the dismally vertical section of ice.

"No."

Disbelief. "No! Why not?"

"I'm tired and hung over and I want to go home."

Kal was inconsolable, as we marched back to the car, periodically glaring over at me. I glared back, a fine mist of beer fumes rising from my pores like steam off of a hot spring in winter.

Kal dropped me at home and I spent the evening on the couch feeling sorry for myself. Kal, on the other hand, got home and immediately began drinking in preparation for an eagerly anticipated 5440 concert that he had been waiting for for the last two months. Tragically, Kal had just had a big day of physical activity in the fresh mountain air and had not allowed himself time to have a proper meal or to get those oh-so-precious bodily fluid levels back up to par. A shiny new bottle of tequila was consumed quickly, in order to get up to speed for the coming rock & roll spectacle, however Kal's nourishment and water-sapped body had nothing with which to defend itself against this onslaught of personality enhancing booze. Kal arrived at the concert, escorted by our friends Reece and Mike, in a disheveled state. Roughly ten minutes after arriving, well before the band could take the stage, bouncers at the bar suggested to Kal that he was likely to begin vomiting shortly and he was encouraged to walk outside until he worked it out.

Reece accompanied Kal outside and supervised the vomiting for a little while, periodically reminding Kal to open his fly before beginning the urination process. After a little while an uncomfortably cold Reece traded off with Mike, who came out to take a shift. The band started up and Mike and Kal decided to head inside, confident that Kal must have purged all available fluids and solids at this point.

Shortly thereafter Mike went inside to see the band; Kal, having been challenged by the bouncers to walk a straight line past them and failing, remained outdoors temporarily, just 'till his head cleared. Not much later Reece was approached by a bouncer who announced that, "you should come and do something with your friend or he's going to freeze to death." A quick check verified that Kal was lying in a snow bank, sleeping the sleep of the just. Kal was roused by Reece, who would have loved to be inside watching the band, and was walked around in circles for a little while. After this aerobic routine was completed another attempt was made by Kal to pass the crucial but oh-so-tricky entrance exam for the bar. Again Kal was found wanting and dispatched back outside. At this point a despairing Reece flagged down a cab and attempted to send Kal home.

The cabbie eyeballed Kal carefully. "No, he can't come in my cab."

Disbelief. "What? Why not?"

"He'll throw up all over it and I have to clean it myself. I can't help you." The cab pulled away like Cinderella's coach turning back into a pumpkin at midnight. Reece was not enjoying the ball one bit but Kal appeared to be indifferent, appeared to be asleep again in fact. After several attempts to offload Kal onto unsuspecting cabbies Reece admitted defeat, got his things from coat check and drove Kal home. Kal still hasn't seen 5440. Did I mention that it's his favourite band?