Thousands will flock to an open field Saturday in hopes of getting hammered drunk in the sunlight and hearing the lyrical genius of rapper Wiz Khalifa.
OK, maybe only one of those is true.
But, with the thousands who attend the annual Number Fest, there will be a large faction of people who travel to Athens from out of town to attend this supposed once-in-a-lifetime experience with their Ohio University friends.
The idea is great in theory. You get to show your friends from out of town why OU is much more fun than wherever they’re going, and they get to experience something that would never occur around the campuses they attend.
Again, the idea is great in theory. At least, I thought so.
In the spring of 2012, I had six friends come from out of town to attend 9Fest. Although they had the mindset of “I don’t go here, therefore I can do anything,” everything seemed to be going OK. But 9Fest was more or less a warning of things to come.
One of my close friends, Adrian, who attends an Ivy League school, thought it would be a great idea to pull his pants down and show his full moon to the majority of the Athens County Sheriff’s Office as we were on a bus driving back to Athens from the field. Though he managed to avoid any legal action from the incident, he did happen to lose his car keys on the way to my dorm.
All of a sudden, he and five others were stranded in Athens with no way of getting home. He had to make an embarrassingly awkward call to his father, who then had to drive three and a half hours from Pittsburgh to bring the spare key.
Painfully awkward and embarrassing, yes, but after he had to spend $400 to replace the set of keys, all of his and the others’ attention was focused on coming back in the fall for 10Fest.
But 10Fest would be a bigger challenge. Instead of the previous Number Fest, which occurred while they were on summer break, my friends would have to attend during the school year.
That didn’t deter them, unfortunately.
Adrian, who had already lost more money on Number Fest than anyone should ever come close to, decided to buy a pair of $100 bus tickets to Pittsburgh, where the rest of them would hitch a ride to Athens, from his school in Providence for himself and another friend, Alex.
The Friday before 10Fest, Adrian and Alex had to leave by 8 a.m. But, as would be the theme for the weekend, it all began to go wrong. Adrian missed his alarm, and the subsequent bus. You would think someone would give up right then and there, but Adrian was determined to make up for his 9Fest blunders. $200 later, he and Alex were on a train, heading toward disaster.
Simultaneously, Greg, another friend from childhood, borrowed his friend’s car at Purdue University and decided to make the trek to Athens. He would also make a key error. He decided to go out of his way to Marietta to pick up another one of our close friends, Nick. Just minutes outside of town, he was pulled over by the state highway patrol for speeding. Unfortunately for him, his license had expired a couple of days beforehand, and the officer would not let him continue on his way. After much negotiating, the officer gave Greg a ride into town, where he would meet Nick and get a ride back to his car, which was sitting by the side of the road.
Keep in mind Nick had already begun drinking with his roommates and was preparing for the short car ride to Athens. Once the two made it back to the car, Greg couldn’t get it to start.
He flagged down the first person he could for jumper cables. Naturally, the first person was the same officer who had first pulled him over. Soon, the two were dropped off by the officer at a gas station miles away, where they waited two hours for the rest of the Pittsburgh convoy to arrive.
Would money stop them? No. The Police? Apparently not. They were in the clear now, right?
Well, that wouldn’t make much sense.
Once everyone arrived, we decided to split up into two groups to enter the fest. It was there that Adrian managed to seal his fate. Once inside, it took a matter of minutes for him to get arrested by the undercover agents for holding beer underage. He would actually have to make a return trip to Athens for both court and community service.
The trip had reached rock bottom by that point, and it all but assured that my friends would think twice before coming back for a few hours of day drinking.
For Adrian, his combined cost to spend a total of three days in Athens for two Number Fests ended up being more than $2,000 for the lost keys, court costs, trip costs, alcohol and ticketing. Don’t worry, we still tease him for it to this day.
But the lesson was learned, Number Fest is held near OU for a reason.
Not everyone can handle OU.
Allan Smith is a junior studying journalism and a senior writer for
The Post
. Email him at as299810@ohio.edu.
