As you’ve probably guessed from the title, this article may or may not be based on my friends’ and my experience one fateful evening when there were no Ubers or Lyfts to be found. To provide context, we were vacationing on a small coastal island for spring break and staying with one of my friend’s grandparents. We were out for St. Patrick’s Day, which also happened to be her birthday. And there was not a single ridesharing service driver around. So we decided to walk 3.5 miles at 1 in the morning.
Now that the scene has been set, let’s get into the advice.
DO: charge your phone before you go out.
There were four of us total. Three of us had fully charged phones; the birthday girl did not, and her phone ended up dying before we’d even left the first bar. (We also weren’t supposed to be going to the other bar, per her grandparents’ wishes, so… she may or may not have turned her phone off. It really was dying, though.) Having a charged phone was great for the trek back, though, for many reasons. Google maps, flashlights, emergency calls, etc.—basically any reason you could think of to have a phone handy.
DON’T: wear heels to the bar.
The poor birthday girl was in green heels because, well, it was her birthday and St. Patrick’s Day. Cute as they were, they ended up being a huge pain in the butt when she had to make the entire journey home wearing them. Can you say: blisters the size of quarters on her heels the next day?
DO: bring a drink with you when you leave.
Birthday girl was a trooper and didn’t complain about her feet the entire time we were walking! Or maybe it was the vodka cran she was nursing for a solid two miles. Who knows?
DON’T: leave without using the bathroom.
Well, maybe that last drink was a mistake. It might cause you and your friends to stop on the side of the path for someone to squat down and pee in the grass. Thankfully it was dark outside.
DO: stick to a path near the road.
Three and a half miles is a pretty long trek at 1 a.m. when you’re all ranging from tipsy to flat out drunk, but you’ll feel a lot better about it when the path you’re walking on is in full view of the road the entire time. There still wasn’t any illumination from the streetlights, though.
DON’T: get too close to the fence.
About two miles into the trek, the path we were on passed a horse pasture, about five feet away from the fence keeping the animals in. For whatever reason, one horse was awake and came trotting right up to the fence as we walked past. I don’t know if you’ve ever ridden a pony when you were younger, but I never really realized just how massive horses are. The fence was literally half the height of the horse; it was terrifying to realize that if the horse really wanted to, it could’ve easily jumped the fence and started chasing us. Then again, horses aren’t apex predators. But everything seems possible at 2 in the morning, including horses suddenly becoming carnivorous and eating four drunk college girls. In essence:
DO: record everything.
Not only will you save the videos forever, but the police will have evidence of what happened to the four of you if something happens. (Luckily, nothing did). It may have taken us an hour and a half to walk 3.5 miles, but those memories and videos will be with us forever. Some particularly memorable quotes include: “it is 21,” “I peed on my foot!” and “they’re awake,” which brings me to my penultimate point.
DON’T: assume her grandparents are asleep, even at 2:30 a.m.
We thought the birthday girl’s grandparents were asleep. They were, in fact, not. We thought we were going to get chewed out, but they were thankfully very chill about everything. Including…
DO: drink lots of water that night and the next morning.
Or you might throw up outside the airport, in front of your grandparents.
…Yeah, it was a rough car ride for the birthday girl.
And there you have it! If you and your friends ever find yourselves needing to make a 3.5 mile trek home from the bars at 1 in the morning, I hope this guide has provided you with some advice and pitfalls to avoid. I also sincerely hope that never happens to you. We were extremely fortunate to all make it home safely, and I am still convinced that the entire night was a fever dream.
Happy St. Patrick’s Day, amiright? ;)