Founder’s Day Banquet 2009

by Joe Candelario

Two cars left Davis on Friday February 6th. The first car left a little after 3:30, with Sean “jetpack” Pierce (I-176), myself Joe “taj o’malley” Candelario (I-174), Mike Raines (I-153), and Todd Harper (I-172) driving. By the time the second car left with Dan “cougar” Jordan (I-175), Ben Giesbrecht (I-167), Ryan Miller (I-168), and Tyler Landrith (I-166), it was 4:30, and we were already nearing Fresno. Todd and Mike were up front and Sean and I were in the back. Sean spent most of the time sleeping or plugged into his headphones, Todd and Mike talked about Lord knows what, and I played DJ for the day trying to find music that people would like. We stopped in Kettleman City to eat, with the group split up as it was in the car: jet and I went to subway, while the other two went to In-N-Out.

Traffic wasn’t half as bad as we’d thought it’d be when we hit L.A., and it cleared up pretty quick. After a quick directional mishap, we were at the Pi Chapter House around 10pm. This was an enormous house – dwarfing even the largest fraternity house in Davis (which belonged to Sig-Ep at the time). Moreover, it was clean. If I remember correctly, there were over 25 rooms, with fifty residents. Downstairs there were a plethora of AGO sweatshirts from three other chapters: Kappa, Eta, and Xi. These people went to bed shortly after we arrived, but we were wired.

A couple of guys from Kappa arrived, one of whom was “Bissel”, a cross chapter mentor of mine. Two Pi pledges arrived shortly thereafter, “Hakkunah Matata” and “Dora the Explorer”. We decided to get food, and the pledges offered to be our guides. The night was beautiful, as were the drunken girls stumbling up and down the street like inebriated angels. Their white clothing (due to the Delta Chi white party going on) added to this effect. While were were eating at Denny’s, the other car arrived.

Pi put our chapter and Eta together in the same room: The E. Harlan Fischer Library. While this would have been ample space for one chapter, fitting two chapters in there was tricky. So four of us: Ben, Ryan, Tyler, and I decided to sleep on the roof, which was easily accessible through the window. “Whistler”, an Eta Founder, joined us after poking his head out of the window. At one point in the night, Mike Raines started taking pictures of us from a room facing the roof.

I awakened to Tyler looking at me. Awkward as it was, he said he had just woken up a second before I did. Everyone was still asleep, so I decided to get breakfast and dragged Tyler, Cougar, and Whistler along with me. We went to this really ghetto grocery store and got a couple boxes of cereal. Cougar bought Mexican bread called “Bimbo”. It wasn’t bad. It was a good thing we’d bought the cereal, because Pi wasn’t planning on feeding the other chapters in the morning.

I realize that this article is supposed to be about Founders, but it’s the most boring part of the trip. So I’ll sum it up and skip ahead: mediocre food, talks from the National Executive Council, the end. After we sang “Strong the Ties” as a whole, we all met up at an alumnus’ house and mingled.

Well, the mingling part lasted less than an hour, until some of the guys from a few of the chapters were called to a secret meeting inside the house. Two hours in a hot room with thirty guys doesn’t sound like much fun. But it beat sitting in that dining hall with a suit on. We packed up and hit the road for home, and thus, brought an end to Founder’s Weekend.