I tend to read during takeoff. As the jet rumbles down the runway, I hold my book or newspaper or magazine as steady as I can through the jossling and focus harder on the words, almost to the point of making my eyes ache as if I'm trying to physically extend them closer to the page without moving my head in order to make them steadier. I'm not particularly afraid of flying, but I do tend to get a little nervous and overthink catastrophe scenarios during takeoff. But as I focus on my book, there's always the thought in the back of my mind: "We should be lifting off soon." I wonder how long the runway is, how far we have to go, where the point of no return is � at what point to we need to be up to speed and where's that marker by which we have to hit the brakes if we're aborting the takeoff.

Not that any of this has ever happened, but I wonder. I always seem to look up from my book at the point I think we should have our nose up, and we never do. But then seconds later, there it goes, and out the window the ground is no longer level, but at an angle, and in a few more moments there's that dip as the rear wheels lift off and the thrust takes us quickly higher. I love to look out on the ground shrinking into a model, and so I can't stand it when I'm sitting on the aisle. If it's a cloudy day along the route, I'm happy to sit on the aisle and read the flight away, but on clear days or nights, I've spent nearly the entire flight gazing down upon the earth. I've traced the entire Atlantic Coast all the way from Newport News to Newark. I've picked out Northwestern and Wrigley Field during descent and ascent into and out of O'Hare. I've watched the Notre Dame campus roll beneath us as we've taken off from South Bend. I've seen the Oregon Coast signal an abrupt end to the continent and later spotted Mauna Loa jutting through the light clouds over Hawaii. My first view of the Grand Canyon came on a Newark-to-Los Angeles trek.

As it was, I dutifully read Moneyball from my window seat and we landed in Atlanta without a hitch on a cloudy Friday, my first experience on AirTran � formerly known as ValueJet, few realize � a success. "Casey and I will arrive in Atlanta around 1:30 on AirTran (that's a real airline, right?)," I wrote to my friends who'd be attending the wedding. Brad, who was flying the carrier from Washington, D.C., with his wife Tenille, responded, "Hey Dan, we're flying Airtran, too. ($72 each way, baby! I fear the pilot may be younger than we are.) If you find out that Airtran is, in fact, not a real airline, let me know so I can make alternate arrangements."

Casey and I checked into the posh and historic Georgian Terrace and claimed our bed [wink, wink, nudge, nudge]. Bryan would be arriving later, driving up from Florida where he was visiting family, and Jess would be coming in on Saturday after her week working with Jimmy Carter and other Habitat for Humanity volunteers in Alabama. It was 3 o'clock. I was a little hungry. There wasn't too much near the hotel. Also, it had started to rain. It was a soft Southern rain, though, so we grabbed our umbrellas and walked the half a block to the corner of Peachtree and, probably, Peachtree (don't get me started � there are about eight different incarnations of Peachtree in Atlanta: Peachtree, W. Peachtree, Peachtree Center ...) and considered a Caribbean place. But then the rain became a deluge. We crossed the street to look at a map, which didn't really offer any suggestions. Across the street was an Italian place, next to it a Blimpie and beyond that a pizza parlor. I figured I'd just get a slice since we'd probably be having dinner with others in a few hours.

Only between us and the pizza was Peachtree River � that is, the water was flowing so fast and hard down the hill that a four-foot stream prevented us from getting onto the street to cross it. With the wind now blowing the rain sideways, we cried "Uncle!" and went back to the hotel to settle for room service (after the suction from a slightly less violent puddle held onto my one sandal, which Casey dutifully picked up as I hobbled across the intersection with one bare foot).

Calling room service, I got a pizza.

Matt, driving down from D.C., arrived and we decided to check out some of the places suggested for dinner on the information sheet that was left for us at the front desk. Bryan had just pulled up as we left the hotel, and after a shower he met us at Vortex, a burger joint six blocks west on Peachtree.

There, we ordered burgers with fries and tater tots and surprisingly cheap ($10) but good pitchers of a beer called Laughing Skull. After about three hours of drinking it, our skulls laughed at us the next morning: "You think you can kill of that many brain cells and deprive me of that much water and expect me not to make it tough on you in the morning?? HA! Who's laughing NOW, bitch!?"

Around 10 p.m., I noticed my watch and thought, "Brad and Tenille should be landing any minute now." Sure enough, I get a call from Brad moments later.

"Hey Dan," he said.

"Hey! Where are you?"

"We're still on the plane," he answered.

"OK, did you just get in?"

"We're still in D.C. We're told we're about to take off. The weather's delayed us. So, uh, we'll probably just catch up with you tomorrow."

After we moved to the bar, we paid more attention to the songs on the jukebox and sang along with them. When Bon Jovi came on, someone groaned, but the bartender clapped and claimed Bon Jovi used to be his babysitter, at least on one occassion. We doubted it, so when the bartender came back, I asked, "You from Jersey?" "Yeah!" he said, "I lived all over � in Newark, Elizabeth, Woodbridge, Iselin ..." and about three or four other towns. That was good enough for me � some of the burgs he mentioned are close enough to Sayreville for the possibility of him having Bon Jovi as a baby sitter.

The Vortex collects people's junk, among them a cage perched on a shelf near the bar.

"Casey, that cage has your name written all over it," Matt said.

"Buy me a few more drinks then, boys!" she responded.

"Does anyone go in that cage?" Bryan asked the bartender.

"Yeah," he said, "that's what the ladder's for."

He pointed just to the right of the cage. To what was clearly a ladder. At eye level.

"Oh," I replied. "I suppose we should've seen that."

We emerged from the Vortex just before midnight. (And no, we didn't buy Casey enough drinks.)

"Where the heck is Kelly?" Bryan demanded. "The rehersal dinner should be finished by now." I dug out Kelly's cell number and Bryan dialed it.

"I don't think that's it," he said moments later, "because some guy named Ron is going to wonder whose number is in his missed calls list."

As we walked along Peachtree back to the hotel, we noticed the two lanes heading in the opposite direction, west and more towards downtown Atlanta, were jammed with cars. It seemed odd, out of place for midnight when we hadn't seen a dense strip of restaurants or clubs or anything, but we didn't discuss it much more than pointing it out.

Back at the hotel, I checked my e-mail from Matt's computer and found the last digit in Kelly's cell number is a 4, not a 7, and when I called, she answered.

"We just got back from the rehersal dinner," she said. It was midnight.

"Holy crap," I said.

"I know. But I'm up for hanging out if you guys are still up."

So she joined Bryan, Casey and me in our room � Matt, weary from his drive down from D.C. that began at 6 a.m., went to sleep. Moments later, our phone rang. I stammered just to blurt out "Hello," because my first instinct was to say, "This is Dan," as if I was answering the phone at work.

"Hey Dan, it's Jamie. Where are you? I want to come up."

A few minutes later, the bride and her maid of honor, a high school friend, joined us. At 1:30, Jamie was sent to bed and Kelly hung around for another hour.

Bryan set an alarm for the morning, so we wouldn't sleep the day away and we could head out for some breakfast. So at 9:30 a.m., we were awakened to a very loud clock-radio offering of "La Isla Bonita," and for the few seconds it took me to viciously pound the snooze button, there was something worse than the pounding in my head.

And there was pounding. So much. I really felt like it might be one of those days, the days after drinking where you're like, "OK, I've had enough alcohol for ... a week. But I must drink tonight. I'll have to be ready for it by the reception."

But such a pep talk was not necessary. I continued to drink water. I got up, splashed my face, put on some clothes, called Matt and we all hopped in Bryan's rented convertible and found a fine breakfast place that offered tasty French toast and decent homefries (but with onions that I had to pick around. They're all about the onions in Georgia).

When Jess's bus from Alabama rolled into Hartsfield Airport, Bryan and I dropped Matt and Casey off at the hotel � the sun had come out and she was eager to hit the pool on the roof; Matt said he had a little work to do � and then went to the airport. On the return trip, the clouds spit some rain on us enough to necessitate pulling over on the interstate and putting up the top. Minutes after that, the sun was out again.

We found Casey and Matt � with his laptop � up on the roof, poolside. The sun was hot and we made our way downstairs around 2 p.m. to get some lunch before the wedding. For some reason, the sun took one look at Casey, and bitch-slapped her. Apparently, she didn't put enough sunscreen on her legs. It caused swelling on her left ankle, which I'd never seen before.

After lunch at Noodle, a noodles place (with onions buried in my chicken fried rice), we began the Shower Relay: Jess, Casey, myself, Bryan. I emerged from the bathroom clean wearing the pants to my suit and an undershirt. The lighting in our suite was horrendous, though. With no light near the shower in the large bathroom, when the curtain was pulled it became rather dark. Casey and Jess complained about the lack of it in the closet area, where although the two giant sliding doors were mirrored, the light made it useless for primping. In pulling my suit out of the dark closet, I had trouble just finding it amid the hanging black garment bags, let alone discerning the pants from the jacket. As I prepared to put on my tie (and I'm always amazed at how, despite not wearing one for months at a time, I always seem to remember how to tie one; though this time it took three tries before it felt comfortable and I could remember the final step), Bryan comes plodding through saying, "This is not my suit! Where's my suit?" He looked in the closet and found his jacket, then compared the narrow stripes on his jacket to the wide ones on the pants he was wearing.

Then he looked at me.

"Give me my pants!" he shouted.

I looked down. My toes barely peeked out from the cuffs. "So THAT'S why they're so long!" I said.

"It looks like you're wearing footsie pajamas!" Bryan screamed. Then I looked at him. My pants � we have the same size waist, but he has about five extra inches in his legs � left four inches of bare skin up his calves. It also explained why there was an unfamiliar United Way slip in one of the pockets on the pair I was wearing.

Jess and Casey came over and nearly birthed kittens from laughing so hard. They both ran for their cameras before I shouted that in no way should they do that and Bryan and I quickly exchanged pants.

"I thought there were more loops for the belt than I'd remembered," I said.

In our defense, along with the aforementioned lighting situation, our suits are VERY similar in color and the pinstripes � hard to see in normal light, practically invisible in low light � are really the only noticable differences at first glance.

Dressed in our own clothes, we boarded the shuttle van to the church. The five of us � Casey, Jess, Bryan, Matt and I � took the row of five seats along the back of the van, and Casey channeled Outkast:

Ah ha, hush that fuss
Everybody move to the back of the bus
Do you wanna bump and slump with us
We the type of people make the club get crunk

And did we ever make the club get crunk.

After the speed wedding � 40 minutes after we'd sat down in the pew and 25 minutes after the ceremony had begun � we were back in the back of the bus heading for Piedmont Park's Magnolia Hall for the reception.

There, at the open bar out on the patio, the drinking commenced at 6:43 p.m. It ended nine hours later. A full work day's worth of imbibing. Just consider it our little contribution to the Summer of The Long Title That It's Not My Job To Remember.

What made this wedding so special was the seamlessness with which we all fell back into our comfortable friendships. The conversation and the carousing can come easily, but this was so effortless that only fatigue brought it to an end. It wasn't just rekindling the friendships: It was reforging them, putting them back into the mold to soften the ridges and redefine the characteristics that had helped build the relationships in the first place. The cocktail hour moved slowly as we eyed the hors d'oeuvres and became reacquainted, but the dinner and dancing flew, as did our conversation. Over dinner, at our table consisting of Jess, Bryan, Tenille, Brad, Matt and Casey (Kelly joined us later for most of the rest of the night), we hatched grand plans and talked them into feasible reality.

Inspired by an article in the July 2003 issue of Outside in which the author, Bill Vaughn, criss-crosses North Dakota in search of a new home for him and his wife, I've found myself dreaming of buying, as Bill's story recounted, 400 acres with three buildings for $70,000. But why stop at a simple homestead or ranch? Vaughn went looking to buy a town. A ghost town, an abandoned stretch of prairie with a Main Street and a cluster of buildings.

At Table 10 in Magnolia Hall, this became our mission.

"We could do this," Brad said. "We could do this now."

Someday � and I truly believe this will happen � several of us are going to go in on a homestead somewhere and set aside a week out of every summer to make sure we're all there together. It may be a ranch in the Dakotas, a little town on the prairie, or perhaps (when we've got a lot of money to invest) an island off the coast of Maine.

"And we'll have to make sure there's enough land to put in our baseball field," I added.

I also reminded Brad of a college dream we had of running our own small-town newspaper. One of our criteria was that we'd have to be near organized baseball, whether the affiliated minor leagues or the independent ones. He took it one step further: We're going to own a team one day.

Someone brought up paintball. But if it's in the West, it should be Wild West paintball. So someone has to develop a six-shooter paintball gun.

And we're going to make the homestead available to underprivileged children, both for the humanitarian value and the tax writeoff.

"We could call it North Bend," Matt said.

"Or West Bend, since it'll be west of Indiana," Bryan added.

"But we'd need a river," Brad said.

"We could have a moat!" Bryan realized.

"Well, we'd have to have some sort of river or stream," I said, "to fill the manmade lake with the wave machine."

"OK," Matt summed up, "So we've got a ghost town in North Dakota or an island in Maine with a minor-league baseball team and six-shooter paintball all surrounded by a moat or, at least, a river that leads to the lake with the wave machine."

That sounds reasonable.

We also discussed South Carolina's Giant Ass Peach alongside I-85. Matt brought it up because he'd passed it Friday on his drive down, and he and I saw it for the first time back in 1999 when we drove to Atlanta for a Mets playoff game against the Braves. Brad knew exactly what we were talking about. It's legendary. And we're not the only ones who think it looks like a giant ass.

Any effects from Friday's drinking had worn off easily by the time dinner � a thick hunk of steak surrounded by tasty vegetables for the main dish � was done.

"I must've been so dehydrated today because I'm absorbing everything," Bryan mentioned. "I haven't gone to the bathroom once yet."

Jess, speaking before her brain realized it, chimed in: "I'm about to go number two!"

She turned beet red. So did Casey and Bryan, but that was from laughing.

"Um ... I mean I'm about to go for the second time! No! Really! That's what I wanted to say!"

And for whatever reason, Casey wrote in my notebook: "'I have beef all over me!' � Bryan" He must've been a sloppy eater.

We entered a new era in wedding receptions on Saturday night. As one standard reception tune faded away, the pounding base and hip-hop lyrics ushered in a new night in post-nuptials partying:

Go, go, go, go
Go, go, go shawty
It's your birthday
We gon' party like it's yo birthday
We gon' sip Bacardi like it's your birthday
And you know we don't give a fuck
It's not your birthday!

50 Cent � or 67 Cent Canadian (I think I've used that joke before) � brought the peers of the bride and groom out to the dance floor from their tables, to where we'd retreated to drink up and catch our breath.

"I was very strict with the DJ," Jamie told some of us later. "I told him, 'Chicken Dance' � NO. 'Electric Slide' � NO. 'Hot Hot Hot' � NO. And I told him to check with me before he played 50 Cent."

"Wait, you asked him to play 50 Cent?" I said.

"Yeah. But I wanted to make sure some of the older people had left first."

It was after 10:30, when the first shuttle had left for the hotel.

But we danced like we were in that club of which he raps, and when Casey threw her arms in the air and trilled like a Sim dancer, Bryan looked at her in confusion. Then she said, "Sim dancing!" and he nearly fell over laughing.

Hands-in-the-air Sim dancing

My Sim dancing with Casey's Sim

The routine was repeated throughout the night: Take a song off for a drink, the restroom, or to rest our feet, then return to the parque en masse when favorite tunes come on. It started with "Oh What A Night (December 1963)" when Jamie demanded the Notre Dame crowd get out to the dance floor. "It's 'Backer music!" she shouted.

Walking back to the dance floor for "Build Me Up Buttercup," Tenille let me in on the conversation she'd been having with Bryan.

"We're discussing good dates for you and Casey to get married," she said. "She's a good one. We don't want to lose her."

At midnight, after successfully convincing Brad and Tenille (and it didn't take much) that they should leave their rental car at the reception hall, take the shuttle with us to the hotel, continue drinking with us, and then be driven back to get their car in the morning after crashing in Matt's room AND convincing Matt that he didn't need to leave Atlanta by 10 on Sunday morning and be back in D.C. for his Monday afternoon interview, we boarded the shuttle to return to the Georgian Terrace.

"Wait," Brad said, "I want to say goodnight to Jamie."

"Ann just told me that Jamie's taking the shuttle too, so you can say goodbye at the hotel," I said. "She's one of the bridesmaids. She should know."

We boarded the shuttle and took our place in the back and watched as Jamie and her bridesmaids walked past the shuttle to get in a car somewhere else in the parking lot.

And I've just now I remembered that the bridal party had its own shuttle, and that's what Ann was talking about.

Back at the hotel, we hit the second-floor bar as Casey and Jess hit their beds.

"Dan, we need to call Heather," Brad said.

"We do," I said as hit Send on my phone.

Voice mail. There may or may not be a message still on it, seeing as how Heather admits she forgot I called. Three times. Once at the bar to her cell phone, once at the bar to her home phone (but didn't leave a message) and once up in the bridesmaids' suite, when Brad used my phone to call her.

When Matt decided he wanted to treat Brad, Bryan and me to a cigar (and one for himself), the bartender backed up our pints because it was now nearly 1 a.m. � closing time � and we couldn't smoke cigars there anyway.

"You have to go downstairs to smoke them," he said, "out on the patio."

No problem with that, and Brad ended up treating Matt after Bryan and I turned down the offer. I've never touched one in my life.

"Wait a minute," Bryan said a second later, looking at the bartender's name tag. "What's your name?"

"Bryan," the bartender said.

"Bryan with a Y!" Bryan exclaimed. "I'm Bryan With a Y!"

"Nice to meet you Bryan With a Y," the bartender said, shaking his hand.

"You're the first black man I've met who's Bryan With a Y!" Bryan continued drunkenly.

"Really!? I'm the Rosa Parks of Bryan With a Y!"

Downstairs, the patio to the restaurant met the sidewalk along Peachtree in front of the hotel. For an hour, we finished our beers, Matt and Brad finished their cigars, Kelly, Ann and others joined us, and we watched the parade of cars heading west � the same traffic jam we'd seen the night before leaving the Vortex.

"I can't believe they allow crusing in downtown Atlanta," Bryan said, though technically we were a few miles from true downtown Atlanta, but no one was being technical at this point.

And that's what it was � tricked-out Escalades and Hondas and other SUVs and sedans and coupes rolled slowly westward with their trunks filled with sound systems pumping the bass, their factory wheels replaced with shiny silver bling-bling rims and Spinners, the type that continue to spin after the car has come to a stop. Guys hung out windows, sat on door frames, stood up and drank from plastic cups through the sun roofs while the cars moved. Girls got out to shake their asses on the sidewalk when traffic stopped and leaned over to shout from car to car, whether in motion or at rest. The soundtrack changed continually, both the voices and the music. It was a show.

At 2 a.m., the manager from the bar came down and told us that everything was closed up and it was time to leave. We moved up to the seventh floor room shared by some of Jamie's friends and their husbands and boyfriends. There, we managed to burn microwave popcorn even though we stood faithfully by the microwave and timed the final pops. We drank more of the beer Casey, Matt and I had bought the night before to prepare for just such a need. We played with Mr. Stud, the blow-up doll without a penis the girls had bought Jamie. When Ann's husband Curt decided that he'd seen enough of Mr. Stud, he deflated his arms and torso, but then lost interest, leaving his legs puffed up. Someone then grabbed him, tied his underwear to the string that controls the blinds, and hung Mr. Stud out the window.

So there, hanging from a seventh-floor window above Peachtree in the hotel that hosted the official Gone With the Wind premiere party in 1939 attended by the film's stars (many of whom stayed at the hotel), dangled Mr. Stud. As the Saturday Night Car Show cruised west. We watched as one car stopped, the trunk opened, and someone jumped out, opening a white umbrella.

"You think they did this back in the 30s?" I asked. "You know, Clark Gable and Vivien Leigh sitting out on the patio, smoking a cigar, as the Model Ts rolled by, a guy playing a bass beat on an upright from the rumbleseat?"

It was 3:30 before we looked around quietly and realized we were spent. Nine hours since we'd started drinking, 10 hours since we'd left the hotel for the church, 12 hours since we'd started showering and getting dressed (longer, of course, for those in the wedding party).

Our Sunday started as rudely as our Saturday: The clock radio alarm woke us loudly from our unconsciousness by blasting "Manic Monday." Jess left for brunch with a friend while Casey, Bryan and I gathered our things and checked out at noon before meeting the crew from the night before for brunch in the restaurant.

"How you doing, Bryan With a Y?" the bartender-now-busboy asked.

By 1:15, we realized that those with 3:30 flights had to leave for the airport and the rest of us were too hungry to wait for an understaffed kitchen to get our food to us. Three plates had been delivered to the table � including two orders of French toast but not the other three � when we just gathered our things and left. They'd been told we had planes to catch and, even with an understaffed kitchen (nevermind the issue of WHO allows a kitchen to be understaffed for Sunday brunch, particularly a Sunday brunch that starts at noon), an hour is inexcusable. Those who needed to catch flights went to the airport; those leaving at night got in a car and went to lunch; Casey, Matt, Bryan and I went to Blimpie across the street.

At 2, Matt headed north while Bryan dropped Jess, Casey and me off at the airport before continuing south back to Florida and his week-and-a-half vacation visiting family. Brad and Tenille we didn't see. Around 8 a.m., Brad went into Matt's bedroom and told him they were taking a cab back to Magnolia Hall to get their car and return to their friend's house. Their flight on AirTran back to D.C. was scheduled to take off at 8 p.m. � and with no thunderstorms in sight, I assume they made it back home before too late.

We left Atlanta weary and with that feeling that there will be no need for alcohol for a few days. But I was also uplifted knowing that I have more friendships than I realized that will continue to thrive despite stretches without contact. Sure, it'll never be as it was in college, but it won't be far off. It just takes a little time, a little effort, a few miles on the car, a plane trip every now and then, a weekend spent sharing the bathroom and opening extra bedroom for someone. I've often left weekend weddings, checked out of the hotel and onto a flight on Sunday, with a sinking feeling inside: All the anticipation came to a crashing halt once the festivities had ended.

This time was different. This time, it felt like a new beginning � and I'm not talking only about the bride and groom.