'AITA for ditching the rest of the backpacking group when I was their only ride?' UPDATED

"AITA for ditching the rest of the backpacking group when I was their only ride?"

So, hear me out:

I (22M) and my friend from college (27M) were invited on a backpacking trip that was being organized by a friend of his who he had met while backpacking in Colorado the year before.

The girl, Kailee (25F), who organized the trip had booked an airbnb for us to all stay at the night after we got off the trail from a 3 day trek. There was room enough for 2 people each to the 2 beds, and then room enough for 2 on the pull out couch. We all paid evenly for the airbnb.

Of course, we thought Kailee should have priority to have a bed since she had done all the planning, and there was a bf/gf couple as part of the 6 of us planning to stay in the airbnb. So naturally, my friend and I felt we should take the pullout couch, and this is how it was settled before ever commencing the trip.

However, midway thru the trek, the couple had to turn around and head home. So now, there would only be 4 people to the airbnb, and naturally (so we thought) my friend and I assumed we would now sleep on the real bed.

Along with the couple backing out, my friend and I became the only ride for the Kailee, and the other guy, Tyler, to get back to the airport in Denver, and my friend and I would have a 14 hour drive back after dropping them off.

(Tyler is a relatively passive character in this saga, as he didn't speak up much for either side, and was designated to be sharing the bed (platonically) with Kailee anyway, so you won't hear much mention of him).

So such was the case when we landed at the airbnb that my friend and I set our things next to the real bed that Kailee hadn't taken, and took a cat nap on the bed.

Enter: Chris Fischer.

Kailee had invited her friend Chris Fischer to come hang out for the night. Chris lived in CO only a couple hours away from where we were and apparently was a celebrity of sorts in her circle. So, Chris had come in and said hi to Kailee and Tyler and was briefly introduced to me and my friend, saying a simple "Whats up" in response to the introduction.

Chris then was shooting the breeze with K and T and my friend and I went into the room to organize our luggage. Then we hear Chris say "I need a shower" and he comes into the room, without a word to us, and plops his stuff onto the foot of our bed and rummages for his toiletries and hops in the shower.

After Chris is out of the shower, the group is talking like they're gonna go out for the evening for beers but I know that we have a 14 hour drive ahead of us the next day after dropping K and T off at the airport, so I tell them all I'm going to hang back and go to sleep for the night. Chris left his bag on the bed, so I moved it to the counter in the living room so he wouldn't forget it.

From here, according to my friend, he spent an entire evening out in Grand Lake with the hugest douche he had ever encountered in his life. Fischer could not stop talking about these obscure world records he had broken and/or set in the world renowned sport of ridge running, and his records for most elevation gain in a day by repeatedly going up and down some particular mountain.

Kailee was apparently eating it up as if she was utterly starstruck. If you've seen the movie "The Other Guys" and recall the attitude that everyone had when encountering the Rock and Sam Jackson's characters, this was, according to my friend, exactly Kailee's demeanor. After returning from a soul sucking outing, my friend was more than ready to bid Mr. Fischer adieu, and never see his face again.

That, unfortunately was not what happened. Kailee was beyond upset that I was still in the bed. She wanted Chris to have the bed. She invoked the fact that my friend and I were designated for the pull out couch from the jump.

My friend was sticking up for us though, saying that not only did it only make sense that we take the real bed after it opened up, but that Fischer had pitched in nothing for this trip, that we weren't even made aware until last minute that he was coming by, and most importantly, that I was already asleep in the bed.

Kailee apparently was absolutely refusing to have it any other way and would not stop hammering the issue. Finally, Tyler came and woke me up for me to come sleep on the pullout. It was around midnight now, and we needed to be out by 6 AM. I came into the kitchenette in a sleepy stupor. Here is where I got a real taste of the douche that is Chris Fischer.

FOR 2 HOURS in the kitchenette, 8 feet away from the couch Kailee had insisted we sleep on, my friend and I sat there and listened to Kailee and Fischer drag on and on about all their outdoor adventure prowess. Talking about how great they were at skiing, at snowboarding, at setting FKTs on trails.

I did not know until this point that vacation activities could be such a flex, but here they proved to me that one can make them one's entire personality and the culmination of an entire life of accomplishment. Looking back now, I should have piped up about how I went to Europe and hiked on the Matterhorn, but they surely would have retorted with how they had gone to Europe too, but even harder.

Here is where my friend and I may be the assholes: My friend was staring at me and seething. He hated the fact that they had woken me up, hated the fact that they kicked us out of our bed, and hated the insult to injury of them having the audacity to shoot the sh*t for another two hours right by where my friend and I needed to be sleeping.

About 1.5 hours in, as he seethes, he subtly gestures at me to look at my phone. I open my phone and read "Let's ditch these AHs." And so as soon as they finally head to bed, we promptly agree that Chris Fischer, in taking our place in our bed, unwittingly took his place as their ride to Denver, grab our packs by the door, and set out back to Oklahoma at 3AM on the dot. So, AITA?

Not long after posting, OP shared this comment.

Just in case anyone suspects I'm exaggerating his ego, here is the famous Chris Fischer in an hour-long interview about his most recent ridge-running record he had accomplished just days before our encounter with him.

And a Reddit user claiming to be Chris jumped on.

Chris wrote:

This is pretty funny, especially for the part where you actually still drove them to the airport. You did an excellent job manipulating this story, Tanner. -Chris

CottonBeanAdventures wrote:

Bro, with how much you love yourself why haven't you put a ring on it?!? You seem like you could be pretty chill but damn you seem to let your personal achievements rule your personality. Do you have other hobbies like fishing or kayaking?? Are you a snowmobiler or volunteer for anything? Does hiking just envelope your life?

I have a close friend who sounds a lot like you where literally every day I talk to him he has to update me on his PB bicycling time/distance. It's cool you love what you do but why do you have a personal website listing off all these weird achievements? Are you going to do something in the Olympics some day? Sorry for the verbal diarrhea I'm genuinely curious.

Chris responded:

Since you’re curious, I do love myself like you should yourself. But, I’m a paid professional mountain athlete so it’s literally my job to post about the things that I do in the mountains. Personally, I hate social media and wish I wasn’t on it but again it’s literally my job and I love climbing, skiing and running around the mountains.

So I’ll continue to do my thing. People that actually know me would speak much differently than this OP. It’s honestly pretty hilarious that he came up with this whole story. Anyways, hope I answered your question. Have a great evening!

MossGobbo wrote:

Did you ever pay anything for the room or did you just mooch like an AH?

Chris responded:

Being invited in to stay the night by the person who paid for the air bnb isn’t mooching. But I offered to sleep in my truck many of times as I had a sleeping setup in the truck.

OP shared an update not long after Chris found the post.

Edit: So there was indeed some embellishment.

Chris asked for this, so no one try and blame me for making him and K look even worse. --> Chris' comment.

Everything in this story is true except for the part about us actually leaving. My friend tried to talk me into it, but I said it was too mean to do even in response to what they had done to us. I couldn't bear leaving someone hours away from where they needed to be (though my friend did insist Fischer would surely be a reliable ride to the airport).

In reality, we had told them, upon agreeing to be their ride to the airport, that this would necessitate us leaving very early that morning because my friend and I were going to be cutting it close to try and make it back to Oklahoma all in one stretch so he could make it to his 6PM (Central Time) class that evening.

So even after being treated like dirt, even after them sleeping in and then lollygagging all morning and causing us not to hit the road until about two hours after we needed to be on the road, we still drove an hour out of our way that morning to take K and T to the airport, which overall ended up making us too late for his class.

We called friends and fam all that day to pick their brains about if we would have been ,as I maintained, wrong to leave them, or if we should have, as my friend insisted, left them K and T high and dry.

We got mixed reviews from that.

We had completely forgotten about the scenario until today when we were driving on our way to another new adventure and reading "AITH" posts as we love to do on our car-rides, and realized that this story would be perfect for this forum.

Of course, we were not posting into a forum called "Would I Hypothetically Have Been the AH if I Had Done The Thing I Thought to Do But Was Too Nice to Have Done," so we had to add to the story the alternate ending that we've always wondered about. So, sorry for embellishing, Chris, but I'm not sure how the reality here paints you in any better of a light. The truth sets us free, I suppose.

The comments kept coming.

Fractal_Maze wrote:

Still NTA lmao.

AND you were still kind enough to take them to the airport..AND they delayed your trip by 2 hours. You are better than me XD. I would have left them after 30 minutes.

whysaylotword69 wrote:

So after all that and them oversleeping, Chris didn’t even offer to take them to the airport? He should’ve kept his mouth shut. NTA.

Chris wrote:

Mouth shut about what? I didn’t say a word to anybody! I didn’t kick anybody out and I didn’t stay up until 3am talking. Nobody overslept, nobody was late for anything and we all had a wonderful breakfast the next morning

Plenty-Anywhere1941 wrote:

I think Chris may have gained some respect here by piping up like a gentleman or just a decent human being actually. It seems like he stood idly by like a snake watching Kaylee be the one to make the fuss, when all he had to do was say he'd take the pullout. This whole "I'll just sleep in my truck" b.s. was obviously just false piety intended to make Kaylee feel bad for him.