So this weekend was another of the “stay at home and kick it” style of weekend; my ribs were feeling a lot better, but still not enough to have gone climbing for the last week, so combining that with the fact that I haven’t biked to work in almost a month gave me a fairly rough case of wanderlust.

Friday –

Friday started off with my drive home from work, leaving early at around 4:30.

Saturday –

Saturday started out nice and slowly, taking its time to ramp up to the full rocking day that it would be.  I woke up late, and lazed around in bed for a while after waking up; listening to music and just thinking about life and everything going on.  After I finally mobilized, I cooked up some quick lunch, and started going over my bike.

The poor bike hadn’t been ridden in nearly a month at this point, but it was still pretty much ready to kick the door in and ride.  I just filled up the tires, gave it a quick clean, jumped on, and was out the door.  I wanted to take a fairly short ride, since by this point it was nearly 3:30, so I just did a big loop around Brighton, onto Comm Ave, around a bit more, and back home.  The party was slated to start around 9:30, so I was aiming to be back at the house by 6:00 so I could make myself a nice dinner before heading out.

I can’t remember what I actually cooked for dinner, but I have a feeling that it involved burgers, spaghetti, or soup… Maybe some wings and/or nachos too.  Either way, it was definitely tasty, and when paired with an episode of Top Gear, and some Modern Warfare afterwards, it lead to a rather good start to my evening, at least as preparation for the party.

T and his roommates were throwing another “Saturday night revelry” shindig at their place, and this time the guest list was looking to be pretty packed, and packed with people I didn’t already know for once.  On my way over I picked up Dave from his place (Katie and her roommate were still getting ready, so Snowman was going to bring them along afterwards), and we rolled on the house.  Mike arrived literally exactly when we did, so we all spent the ten minutes that it took T to walk down his stairs to let us in rocking out on the porch, and debating tapping the Mini-keg that we had brought.

Once inside we saw we were in the early group; there was only five or six people there already, aside from the house-mates.  The party ballooned pretty quickly though, starting with a few games of Darts while waiting for people, and quickly moving upstairs once Mike pulled out the guitar and amp and started rocking out in the ballroom-attic-place.  By the middle of the night we had thirty of forty people rocking out in the attic and living room, but that just led to the craziest part of the night; trying the circle-dance.

I have no idea why Filipe thought this would be a good idea, but for some reason we all got into a circle, and were instructed on the intricacies of stepping left and right.  Now, to most people this would be easy.  To most non-intoxicated people that is.  To us… it became difficult, especially when combined with trying to hold onto each-others shoulders.  So instead of a “circle dance”, we moved into an “oval-stumble”, which devolved into a “fall on your face”.  Not my best moment, but it turned out to be one of the most fun parts of the night, once the BS of the “late-game” started to bubble to the surface.

This party reminded me of the dangers of staying late; while it’s easier to hook up with people in the late-game of a party, its also significantly easier to cause drama, and/or get stuck dealing with said drama (mostly stemming from the easy hookups).  We had two girls leave in a huff after one started hooking up with a friend of mine, and the other went into “protective roommate” mode, dragging the lovers bodily apart and hauling the girl out the front door; after some yelling and crying, of course.  Then we had the attempted hookup, where the guy was nearly launched out the door after a failed seduction.  Lastly, we had the “roommate disappears, and everyone gets recruited into helping to find her” situation, which thankfully resolved itself after about an hour of frantic phone calls and some running around mission hill searching.

At the end of the night I ended up driving the whole 337 crew home though, and finally headed home for some much needed R&R in prep for helping Mike move the next day.

Sunday –

Sunday started in pretty much the same manner as Saturday, with a slow wakeup followed by some music, rest, and a long, hot shower.  I couldn’t get a hold of Mike,so I headed out for a quick breakfast at a place called Jim’s Diner, a small grease-pit near my house.  This was the first time I’d eaten there, and it was definitely an amazing place; great pancakes, good sausage and eggs, and fairly cheap.  But mostly; it was close.  I chowed down, and tried Mike again.  No answer.  Well, I had my camera in my pocket, and great weather with cool-looking clouds, so I started off in a random direction I’d never been before.

I walked around Brighton for a few hours, taking pictures and relaxing to music.  I found myself one really cool pond with some neat cloud formations above it, and a little hocky-rink carved out of the snow.  And even cooler, I found BC’s dedicated “snow dumping spot”, where I think their plows dump the snow from their roads.  All this snow dumping made an amazing landscape, more akin to a glacier, or maybe the moon, than to Boston .  I took a good bit of time exploring the area, clambering up the pinicles, and falling through more than one cornice.  I even found a crevase or two, creepily enough.  My favorite part was the “Hot Gates” ice formation though; it seriously looked like something straight out of 300, with a huge area in front of it, a choke-point, and this cool ridge in the middle for the hero to stand (obviously I took pictures of myself there, thanks to my waterproof camera I was able to use some snow and ice as a tripod).  I continued walking around for a while, and finally headed home after I was finally able to get Mike on the phone.

See, Mike had partied harder than me.  Significantly.  Hard enough, in fact, for him to still have a hangover at 4:30 in the afternoon.  This meant that we were not, in any way, moving him today.  However, I had a backup plan in place (as I usually do), so I headed home, and kicked my roommate Rich’s door in; we had debated heading up to a shooting range in New Hampshire today, but we had decided to hold off so I could help Mike out.  So within the hour we were on the road up North, burning through the hour drive up to the lane.

We went to a place called Manchester Firing Line (I think), a place that reminded me of the dangers of a “Live free or Die” state.  See, New Hampshire lets people own guns.  Not just handguns, or rifles, or assault weapons, but… EVERYTHING.  Yes, you could rent a Vulcan Mini-gun (a six-barreled, helicopter mounted “area denial” weapon) and tear into some poor defenseless targets with a burning rain of steel. We didn’t go too far, although I was very temped to rent the SCAR or the AR-15, and got a simple .45 pistol, a box of shells, and a few targets.  After two rounds I realized that the gun was in no way going to work; it had a faulty safety that would re-engage after every shot, forcing me to disengage the safety and clear the chamber after every shot.  So the range-master grabbed us a new Sigg .45, and the shooting began in earnest.  Rich and I did pretty well for kinds who hadn’t shot in ages (months for me, years for him); we didn’t miss the target once, and stayed within the 7 line for nearly all of the shots.  We emptied a second box of shells before leaving, for a grand-total of 50 rounds each, packed up our final silhouettes, and headed out front.  We spent some time checking out the guns up front, and ended up talking with the (owner, range-master, manager?) for a good half-hour, hearing a few of his stories about running the army training ranges for the 40mm grenade launcher and the Anti-Armor lanes, and other random stories ranging from using bazookas to hold beer to blowing up an old VW beetle in a sandpit.

The drive back home and the rest of the evening were pretty uneventful, focusing on relaxing, watching some random shows, and making myself some dinner.  The week was fast approaching, and although I was looking forward to meeting with a friend on Monday to plan out the Asian leg of my world-trip, I was mostly excited about being able to Bike into work this week 🙂