Weekend of the 29APR11 - 01MAY11
Pre-story to the weekend: All through the week I had been 
planning out a big trip to Rumney for the weekend.  The idea 
started with my friend Aaron St. Pierre, when he invited Kittie 
and I to come out to Rumney with him and his buddy.  I posted on 
the NUHOC baords (to be polite), and brought Dave and Rebecca 
and Daniel into the trip as well, thinking to re-create the 
amazing trip from two years back with Mags, Daniel, Dave, and 
Zack.  That was not to be, however, since immediately after posting 
on the boards, Daniel decided that this was his trip, and that he'd 
be planning everything out.  Turns out Him and Stef were already 
planning on going and camping out, but weren't going to bring 
anyone else along, but he thought he may as well take the reigns, 
since he'd be there anyways.


Friday - 
Today was packing, prepping for the weekend, making last minute 
phone calls and deciding where to meet up tomorrow morning.  
After I finally got everything packed up, I headed over to Rebecca's 
place to make a quick showing at her goodbye party before heading 
out to pick Kittie up from her work.

Rebecca's party was pretty cool, with lots of neat food 
(upside to having nerdy friends I guess... they all make sure to 
bring food so they don't look bad) and some fairly cool folks.  
Most of my conversation was with Daniel though, planning out 
where and when to go, and what people would be doing.  The 
baseline of the conversation turned into "Well... I was going to 
lead the trip and take eveyone out.  But you decided to take over, 
so... now its up to you man.  I'm going to go do my own thing and 
have fun, and you get to teach all the newbies how to tie in".  I 
almost felt bad for leaving him with all of the new kids, but... 
only almost.

The night got significantly more interesting when I tried to meet 
Kittie.  Turns out I must have done something to piss her off 
royally (To this day I still don't know what it was... we had a 
quick conversation about how I couldn't pick up a flea collar for 
her cat, but thats is), so she wouldn't pick up her phone or reply 
to text messages.  I did see her biking away from the theater, but 
she didn't reply when I yelled out, and I couldn't spin a quick 
U-turn thanks to an accident that happened ahead of me.  So 
instead of helping Kittie pack and crashing at her place, I headed 
home, listened to a bit of music while sipping a glass of scotch, 
and hit the sack early.

Saturday - 
I woke up at 5:30 to Dave's text message, telling me that he had 
comandeered a spare Harness, just in case I didn't have one for 
him already.  I'd already packed a spare for him, but the text was 
pretty key in motivating me to actually move myself out of bed and 
onto the path towards Rumney.  

I texted Kittie quick, "to make sure she was ok", although in my 
heart I knew what she's be replying.  I was proven right by her text, 
as shown below:

	"Alive.  Pissed as hell at you.  Not dealing with it anymore.  
         Not coming.  Not talking to you."

I replied with a quick "huh, why?  Sorry, I'm a bit confused...." 
text, but never heard back from her.  I was pretty sad about it, 
but had been expecting it since the night before, so had enough time 
to cosole myself against her message.  Only later did I realize what 
it meant... SHE HAD MY SPARE ATC! DAMNATION!

I met Dave at his place around 6:45, and we started out onto I-93 
towards climbing.  Grabbed a quick breakfast and re-fuel in 
Manchester, and busted into the parking lot by 8:50 or so.  We 
chilled around for about 20min, relaxing and playing with the small 
football I had won at Dave & Busters a few months back.  Once Aaron 
and Liam arrived, we finished packing our gear up and headed to 
Jimmy Cliff for our climbs.  The day was an amazing success, with 
TONS of climbs being knocked out by Dave and I working as a pretty 
damn solid team; though the Peanut Butter & Jelly & Cheese on a 
Tortilla wrap definitely didn't hurt the situations :)

Climbs busted out:

• Clip-a-dee doo-dah – Sport, 2 pitches
• Pine Tree – Trad, 2 pitches
• Some really cool Sport 5.6 with a sick roof
• Pee-Wee’s adventure – Trad, really awesome placements
• Scalliwag – Sport, really fun Chimney Climb
• “Commodore Von Huttenstein” – Sport, route on the face to the left of Scalliwag. NEW ROUTE!!!

By the time we had finished cleaning up Commodore Von Huttenstein, 
Dave and I were exhausted, so we headed back towards the parking lot, 
to meet up with Aaron and Liam, and Daniel and his crew.

Before heading out to Pawtuckaway to camp, Dave and I shot the 
shit with everyone for a bit; saying goodbye to Aaron and Liam 
and grabbing a quick slice of pizza with Daniel and Co.  We all 
swapped stories about the climbs we had done, and had some very 
entertainingly heated discussions about things that I have 
absolutely no recollection of, but were clearly very important at 
the time.  After a quick game of semi-tackle football in the parking 
lot, Dave and I headed onto the road again, to hunt for a campground.

On the road to Pawtuckaway we grabbed a burger at Tilton Diner, and 
then pressed on to find the campground at Pawtuckaway.  After one 
or two wrong turns and some bad directions where the GPS tried to 
bring us to the middle of Pawtuckaway instead of the campground, 
we finally arrived and set up camp.  Dave gathered a ton of loose 
firewood for us to burn while I set up the tent for him and the 
hammock for myself, and then we set about making the biggest 
fuck-all fire that we could :)  After drinking a few beers, 
smoking some shitty cigars, and burning some of Daves "researching 
conciousness" (AKA "hippy 'one with the universe' bullshit combined 
with 'Eve was so much better than Adam' crap") textbooks, we 
proceeded to chill out around the fire for an hour or so, just 
watching the logs burn up and the embers slowly die down.  After 
the last few flames were out, we doused the remainder of the fire 
around 01:30 or 02:00, and crashed like only someone who'd been 
climbing all day could do.


Sunday -
I woke up to the sounds of a speed-boat tearing across the lake 
that we were camped by, and shot awake scared that it was the park 
rangers coming to fine us for camping out.  See... while the gate 
to the park had been left open, there WAS a large sign stating that 
the campgrounds weren't open, and wouldn't be until the middle of 
May.  Not something to stop me, but something to keep me slightly 
worried and paranoid.  The boat turned out to be some fishermen, 
but the damage was already done and I was awake, ready to start 
the day out right (right meaning "in the afternoon", since it was 
already noon)

Dave and I ate a quick breakfast, explored the area a bit, then 
went about breaking down the camp and packing everything back into 
my car.  Once camp was cleared and everything put away we headed 
back onto the open road, with two goals in mind: getting lunch 
somewhere in Manchester, and going shooting at a range that Rich 
and I had shot at before.

The range came first, so Dave and I parked and headed inside to 
pick out a gun, buy some ammo, and put a few holes in some targets. 
We had already decided on renting the SCAR-19, a new rifle designed 
by Bushmaster to be the new main rifle for the military, replacing 
the old-school M-16.  The only real SCAR-19's that the range had 
were already rented, unfortunately, so we picked out a Bushmaster 
ACR with a holographic sight instead; pretty much the same gun, 
but designed for civilian use.  With two boxes of 50 rounds each 
in hand, we donned our eye and ear protection and headed into the 
range. 

I've said that my favorite gun to-date is the old Chinese SKS 
that my Dad owns... but thats changed now.  The ACR is an amazing 
firearm, with medium recoil and a really good layout for the safety, 
slide-release, and magazine lock.  Dave and I went through the 
100 rounds in fairly short order, using magazines of 10 rounds 
each and swapping out targets about halfway through.  Dave was 
obviously a significantly better shot than I was, but I still 
did pretty well for myself; we decided to shoot at 60 yards for 
most of the sets, and at no point did I have a spread larger than 
about a foot... not bad for a untrained shooter from a standing 
position.

After firing off all 100 rounds, Dave and I headed back out front 
to trade the gun in.  See... we had been debating what to shoot, 
and I remembered something from the website about "historical 
machine guns"... AKA A Thomson SMG.  Thats right, we wen't full auto 
on that bitch.  We only bought one box at first, but when all 50 
rounds were used up in "Automatic-weapons training", I decided that 
this was a special enough occasion that I wanted two more boxes.  
See, the gun's magazine took 25 rounds of .45 pistol ammo, and a 
single magazine goes QUICK when your on full auto.  As in... 15s or 
less... Dave and I legitimately took more time reloading the 
magazine than we did shooting the gun.  It was AMAZING though, 
working to control a gun firing like that was a real experiance, 
and gave me a huge amount of respect for the guys back in WWII who 
were shooting those every day.

After shooting we cleaned ourselves up, checked out, and headed 
into town to grab some lunch.  My target sandwich shop was closed, 
so we headed to a little irish pub I'd heard about while working at 
DEKA.  We had some quick burgers, but before we left we started 
checking out these "beer olympics" that were going on in the back 
room.  Turns out we arrived just as the games were starting; Beer 
Pong, quarters, flip-cup, 1-mile beer run, the works.  Dave, of 
course, needed to do the beer run... so we signed him up and he 
started warming up for the run.  The goal was to drink a full beer 
and run a full mile (on a treadmill) as quick as possible.  Dave 
decided to up the ante by doing the run barefoot, and so started 
out sipping and walking, running and chugging.  He did the run in 
a bad time for him, but a nearly unbeatable time for all the semi-
drunk "large" dudes competing in the competition; 8min 24sec.  

Victorious, Dave and I headed back out to the car, and started on 
the road back to Boston.  After a quick U-turn to pick up Daves 
wallet that he left on the treadmill, we were on I-93S, getting 
back to Boston in pretty short order.  I dropped Dave off at his 
place, and headed back to mine to unpack and decompress, a great 
weekend and a camera full of memories at my back.