Weekend of 28MAY11 - ACADIA!!!

Friday -
ACADIA!!! My brain was shouting it out all day long at work, tearing my 
focus away from projects and plans and training, and locking my 
attention solely on leaving early to get an early start on the drive  
up to Acadia in Maine.  I finally left work around 13:30, rushed home, 
packed the car up, and booked it out of town.  I instantly hit massive 
traffic when trying to get onto Storrough, so I rocked all my back-roads 
knowlege to get myself around the worst of the traffic (even running 
into Erin McGuiness again), until I was battering my way through I-93, 
busting out onto I-95, and finally making into Maine.

The Maine portion of the drive was long and slow, though I did get a 
nice break where I stopped in to visit a friend of mine on the road up.  
We hung out and played around in the woods, desecrating some poor kids 
deep-woods campsite and generally acting like horny highschoolers.  
After I got back onto the road I lapsed into my driving coma of 
listening to music and staring into the distance, and before I knew it 
I had passed over the bridge onto Acadian soil.

After I arrived I walked around for a bit, waiting for Daniel and his 
car to finally arrive from Nemo's (a BBQ pit nearby) for us to set up 
camp.  Once everyone was accounted for and camp was set up, we relaxed 
for a bit, and then I started fire-hopping.  I had hoped to start my 
own fire on Friday, but since I was the only one interested in starting 
it up We canceled that plan and I wandered around saying hi to everyone 
instead.  I finally settled down at an old friend of mines campfire 
(Him and 8 or so others I hadn't met before) where I heated up a can of 
Chef Boyardee as a late dinner.

We talked and relaxed while I finished my dinner, passing around a 
bottle of Mead and catching up with everyone.  It had been months since 
I had seen most of these folks, so it was a really great chance to 
reconnect and remember old times, catch up on the present, and plan out 
some new trips for the future.  When I did finally decide to sleep, I 
jumped in my hammock (I actually set up both my tent and my hammock, in 
case I needed a place to change) and was lulled to sleep by the sounds 
of fires crackling and acoustic guitars playing their notes, trying to 
impress the cute new girls.

Summary:
Leave work early
Traffic = hell
Arrive, chill for a bit
Daniel and Co. arrive - set up tent city - chill
No fire, so go fire-hopping and eat Chef
Sleep

Saturday -

I tore myself from my sleeping bag on Saturday after hearing someone 
mentioning that the Bagles were almost gone.  Hell no I wasn't going to 
loose out on Bagles!  I had been awake for an hour or two at that point, 
just dazing off and relaxing.  After I had fully mobilized myself and 
gotten blood flowing again, I made myself a quick bagel with 
creamcheese, stacked up a PB&J&Cheese sandwich with trail mix, and 
headed out to find myself a trip.

Climbers were nowhere to be found this year, and Daniel seemed pretty 
dead-set on not leaving anytime soon, and definitely not climbing, so 
I started hunting around for an interesting hike to join in on.  I 
ended up with Aaron, an old friend of mine best known for his amazing 
chiropracty, epic height (he's 6'9"), and overflowing personality.  We 
searched for some others to join us, found a few cool people, and headed 
out.  Another group was planning on meeting us on the trail, so I gave 
the girls my phone number so they could hunt us down, and then we headed 
out.

Our hike was Flying Mountain, over Acadia Mountain, and continuing 
around a long loop until we found ourselves back at the car.  We met up 
with the girls at a beach where we were hunting for crabs and skipping 
stones, then continued on bagging peaks.  We couldn't hit Acadia 
Mountain since it was full of Falcon nests, but the rest of the hike 
was quite pleasurable and relaxing; nothing too strenuous, but enough 
of a challenge that I was glad to be doing it.  

After the hike we headed into Bar Harbor for a quick Brewery Tour, where 
we got more of a "taste-tour" and less of a "physical-tour".  Not 
complaining though, because the beer there was amazing, and they even 
made us a mix-beer for some extra fun (Black and Blue; a stout and a 
blueberry ale.  Amazing).  After the beer tour, we took a quick wine 
tour, and then headed out perfectly buzzed hoping to rent ourselves 
some bikes and hit the carriage roads quick.  Unfortunately by the 
time we got there they were only an hour and a half from closing, so 
we headed back to camp instead.

While we were waiting for dinner to be ready and for the sky to darken 
enough for the fires to be set, I got a nice big group together for 
some old-fashioned Acadian fun; Beach Volleyball.  We weren't 
technically on a beach , but the campground had a huge sandpit with a 
volleyball net set up, and that was more than enough for us to have 
some fun.  One of the Alumni, Melinda, pulled out her old volleyball, 
we racked up teams, and started in.  My team carried the first game, 
with 8 aces going to be on a single serve rotation (of course, I missed 
almost every other serve after that.  Damnit.)  From there the teams 
started to get a bit more fair, and we continued having an amazing 
time.

The game was brought to a painful halt though, when Melinda collapsed 
with a scream.  In jumping for a spike, she had landed badly, and 
re-dislocated her already damaged knee.  About a year ago she had 
surgery to bring her knee back into alignment, but I guess it didn't 
fully take, because before you knew it I was lending her my tent to 
change her pants (so we had better access to her knee), and strapping 
an icepack onto the kneecap.  A guy named Dennis and I helped her 
around camp for a bit, while the others finished out the game, and 
it was honestly a rather fun time, acting as a palantine bearer for 
once :D

About the same time that Melinda was tucked away into her chair by the 
fire, the "dinner yell" went out, and Mike finally arrived right on 
time for food.  We all lined up for burgers, dogs, mac & cheese, and 
all sorts of awesome food, started up the fire. As we chowed down on 
dinner, we started into the other Acadian Tradition; drinking way too 
much.  I had brought a full bottle of Mead, which was started around 
the fire for everyone to share.  See, everyone brings Rum or Vodka or 
something, but only a few people think to bring Mead to a camping trip.  
I am one of those guys, and before too long I was traveling between 
campfires, sharing the honey-liquor with everyone.  

We spent a lot of time at the Alumni fire, hanging out, listening to 
music, and playing random games of flipcup.  At one point Daniel and 
I cut a hole in a Watermelon, shoved a bottle of Vodka into it, and let 
it sit for an hour or two.  The end goal was a watermelon with enough 
booze in it to knock out a horse, but it turned out that there was way 
too much water already in the melon for the vodka to properly absorb, 
so it just came out minorly alcoholic.  This did nothing to deminish 
our fun though, and the fun went on long into the night.

I did finally crash a bit after midnight though, the world spinning in 
my hammock.  I headed out to the bathroom once, realized I just wanted 
to sleep, and then walked right back to my hammock.  Which, upon 
arriving, I realized was VERY spinny, at which point I made a beeline 
back to the bathrooms to void my stomach of its poisonous contents.  
After puking for a bit I felt much better, and went back to my hammock 
a much happier (and soon to be much more asleep) man.


Summary:
Wake up, try to find climbing, none
Chill for a bit, have breakfast and make lunch
Meet up with Aaron, have 3 groups join + bail
Go hiking, meet with Lisa and co. on the trail
Fun hike
Bar Harbor - Chinese place, awesome drink, share lunch w/Sam, fun with Lisa
Brewery, fun, chilling around
try to go biking, denial, head back to camp
Volleyball - Melinda hurting herself, us carrying her around
Chilling, dinner, fun
Drinking time!  Alumni camp, lots of fun
Midnight celebration, bucket, nope, not happening drunk and sleeping

Sunday - 
I woke up at around 6:20 on Sunday when my phone alarm went off in my 
pocket.  Damn.  I had forgotten to shut that off.  Ohh well, back to 
sleep.  And back to insane dreams, more single images, burned into my 
mind for a second before fading.  First; Lisa was walking up to my tent 
and I vividly remember EXACTLY what she was wearing, but thats all I 
could understand.  Next; I look out of the hammock to see Lobster traps 
covering the campsite.  And this progression of strange images continued 
on, until I finally forced myself to ignore my headache and get out of 
Bed.  

Breakfast was another portion of Bagles with Cream cheese,  during 
which I planned the day out with Daniel, Mike, Lisa, and everyone 
else.  We were to meet in Bar Harbor, pick up the bikes, and then kick 
it around the Carriage roads for the day.  I didn't pack a lunch, 
instead trusting in my handy JetBoil to heat up another portion of the 
all-awesome Chef Boyardee.  After significantly too much time spent 
dicking around, we finally left the campsite around 11:00, and tore 
over to Bar Harbor.

In Bar Harbor we checked into the bike place, but held off on actually 
renting the bikes until we could get a quick bite to eat and a few 
coffee's for Mike and Lisa.  I grabbed a large smoothie to hold back 
the Hunger, Mike grabbed a sandwich wrap for lunch, and then we headed 
back to the bike shop to pick out our rides for the day.  We strapped 
on helmets, mounted up, and headed out into the streets of Bar Harbor.

The ride up to the carriage roads was windy, steep, and on a highway.  
In other words, perfectly fun and a great little warm up for rocking out 
around the carriage roads all day.  I did get a nice little ego boost 
from having to stay slow for Mike and Lisa, but I really shouldn't feel 
too proud of myself, since I do happen to bike literally every day.  We 
walked the bikes a little bit, rode a bit more, and finally arrived at 
the shore of Eagle Lake, where the carriage roads started.

Once on the carriage roads we made pretty good time, although the paths 
were significantly steeper than we were lead to believe.  We took it at 
a fun pace, not rushing anything but not slacking off too hard either. 
We rode and played around for a while, taking some time to take 
pictures, relax, and take some video's of us power-sliding through 
turns and pulling 180s every so often.  We picked out a spot by Witch 
Hole pond to have lunch, which turned out to be an amazing decision, 
and a horrible decision.

See, Witch Hole was really pretty, but it was also infested with little 
bugs.  We had some hefty bugspray on already, but that was only keeping 
them from biting, not stopping them from flying into our eyes and being 
general annoying pests.  So I quickly ate my Chef, Mike devoured his 
wrap, and Lisa chowed down on her... sandwich, I think, and then we 
headed out before we were eaten alive.  The goal was Bar Harbor; since 
we had finished a pretty big loop and it was nearing 16:00, we wanted 
to get back in time to get the half-day rate on the bikes, instead of 
paying the full day price.

We got to the bike shop with 15min to spare, returned the gear, and 
headed into town to hunt ourselves down some Clam Chowder.  We spent a 
good hour relaxing in town, napping on the town green and eating our 
chowder like it was the first meal we'd had in years.  We saw a good 
number of NUHOCers while relaxing, most of which were hunting down ice 
cream, coming back from kayaking, or just relaxing like us.  We debated 
getting some lobster icecream, but in the end decided against it, in 
favor of heading back to camp.

Back at Bass Harbor we started up a new game of volleyball, one that 
Mike Lisa and I clearly dominated the whole time.  Sort of.  Not so
 much.  At one point we had to pause the game so we could rescue a 
frisbee that had gotten stuck in a tree... we tried throwing the 
volleyball at it, climbing the tree, nothing worked.  Nothing, until 
Mr. William Austin (the guy running the weekend) showed up with dark 
sunglasses and a huge fuck-all stick that he used to literally reach 
up and grab the frisbee.  Yeah... Will wins.  Mike Lisa and I then 
headed back to her camp to grab something to drink, and ended up having 
Box Wine in an old washed-out beer bottle, since we couldn't find any 
actual glasses.  Recycling, we do it.

After another few extremely solid games of Volleyball, Mike and I were 
shanghai'd into helping gather firewood for the evenings bonfire.  Mike 
and I hunted down a felled tree, chopped it into a few movable pieces, 
and with some help hauled it all back to camp just in time to start 
eating.  Brian hooked me up with a few extra burgers, since they 
"looked bad" and he didn't want to serve people "ugly burgers".  No 
complaints from me, I ended up getting three or four extras thanks to 
their horrible looks.  

After dinner the fire was starting to go, but it was rough going 
thanks to wet wood, and Sam having lit the fire a bit too early, 
before we were actually able to build it up enough.  Since no one 
else was stepping up to help out, I ended up taking over fire-lord 
duties, getting people to fan certain areas, poking parts that 
required poking, and generally just strategically placing every 
piece of wood I could find onto the fire.  Literally, everything we 
could find.  I don't think a single campsite had a piece of Bark 
left over by the time we were done.

I took a quick break from fire-duties to walk out to the lighthouse 
with Lisa, where we just hung out, relaxed, and discussed life and 
NUHOC... Its a really interesting group when you get to know the 
inner workings, and I'm always amazed to learn more about some of the 
side-groups that hang out with the club.  The dynamics are somehow 
always changing, and yet still in the same paths that they've always 
been... Its amazing, and I'm really surprised more Anthropologists 
haven't come to study us :P

After we got back evertyone had settled down to a perfect chilling 
harmony, with couples paired up around the fire, people chatting 
about the days adventures, and bottles of drink being passed around 
between everyone.  I added my mead and Blackberry Brandy to the 
circle, and sat down to watch the fire for a bit.  We had a few 
interesting incidents with drunk people, including one girl 
alternating between hitting on me, flirting with her boyfriend, 
trying to convince him and I that we should have a threesome, and 
feeling Daniels face while Stef repeatedly introduced herself as 
Daniels Girlfriend.  The best drunk situation was, of course, the 
trashed couples who forgot where they were, started making out, 
fell over, and just continued rolling around beside the fire.  
Luckily a few E-Boarders showed up and helped us move them away 
from the fire, so we didn't have any roast-NUHOCers that evening.

My night was winding down at this point; I had left off control of 
the fire since it was burning quite cheerily on its own, and was 
cuddled up with Daniels older sister Katie.  See... Katie and I 
cuddle up every year at Acadia, and then never talk again.  Its 
sort of a tradition of cock-teasing, but one that I'm willing to 
roll with since its nice to have someone that I know I can rely on 
for wamth and light backrubs :)  I promised her a poem about our o
ne-night-life, and it can be found later on in the post.

As the fire died down Peter and I decided we needed it to go out with 
a BANG instead of a little fizzle, and so we broke out the bacon 
grease.  Pete got two amazing fireballs, but I unfortunately only 
had the dregs to work with, so mine was a much smaller burn.  Still 
really fun for my first time lighting grease-fires though, hehe.  
After the Fireballs people started turning in, and so I headed out to 
make sure Mike was doing ok, since I hadn't seen him in a while.

I found Mike rocking over my the Alumni fire, completely trashed and 
yet somehow still rocking out with some of the best Zepplin riffs 
that I've heard him play... I guess booze really does help creativity.  
I left him to go walk around a little more, but re-met him outside his 
tent where he was helping some of the other folks deal with the remains 
of the drunk couple... the guy had finally woken up and was making his 
way back to his own tent, but the girl was completely gone and unable 
to even wake up, much less get herself back.  So Mike offered up his 
tent and sleeping bag, and he borrowed a spare bag that I had brought 
along.  

It started raining a few minutes after all of us found our ways back 
into our tents, a storm worse than any I'd been out in from recent 
memory.  Brian and I had an impromptu Kareoke party (he had a LOT more 
to drink that I had thought), and then everyone crashed for the evening, 
finally succuming to sleep with the painful knowlege that the weekend 
would be over the next day.  The last line of the day? 

Brian - "Ben, make Katie stop being Patronizing!  She's Patronizing me!"

An Ode to my Acadia snuggle-buddy:
My Acadian cuddle-buddy
We sit together
Curled beside the fire
Embraced againt the cold night
I'll miss this night
Until next year

Summary:
Wake up mostly hungover
relax, some bacon for breakfast
don't make lunch, just grab Mike and Lisa and go biking
bike all around, wow, I'm more in-shape than I thought, arrive
chill biking, lunch of Chef and fun, fork problems, yeah.  
Awesome skidding, shredding the trail, fun times.
head back to Bar Harbor, get Chowder, nap on the lawn
think about beehive, but denial.
back at camp, relax, get a volleyball game started once we get the frisbee down from the tree
VOLLEYBALL!!!
Boxed wine in a beer glass
chilling, burgers, brian hooking me up, start of the fire
I take over the fire, we burn that shit to the ground, good times
Going to the Lighthouse with Lisa
Allie being drunk, with Dennis, with Daniel, with Stef
first drunk couple
second drunk couple
Mike rockin the Alumni fire
relaxing around the bonfire with Katie <-- mmmm... cuddles... put poem here
starting to die down, bacon fireballs
Drunk couple #1 breaking apart
Mike being honorable and drunk, the rain falls, sleep, Brian singing, Katie being patronizing


Monday - 

Monday started out as all Mondays do... unwillingly.  I slept in almost 
an hour after I started heading peoples voices milling around, eating 
and packing up.  I wasn't the worst off though... Poor Mike and Brian 
were both crashed out, only giving painful moans in responce to any 
enquiry.  They had a bit to drink the night before it turns out.  I 
had to spend a bit of time Protecting Brian from Stef, since she 
decided the best remedy for his pain was to run around outside his 
tent screeching "Good Morning!" and kicking his sleeping bag... I'm 
still surprised that Daniel didn't intervene with it.

I comandeered a quick breakfast of Bacon and Eggs from the grill, and 
very slowly started in on packing up my gear.  I gave a few quick tours 
of my Hammock to some curious newcomers, and had pretty much everything 
packed up and ready to go before 10:00... but the last few parts were 
what took the longest.  I helped Sam and Mike out with packing their 
gear, and Mike was actually able to get on the road by 11:00 or so, 
heading back to Boston to get a few quick hours of work done at Lincoln.  
The rest of us relaxed and delayed leaving; going down to the 
lighthouse for a quick sit on the rocks, helping NUHOC pack up and 
pull in the trash, and generally being lazy little bastards.

When we did finally get rolling, I followed Daniel and Co. over to the 
nearest Friendlies, where we had some quick food, and compared pictures 
from the weekend.  And mocked Stef for her vegan-induced inability to 
eat at Friendlies.  Hehe.  We Split up again on the way home, since they 
were going to make a few stops on the way, and I pushed my way through 
Maine and New Hampshire towards Boston.

A few roadblocking accidents, traffic jams, NUHOC vans, and general 
tomfooleration later I finally got back to Boston.  Unpacking took me 
almost an hour, what with having to go through all my gear, pull my 
clothes apart (wet clothes = stuck clothes), and reorganize all the 
gear I hadn't used.  Since I was in my room though, I had access to an 
air conditioner, music, and lots of fun things to drink... so it was a 
quite fitting end to a quick excellent weekend.


Summary:
Wake up slowly
Mike's dead, Brian's dead, hehe... fun times
quick breakfast of eggs and bacon
very slow morning
pack everything up, help Sam pack
go to lighthouse, pictures of water
finish packing
Friendlies!
drive home
its over!