Tag Archives: NUComers 2012

Nov16

NewComers Weekend 2012 Part 3: Ending on a Sunday

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Sunday, 07 OCT 12

 

After a long night of tending the fire and keeping people from “expanding” the fire to other people, I wasn’t going to wake up early. At least I wasn’t planning on it.

But I did… sort of.

9:00 hit, and it hit with the cry of “Hey! LCs! We need drivers! WAKE UP!”

And so, I rolled out of my tent, packed up my gear and a quick lunch, and went about the process of figuring out where I was needed most. The upside of the chaos of NewComers is that it’s not at all difficult to find a trip that could use an extra driver, so within a few minutes I had linked up with a trip heading out to the summit of Mt. Willard.

Mt Willard, for those who don’t know, is one of those hikes that almost feels like you’re cheating – it’s short, not too strenuous, but has one of the best views in all of the white mountains. Seriously, You’ve been walking for barely over an hour, not really gaining any elevation, and then suddenly: Ideal view of the white mountains. A complete 200 degree view, with Mt Washington rising out from a cloud bank and anchoring the left flank.

Since the hike was such a short one, even with the amazing view and a long lunch at the summit, we found ourselves done with the hike and back at the cars quite early. With the rest of a perfect fall day in New England ahead of us, there was really only one thing for us to do.

Pick.

Apples!

So… we did. The upside of being near Maine is that there are tons of little family farms that do the whole “pick your own apples” deal, so we just picked one close to the Loj and wandered around pulling random apples off the gnarled trees lining the lane. Thing I hadn’t known about New England apples – there are dozens, if not hundreds or thousands, of different types of Apple Trees. And each one is just different enough that the orchard had a whole list of information about each different type of tree – how to tell the difference, what the apples were good for, and when in the season to pick them.

When we finally made it back to the Loj we arrived ladened with bags upon bags of apples – I left most of mine in the car, since I was going to head home later in the evening, but the rest of the folks on our trip made a beeline for the kitchen to start transforming the apples into apple crisp.

As they worked on finishing up dessert and starting in on dinner (yeah, we have our priorities straight. What of it?) I made my way around the Loj, saying my initial goodbyes to the people I probably wouldn’t be seeing again before I headed out for the evening.

The dangers of saying early goodbyes is that… they’re never just a goodbye. They turn into discussions and stories, long conversations and heart-to-heart talks. I ended up staying at the Loj until nearly nine at night, just chatting with people and talking about the trips we’d been on and where we wanted to go for our next adventures.

A good way to end a great weekend – discussing not only the fun times in the past, but how awesome the future is going to be.

Nov13

NewComers weekend at the Loj: Part 1

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Part 1: The Arrival.

 

Friday, 05OCT12

 

NewComers (alternatively spelled NUComers) is a rather amazing weekend for NUHOC. Ton’s of people show up to the Loj, and everyone gets to relax, go on adventures, and meet lots of new people. And when I say lots, I mean “triple digits”. I mean “we have people who’ve never been in the woods before”. I mean “It’s freaking amazing”.

Seriously… Some people like mocking others for not having experienced certain things. I disagree – everyone’s a newbie sometime, and seeing someones excitement at seeing real mountains for the first time… it’s amazing! It reminds me of all of my firsts – my first lead climb, my first backpacking trip… it’s amazing and infections and excellent.

Thus, I went up to NewComers. It should have been a pretty simple drive from Danvers, but since I can never do anything simple-ways, I decided to stop by Mike’s place in Somerville first to comandetheer his GoPro camera for the weekend. Mike was working all weekend (dangers of being in a high-tech lab), and so he’d left it hidden in his mailbox for me to grab. And after a nice and roundabout route, I did comandeer it from the foul grips of the mailbox.

The ride up was, in a word, amazing. It’s all about the perfect components coming together at the right time – it was a Friday, I’d had a good week at work, my paychecks had been coming in for a while, and I was on the road early enough to miss the bulk of the Columbus Day traffic. I was feeling really good, and the ride went by rather impressively well. (Ed note: this is one of my favorite drives in the world. See my first or second post for an example as to why).

And to make matters even better – I was the first up at the Loj. I was honestly not expecting this, so it was a bit of a shock when I was setting my tent up in the prime location, with not a soul around. I wasn’t able to relax much though, since almost as soon as my camp was set and ready, people started showing up with truckloads (literally) of food needing to be unpacked. And since I was the only member of the Loj Committee up there so far, it fell to me to open everything up and help organize.

From there, the night turned into a snowball of insanity and excellence. I took it upon myself to be “that LC” for the night – that one alumni who had a big stein of drink, mead in my case, and walks around making sure that no one is lighting themselves on fire. You think I’m joking, but I seriously had to stop a few people from doing things like setting their tents in the middle of the road, or starting fires off in the woods somewhere. It was fun, and getting the chance to help people decipher their tent-instructions was a fun way to start the weekend off. The mead didn’t hurt either.

But the fun couldn’t continue unabated; too soon the whole discussion of trips started in earnest. After listening to far too many possible ideas I simply gave up – leaving the decision of where I’d go and what I’d do to be decided in the morning.

With that, I headed back to my tent and slumber-land. Or… I tried to.

Remember the whole occupy movement? Yeah.

This was “occupy Ben’s tent”.

Seriously, I quickly learned that my “new spot” was actually known as “the complex”, and it’s effectively THE spot to camp out if you’re not interested in sleeping in the Loj. So… to say I wasn’t alone there is an understatement. To say that every square inch of turf was taken up by a tent… that’d be a bit more accurate.

But even with the company, I did crash quite quickly, dreaming to adventure on the day to come.