Roughin' It - the Real Thing

I just got back from a camping trip with the Boy, a couple of his friends, and a bunch of his friends' friends (16 people in total). We all met up in White Plains early Monday morning and caravanned to Lake George. This was my first camping trip ever, and boy was I excited!! Lake George was gorgeous. Foliage was already starting, and the trees were covered with lime green, bright yellow and reddish leaves. We had 5 camp sites located close to the beach and a nostalgic looking dock on the lake. The entire place reminded me of Lake Tahoe. Upon arrival, everyone set up their tents. The Boy and I borrowed camping equipment from a friend who supplied us with two very warm sleeping bags and the mother of all tents. It was a huge tent meant to house 6 people (more guests than our teeny tiny Manhattan apartment can squeeze)!

On the first day, we all sort of did our own thing, as campers trickled in at various times. The Boy and I scouted out our camp area, enjoying the lake view on the dock, locating the showers, and walking in the woods. Evening came quickly, as we spent about half the day driving, and it was time to start a campfire to make dinner. Campfires are quite hard to start. The logs take forever to catch on fire, and they burn out if you don't know what you're doing. Luckily, we had a few boyscouts with us who knew how to start fires. We all cringed as they practically stuck their faces into the flames and blew to make the fire bigger. Dinner that night consisted of roasted hot dogs and burgers, all expertly prepared by the Boy who whipped out his arsenal of seasonings to flavor the meat.

After dinner, we all lounged by the fire for a bit before turning in. This was my first night ever sleeping outside. And it rained. It poured. But thanks to the warm sleeping bags and our handy dandy mansion of a tent, it was very comfortable. I fell asleep to the pelting sounds of rain hitting the tent and loved it.

The next day, we woke up and ate a breakfast of instant coffee, rice krispy treats, granola bars, pop tarts, brownies, oatmeal and fruit (no, I didn't eat all of that!) before driving off to a part of the lake where we could rent canoes. We canoed on the lake in teams of three for a couple of hours. I never knew that each person in the canoe has a specific function, and that there is a specific technique to employ in order to steer the boat properly. The person in the front controls the speed, the person in the back controls the direction and the middle person doesn't matter. The boys put me in the middle. Damn sexist pigs! Unfortunately, no one in my boat was aware that these techniques even existed, and the boyscouts paddled off in their teams, leaving us behind and forgetting to coach us on what to do.

We had no control over the boat. We all paddled in different directions at different times, and I'm pretty sure that we occasionally paddled against each other. We were a completely uncoordinated crew and completely unaware of this until we found ourselves in the middle of the lake stuck in a current. We were stuck, couldn't paddle ourselves out and at the mercy of the waves to take us back to the dock. At this point, we decided to stop paddling and wait for the waves to settle. It was nice, floating in the middle of the lake, enjoying the water and the lush foliage that surrounded us. But our brief moment of tranquility (it lasted about 10 seconds) was cut short when a huge speed boat came ripping through the waves out of nowhere. It was aimed directly at us and threatened to capsize our little canoe. We had to think fast and get ourselves out of there. The boys immediately dipped their oars into the water and paddled to no avail. It was then that a *brilliant* idea dawned on me:

Guys, guys. We've tried to turn the boat left so many times, and it never works. The boat just won't turn left. So, why don't we just paddle on the other side and see if the boat will turn right instead?

Hmm...alright.

So, we switched which side we all paddled on and ... right! The boat turned right! We paddled the boat right until its nose was pointed in the right direction just in time for the residual current of the speed boat to push us along to shore. We then found the boyscout campers who showed us how to steer a canoe, and it was smooth sailing for the rest of the day!

Nightfall came, and it was time to roast marshmallows and tell stories by the fire. The storytellers were good. Real good. They told it like it was true, and I believed it all. I couldn't believe that I hadn't thought of this the night before, feeling so safe in a flimsy little tent. It made perfect sense that the forest at Lake George was the premier site for axe murderers and mental patients to be running around, ready to claim their next victim. This freaked me out! I couldn't sleep. I woke up many times in the night, annoyed each time that the Boy was taking this so lightly, fast asleep! Couldn't he hear the footsteps outside the tent!? Didn't he see the shadows all over?! Nope. I'd have to protect us both. He was so fast asleep that he was snoring.

It rained heavily the next morning. We tried to wait it out under a tarp tied to the trees, but it wasn't letting up, so we let the rain drench us as we packed up our gear and headed home.











































A Short Vignette:

Setting: Saturday morning after our first night camping. The Boy was already up and dressed.

The Boy whispered for me to wake up and join everyone for breakfast. I reluctanly agreed to wake and get dressed. The Boy left the tent and wandered around outside. I changed out of my PJ's and into jeans and a long sleeved tee. The Boy had left my shoes inside the tent before the door.

As I stuck my right foot into the sneaker and pulled the laces, I noticed a green appendage about an inch and a half long and about a quarter of an inch wide sticking out of the shoe's lip at a 45 degree agle.

Hmm...I don't remeber this being there. It looks like it could be a decorative part, and it matches the shoe quite well. But I really don't remember this being there. Ah, I'll compare it to the other shoe, and if it matches, then I guess it's a part of the shoe I never noticed.

I pulled the other shoe over and looked at its lip.

Nothing there. Nothing there at all. But, if there's not a matching part on the other shoe, and I don't remember it ever being there before, then...it...must...be...

***Complete hysteria***

Visit From an Out of Town Friend

Last weekend, an old coworker/friend came to visit, giving me a chance to play tour guide once more. In just two and a half days we covered so much! Of course, it helped that we reconnected with another old coworker/friend living on the Upper West side who relieved me of my duty of knowing my way around for a day. Our itinerary:

Friday: Lunch at the Aquagrill (mmm! oysters!), cocktails at an Asia Society mixer in the Upper East Side, dinner at Cafe D'Alsace. While I was at work, my friend shopped in Soho and walked all the way to Downtown Manhattan and across the Brooklyn bridge and back!

Saturday: The Met, stroll through Central Park, lunch at Buchon Bakery in the Time Warner Center (here is where our former coworker/current friend joined us), Times Square, Bryant Park, New York Public Library, Fifth Avenue window browsing, St. Patrick's Cathedral, Rockefeller Center, Broadway play (Hairspray), topped off with some late night drinks and appetizers.

Sunday: Rode the Staten Island ferry to get a nice city skyline view, got lost, walked around South Street Seaport, got lost, bumped into and mowed down a few people in Chinatown (it's too damn crowded there!), got lost, got gelato in Little Italy, got lost, drinks at Union Square, dinner at Oh Taisho! in Astor place, and more drinks at Union Square.

Sunday ended with us meeting my Brooklyn friend in Union Square for one last drink. My visitor exclaimed to my Brooklyn friend that I was such a wonderful tour guide and showed her all over the city. Hmmm...the heavy dose of sightseeing done flawlessly on Saturday with our other friend leading and me pretending to lead seemed to have obliterated the fact that I was lost in between every sight on Sunday. At this, I smiled and kept quiet...until my Brooklyn friend shot me the same confused look I get on my face when asked for directions. To that, I guiltily confessed.

Martha's Vineyard

The Boy and I spent the second day of our Cape Cod area tour at Martha's Vineyard. The weather started out cold and drizzly. I was a bit disappointed at this, as I was hoping that the Labor Day weekend would bring sunny enough weather to lounge around on the beach in my new bikini. But I suppose it was better that this didn't happen. I wasn't too successful in fixing the color on my legs, and I'm sure the blotchiness and stark color contrasts would have drawn quite a few shocked and disgusted looks. I'd be the girl on the beach that everyone would whisper about: "She shouldn't be allowed in a bikini. "

The ferry ride was extremely windy and rainy up on deck, but surprisingly smooth and tranquil on the bottom level. The rain subsided when we landed at Martha's Vineyard which reminded me of Catalina Island. The Boy and I rented bikes and did a 9 mile stretch from Oak Bluffs to Edgartown, stopping along the way to enjoy the different sights of the two towns. My favorite was the "gingerbread cottages", a collection of gaudily decorated cottages in Oak Bluffs:

The ride from Vineyard Haven where the ferry dropped us off to Oak Bluffs was nice and smooth, but as we continued riding along the coast from Oak Bluffs to Edgartown, the winds blew fiercely against us. Even with a slight decline in the road, we were pedaling furiously on the road to nowhere. In fact, we were pedaling so as not to get blown backward along our course. My thighs were killing me, and it didn't help that I knew we were barely covering any ground. I gave up after a mile of this torture and began walking the bike. As we got closer to Edgartown, the winds died down, and we hopped back onto our bikes, riding through these scenes:

The Cape

They Boy and I spent the Labor Day weekend in Cape Cod and Martha's Vineyard. We left early Saturday morning for a four hour drive from New York City to Fairhaven, MA where our hotel was located. The drive was nice, as traffic was pretty light and the view scenic. The night before, the Boy and I packed a roadtrip feast of pretzels, cheeze nips, kit kat bars, egg salad sandwiches (deliciously prepared by the Boy), pasta salad (expertly prepared by me), peanut butter sandwiches, water and Odwalla bars. We checked into our hotel at around 10:30AM, and took a 20 minute nap before driving to Cape Cod to check out its various towns. The first stop a town in the Upper Cape called Sandwich, a museum town. Almost all sights and attractions in Sandwich were turned into a museum. They Boy and I aren't big museum people, so we just walked/drove around the town and took a bunch of pictures:
















Next, we drove across the Middle Cape to Chatham to check out a lighthouse, walk around a quaint, little shopping area and splash around at the beach. Chatham is a cute place with a central shopping area/attraction reminiscent of a beach town. The place was trafficky, and we had to circle around to find parking. We hung around the shopping area a bit, popped in and out of a couple of stores and then decided to see their beach and famous lighthouse. It's funny how your perception of what's walkable and what's not differs so much from person to person. Not wanting to give up our parking spot only to look for another in an impossibly crowded area, we were hoping that someone would tell us that the lighthouse was a reasonable walk away. We asked a young lady in a convenience store, who told us that it was a little ways down the road. We asked how far, and she referred our question to an older gentleman who emphatically said that it was not walking distance. He estimated that it was two miles away, to which the young lady disagreed and said it was walkable. We left the two to argue and began the two mile hike to the beach. About 10 minutes (3-4 blocks) later, we were there. Two miles my ass! I don't know that it exceeded 3/4 of a mile. The beach was scenic, but it was a windy day. We dipped our feet into the water, and spent the rest of the time enjoying the views:
























After this, it was back in the car for us as we headed out to Provincetown at the northeastern tip of the Cape. We made a quick stop along the way to see a famous lighthouse at Truro:

A short while later, we were at Provincetown-my favorite of all the little towns. Provincetown is a very lively, energetic beach town with lots of little shops and seafood restaurants. After I picked up a little saltwater taffy at one of the cute candy stores, the Boy and I were hungry for dinner and eyeing an extremely crowded lobster restaurant with a line out the door. We took a beeper and walked around for a little while until we got too hungry and opted to try out a highly recommended seafood shack (Frommer's) in Wellfleet called Moby Dick's. The Boy had an extremely fresh and meaty lobster, while I munched on fries and a juicy lobster roll. Mmmm! This concluded our tour of Cape Cod. The next day we'd take a ferry to Martha's Vineyard.