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I woke up at the crack of 11:30 AM after the forceful deflation of my air mattress and after a sequence of shit-we-forgot’s and two pizzas which were eaten across from surly old people we made out way Northward.

I got to drive Pat’s Rav4 and being in another person’s car the most dangerous thing I did was drink and drive.

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At a previous point I’d taken a picture while driving and holding my iPod, so this is a cakewalk.  Pat and Joe were also strongly opposed to a practice I call “slap steering” which terrifies both of them.

Around 10 PM we stopped at a Target in Augusta to get a 1/8″ patch cable so I could bore everyone with The Economist audio edition.  The hand dryer was quite potent and my hands came away red with windshear.  On our way out, we hit a T-intersection with no obvious path back to the highway so I picked left at random.  This small change resulted in us taking a sequence of country roads, byways, and semi-paved paths to Acadia through the “drive faster, I hear banjos” portion of Maine.  I got bored and started taking long exposures of lights while driving of which some came out well.

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We arrived at Acadia at about 11:30 PM, several hours after the proper closing of the park.  My concern for lateness dropped when I learned there after-hours check in process was “go to a campsite, and tell us sometime the next day that you’re here”.  We entered our gravel-covered campsite and discovered that one was supposed to sleep on the gravel.  Gravel ranks as slightly below a battery of dull steak knives for uncomfortable sleeping surfaces and the hours taken to actually sleep proved this.

Luckily, the rest rooms were exceptional and even included two-ply toilet paper.  The walls also held some of the most erudite graffiti I’ve ever seen including:

  • A spot-on picture of Master Shake
  • A Sierpinski triangle after three iterations
  • I LOVE HUNGARY

  • Eulers Identity

    Euler's Identity

  • “Go Organic” with an arrow pointing to that phrase with the caption “wow, you convinced me”.

I was impressed.

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I don’t vacation well.  I usually get more excited by sitting at home but rarely do I achieve the To Do List slaying I gun for and I’ve slowly learned that I suck at prioritization until the last minute or when someone else is counting on me.  Joe and I talked of going to Nova Scotia over the summer which slowly turned into a few days at Acadia National Park.  I had an secondary goal of visiting some people and somehow Pat Toye was magically available so he became our Day 1 waypoint.

Joe and I left a spot late around 3:30 PM and shot for the icy north.  Entering NY was an absolute clusterfuck as we tooled along for 20 miles at 10 MPH.  We saw the following:

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And

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Yep, her other car is a broom.  After idling past Scarsdale I fumed at some 200 car pile-up causing the delay when we crested a hill and there the pile-up was.  Not quite 200, but enough to generate a gaper delay that shaved two hours off my life.

We met A.C.E, aka Richard Mercier at Braza, a Brazilian steakhouse in Hartford with the standard gimmick of all food coming from servers with the appropriate meat cut skewered on giant 3-bladed rapiers/sais.  I destroyed a hearty collection of sausages and various meats wrapped in other meats.  I was disappointed to learn that desserts were not served in the same manner and was hoping to see a sword impaling a collection of cheesecakes.

A.C.E mentioned his love of hot wings and brought up some wing joint in Philly with egregiously hot wings.  I began thinking if the hotness would be enhanced by simply using pepper spray on a wing before serving it and thought of starting a business as a pepper spray sommelier for those wanting a more refined tongue-incinerating experience.  Before leaving the restaurant I asked if we’d missed any of the food items to which the host said matter of factly “no, sir.  You ate everything.”  I don’t know in what sense he meant “everything” but I wouldn’t be surprised if there were an airlift from Munich as an emergency restock after I leveled their sausage reserves.

Afterword we hit A.C.E’s house where none of my pictures of his mint-green pool were properly illuminated.  His wife “the Warden” is a wonderful gal and loves to have her picture taken and does an awesome impression of Samara from the Ring.

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A.C.E has a minute computer monitor and I’m not terribly sure how he plays TF2.   I think I’ll start a collection for a real one leading up to his wedding.

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I suppose to a certain extent that was made up for by his much larger DVD collection.

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A collection he rarely gets to peruse for the following reason:

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All my photos of Richard sucked so….

We departed Richard’s home around midnight and arrived at Pat’s Vermont home at 2:00 AM.  Joe and I were immediately struck by the quantity of celestial pinpoints apparently called “stars”.  There are few in Philadelphia and I think we should look into importing them.  We went to bed around 4 AM, about 2 hours after Pat first saying “maybe we should go to sleep soon” and three hours after Joe shared a moment with Pat’s cat.

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I took up residence on an inflatable floor mat and day 1 was done.

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I’ve passed around several emails regarding my upcoming trip to Main-anada but was looking for the specific message where I outlined the day-by-day.  I couldn’t find it initially until I remember Joe replied with “I LIKE TURTLES” for seemingly no reason.  A quick search for “turtles” yielded that message a 10% coupon for TMNT figures from Amazon.  Joe’s non-sequitor responses have been quite useful in in finding specific messages.  If I need to find my list of recommended camping places I can just look up “DRY SLAM”.

Be a friend, use odd email responses.  Not only do they confirm that the email was received and reviewed but they make for easy indexing. NARBONUCULAR!

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JJ Abrams Star Trek was a 12.  Easily blowing away First Contact and Undiscovered Country as my favorite.  Some notes:

  • When Chekov Harold Zulu Sulu raises his hand to indicate his skill in hand-to-hand combat he should have shouted “pick me, I’m Asian!”
  • Spock has cauliflower ear, he didn’t previously.  Probably got it kickin’ ass and taking apostrophed names on Vulcan.
  • JJ Abrams either bought a lens flare plugin for FinalCut Pro or bought them in bulk from Costco
  • The navigational deflectors didn’t deflect the debris around Vulcan

In other news I found that the guy I slyly called a jerk at the Neshaminy Red Robins remembers me from January.  Time to grow a beard and wear sunglasses or start going to the red Robins in Oxford Valley.  I’m kinda impressed/scared he remembered an offhanded comment made to a server via napkin from four months ago.

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Tom Foulds, a friend of mine from many moons ago, got married on Saturday and the wedding was spectacular… all 15 minutes of that.  Mind you, I’m not complaining.  It was beautiful, the speaking selections were well chosen, and when the JoP said “selfish love” instead of “self-less love” everyone laughed politely.  I do feel obliged to send Rutgers a donation to the 130 year old Kirkpatrick Chapel was not designed for large men with steeltoed shoes navigating the pews.  I may have left my mark…

The reception was interesting, notes:

  • One guy looked like Ron Paul’s stunt double
  • The ice sculpture was illuminated with a heat lamp
  • The band committed the cardinal sin of singing Van Morrison such that you could make out the words and singing Billy Joel such that you couldn’t.
  • The five mildly inebriated bridesmaids dancing to a random Latin song looked like a scene from Fantasia (observation courtesy of Leon Duminiak)
  • There was a wad of raspberry chewing tobacco the size of a man’s fist in the sink of the ground floor bathroom
  • The opening band numbers were awesome with one guy playing a clarinet, soprano sax and what looked like a sacbut, and then he switched to some electronic instrument that sounded like the woodwind equivalent to a Casio MusiMagic keyboard.

Joe and I took some pretty pictures of the reception place:

[flickr album=72157617887085697 num=30 size=Thumbnail]

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A conversationlet of the following first few lines occurred after a 5-Color event a month or so ago.  I mentioned this to Joe Naylor who found it quite funny and after we had some embellishment got something that could possibly turn into a Whitest Kids You Know skit.

Person 1: Wow, they really gave me a lot of marinara sauce with my shrimp.
Person 2: Really? How much?
Person 1: I’ve gone through all of my entree dipping each bite before consuming.
Person 2: Did you dip your balls in it just to make sure?
Person 1: Of course.
Person 2: You should alert our waiter.  Waiter!
Waiter: Yes?
Person 1: You gave me an excessive amount of marinara sauce.
Waiter: Ok.
Person 1: I even dipped my balls in it as a last measure and there’s still quite a bit left.
Waiter: Well, that is quite a problem.  I apologize for giving you too much marinara such that even after dipping your balls in it there’s still too much.  Might I interest you in a courtesy piece of pie for your inconvenience?
Person 1: And….
Waiter: And a finger bowl into which you can dip your marinara-covered balls.
Person 1: Thank you.

I wonder how it could turn into a campfire skit.

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Kyle, Joe and I decided to visit Bill Schilling in his camp oubliette and we arrived early at Giant to meet up with him so we hit Wawa for superfluous energy drinks.  Joe and I seem completely unaffected by  them but we enjoy the trainwreck-like pull of their flavors ranging from something akin to burnt Mountain Dew to fermented bull urine.  Needing to kill more time we pick an appropriate mix to go with our Rockstar drinks, which I think is made largely of caffeine and drummer sweat.  So what line and so is blairing on the radio when I roll down my window to talk to Bill? “I’m all out of love, I’m so lost without you…“  from All Out of Love by Air Supply.  Timing, I has it.  To regain our lost masculinity we watched Prescilla, Queen of the Desert and debated proper appletini technique.

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I don’t want to say the staff reunion was a disappointment, Joe, Dan, Dave, Ed, Marc and myself could have just eaten pizza at CFS and I would have been happy but more people would have been enjoyable.   After two hours of volleyball involving feets of fat-crobatics like Chris Rinelli mocking somone then eating volleyball or Joe Naylor, Pat Toye and I making it appear that Bob Fosse was fielding a corpulent volleyball/dance troupe.

Later we played Scrabble and after staring at ACEILLH and thinking “ACHILLES” isn’t legal, like in a dream HELICAL came to me.  I did a word check found CHALLIE to exist and BAM 78 points.  Maybe I should give up Scrabble so soon.

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I don’t want to say the staff reunion was a disappointment, Joe, Dan, Dave, Ed, Marc and myself could have just eaten pizza at CFS and I would have been happy but more people would have been enjoyable.   After two hours of volleyball involving feets of fat-crobatics like Chris Rinelli mocking somone then eating volleyball or Joe Naylor, Pat Toye and I making it appear that Bob Fosse was fielding a corpulent volleyball/dance troupe.

Later we played Scrabble and after staring at ACEILLH and thinking “ACHILLES” isn’t legal, like in a dream HELICAL came to me.  I did a word check found CHALLIE to exist and BAM 78 points.  Maybe I should give up Scrabble so soon.

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I enjoy the onslaught of emails, calls and Facebook messages I receive around the holidays from former high school associates.  Their saccharine sentiment that makes them feel like they’re doing missionary work from the Church of Cool that usually goes something like “hey gang!  It’s your arrogant friend who left for the big city.  I’m going to be inyour backwater hovel for a week and want to give you the honor of  hearing me wax idiotic about how worldly I am now.”

Normally my response ranges from silence to “I hope you die of amoebic dysentery in a ditch” but Joe Naylor has provided another option: “Isn’t my face red. I’ve been so busy being useful to society and accomplishing things like not being a douch that I forgot you existed.” I think I may try this take as a New Year’s resolution. What tactics do you use?