Paperback Writer

The forecast for Florida during our stay:

Day One: A low of 43 degrees (did I mention it’s currently ten below zero right now? 43 degrees would seem like heaven) and a high of 71 degrees.  70% change of thunderstorms.  Perfect flying weather.  I am focusing on the low of 43 degrees.  Everything else is gravy, right?

Day Two: Low 47 with a high of 69.  With sun.  Lots and lots of sun.

Day Three: Low 51 degrees (I just giggled like a school girl) and highs in the low 70’s.  More sun.

Day Four: A low of 58 degrees and a high of 75 with partly cloudy skies.  You know what that means…mostly sunny skies.

The highest temperature for the Mount Washington Valley during the same time frame is 44 degrees.  This will happen the day we leave and will be followed by another round of below freezing temperatures.  Not below zero temperatures (thank goodness. I am so over below zero temperatures) but still, below freezing.

The one and only downside to all these warm temperatures and sunny skies is that I’m actually going to have to wear shorts.  This means I’m going to have to shave my legs.  This is really only a problem because we’re trying to pack smartly and lightly as to avoid having to check baggage and pay the baggage fees.  I’m pretty sure the TSA site said disposable razors were all right but I’d really hate to end up pissing them off.  Plus, I really hate disposable razors.

Maybe I’ll just buy something when I get down there.  And then leave it there.

The carry on only plan means I will also have to be smart about what clothes I pack.  I like to bring extra clothes when I go because I like to  have options.  Tomorrow when I fill whatever bag I decide to bring, I’ll have to put together outfits but sometimes, once I get to where I’m going, I just don’t feel like wearing those outfits anymore.  I was thinking about bringing two pairs of jeans (wearing one on the plane, packing the other) but that extra pair of jeans will take up room that could be used for other garments.

I hate packing.  Hasn’t anyone yet invented a suitcase which will pack itself?  Because I would buy one.  I really would.

And then there’s the other things I like to take with me.  I usually have a backpack just filled with books, notebooks, writing utensils and book lights (you know, in case one breaks, I like to have a back up).  If there was ever a time to have a Kindle, right?  I am not bringing my laptop which means I will not be blogging unless I commandeer The Man’s laptop.  I should probably limit myself to bringing just the one book.  The purpose of the trip is to visit with The Man’s grandparents.  I can’t imagine I’ll have oodles of free time apart from being trap on the damn plane (I’m not much of a flying fan).  One book would probably be sufficient.

Speaking of books, and this is a completely unrelated side note, but the fifth volume of George R.R. Martin’s Song of Ice and Fire series, A Dance With Dragons was issued a release date today.  And it’s coming out this year.  In a handful of months even (July 12th).  And GRRM fans everywhere rejoiced.  I have very much enjoyed the first four books in this series so I am very much looking forward to getting my hands on the next one.  (I heart Jon Snow.  And Tyrion Lannister.)  I’d also like to get my hands on HBO before April when the television series based on these books premieres.  Entertainment Weekly had an exclusive and extended trailer on their site today.  I watched a few (dozen) times and then had to wipe up an unsightly pile of drool from my desk.  I begged The Man to get HBO just for the duration of the series’ season but he laughed scoffingly at me and then left the room.

Utterly unfair.

But that doesn’t have anything to do with packing.

See, this is why I am such a bad packer.  I get distracted by something, anything, just so I don’t have to pack because I hate it so.  And then when I do actually get something into the suitcase, I end up having to take it all back out again to make sure I made the right decisions.  It rightfully drives The Man crazy.

Tomorrow I plan to distract myself by posting the much anticipated pictures of my big ass storyboard monstrosity thing.  (It’s not quite 100% done but it’s as close as it’s going to get before this trip.)  I honestly can’t stop looking at it.  If the airline tickets were refundable, I’d probably cancel the trip just so I could stay home and stare at it some more.

I am very pathetic, I know.

Heather and I made our now annual pilgrimage to King Richard’s Faire yesterday.  I was up at 4am.  I didn’t want to be up at 4am but, alas, awake I was.  It didn’t make me happy because I knew it was going to be a very long day and I was going to need my sleep.

Oh well.

Last year, when we went, it was a little wet.  And by ‘a little wet’, I of course mean it was a frakking monsoon.  It was raining so hard that by the time we actually got down to Carver, MA (a four hour drive, mind you), they had closed the faire.  When they close the faire, they only take in the signs announcing that you have arrived in the right place so Heather and I spent a good amount of time driving up and down route 53 in Carver looking for the damn thing.   We stopped when we talked to Joe who reported that the announcement that the faire had been closed was posted on their website.

Now that I have a smarter-than-me phone, we will not have that problem in the future.

But we didn’t have that problem this year either because yesterday it was sunny, it was hot, it was over 80 degrees in the shade.  Are you kidding me, people?  I don’t even know how to dress for a ren faire (because I don’t go in costume) when it’s sunny and 80 degrees in the shade.  I’ve never been to the ren faire when it’s been so nice and warm.  I’ve been when it’s nice and cool, classic New England weather and I’ve been when it’s nice and wet (not monsoon weather but a nice steady mist) but never when it’s hot.  So for the first (and probably last) time, I went to the ren faire wearing shorts and a tank top.

We left early, around 7am, and had to stop at the ATM to get some cash.  This is when some suicidal pigeon actually walked into my tire.  This was followed by me driving over a curb (just a little one) and then a suicidal squirrel running right out in front of the car.  And that was all before we’d even left town.

We got to Massachusetts without further incident (apart from the two large dogs who went screaming across the road) but got a little lost when we got off the highway an exit too early and ended up driving on some narrow back roads between the towns of Carver and Kingston, MA saying “I don’t think this is where we meant to go…”

It wasn’t.

We did find our way to the faire eventually though and found it easily as it was marked with big giant signs and a police officer whose sole purpose in life was to direct traffic in and out of the event.

We were greeted by singing and dancing and general frivolity and silliness.  I looked at Heather and said, “Joe would be in hell.  If he was here, he’d be going to sit and wait in the car right about now.”

This is, of course, a moot point as Joe would never agree to ever go to any Ren Faire ever.  Heather’s beau, by the way, has been to the Ren Faire before.  He went dressed as a robot.  I find this to be the most awesome thing quite possibly ever.

Anyway, I have to say that the Ren Faire is always a little raunchy.  Always.  It’s part of the fun.  But this year, as you’ll see as you proceed through the remainder of this blog, it was particularly bad this year.  This was the PG-13 Ren Faire, home of the double entendre.  The recurring theme repeated by many of the performers was (and I am dead serious), “if your kids get the joke, it’s not our fault!”

That said, my mission at the faire was to find a matching pair of short swords.  I don’t know if I have mentioned this before, but I seriously love medieval weaponry.  I have in my house a very nice selection of daggers and a couple of swords.  One is a replica of the William Wallace sword (Braveheart).  This sword I cannot, you know, lift.  One is a much smaller sword that my brother and sister-in-law picked up for me so I would have one that I could swing around more safely.  I have to say ‘more safely’ because well, because I have a track record of damages (all to inanimate objects, I swear!) when I have a sword in hand.

And now I want a matching pair of short swords.  The reason behind this is…something I’ll discuss in another blog.  Because this blog is about the Ren Faire and the unexpected times we had there.  We started off the day wandering and looking at all the weaponsmiths.  I’m expecting the short swords to just speak to me.  I’ll see them and know they’re the ones I want.  I know this sounds weird and I tried not to bore Heather too much by it.

Eventually, we ended up wandering into the corset shop where we were immediately offered a measurement for a corset.  We both said yes, what the hell.  My number (your waist measurement minus a couple of inches) is 23.  Then we were offered a deluge of corset information by a woman who reminded me of Estelle Getty in the movie Mannequin (remember that one?).  She was wearing a corset that really showed off her…uh…assets, and even had some money rolled up and stuffed in there between the girls.  It was one of those train wreck situations where you don’t want to look but you just can’t look away.  She told us of all the places she wears her corset (and there were a lot of them) and how last season she sold corsets to a bunch of surgical  nurses who then wore their corsets under their scrubs into surgery and how their backs didn’t hurt.  Now, I don’t think this woman was lying and I’m all for things that make your back not hurt, but the idea of nurses wearing corsets into surgery is well, it’s funny.

Heather and I browsed the corset selection and repeatedly turned down Estelle’s offers to tie us into a corset and left without rearranging our internal organs mostly because they were a minimum of $150 and if I was going to spend that much money at the ren faire, it would be on weaponry and not on a corset that I don’t have the chutzpah to wear.

We found our way to one of the many shows offered during the course of the faire.  This one was a man who called himself Jacques Ze Whipper (he doesn’t seem to have a website but he is on Facebook…look him up!).  He does an act with whips, like a medieval French Indiana Jones (he’s from Boston, by the way).  This one was pretty family friendly and highly entertaining.  We spent a lot of time watching him use a whip to break spaghetti into little teeny tiny pieces and yelling “oui, oui!”

After Jacques Ze Whipper, we went over to the leathergoods shop right next door.  As we walked over, we were talking about weaponry (yes, again) and whether it was weird that I was being so damn picky about my matching pair of short swords (we agreed not.).  Hanging right outside the shop was a very skimpy leather outfit.  I pointed it out to Heather and said, “Well, if I came home wearing that, Joe wouldn’t notice how much weaponry I bought.”

“You should try it on,” the store’s greeter said, looking and sounding all too entirely eager to help me into it.

“No thanks, I’m good,” I said and we pressed further into the store.

On the back wall were a number of halter top/corset looking things and it was while we were checking them out that we were approached (and when I say ‘approached’, I more mean ‘accosted’) by one of the saleswomen.  The following exchange happened:

“You have awesome boobs,” the saleswoman said to me.

Excuse me?

I looked around to see if the woman was talking to someone else.  She wasn’t.  I invariably looked down at my chest afterward, to see if they had somehow changed from what they had been that morning.  They hadn’t.  I looked at the girl, confused.

“I’m going to dress you in this,” the girl announced, selecting a blue halter corset contraption from the wall.

Huzzah?

“No, you’re not,” I said.  “But thank you.  I think.”

Then we had a “Yes, I am”, “No, you’re not” conversation where the girl tried really, really hard to get me to say yes to letting her lace me up in whatever the hell she was holding.  The second time that day that a woman begged me to let her tie me into something.

Strangest.  Ren.  Faire.  Ever.  And it wasn’t even noon yet.

“It’ll only take three seconds!” she exclaimed.

“I’ll pass,” I said.  “But thanks.  I think.”

So the girl then turned to Heather.  “How about you?”

Heather was more game than I and so she said yes.  The girl dressed Heather in purple halter corset.  It took longer than three seconds.  When the girl looked at me, in obvious disgust for my lack of good sportsmanship, and said, “You would’ve taken three seconds”, Heather responded with “What are you trying to say?”

But wait.  It gets better.

So, the girl finishes lacing Heather into the halter corset thing and then comes back to face Heather and instructs her to do a little adjusting.  Heather did so but she apparently didn’t do enough because then the girl took it upon her self to undo the buttons on Heather’s blouse and reached right in to Heather’s camisole to do the adjustments herself.  Heather and I exchanged looks of surprise because Heather and I were somewhat stunned, Heather even more so than I.

“Don’t you usually get dinner first?” I asked.

So just as soon as Heather was freed from the purple leather halter torture device, we took off.  I sent Joe a text to let him know that I have awesome breasts (he maintains that’s what he’s been trying to tell me the whole time) and Heather sent her beau a text to let him know that the corset lady got to second base with her (his response was:  “Um…how?).  We looked at more swords and watched a juggling duo known Juggle This.  They were pretty funny.  Very sarcastic and I always do appreciate good sarcasm.  My favorite was probably when the next stage over started playing a Lady Gaga song and one of them stopped, put a hand on his hip and looked at the stage saying, “Lady Gaga at the ren faire?  Really?”

So it would seem.

We went and watched the King’s tournament and cheered for the black knight who rode around the ring muttering things like, “I hate these stupid games!”  I do so love a malcontent.

After lunch, we watched a couple of other shows, including Jacques Ze Whipper again (this time teamed up with the master of torture who not only drove a nail up his nose (yes, really) but also ate fire and then breathed fire.), and then ended our day with The Mud Show.

The whip and torture show was listed as a PG-13 show and was so announced at the start of the show so any concerned parents could remove their tiny innocent children (and a couple did so).  There was no such announcement at the Mud Show.  And there should have been.  There really should have been although I also would not have argued if they rated this show R because it was that raunchy.  The Mud Show was dirty in every sense of the word.

Now, Heather and I are not prudish or anything but we did not enjoy this show.  In fact, just as soon as the people sitting on the benches surrounding us (and trapping us) stopped surrounding us, we left.

We had more important things to do because now that we were through with the ren faire, we were on our way to Boston and Mike’s Pastry.  I’ve blogged about Mike’s Pastry before so I don’t need to do so again but it’s totally worth the somewhat out of the way trip we had to take to get there.  And, truth be told, it was only so out of the way because Heather and I missed the exit that would lead us to I-95 and the MBTA station for which we were looking and ended up instead on I-93.

We figured it out.  Eventually.  And then we figured out where we were supposed to be.  Eventually.

The point is we still came home with a big box of pastries (Heather got cannolis, I bought cookies and brownies), enjoyed dinner at Quincy Market and got to eavesdrop on what was possibly the funniest monologue in recent memory on our way back to the car.  I won’t write it all for you mostly because it’s getting later in the day and I still  have to read the last three hundred pages of The Girl Who Kicked The Hornet’s Nest (booooooorrrrrriiiiinnnnngggg, by the way) before tomorrow when it’s due back at the library.  The moral of the girl’s subway monologue is that we’re all basically bisexual.  Her evidence?  Girls check out other girls all the time.

This stuck me as even funnier when one considered I’d spent most of the day walking around the ren faire  surrounded by women who had put their whatnots on display for the world to see.  Whether or not they should have.  And, I have to say, for the most part, they shouldn’t have.

Because not everyone has such an awesome rack as me.  Apparently the corset girl should spend some more time checking out other women because then she would know just how very wrong she was.

Huzzah!

I’d like to apologize for the lack of vacation blogging.  I know how very much y’all clamor for it but the WiFi here in the townhouse is…well, lacking would probably be an apt description.  Sometimes it has other ideas than I about how much blogging I’ll be doing.  So that’s why this one’s a couple of days late.

But it’s not always the WiFi.  I didn’t blog about what we did Monday because we didn’t do anything on Monday.  It rained and rained a lot so we went out for lunch where our waitress forgot about us and then took the shuttle back to Southwest Harbor (otherwise known as the home of the giant chocolate chip cookies).  I was a little hungover, the same kind of hangover I always seem to get whenever I drink whiskey.  This hangover makes me a little nauseated and a little mean (woe is the waitress who forgets about us then)… Hmmm… wonder if there’s a lesson in there somewhere?  Anyway, Monday was overall boring.  But Tuesday?  Tuesday was far from it because Tuesday was the day of the Mega Hike.  To properly pronounce this, one should imagine an announcer at a monster truck rally.

Mega Mega Mega Hike!

MEGA HIKE is the eight mile, six peak excursion I had planned for us before this trip.  If you’ll remember, it hit a small snag because the peregrine falcons are busy making little peregrine falcons and a couple of the trails integral to MEGA HIKE were ruled out of bounds.  But, as I was determined to make MEGA HIKE a reality, I came up with an alternate route that ended up adding just a little bit of mileage to the original plan (all right, maybe two whole miles).  I maybe just didn’t mention that part of it to Joe.   Don’t get me wrong, I did attempt to have this conversation with him but he agreed with me.  It was just better if he didn’t know.

Here’s an account from the day:

5:00am:  I’m awake.  I don’t want to be awake but I am, in fact, awake.  I wasn’t planning on being awake for another hour and now I am sad because I set the alarm on my smarter-than-me phone to serenade me with the theme song to Dr. Horrible’s Sing Along Blog and now I have no good reason to keep the alarm on.  Whatever.

6:00am:  Shower.  Joe’s still sleeping.  He does not seem to have the same level of excitement for MEGA HIKE that I have.

7:00am:  I look outside at the still gray skies and the wet roads and double check the forecast on my smarter-than-me phone.  It’ll be sunny by 9am which will be nice since that is the proposed start time for MEGA HIKE.

7:15am:  Of course, this means I will have to roust Joe from bed first.  I tell him that if he’s coming along on MEGA HIKE, he’ll have

Lower Hadlock Pond's Wall Of Fog

to get out of bed since our shuttle departs the Village Green in an hour.  He groans something that sounds like “Can’t wait!” but could possibly have been “Go to hell!” and then rolls out of bed.  I go downstairs to start packing our bags.

7:30am:  I’m excited to be using my new ultra light day pack for the first time.  I put in my camelpack hydration system, a bag of food (mini bagels and peanut butter, granola bars and carrot sticks), sunscreen, phone, camera, the shuttle bus schedule and the all important map.  Interestingly enough, the ultra light day pack is not as light now.

7:45am:  Joe comes downstairs and we debate the merit of bringing along rain jackets.  I say skip it since the weather channel still says the sun is coming out…but not until 10am.

8:00am:  We leave the townhouse and book it down to the grocery store in order to purchase the sports energy drinks we neglected to buy the day before.  We then have to book it to the village green to catch our bus on time.

8:15am:  The Brown Mountain bus leaves.

8:55am:  We arrive at the Brown Mountain Gatehouse.  The trail we intend to take is located across the road.    We walk up and down route three looking for it.

9:00am:  Still looking.  This is kind of embarrassing.

9:03am:  Will MEGA HIKE be called on account of us not being able to find the damn trailhead?  Where the hell are the signs?

A Boy And His Smart Phone

9:05am:  Oh hey, look.  There it is.  At least we think that’s it.  There still isn’t a sign but it kind of looks like a hiking trail.  And there is a pond, Lower Hadlock Pond if we’re reading the map correctly (which I am almost positive we are).  It’s enclosed by a serious wall of fog.

9:15am:  Oh hey, look!  There’s a sign, an honest to goodness sign that confirms that we are in fact on the right trail.  1.4 miles to the summit of Norumbega Mountain.

9:40am: We encounter our first group, a woman and her two dogs.  They’re headed down while we’re headed up.

10:00am:  We stop for a rest.  The sun’s starting to break through, just like the weather channel said it would, and we’re close enough to the summit so that we’re walking on open rock faces.  Joe breaks out his smart phone and checks that the GPS knows where we are.  It’s not entirely wrong.

10:15am:  We reach the summit of Norumbega Mountain.  Joe breaks out his smart phone to open his compass application and

View from Norumbega Mountain summit

checks that the compass knows our proper elevation.  It’s not entirely wrong.  My phone, on the other hand, is beeping incessantly for no discernible reason.  Whatever.  After a short rest break, we start down the north side of the mountain, a trail sometimes called the Goat Trail.  This trail is a short, steep climb along granite ledges and, you know, walls, for lack of anything better to call them.

10:18am:  Acadia Fun Fact #1:  Rain makes granite wet.

10:18:02am:  Acadia Fun Fact #2:  Wet granite is slippery.

10:18:04am:  Acadia Fun Fact #3:  A trail which receives little to no sunlight will not dry.

10:18:06am:  Welcome to the Acadia Water Slides.  Make sure you pack your ass padding ‘cuz you’re gonna need it!

10:20am:  Joe, being the gentleman that he is, lets me go down first.  I think it’s so he’ll know where not to step because while I slip and slide on my ass quite often, he doesn’t.

The very end of the Goat Trail

11:00am:  We make it to the bottom of the Goat Trail in one piece.  My palms are scraped red from all the slipping and sliding and I’ve already sweated completely through my tank top which used to be an extra small but is now large enough to be used as a tent.  I stop to change, grateful I had a second shirt in the ultra light day pack.

11:05am:  We reach the start of the Bald Peak (elev. 974 feet) trail.  Joe has now seen the map and realized just how mega MEGA HIKE is.  This annoys me because I did try to show him my intended route on more than one occasion before now.  He decides the key to making it through the hike is the promise of dinner.  Dinner, he decides, will consist of tacos and beer.  Not necessarily in that order.

11:40am:  Joe starts talking about how we should hike the Appalachian Trail.  I find this hysterical for a man who was reluctant to climb one 974 foot mountain.  Plus, I tell him, I do not pee in the woods.  Six months is a really long time to hold it.

11:55am:  We reach the summit of Bald Peak.  This trail was much easier than the masochistic Goat Trail as it had been exposed to more sun.  From here, you can see the fog rolling in off the water.  You can also see our next three intended summits (Parkman, Gilmore and Sargent).  We sit down for an extended lunch break.  While we’re lunching, a family comprised of two adults and five children (toddler to teen) arrive.  They don’t stay for lunch.

12:00pm:  I try to update my Facebook status with my smarter-than-me phone but the phone can’t decide if I have four bars or zero bars so eventually it gives up and tells me to update my status later.  Instead I email my brother and tell him I’m writing an email from atop a mountain, albeit a small one.

12:20pm:  We head out toward Parkman Mountain.  It’s a very short walk between Bald Peak and Parkman Mountain (only .3

The view from Bald Peak

miles).  My phone won’t stop beeping again.  Stupid smart phone.

12:35pm:  We summit Parkman Mountain.  We would have been there sooner if not for my dumb ass phone.  I turn all sounds off.  Haha!  Take take, so-called smart phone.  Let’s hear you beep now!  I HAVE THE POWER!

12:40pm:  We head down Parkman on the Grandgent trail.  The Grandgent trail is described as “hard-to-reach and strenuous.”  It also doesn’t receive a hell of a lot of sun.  It’s dryer than the Goat Trail but not by much.  Joe’s mantra has become “tacosandbeertacosandbeertacosandbeer” muttered under his breath over and over again.  My mantra is “three down, three to go!”

1:05pm:  We reach our fourth summit: Gilmore Peak.  There’s another family group up here with lots of screaming kids running around the summit.  Always seems like a bad idea to be running toward the edge of a mountain but I’m not a parent so what do I know, right?  Joe and I don’t stick around for very long before we head off on the Grandgent Trail again.

1:45pm:  Summit #5:  Sargent Mountain, elevation 1,373 feet.  The family with the five kids is already here.  I’m damn impressed that the little ones have stuck it out this far.  I take a family picture for them by the summit sign but one of the kids refuses to be in it.  It’s probably not because I’m wearing my Red Sox hat.  This, for anyone who doesn’t know, is a reference to our visit last year when a mother asked me to take a picture of her entire family together but her youngest son (an obvious Yankees fan) refused to let me touch the camera because I’m a Red Sox fan.  Punk.

Sargent Mountain Summit, views to the south

1:50pm:  Another family group, a mother and daughter and their little toy poodle, Aspen, arrive.  Aspen, who is off leash, barks at and charges everyone.  Joe finds this annoying.  Not that the dog is barking or that the dog is off leash (which, by the way, is not allowed in ANP but whatever…) but that it seems to be all right because it’s just a toy poodle doing it.  Big wouldn’t do anything to anyone either but it would be less okay if a 130 pound German shepherd charged you.  At least he’d eat the toy poodle.

2:00pm:  We leave Sargent Mountain, headed down the Sargent Mountain South Ridge trail toward Sargent Mountain Pond (.8 miles away).  The trail here is very open and remotely flat (and dry) and we’re able to cover ground quickly.

2:08pm:  I managed to stumble and stub the little toe on my left foot.  It is very angry.  I am forced to stop and wait for it to become slightly less angry.

2:10pm:  We walk through a whole mess of dragonflies.

2:30pm:  We reach Sargent Mountain Pond.  I am so hot and sweaty by now that I have to resist the urge to just dive in head first.

2:45pm:  Summit #6: Penobscot Mountain (elevation 1,194).  Our only company up here is a seagull.  This is the part of the hike

Penobscot Mountain- and not a peregrine in sight

where the peregrine falcons come in.  Originally, I’d planned for us to take the Penobscot Mountain trail back down to the Jordan Pond House (our ending point) which would have been just over a mile and a half.  But because of the falcons, we’re forced to return to the Sargent Mountain South Ridge Trail.  This makes Joe really, really happy.  Buck up, I tell him.  It’s all down hill from here!

3:00pm:  Except for this very brief uphill section.

3:11pm:  And this one too.

3:15pm:  Joe states that he’s starting to get tired.

3:18pm:  I manage to stumble again.  Now more toes are angry.

3:20pm:  Joe asks if I’m limping.  I tell him, “Only a little…but it’s all downhill from here!”

3:23pm:  I have got to stop saying that.

3:30pm:  My phone is beeping again.  This time it is beeping to inform me that all its previous beeping has caused my battery to die.  Best.  Phone.  Ever.

3:47pm:  Joe worries that we are on some never ending trail that leads to nowhere.  I assure him that we have to be getting closer.  You can hear cars now so that means we’re definitely getting closer.  I am almost convinced of this myself.

3:50pm:  I think my toes are now planning to murder me in my sleep.  And I will sleep tonight so I will never see it coming.

4:00pm:  We reach the bottom of the Sargent Mountain South Ridge Trail only to find a sign telling us that the Jordan Pond House, home of the bathroom and the shuttle home, is another two miles away on the Asticou Trail.  Let’s just say that Joe’s reaction wasn’t exactly “tacos and beer.”  At least the Asticou Trail is a relatively flat trail.

4:13pm:  Except for this brief uphill section, of course.

4:15pm:  I stumble.  I then upgrade my toes from “angry” to “really frakking pissed.”

4:23pm:  We both get excited when we think we see some sort of rare, interesting wildlife in the forest.  Turns out it’s a stump.  Oh yeah, we should totally be hiking the Appalachian trail.

Bridge to Civilization

4:30pm:  We come across a quaint little bridge crossing a quaint little brook.  I manage to drop my hat into it.  I say some not nice words and Joe fishes my hat out of the brook.  On the plus side, when I put the soggy hat on my head, it does feel good.  I think about just lying down in the brook for a moment but my eagerness to get to a toilet trumps everything else.  It’s been a very long day and I’ve had a lot to drink.

4:46pm:  I comment on how I think the Asticou Trail would make a good trail running trail.  Joe tells me to go ahead.  My angry toes tell him to do something else.

4:53pm:  We’re approaching the carriage roads now which means we’re thisclose to indoor plumbing being finished with MEGA HIKE.

4:55pm:  Our first sight of indoor plumbing the Jordan Pond House.  “Civilization!” Joe cries.  “You’re dead!” my toes cackle.  I go to the ladies’ room and wait in line.  While I wait, I listen to a three year old sing some nonsense bit of song at the top of her lungs.  When her mother finally tells her she’s being too loud, the toddler replies, “Oh.”  And then keeps on singing.  I resist the urge to scream “WOULD YOU HURRY UP?  SOME OF US HAVE BEEN WAITING TO PEE FOR EIGHT FREAKING HOURS NOW!” It’s the polite thing to do.  Or so I’m told.

5:07pm:  Me and my really frakking pissed off toes make it to the shuttle bus line.  There’s quite a group of people waiting for the same bus for which we’re waiting.  This means we’re likely going to have to stand all the way back to the village.  We can’t decide if this is a good thing or not.  As much as we’d like to sit down, we can’t be sure we’d be able to get back up again.

5:15pm:  The bus arrives.  Joe and I stand in the back until a pair of sisters squeeze together to offer me a seat.  I apologize for my extreme smelliness.  The little old lady sitting in front of us wrinkles her nose and opens a window and mutters something rude to her husband sitting next to her.  I think it’s cute she thinks I can’t hear her.

5:45pm:  We arrive back at the Village Green.  I am pleased to find that my legs still remember their function.  My toes, however, seem to be more angry than ever.  If I had to rank their anger on a hurricane category level scale, they’d be a six.

6:07pm:  We manage to limp our way back to the townhouse.  We should be embarrassed that it’s taken us this long to walk so little but hell, we summitted six mountains and walked ten freaking miles in eight hours and didn’t break any bones while doing it.  Joe’s tired and my toes are planning a coup d’etat.  No room for embarrassment there.

6:07:01pm:  Shit.  Why did we have to rent a unit with stairs?

6:07:05pm:  What the hell do you mean there are more stairs?  Do you think they’ll bring the tacos and beer to us?

6:08pm:  We make it to the bedroom.

6:10pm:  Is that a blister?  Oh, screw it.  Bring on the margaritas!  Just as soon as I can get back down stairs.

6:11pm:  It’s all downhill from here…tacosandbeertacosandbeertacosandbeertacosandbeer…