I went camping!

Last weekend I went camping up in the Adirondacks Mountains with three guys named John, two guys named Ralph, a guy named Jun, and my parents. We spent four days on Raccoon Point on Little Long Pond, having to portage our canoes and items from St. Regis lake through two other lakes to our destination. It was hard work!

Boy did I have a lot of fun! I spent a lot of time on the eight hour trip up there wondering what I was going to do in the woods for four days straight to keep myself entertained. The ironic part is, the days flew by so fast that I wasn't ready to leave! I could have stayed up on that mountain for at least another week living off ramen noodles and other campers passing through the area. We ate very well, having been treated to a Filipino dish of ran-Dang beef (I believe?), some turkey and noodle concoction that Ralph number two and I swear did not taste until the third night (due to interference of everclear memory blockage, and the absolutely divine taste of peanut butter and toasted marsh mellow sandwiches.

The days went by pretty much like this:

Wake up at 830-930.
Have coffee mixed with Frangelica or whiskey.
Go "looking for firewood".
Sit around and play "the game" (will explain in a minute!)
Have lunch.
Play "the game" some more, and begin drinking river water and everclear.
Have dinner.
Become incredibly intoxicated while feeding the fire, roasting marshmellows, and hanging out with my good pals! Also, play "the game".
Sleep around 11-12.

"The game" is something that I was introduced to last year while camping in northern PA in the winter. It started like this:

Flap: You guys. I got this great game.
You guys: OK..
Flap: You say a famous person's name, and the person to your left has to say another famous person with the first name starting with the first initial of the last name of the person you just said. If the person has the same first and last initial, it gets passed to the person on your right. Ready?
You guys: OK..
Flap: Loretta Lynn.
(You guys look around, completely confused as to whose turn it is.)

While "the game" usually picks up the second night of camping and is limited to one round until all parties have either exhausted every name possible and/or have fallen asleep and/or passed out from being drunk, during this camping trip, "the game" was played about four to five times a day, every day, in separate spurts, and mostly while intoxicated, leading to ten minute interludes of two people arguing as to whether or not someone said "Donald Duck" this round. To this day I am still sitting here, sending my friend text messages with "Fredirico Felini" and "Sam Snead", who by the way, if you can tell me who those people are, WITHOUT looking them up, I will award you superstar "the game" player medal honors. Thats the other frustration of this game, playing with people from different generations also leads to the argument of whether or not each generation is making up certain personalities in order to trap the other players in a two man battle of double lettered names. Incredibly frustrating, to say the least.

It was absolutely beautiful up there though, and I certainly felt like a completely different person when I came back - fresh, healthy, rejuvenated, until we pulled up into my parents driveway and noticed the empty box of beer left in the trash by my supposedly ill brother, along with the notice that his driving privileges have been suspended for a situation completely out of his control. But thats a story for a different day.

I give this camping trip 8 out of 10 stars, losing points for the most painful ride in a car ever (8 hours with my parents drinking martinis while driving, WTG), one of the most irritating people I have ever met in my life being present on the trip, the spider webs that blocked my way to a haven of un-tapped firewood resources, and the absence of my brother.