I (heart) NY

I clearly have too much time on my hands, because this is the third post I've made today. That's okay. Really it's just because I FINALLY got the blog up and running the way I want it to, and now I can actually write about stuff I want to write about!

And for the record, no one will ever accuse me of having too much time on my hands.

I don't really get any vacations from work this year since I'm going back to school in the fall, so I have been taking a series of mini-vacations on holiday weekends. I went to the Cape on Memorial Day weekend, and this past weekend I went out to New York for the 4th of July. I went to visit a friend who I see maybe once a year if I'm lucky. The thing is, he is a REALLY good time to hang out with, and we have some pretty crazy experiences whenever we get together.

This weekend was certainly no disappointment. In a matter of 4 nights and 3 days we managed to go out drinking, drive up to the camp in the Adirondacks, rent mountain bikes, get lost on said bikes for FOUR HOURS (more on this later), drive to Lake Placid, hike Whiteface Mountain, explore a river we drove by, go out drinking again, kayak back and forth on Mirror Lake for few hours, drive back to the camp, drive back to Utica, and drink an entire bottle of wine in roughly 20 minutes. Needless to say, we never made it to see the fireworks on Monday night because we were BEAT.

On the plus side, we did manage to knock off a lot of the ideas we had put on a checklist of things to accomplish for the weekend. Now, about the biking. In my photo album (link to your right), there is only one picture of me and one picture of my buddy on our bikes. This is because we were so exhausted, so lost, and getting absolutely massacred by bugs. Had we stopped, the bugs may have eaten us alive - God knows they were trying to anyway. We decided to be adventurous (mistake #1) and try a new trail. This trail is one of the harder trails and is roughly 10 miles long (mistake #2). We decided to try this despite already doing about an hour and a half of mountain biking already (mistake #3). Turns out, this trail has not yet been cleared of roughly 2382394 downed trees that fell over the winter. Also, it's more of a cross-country ski trail than a bike trail. Also, it's not very clearly marked, so that if you try to follow the most direct route back to where you started, you end up at the edge of some trees marked "PRIVATE PROPERTY" and warning you of your impending death should you proceed. Did the lady who gave us our bikes and maps inform us of this? No. Why would she?

We paid to rent the bikes for a total of 4 hours, and when all was said and done, we hobbled back into the bike shop with about 2 minutes to go. I never thought my legs would work again. Did I mention most of the trail was uphill? Ridiculous.

Hey, at least we can say we did it. And it's a good story! But it would have been nice if we could have taken some pictures without fear of a giant mosquito flying off with the camera. If I never see another bug again, it will be too soon.

All in all, the weekend was incredible. Surely I will pay for it (my glands are swollen already... I can hear my body cackling, "You wanted to push me to the limits? I will curse you with the worst cold you've ever had!!"). It could have been the alternating 4 hours, 12 hours, 4 hours, 8 hours of sleep I got all weekend. Or the beer. Who cares! It was worth it.

Thanks for a great time buddy :-)