a life more awesome: Weekend in Vermont, part 1

When you're friends with nerds who love organization, a trip to Vermont to have a planning committee meet to plan a party over a year in the future isn't that weird. Well, I guess it's still pretty weird, but when it was proposed that the 2012 edition of our annual Thanxmas gathering be on a cruise ship, someone had to step it up and actually put the thing together, and it certainly wasn't going to be me. So, while some people headed up to Jake and Tara's loveshack to do some planning, I took the opportunity to hijack said trip and see some people I love and never see.

I got up at 7:30, and after telling Hilton it was raining and his jeep was getting soaked,

weathermen are just guessing.

I showered and got on the road for the 3 and a half hour drive to picturesque Williston, VT.
I think I had only really travelled on Route 89 in the dark before, and was pretty blown away at how pretty it is in the summer- green everywhere, flowers lining the highway, mountains in the distance, etc. It's a nice drive.

I also saw some sweet roadkill- a bear on the side of the road and a coyote head in the middle of the road staring at me! You may find this gross, but I was pretty blown away as I'd never seen a bear in real life before and only seen a coyote once.

The gang was en route to the beach by the time I was nearby, so I drove straight to North Beach in Burlington (on Lake Champlain), which is an enormous and although absurdly packed, pretty nice beach.

the tunnel leading to it

As it was 90-95 degrees, I was pretty excited to get some swimming and B in. We grilled some burgers, sat and chilled for awhile, and, as there were 2 babies (3 and 9 months), had a baby party.

Ben with enormous Caden

Wyatt eating Shaun's credit card.

Pretty cute kids. Caden is still in lie-there-and-be-frustrated-he-can't-get-up-so-he-just-stares-at-stuff-confused phase, but Wyatt is in curious, stick-everything-in-his-mouth phase, so he was pretty fun. I love this picture of him- I think it should be the cover of his emo album, "Life in a world of legs" or something:

"This is it? just legs everywhere?"

This is a public beach, which meant it was super crowded, and we had quite the group of people near us.

These people talked A LOT.

I burned my feet worse than I ever have in my life just walking across the sand- I refused to be the person that had to run across the sand because it was so hot, until it hurt so unbearably bad that I ran as fast as I could and buried my feet in the water and sand. They still hurt 10 minutes later from the burn. It was insane. I had no idea a beach could be that hot. But swimming was done, B was thrown, and only Shannon got hit in the head with a frisbee (sorry Shannon). It was weird swimming with people who went in, cooled off, maybe threw the B for 10 minutes or so, and then were ready to go in. I'm used to Rich and Josh, who, like me, easily go 2, 3, 4 hours straight. I guess we're just a different breed. I have very rarely ever viewed swimming as just a way to cool off and get refreshed every now and then- it is a way of life, and nothing short of an hour can satisfy my hunger.

They actually left and I stayed to swim more. That's how seriously I take it. I then explored a little, found a weird area at the end of the beach that looked like it was from LOST,

watched some white trash go from yelling at each other to having beach patrol get involved to cops showing up,

and sweat so hard on my way back to my car that all I wanted to do was go back to the lake.

I headed back to Jake and Tara's house where they had their committee meeting and Jake, Shaun and I played the roles of the idiots in the back of the class, snickering at everything.