Squamtoberfest 8

As anyone who has read my blog by now knows, Squamtoberfest is one of my favorite weekends of the year. This year, I skipped out completely on biking and focused on hiking and drinking only. This has a lot of pictures, so I'll keep the chatter to a minimum. I started by going up Friday afternoon (way too late of course) and hitting up the best place ever, Georgiana Falls. 

standard tree shot I take every year

Now that I've gotten really into hiking and have explored some amazing places, I don't know if this is truly the best place ever anymore, but it will always hold a special place in my heart.

I got on the river as soon as I could, and hiked up the rocks.

HDR city:

When I got to the top, there was a really weird pink glow to everything that made HDRs and even regular shots really hard to get right. I had to do some tricky stuff to this one to get the background to show up enough. One of my favorite spots ever:

I left in the dark, then headed into Plymouth for a calzone. There were no pumpkins on the tower :(

I got to Kevin's late as expected, and eventually Dustin and Amanda and Tobin and Kira showed up. We drank old fashioneds and listened to terrible vinyl. I love gentleman's lounge. More people need to come up early for it!

Day 2, we all kind of went our separate ways. Nobody wanted to hike other than my Mass roommates, so we hit up Cardigan. My plan was to start working on earning a Views and Brews patch, where you have to hike a mountain, then visit a local brewery and try at least 1 beer (pretty hilariously awesome). Apparently you have to visit a local attraction or do another small hike too. 

When we got to Cardigan, there were even more cars in the parking lot than I expected. We set out just the 3 of us though, and it looked like it would be a foggy hike.

As we went up, it got foggier and foggier.

And we quickly realized we wouldn't be getting any views. Bummer.

But, I'm actually really psyched about this hike. I've been in clouds at the top of a mountain before, but I've never seen it this thick. And it was windy and FREEZING up there. It was a complete tundra disaster.

So we took some cool pics.

Mike vs. the world:

Here's my instagram. This is just one black and white filter. It really was that thick up there.

We didn't hang out on top for long. We then headed down and went way too far in the wrong direction to go to 7 Barrel Brewery, the brewery listed for Cardigan. 

We both got their red ale, which was pretty solid.

I also got their poutine, which... holy shit.

It was pretty much just a bowl of cheese. I've never seen this much cheese on anything. I think this may be a case of going too far. 

There is a waterfall in Plymouth that I wanted to visit- recently when cleaning my room in Maine, I found an old issue of the Clock that recommended this waterfall for a small hike. I took a picture of it and have been looking for an excuse to check it out, and this felt like a good one. We of course paid our respects to the zoo on the way,

then headed into the woods again to check out the waterfall. It was pretty nice, actually.

Tobin was real excited for it.

We then headed back and it was dark by the time we got there (with calzones from AHOP of course). I think I screwed up this year. I had fun doing the 2 hikes, but there was so much driving, and so much time spent with people I see all the time. The people who went biking were back in the early afternoon and had all day just hanging out at the house. They also went apple picking on Saturday morning which I missed. Next year, I'm gonna do 1 day hike and try to leave early. Then be back to the house for partying. I learned my lesson. 

Once the campfire got going, everyone was in good spirits. And we had that badass NEMBA tent too.

Christmas lights, pumpkins, chips, candy corn, beers. Hell yea.

Here's Kevin with his foot in a bucket.

And here's an action shot of Pog chopping wood in the dark:

Mysterio and Adam fighting the fire. Mysterio's head was pretty much fully engulfed in flames.

I love Kevin's moustache illuminated by fire in this one:

I tried so hard to get Mysterio lit up next to fire, but it never really worked.

Pog tried to as well.

As the night went on, things got more retarded. I love this series of photos:

Mostly because Kevin looks like my drawing of him in the last one.

Soon though, peeps started to get tired.

I love Amanda taking a picture of a pumpkin butt while Kevin is rage yawning.

And then as per usual, I caught Kevin retiring for the night.

Last year, I really wanted to play emo music to keep in tradition with the old Squamtoberfest vibe of sitting on Kevin's deck in Ashland, but people didn't really want to listen to it, and it caused conflict. This year, I just let whatever happen happen and I think we listened to line dancing country music for much of the night. As people started going to bed though, I put on my stuff and played air guitar. Even though it was pretty much by myself, it felt good. This may have to be the way things go from here on out.

I slept pretty horribly that night, waking up twice with horrific tooth pains. Fast forward to a week later, I had to have a tooth pulled because it was rotting out of my head and causing me some of the worst pain I've ever experienced in my life. It all kicked in at Squamtoberfest. Damn me and my need to eat candy corn.

Sunday morning, I woke up still terrified about my mouth, but I had fair eating to do. So we headed out.

It was super packed. Here's Kevin eating a sausage.

Dustin in a jacket I'm still bummed he didn't buy:

This stupid thing was the highlight of Amanda and Gina's day for sure. These vegetables came out and danced. One rapped. It was for little kids, yet Amanda lost her mind at it. Even Kevin's mom was all about it.

And here's a lovely picture of Gina with a giant doughnut.

That's pretty much it. Pretty standard Squamtoberfest. It was generally all a good time. I screwed up on Saturday and missed apple picking and house hangouts, but gentleman's lounge, the fire, hiking, fall, best place ever, and the fair all = awesome. Year 9 this year! I'm planning on taking a few extra days off and trying to hike 5 favorite mountains around Squamtoberfest, then hanging hard at the house this year. Fall overload + hangs will mean an even better fest.

currently listening to: Taking Back Sunday- "Happiness Is"

Fall in Fast Forward Photo Form, part 2: Halloween

Here are the best pics from the later part of fall- the Halloweeny part. I stole a bunch of these from Rich. Thanks, Rich.

I had nothing to do with this decoration since I was at work when it happened, but man I love when my roommates decorate. They do a hell of a job.

I only went to 1 haunt this year,-Haunted Overload, which has always been my favorite. I didn't have as good a time as I did last year, but it was still pretty awesome. This giant skull head was about the coolest thing I've ever seen.

(it's probably 20 feet high and 15 feet across)

We went to Funspot for Buote's birthday. I hadn't been to Funspot probably since college, and it was awesome. We had a great time. Here's Heath trying to get arrested:

hide your kids hide your wife

We hit up that destroyed building in Kittery, where I took a terrifying Screammask shot.

Dustin didn't really do anything for Halloween in Saratoga this year, so I went to Birthdayween. It was probably time anyway, as it had been a few years. Horseman represented. I think this is my Halloween costume forever now.

Half man. Half horse. All justice.

Here's Horseman drinking a BURR while Pat Lane looks on admiringly:

Josh's costume was incredible. He was the made-of-money guy from the Geico commercials.

Bigfoot pose

Ridiculous!

Most of Birthdayween was posing for superhero pictures.

I particularly love this one. Jesse's face is classic.

as is Ahadi's costume

Another good one for Jesse. Nice costume, Heath.

Jesse threw cards everywhere while pieces of money fell off Josh all night. 

Here's everyone. How weird is it that Nintendo put the A and B buttons in that order? I never thought of that before.

Another one. Horseman loves posing.

Oh yea, and this happened.

This is the least incriminating picture I have. Basically, someone loves drinking and getting naked at parties, and that someone decided to put stuff into a certain place in front of a lot of people, then he put something into his mouth from that place. Yikes.

I should do this pose more often:

Here's Rich and I at Art's Halloween party a week later:

And me fighting a fire:

Josh and I, the 3 armed Horseman, after kicking butt at beer pong (pretty much all josh).

So Art's party was a little odd cuz I knew 1 person there other than the people I came with, and that was Art, who I barely know. But I think this was the 3rd time he had done this party, and there was a huge game of Slender Man that absolutely ruled. 

If you don't know Slender Man, he's a character created by someone on the Something Awful forums, a site I used to go to all the time. I think a computer game was created, and somewhere down the line, this game was. It may be done by other people- I'm not sure. At this party, what it entailed was groups of 2 running out into a giant field (this party was at a peach orchard), where you have to find pieces of paper with clues on them. The clues didn't really matter- it was more just about finding the pieces of paper. Each group had 1 flashlight. And roaming the field (and all of Art's property) was a friend of his in Slender Man garb, on stilts. So he looked pretty much just like this:

Other people were dressed as skeletons, and they ran around finding people for Slender Man to catch. Sounds ridiculous, right? Especially after drinking? Let me tell you, it was AWESOME. Rich and I partnered up, and right away, standing in a silent field, Rich says "you hear that? THAT'S HIM!" and you could hear the creaking of stilts in the distance. But I couldn't see him at all. In fact, I'm pretty sure the person dressed as him got dressed without anyone knowing, so nobody would have seen him. I saw him once in the distance, and he was huge and terrifying. 

It was weird how quickly the game got really intense. As soon as you heard Slender Man, you took off, fast. I remember my closest encounter was when Rich suddenly saw him heading towards us and we ran in different directions. I started making my way back towards where Rich had gone, and immediately saw him coming towards me. I had to jump and duck behind a rock as he walked by. Oh yea- and Art was blasting this terrifying music that was essentially a distorted machine-sounding heartbeat with weird eerie sounds in the background. You'd hear people scream in the distance, see people and not know if they were good or bad, etc. And you never wanted to turn on your flashlight, because that would alert Slender Man as to where you were.

I ended up sneaking back to home base where I found out the game was still going and there were only a few people out there. I had collected a few pieces of paper solo, so I realized I could win if I found a few more. Rich had either been caught or had enough, I can't remember. So I headed out into an uncharted area and found 3 more. I was psyched but heard Slender Man in the area, and when I should have called it a night, I headed towards 1 last piece of paper, only to have Art, in full skeleton makeup, jump up out of the bushes like 10 feet in front of me. He later said he thought I was going to walk right into him and had no idea how I didn't see him. I screamed out and took off sprinting towards the woods, where I was told I was safe. But I guess the game was over, because Art followed me right in there. I stood in silence, trying to be invisible, but I was already made. He ran in after me, and, tripping over rocks and smashing my way through trees and very thick (and wet) woods, I got my foot tangled in brush and my shoe fell off. 

I yelled out that I guess the game was over and Art helped me find my shoe. Apparently he only went in the woods to get me because I was the last one out there and they were trying to end the game. So it doesn't count, and I went un-caught. I had 6 pieces of paper, which made me the winner. At least that's how I feel. Woo!

When I got out of the woods, there stood Slender Man, illuminated by the moon glow, and he was absolutely terrifying. It's hilarious how scary and intense a game of basically hide and seek mixed with a scavenger hunt was, but you put on super loud creepy music and send strangers out into a dark field with a giant guy on stilts chasing you, shit gets intense quick. What a fun party. I wish I had pictures, but it was all too intense to even bother. What a cool party though.

currently listening to: Yppah- "You Are Beautiful At All Times"