chicus.com

New Hampshire
Sep 01, 2009
Early in the summer Kelleigh and Mike planned an excursion to a home near a lake owned by Kelleigh's uncle. Despite the coming of Tropical Storm/Depression Danny, Kelleigh and Mike, John and Brinda, and Jen and I headed up for Alton for the weekend.

The event unofficially began Thursday evening when Mike, John, and I dropped a handsome sum on beer for the weekend. We all like good beer and decided to splurge a bit and loaded the cart with a wide variety of six-packs and 22 oz bottles.

Jen and I arrived around 5:30, after the others had already shopped, swam, and kayaked. The grill was going and Jen got swiftly to work on a little surprise for me, birthday cupcakes and a small cake. She even packed a hand mixer. We had dinner and cake before retiring to the front yard for a fire and some beer. We sat in firelight and away from any urban sounds for a couple of hours when sprinkles began to fall as quickly as eyelids. We packed up the chairs and then Mike and I extinguished the fire (urinating seemed to work well) and headed to bed with the only sound being that of rain drops. Every time I stirred overnight was set to the tune of mother nature's deluge, as was the sound when we arose around 8:45. However, at that time there were few other man-made sounds available as the power had gone out sometime around 7:30.

I returned from a wet run to find John at the entrance to the garage heating water for coffee on a small propane grill. I entered to find three 22 oz beers lined up by Mike, set for immediate consumption. There had been one coordinated effort to open the fridge and pull out anything which would be needed for breakfast. Along with butter and the likes were three beers.

John, Mike, and I sampled the beer with breakfast and at around 10:15 power came back on. Due to the rain we settled in to watch Ted Kennedy's funeral, much to the dismay of Kelleigh and Mike. I understand their point and agreed, we were on vacation at a lake. But the other four of us felt that it was a historical event and due to the rain were content in watching.

After the funeral and some board games we donned rain jackets and long pants to brave the 55 degree temps to kayak around the lake. Watching sheets of rain and mist move across the lake was fun and miserable all rolled into one. After some warm showers in the iron-fortified water we were alone to our own devices (reading and sleeping, mainly) before Kelleigh, Mike, Brinda, and I took to some beer pong. By that time the rain had basically stopped so we fired up the grill for some bbq chicken fajitas and some more drinks. The wood was all soaked though so instead of a bonfire we played some speed Scrabble and Bananagrams and called it a night.

We arose Sunday and had a hearty breakfast of spent-grain bagels, made of the leftover grain from John's most recent batch of beer. The bagels (and bread) were awesome but were definitely high in fiber. I'll not go into details but it reminded me of this SNL commercial. We then hiked Mount Major before heading back for a quick lunch (more spent grain bread on my turkey sandwich) and walked down to the lake for some swimming. We got back around 5:15 and after a quick shower Jen and I were back on the road headed to Boston. She slept and I wished to sleep.

It was a most pleasantly exhausting Sunday to cap a really wonderful weekend. After a clam bake and weekend in New Hampshire my trip to IA for next weekend has a lot to live up to...but I think it can.