Im back in the Shire after a great couple weeks. A summary of the stops:
Louisville, KY - Visited Uncle Tim, Aunt Sue, Joe, Erin, Gordo, and Abby. First, the highlight of the trip, Grammy after a few cocktails:
That is my Colgate hat, and I almost lost it twice later down the road, but that'll come later. Basically my days in Louisville consisted of drinking most of the day while occasionally betting on horses with good names and mixing in some soccer games against little kids (I blame the mint julip for making me say "ass" to a five year old girl and having to make a pact with my team not to tell their parents I swore). Also got to see Joe and Erin play soccer games, all around a good time.New Bern, NC - Went to visit Nana and Grandpa. The flight in was terrifying, it was a small plane and there was a rediculous wind storm. My hat blew off my head and over the plane immediately upon exiting and some airline guy had to run down the runway to get it. I think the only reason they landed was because it was a historic flight and there were a bunch of Delta investors or something out to watch the landing and have food afterwords (none for us). This stop on my trip consisted of sleeping for 12 hrs a night and having 3 great meals a day, a vital recoop from Louisville and good preperation the life draining week I was to have Hilton Head/Graduation. The highlight from that visit, meeing my new cousin Ian:
Washington, D.C. - Nana drove me to the Wilson, NC train station and after an hour and half delay before I got on and another hour and a half of waiting on the tracks for trains that were on time to pass, I arrived in DC around 7 (a couple Sam Adams from the beverage car made it bearable). That night I went with Jen, Kevin, and Keriann to see Ben Gibbard, the lead singer of Deathcab for Cutie and the Postal Service, at the 9:30 Club. It was a lot of fun, at one point Jim from The Office came on stage and they did a little bit, it wasn't great but it was cool to see him. The next day we hung around Jen's house, Keriann found out she'd been accepted to work in a Master's program in NYC where she'd teach in a high needs school so we celebrated a little after a great barbeque with a chocolate cake (the caffeine was supposed to keep us up) and at around 8ish pm we left for Hilton Head.Hilton Head, NC. - After a little traffic it was smooth sailing, a dirty text message war with another car kept our wits about us. (I'm not trying to keep this blog PG but I don't think an example would be appropriate for anyone to read). It started to get hard to stay awake around 3 but finally around 5 we made it to our house (Keriann drove the entire 9 hrs, it was pretty impressive). We pull into our driveway and theres another car there. No big deal, the owner left a car there or something, we'd just have to get it moved in the morning because we have too many cars already. We enter the doorcode, and I notice a bag sitting on the couch. Weird. I say "Hello" and people respond "We think you're in the wrong house". Disaster. Turns out we didn't get the house until technically 4pm, but the people left at 10 and the cleaning people were out by 11 or so. We were close to the beach so we went and layed down and watched the sunset, played frisbee. The whole thing seemed hilarious, mostly because we were so tired and in such nice weather. Me, Kevin and Keriann went out to breakfast when the other cars showed up while Jen stayed back (the landlord recieved a complaint from the people in the house that there was a car outside with someone sleeping in it...but what were we supposed to do?). The rest of the week was great, consisted of going to the beach in the "morning" the pool in the afternoon, and out on the town at night. The ride home was going great, no traffic or anything, when we got pulled over 20 miles outside Hamilton. Luckily Keriann made it 3/3 lifetime in getting out of tickets and we made it home and passed out.
Hamilton, NY - This years graduation was a lot like last years... good food and lots of family (playing beruit too which is always fun). Saturday night I got peed on a little by some drunk guy out a window, luckily I had two shirts on it wasnt that big a deal. Jen and her friends at torchlight, my favorite part of graduation:
Boston, MA - After a lot of packing and shoving and a lot of goodbyes, me and Jen headed to Boston for a Damien Rice concert. We stayed at MIT in her friends apt. which turned out to be very convenient, we walked to the venue through the Boston Commons, it was great. The concert was amazing too, I snapped this picture which I find equally amazing:
I dont how those shadows worked out to make it seem like there was a gun pointed at him, but it did and its cool. I left my hat under my seat, we had to turn around and go back half way home but luckily we got it back. Its the third time I've almost lost it, it got taken briefly in a night club in Peru (thanks to Carly for finding it). I'm sure there will be more hat lost stories, hopefully with me finding it in the end. Anyway, the day after the concert we were on our way to....New York, NY - Yankees vs. Red Sox at Yankee Stadium. Unfortunately we lost the game (still, for all you Yankee fans, we're up 14.5 games right now). Also unfortunate was the ***hole sitting behind us. After getting peanuts thrown at us whenever we cheered and Kevin getting beer poured on his back, eventually we had to move for the 7th and 8th inning, leaving early to beat the traffic. It was fun, good to see Kaplan again before I left at the very least. I finally made it home, exausted, and that was the end of the tour.
To quote an overquoted but fitting phrase, what a long strange trip it was. 1 more post before I leave, to put my packing list up and other things to help future volunteers.
brad
