Feeling Vermonty.

Got back from Vermont last Tuesday. Successful vacation. What what.

1. Drove there solo because both MoLinder and Mr. Lange decided that they weren't cool enough to take the 900 mile trip, but mostly because they didn't care about seeing Phil. I'm sorry Phil, but it's true. Spent the night in Windsor on the way there, and I had every intention of waking up early and you know, driving to Vermont and all, but of course I got seriously detoured in a conversation with the owner of the hotel about Americans drinking in Windsor and how Duty Free is bullshit.


2. Duty Free is bullshit.

When you drive into Canada you get to stop at a Duty Free gas station and buy Duty Free things. It's cheaper to just get things in the suburbs. Cartons of cigarettes were fifty bucks, 24-packs of Coors Light were like nineteen, gas was still like 3.40 and that perfume that Britney Spears does commercials for where she humps a doorhandle was some ridiculous price I can't recall because (a) I don't remember, and (b) I don't give a crap, because why would you wear something that fills you with the urge to masturbate with a brass knob?

3. Canada driving is awesome, because every couple kilometers there's an impressive and very polite sign that details exactly how you will perish on their highway.

FATIGUE KILLS. Make frequent pauses.

TAILING KILLS. Maintain a safe distance from the car in front of you.

STAYING UNBUCKLED KILLS. Remember to fasten your safety belt.

SPEEDING KILLS. You can be fined up to $10,000 for exceeding 200 km per hour.

Half a mile later the sign is repeated in French.

4. Stopped at Niagara Falls for about two hours and took twenty-three headshots of myself in front of the waterfall with various facial expressions and eighty-seven picture of myself trying to get the correct camera angle where it would look like the steam from the falls was coming out of my ass. I failed.

5. Got to Phil's at about midnight and we proceeded to get drunk.

6. Woke up the next day and wandered around Manchester, which is like stepping into quaint, storybook New England, if quaint, storybook New England was full of Ralph Lauren, Armani, and Dolce and Gabanna outlets.

7. Went back to Phil's and started shotgunning beers. Devised an ingenious plan with his roommate, Tim, that entailed driving up Mount Equinox on a reconaissaince mission to map out the secluded Carthusian monastery so we could later kidnap some hermit monks and see if they broke their silence when we shot them with water guns.

8. Hit up a bar called "The Perfect Wife," which I'm assuming is in reference to booze, because were I to take a wife she damn well better bleed the stuff, since I don't do chicks.

9. Woke up all kinds of hungover and Phil, Tim, and I loaded up Loki the Honda with the one water gun we could locate, a frisbee, and a cooler of beer.

10. The road up the mountain was blockaded a la Parcheesi, our plan foiled, and we had to return to the beginning. We decided to head to Emerald Lake instead and loitered around for hours. I climbed a hill of rocks with the speed and agility of either (a) a well-seasoned mountain goat, or (b) a mortally wounded armadillo.

11. Tim and Phil played frisbee for awhile and I tackled the tire swing (oh, yeah...there was a tire swing). I was trying to come up with some way I could partake, because I'm fucking awful at frisbee, due to my recognizable similarity to a wounded armadillo. I realized that I'd never been skeet shooting before, so I spun myself in circles and yelled, "PULL" every time they threw the frisbee and blasted it with the water gun. Best game ever.

12. Eventually we went back to Phil and Tim's place and then his other roommate, Amber (who is amazing) drove our drunk asses to Troy, NY so we could go to a show headlined by the old lead singer of Soul Coughing. The only cheap beer they had was this aptly named slop called Pork Slap, which tasted exactly like something you'd eat on Fear Factor. We were well warned.

13. Got back to Phil's and played the Ron game, which is always wonderfully lame and frat-tastic (for those who don't know, watch Wake Up Ron Burgundy and drink whenever anybody says "Ron.")

14. Spent Sunday drinking around the apartment. I miss Phil, because whenever we hang out we just get drunk and watch bad TV and pretend we're on MST3K.

15. On Monday Phil had to work and I explored the tourist trap he calls home. There are some excellent cemeteries, because they're all hilly and gothic and run down and nearly two hundred years old. Some of them have these fantastic family tombs where there are chained doors on hillsides, leading into a tomb that was carved under the hill. Hobbits live there.

16. I spent two hours at the Cheese House where I dropped way too much money on cheddar. The guy there let me taste all their varieties of cheese and I settled on buying glorious, stanky-ass Stinky Truck Driver Cheddar, which is sharper than XXX Cheddar but not nearly as potent as Old Dirty Rat Trap Cheddar.

17. Phil agreed to let me cut his hair, so we walked over to Rite Aid and bought some scissors. I googled haircutting tips, had some beer, and proceeded to destroy his head. According to the roommates, "You made him look like a vagina."

18. Tuesday was leaving day. I drove the fourteen hour stretch all at once and listened to Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat.

Twice.

...