Rational Action

Yes, yes, another whirlwind trip. Here is a timeline with a map!

To Montreal!

• 2:30pm - I leave Columbia University. Pandemonium ensues.
• 3:30pm - The Fung Wah bus departs. Thankfully, I am seated on it. Not so thankfully, it gets caught in the snow/rain, and travels at around walking speed for the next 6 hours.
• 9:30pm - The bus arrives at South Station. I take the infamous “Bran Van” back to Brandeis. At this point I have not urinated in approximately 8 hours.
• 12:30am - Ethan and I embark, dragging behind us the Blue Beast. It is snowing out and we recognize leaving in these conditions is a pretty stupid idea. But anyway, back to the story.
• 2:15am - With 10 miles remaining on the tank, we finally find a gas station. We are somewhere in the Middle of New Hampshire, and the attendant explains that there is no gas station open at this hour within 30 minutes in either direction. We fill up, buy beef jerkey, and continue onwards.
• 4:15am - We arrive at UVM. It is freezing out, and all of the people we were supposed to meet are already asleep. At some point, we go to sleep.
• 3:00pm (later that day) - To Montreal!
• 5:00pm - Bonjour. We arrive in Montreal.

I should speak about Montreal: I have been there before. It is a nice place, and French is a funny language. Good times were had by all, and these good times have been saved forever on Ethan’s picture gallery. All in all, I spent about 10 waking hours in the city, which is about half the time I spent getting there. Let’s just say that this trip was about the process, and the process was (mostly) a lot of fun.

From Sunday to Monday we (where we is a large group of guys) went on a hike in the Catskills. After some rushed planning and preparation, we finally set off on Sunday afternoon. The drive was long and tough:

As we approached the campsite, the hunger pangs became too great. We needed to stop and eat. Someone must have seen a food sign as we approached Exit 109 on Route 17. Suddenly we found ourselves in front of the most excellent pizza place on Earth: Pizza the Rock. Ethan rushed to capture this moment forever:

That night we set up camp, built a fire, had a glorious meal, and shivered in our sleeping bags. All in all, it was quite an experience. However, most of the real fun happened the next day.

We decided to take a hike. As you will see in an upcoming diagram, the trail took the form of an oval. It crossed over a mountain, making the first half a constant uphill climb, and the second half mostly downhill relaxation. As we entered the second half, we began looking for shortcuts across the middle of the forest. Finally, we took one.

Getting Lost 2004: An Illustrated Guide

On the map, point 1 represents where we decided to take our shortcut from the trail. We climbed off the cleared path, then practically ran downhill through the forest with little care for moving in the proper direction. After running for some arbitrarily too long period of time, we reached a general consensus that we were lost. We also reached a general consensus that no one had a functioning cell phone nor a functioning compass. Finally, we reached a general consensus that, generally, we should turn around.

The aforementioned general consensuses were all reached at point 2.

The trek back consisted mainly of our climbing back over the areas we had gleefully run down earlier. I never worried that we wouldn’t make it back to the trail, but I knew with near certainty that getting back would take more effort than I wanted to spend. Indeed, this part of the hike was truly challenging. On the other hand, looking back, it was undoubtedly the most exciting part of the trip. After lots o’ intense climbing, we reached a sort of peak. Within a few minutes we had found the trail, and we celebrated like all hell. Celebration occurred at point 3.

Our shoes were wet, our shirts were damp, and our camera batteries were dead. We made our ways, in stages, back to the cars. On the way back, we completed the hiking circle of life by stopping once more at Pizza the Rock. All in all, an amazing trip.

A last word. Sifting through our pictures, we found this one, taken by persons unknown. Here it is, for the audience’s consumption:

“I want to see something pretty,” I said as we ambled around Westchester in Lance’s minivan. Faced with the prospects of watching Amelie — a film the New York Times claims “shows French snootiness as its absolute snooty snooty worst” — we became desperate in our hunt for something fun to do. Then Ethan called his father and found a pretty place to placate me: a “park” in a “town” called “Irvington”.

With the destination settled, we regrouped at Ethan’s house, gathering strength and wisdom for the trip. Part of gathering strength involved choosing appropriate attire. By the time we left for Irvington, Ethan was wearing his graduation gown, Matt had on an indian suit, and Eric displayed a Ben and Jerry’s smok. Lance and I made do with reindeer antlers and a laser pointer that shone light in the form of a spiderweb.

We made the trek across Westchester using only our “man sense” of direction and a few frantic phone calls to Ethan’s parents. Our man sense led us astray, and we took this critically acclaimed shot:

Yet just moments later we found ourselves driving by the entrance to a private park. Yes, it was closed. But we had made it! We took some more pictures as we explored the territory and became accustomed to local laws:

The evening ended with a traditional diner run. But we haven’t seen the last of that park.

(Picture credit Lance, Camera credit Ethan)

Jesse and I took a road trip to Brown University yesterday. Somehow we completed the drive in under three hours (Early estimates center around 2.5 hours, which is simply amazing.) Once we got into the dorm, we opened the wine bottles and began the festivities, Hemingway style. Err. Scratch that. Not quite Hemingway style — the wine was cheap.

Starting to drink at 6pm has its disadvantages, though. Since the brews were on the grapey side (read: wine), they required an unusually high liquid intake rate to maintain intoxication. Around 9pm, Kroll put down his bottle of wine in despair, announcing “I’m not going to get fucked up off this shit.”

We killed time for the next few hours. Then I, noting that Ethan had bailed on visiting us, jokingly suggested that we visit him at Brandeis. Everyone liked the idea. Kroll volunteered to drive. I gave Ethan a call to announce our coming arrival.

Me: WE’RE COMING TO BRANDEIS!!!
Ethan: What?
Me: WE’RE COMING TO BRANDEIS ETHAN!
Ethan: Uh? You Sure. Okay…

We took the top of a pizza box and wrote “GONE TO BOSTON” on it, placed it outside the room that housed Lance and Rachel, and set off.

We arrived 45 minutes later, stayed for 45 minutes, and drove back to Brown.

So it’s a new year, 2004. Happy that.

I think each year people realize moreso that the new year is pretty arbitrary. I actually didn’t have to stifle any excitement as the ball started dropping. Maybe I would if the ball dropped at 9.8 meters per second squared.

The night on the whole was good. It began with someone making a big trip and gifting me a very nice gift:

I was then gifted even more gifts, and a card, and reprimanded for not getting my pictures developed so I could talk about them while wearing the above-pictured gift.

As the evening progressed, we discovered that Fernando’s was closed on New Years Eve, that Sun Sing (Chinese Eatery) was not, and that a divided house could not stand. Indeed, Armonk was host to several divisive parties, which meant that everyone could not chill together.

I think that these are highlights. Images will open in a new window, just leave the window open above the page for easy browsing. ( Pix taken from Ethan’s Index and Lance’s Index)

• Ethan was found wedged into Jeremy’s Christmas wreath
• Kroll imitated what he saw on TV
• And proceeded to attack me and the gift-giver
• And probably thought he was getting some hot tongue action with me too, not realizing that my head was turned away (Hott Closeup)
• Everyone got a little something
• Ethan’s Brandeis companions declared victory
• I got seriously messed up
• Where did Bregman and Izzy go? I couldn’t find them. Neither could Kroll, but he looked hard.
• The picture taker was distracted from his subject matter
• But not when the subject matter changed (Further Evidence)
• Keane showed up late
• But just in time to see Kroll get his groove on
• We tried to forget some things, but couldn’t. The blurring is not enough.

Ethan came to town on Friday night and documented the night. We stood guard during a massive monetary transaction, ate some good pizza, found the source of much happiness, and proved that ivy leage stairs can be ugly too. Let’s not forget the Christmas party:

My 6 Reasons to be happy, in relation to the Christmas Party

I was working on my final Lit Hum paper at 5am when I decided I wanted some potato chips. I took the elevator downstairs only to find a group of about 8 kids sitting around eating.

It was really AZN. They had seaweed salad and lox and sardines and other weird stuff. Not that those foods are AZN, but, you know, they were all Asian…

I asked them what the hell was going on. They told me it was a Chinese celebration, and that they did it every Sunday night.

It was 5am. They had class in 4 hours. Hnuh?

In case you haven’t figured out yet, I downloaded the Tears for Fears song Head Over Heels. It’s the one that plays at the beginning of Donnie Darko during the cut through school with the kid snorting the coke or whatever in front of his locker.

After much anticipation, Marisa and I successfully patched my pants yesterday. Now they are Frankenpants with an odd sewed square around the hole. But so much warmer!!

Chris, Marisa, and I all played pool. I was on fire. I eliminated Chris. It seemed that our plan to hustle people at 1020 would be a surefire success. We saw moneybags before our eyes.

However, when our masculinity was finally put to the test, with Marisa, Emily, Jenn, and her 2 friends watching our every move, we turned into little girls. We cracked under the pressure and lost big time.

Our failures behind us, we decided it was time for an adventure: Soha. Tension was running high this time because rumor had it that Soha failed its food inspection tests. Of course, that didn’t stop us. No one could stop us. No one, except some sketchy guy.

Sketchy guy sticks his head between Jenn and Jenna.
SG: Hey girls, can I see some action?
(They make lively conversation, but ultimately decide no, no action.)
Jenn: NO WE ARE WITH ADAM
(At this point I wedged myself between SG and the girls to protect them with my manly strength “to talk to Chris”)
Me: CHRIS WHAT DID YOU SAY?
Chris: Huh?
And sketchy guy vanished into the abyss.

If you ever catch me trying to pick up drunk girls in a sketchy bar, just hit me. Say, “Adam what has become of you,” and look down at the ground like you’re real disappointed at me. Because in that case, you should be — but your shame should be of no comparison to my own.

Around the end of the second week of school, probably the day after I got dumped, I ventured out onto the Furnald Lawn with my copy of The Iliad to engage in some Lit Hum reading. There I discovered Brooke and her posse, and I explained to them my sorry state of love affairs.

One of the girls who was sitting there told me I should take her number down and call her whenever I thought about Flo. Then she offered to pose for me, cause she found out I was a photographer.

That girl was Jaime from Rich Girls.

Let’s not underestimate the significance of this event. I got hit on by a fabulously wealthy young woman. (Trying to be nice here so no one gets angry) Granted, she wasn’t exactly my type in several ways. But still. Wow.

UPDATE:
Maybe it wasn’t her. First response from Brooke, on odds it was Jaime:
(12:47:34) XstyleZ 55: i cant remember but i dont think so
However, after some posturing on my part:
(12:49:02) XstyleZ 55: then you met jaime
She still hasn’t
agreed that she hit on me though.