Chupacapras are Nocturnal, Guys!

It's hard to belive that I slept almost 12 hours last night and am still pretty tired. It's also difficult to understand why I'm still so sore. Colin, Andy and I made our sluggish return from the Easter Beer Hunt yesterday, and I'm still in recovery mode.

We arrived Friday night after almost nine hours in my car (a trip which included a ride through Elnora, Ind., Stankiest Place on Earth). Matt, Kristin and Kyle were already there, and had passed the hour between their arrival and ours with drinking and some mild campfire building. While Colin, Matt and Kyle pitched our seven-person tent in the dark, Kristin and I drank green tea Smirnoff (who knew there was such a thing!) and caught up over the making of dinner.

The first night was pretty typical camping - there was booze and food and scary stories (i.e. the last entry here) told around the campfire. Around 2 a.m., we stumbled into our tent for some rest. I know that camping isn't supposed to be super comfortable, and that was alright - we all made peace with the uneven ground and the cold. We did not, however, make peace with the child who ran around the campsite switching between maniacal laughter and cooing like a retarded turtle dove.

The next morning was a little rough, given the lack of sleep and the hangovers, but we woke up and cooked a slightly different version of the meal we had made the night before. Matt got out his guitar, and he and I sang a rousing rendition of Belle and Sebastian's "Meat and Potatoes" to complement breakfast. Kristin and Kyle left shortly after that because Kristin (lamely, I might add) had to make jelly with soccer moms for her internship. She didn't respond to my guilt trip (I'll admit, it wasn't my best, as it was delivered pre-coffee), and I was a little bummed, because though she left me a few bottles of Green Tea Smirnoff, she missed the best part of the weekend - the Easter Beer Hunt.

Matt's parents and some of their friends from college have been conducting this fantastic activity for the last 31 years. This is an awesome tradition that starts out with a keg, because it's important that one be slightly drunk before hunting. The actual hunt only lasts a few minutes. It starts with some announcements read by a man named Roger who was wearing a referee shirt, then a whistle is blown, and about 20 drunk adults and several sober, underage "apprentices" go racing down a hill. The running stops after about the first two minutes and turns to slow ambling. However, I will say that Matt had a sweet power dive for a bottle of Little King that resulted in him tumbling over onto a second Little King.

After the hunting, there was an awards ceremony complete with bizarre prizes (president masks, beer shaped sunglasses). Colin, Andy and I won the award for the hunters who had travelled the greatest distance, and Matt won "Bringer of the Most Rookies." Prizes for these two great achievements included light up fake teeth, a rubber Blues Brother mask, and a small can of roadkill possum.

Following the hunt and subsequent drinking, we decided to relocate our campsite to the backyard of the cabin that Matt's parents had rented. There was plenty of room, and it was free. We didn't want to disassemble the tent, so the four of us picked it up and walked it about a mile uphill to the cabin. I wish I had pictures of it, because it was pretty ridiculous. Cars kept coming and the drivers would stare at us like they'd never seen four people carrying a tent that I could have parked my car in before.

Once at the cabin, there was pizza and (surprise!) more drinking.

We woke up the next morning hung over and sore from once again thinking that our campsite was much flatter than it really was. Andy looked like Morrissey, and my hair sort of had a charming Thomas Jefferson thing going on. We finally left around 11 a.m., and made the long drive back to Memphis.

The weekend as a whole was fantastic, and there are tons of details that I'm leaving out because they would just be too difficult to explain. It was an awesome time, though, and I'm already looking forward to next year.

Maybe the turtle dove kid's family will have learned their lesson about taking their child camping.

that's what she said,
Kerry

PS - Blogger is having difficulties uploading pictures today, so I'll try again later .