Wissahickon

I think I broke my neck-damn my competitive spirit!- but other than that, it was a great week in Vermont and I was loathe to leave. We didn't have rain all week, and of course it was bright and sunny when it was time to go :( Some highlights included:

"Free Bird"...As I drove the last hour and a half of the trip to the lake, I hit a bird. Everyone else tried to convince me that the bird had probably run into other windshields before, and was probably just stunned. Meanwhile, I was laughing hysterically and crying at the same time, a very odd sensation, and pointing at the smear on the windshield with little white feathers in it, going, the bird is dead, it wasn't wearing a damn helmet! You have to have a thick skin at the lake, you have to be able to hold your own in an argument, and you have to be able to pull BS out of thin air on a moment's notice, or you won't survive. Viv wore her free bird shirt the following day to see if she could get a rise out of me, and I just died laughing, pronoucing the bird to be no longer bound by earthly ties, amen!

My fritos fight with Viv...video to come as soon as Jinny sends it to me.

Driving the motor boat solo for the first time, trollin' for guys in my bikini! ;)

Meeting Wayne's teacup yorkie, Teddy, who is half the size of Gerry...I want one!

The Wenners trying to catch sunnies in a net by dropping bright orange tic tacs in the lake as bait. One sunny was dropped onto the dock to see what Teddy what do about it, and as the fish hit the dock, it spit a tic tac back out at us!!

Sitting around the bonfire at night, with Sam or Wayne playing the guitar, making up verses to the blues from whatever mischief had gone on that day, eating s'mores and looking for shooting stars.

Reconnecting with Wayne for the first time in several years, and reminiscing about growing up together in Vermont...you'll see the junk drawer in a picture when I post them where we spent many happy hours with our imaginations and whatever happened to be in the drawer. We ran hotels, fooled around with snaps (small fireworks for kids that make a snapping sound when you throw them on the pavement), built fishing lures and so much more.

Skiing behind the boat as the sun goes down and the lake has cleared of all the daytime traffic for the most part. I do wish I hadn't taken a couple of nasty spills at high speeds as I slalomed for the first time this season....although that may have had something to do with the couple of drinks I'd already had (we operate on the "It's Five O'Clock Somewhere" rule at the lake, so it's not uncommon to see beer at breakfast or soon after).

Yuengling Black and Tan- yum! One of the beers I do drink. And Key-Lime Martinis, which I now know how to make, thanks Chris!

The Alpine Slides at Bromley.

And then there was the Fourth of the July, an outstanding holiday this year if I do say so myself. Myself, Wayne, Tress and Chris took the motor boat out across the lake once darkness had fallen for the best seats in the house. Last year, Chip VanDerMinten (yes, they are horribly rich, how could they not be with a pretentious name like that, and they do own the loudest fastest boat on the lake) put on a gigantic fireworks display, and the word went out the following day that he'd spent $10,000 on the show. This year, there was a bigger, better fireworks display around the corner of the big lake, which we did get to see, but we didn't know Chip's show was going to be disappointing at the time. He played awful synthesizer music which wasn't timed to the fireworks at all (when we'd first arrived, he was playing great music for his guests, we don't know why he chose the music he did for the pyrotechnics). So we drank beer and sickeningly sweet wine coolers, made fun of Chip, of the other boats around us and their horns (one sounded like clown noses), and almost lost Chris overboard, dancing on the seat when some waves hit us! We drifted several times during the show, so we fired up the motor a couple of times to get us back into position. Unfortunately, once the grand finale was done, we discovered that with all our maneuvering, we'd flooded the motor. We tried to start it up several times, then gave up for a while and turned on the radio. I finally tuned into a rock station, and we all broke up laughing so hard our stomachs hurt as Night Ranger's "Sister Christian" came on...we sang "Motorin! What's your price for flight..." at the top of our voices as we sat dead in the water with a flooded motor. We finally decided to try the oars, making pirate jokes, and singing the "stuck in the middle of the lake blues" as we realized we weren't going anywhere fast with the oars. Chris decided to use the flashlight to send an SOS signal back to those at the cottage, but none of us could remember SOS is three short, three long, three short. As we took stock of what we had for survival- one wine cooler left- we realized we'd completely forgotten to try the motor again for quite some time. And it worked! We were no longer stranded. You probably had to be there, but I don't think any of us had laughed that hard for a long time :) Good times, good times, and just like old times.