After the monotony of the first week of classes, I left Bowdoin behind on Friday afternoon for the four-hour drive to Baxter State Park, home of Mount Katahdin. With a couple of other Bowdoin Outing Club leaders, I was leading a weekend hike up the tallest mountain in Maine—one of the most beautiful in the northeast. Following some sweet driving at speed on the highway up to Millinocket (with a brief stop for urination and the purchase of delicious gummy sharks), we arrived at our campsite at Roaring Brook just after dark. A gigantic dinner of couscous with sausage sent us to bed.

            I could give you the blow-by-blow of our hike, but I think that most people would probably fall asleep if I tried to chronicle the entire day. Some choice moments included:

–Eating a watermelon at the top.

–When I learned how bidets are actually used (you’re not supposed to sit in them–don’t worry, I’d never actually tried this).

–Running into the COC(K), or Colby Outing Club. This may not actually have been the Colby Outing Club, but rather a mindless agglomeration of Colby students. Suffice to say that my disdain for them is at least partially merited, if not entirely.

–When I tried to eat cranberries, and Nick (co-leader and ski team captain), flipped out because THEY COULD BE POISONOUS.

–Eating absurd amounts of pepperoni and cheese, with appropriately minimal quantities of accompanying tortilla.

When we got down, we made one of the most awesome, rad, extreme dinners ever:

ramen bombs. If you’ve never experienced the goodness that is ramen bombs, allow me to enlighten you. The gist of it is, combine cooked ramen with instant mashed potatoes. Season with whatever you want—we used ramen packet seasoning and cheese, though sausage or bacon or some other meat product would have been a welcome addition. It was awesome, and sufficiently high on the glycemic index that we all needed more sugar from brownies and smores to stave off the inevitable crash that would have otherwise followed.

          I’ve been doing much better this year than in years past in terms of being a responsible athlete. Since April or May, I’d only been sick once, and even with some annoying allergy problems, I haven’t had health interfere with training at all.

            Until this week. I think it was bound to happen at some point, as you have like 1600 people all coming from different places with different germs at the beginning of the school year. Looking back, there were probably a few things I could have done differently, mainly drinking water in the 24 hours between the end of the Katahdin hike and the beginning of my specific strength workout the next day. But this is in the past. Monday morning I woke up with one of the most intense sore throats I’ve had ever. The only thing consoling me is that about half of the rest of the school is sick, as is the same proportion of the ski team. I’ve been pounding the Vitamin C and water, and hopefully I’ll be good to go by tomorrow. 

Below are some gratuitous watermelon shots, as well as some other good pictures…

Tags: BBAdd new tag

This entry was posted on Thursday, September 18th, 2008 at 2:47 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.