Kamanda and Mista Go Camping

(Original post date - Sept 26, 2017)

Apparently my roommate, Amanda, and I have been dubbed “Kamanda” by Mike and Krista who I had previously referred to as Mista.

In preparation for our trip, Amanda and I ate a hearty breakfast of scrambled eggs drizzled with sriracha, avocado, and leftovers from the night before, including mashed potatoes and collard greens. Ready, set, go.

Our original plan was to go to Acadia National Park, but since we didn’t really have enough time to make the long trek, we opted to do an overnight at Island Pond in Harriman State Park. This is just about an hour ride on a Shortline bus from Port Authority to 1 Arden Valley Road (don’t ask the bus driver to drop you there. He “doesn’t know where that is.”)

Since Arden Valley Road is not a real stop along the route, Krista took control and thanks to Google Maps was able to alert the driver when we needed to hop off. We then walked along the road until we arrived at a parking lot near the entrance of the Island Pond trailhead (which I learned is part of the Appalachian Trail).

We had two options. Go for a shorter, but strenuous hike or a longer but less strenuous one. We opted for the shorter one because Mike wanted to take a nap while the rest of us “played.” Okay Mike, you’re not our dad.

We began the 1.1 mile strenuous hike, further confirming what I already knew. I’m out of shape. I guess all the hiking I did back in March during Parks and Trekreation wasn’t enough exercise to last me a lifetime, which I had hoped it would be.

The hike was not so far, but it was a pretty steep climb and my heart rate was pushing 140 at times, though my Fitbit has been lying to me lately. More on that later. I trailed behind most of the way while Amanda, Krista and Mike blazed ahead and my calves and quads screamed at me to slow down. Or just stop. Mike kindly stayed behind with me while I hydrated and recovered a bit, and we eventually made it up to our destination.

Swimming in the pond, camping and making fires is expressly prohibited according to the many signs we saw along the way. But like the rebels we are, we planned to ignore them.

First things first. Lunchtime. Tanka bites, carrots, and rice cakes with peanut butter and thanks to Krista’s cleverness, trail mix on top. This was surprisingly filling. Next up, chillin. We parked our butts on a nice looking rock near the pond and basked in the sun like the little lizard that prompted a scream out of Amanda during lunchtime.

Krista: Hey, wanna see something cool?

Us: Yeah, sure.

Krista then instructed me to film her legs with the slow motion feature while Mike slapped them. That kept us entertained for a while. Try it yourself if you’re bored. 

Amanda realized she left the rice cakes out, and afraid that chipmunks would tear them to shreds, Amanda and Krista went on a reconnaissance mission to survey the possible damage and recover the remains.

Mike and I stayed behind and came up with a couple “would you rather” questions of sorts. What we learned from these hypotheticals is that I am lonely, and Mike is selfish.

I started to feel like we were being scorched by the sun, so we made our way back to the others and basically just sat around and talked until the sun started to go down. Mike and Krista regaled us with stories of their recent trip to Germany. We also determined that I was the weakest link and that if a bear came, they would sacrifice me to escape.

(This is what they would look like after the deed was done.)

Suddenly a hot, shirtless guy showed up (if you look closely you can see him perched on the rock) and we discussed him at length and only later realized the sound carries quite well when a couple of ladies swam by and we could hear their discussion about classical music. When the guy left, at least he left with an ego boost.

Then I had to pee, and found what I thought was a perfect spot between a couple rocks on a downward slope. I guess I didn’t go far enough away, and Mike turned the corner to find a different kind of view than he was probably expecting. Oops.

Before we lost too much light, we took advantage of the golden hour and did a little photo shoot. Krista and Amanda employed me as their photographer to do a “mild” take on #mountainbabesexposed. Instead of going completely topless and facing away, they kept their sports bras on and did a little “yoga.”

Once the coast was clear and there were no park rangers around to yell at us, we set up our tents.

Then Mike began filtering some pond water, while the rest of us gathered up some wood to start a fire. Once that was complete, we ate some pre-made Onigiri rice balls with pork belly and pickled vegetables that Mike made the night before. Then we put on our headlamps and made a fire and hot chocolate and tea. We sat around and became mesmerized by the fire and filmed it using the slo-mo feature until bedtime.

Amanda and I brushed our teeth by a nice looking tree, but I made the mistake of looking up to find a giant spider in a web. We kept our composure, and finished brushing under the spider web, careful not to alert Krista to its presence as she would surely have shit a brick. Why we didn’t just walk away, I don’t really know. Laziness probably.

While standing near the tent, my Fitbit alerted me that I had just reached my 10,000 steps which is a total lie because I was standing completely still at the time. So now I can’t believe anything it says. I think we need to break up. Plus, I’m not that attracted to it anyway. I’m thinking about an Apple Watch.

Once we were cozy inside our tents, Amanda wouldn’t stop talking about bears, so I tried my best to assure her that a bear wouldn’t come along and eat us. Changing the subject didn’t work, but eventually we “fell asleep.” I put that in quotes because I never sleep very well on the ground. At one point in the middle of the night, I felt Amanda vigorously pressing up against me and I remember thinking that it felt nice and made my back feel better for a short while. It was like a mini massage. In the morning, uneaten by bears, we emerged from our sleeping bags to find a daddy long legs on Amanda’s knee. She bravely kept still while I searched for a weapon to slay it. I used the bag of extra tent pegs. At this time, I also found out that the reason Amanda was vigorously pressing up against me is because I had rolled over and squished her into the corner of the tent. She was pushing me back to my side. Sorry!

We packed up our stuff and hurriedly made coffee so we could get an early start down the mountain. Once we got down to the road (coming down was much easier than going up by the way), a barrage of men in douchey sports cars whizzed past us at breakneck speed, kicking up gravel that pelted us in the necks, angering me to the point of flipping the middle finger when they turned around and recklessly sped past us a second time. We had half a mind to make use of the slo-mo feature again and get their license plates to report them to the cops.

Since we got dropped off at a non stop stop, we had to hail the return bus as it made its way to a real stop that was too far away to walk to. We got to the main road about 20 minutes too early, so we shivered in the cool morning air as we ate breakfasts of rice balls and meat sticks and RX bars on the side of the road, and I ran in place to warm up. The bus finally came and we confused a car driving next to it as we wildly waved it down.

(from left to right: John Lennon, Amanda, Krista, Mike)

Once we arrived at Port Authority, we all hugged and said our goodbyes and Amanda and I spent the rest of the day napping and watching movies. The Martian was way better than I expected it to be. Good job, Matt Damon. We both basically had a really badass weekend.