August so far

I haven't written anything for a while. This is because I have been busy, both with work and adventure. It all began when I got a message from couchsurfers wishing to stay in Newport for the weekend. There were four different surfers from three different places. Monica came to town first. I picked her up at the bus station in town and took her back to the house. From there, my roommate Austin, his friend Kelly, Monica and I went to check out the cliff walk by bike ride and tried to find treasure on the way. We succeeded on one search but failed on another. I think that the second one was gone. Damn muggles.

From there we went to downtown to show Monica the nightlife. It was standard Newport insanity. On the way home was when perhaps the most memorable event happened. So there we were. Walking down the street near my house when we see a skunk. Skunks are small woodland creatures that look much like fluffy kittens. They cannot run, but instead waddle along. As a result of these two features, I neglected to respect the facts that skunks do not like to be picked up and they have the capability to create smells far worse than Thai food in the digestive tract. So i picked it up. foolish huh? The thing simultaneously spun in my hands, sprayed and bit me. As a result, I smelled like skunk for a while and learned not to pick up cute animals.

The next day was Friday. Monica and I took a bike ride to see the coast, look for some more treasure and do some snorkeling. We found one of the two caches we were looking for and and found a huge population of hermit crabs in the sandy, rocky bottom at Gooseberry beach.
In the evening, I got a call from our second couchsurfer, Nick, from Nottingham, England. Tony, Monica, Nick and I decided to head over to Flo's clam shack for some good New England seafood. Its calamari, scallops, clam strips, fish, and these clam balls. All of them are fried and delicious. i recommend.

That weekend was Folk Festival. I asked around for some boats to take out the the water front to watch the festival from there. We ended up with a kayak, a canoe and an inflatable walmart raft. We paddled out with Tony, Monica, and I to watch the music. It was a giant floating party for the first part of the day. Then, at around 2 or so, the sky erupted in a maelstrom of chilly rain. we sought respite under the hull of a fishing vessel, but it was incredibly cold and we decided to head into the festival and hop the fence. While we understood that this was illegal, we felt that we could justify searching for shelter. We got out of the rain and met up with Nick, who had a legitimate ticket for the weekend. The weather cleared up and we made it out to the muddy yet still populated stage area for a good Marley Brothers set followed by the Black Crowes. We met up with couch surfers 3 and 4 there as they had driven up for the festival from New York City. The day was great, until we tried to leave to find police waiting for us to get back to the boats. After much reprimand, they made us buy tickets and let us go home.

That night, my 2 roommates, the couchsurfers and I went next door to jimmy's. There was karaoke and a diverse variety of patrons including Bert, who somewhat resembles Mr. T. When asked why he had his sunglasses on in a dark saloon, he replied "The sun never sets on you when you are this cool." Yes!

the next morning was tired frisbee, then back to the folk festival. Marc and Allissa, the couchsurfers from new york, came along for the view from the water. This day was beautiful and police-free as we stayed out on the water. it was interesting, however, when we moved everyone into the canoe so that we could dump the raft and reinflate it. Canoes are top heavy and inherently tippy. We sunk immediately. We lost a few shirts and some sandwiches and Marc's phone is water-logged and potentially deceased.

Everybody stayed another night, but as a result of a busy weekend, we all just hung out at the house.

The next day, Nick, Marc and Allissa left to their respective destinations. Monica, Tony and I drove first to Boston to pick up Tony's best friend Mike. We continued on to northern mass to drop Monica off at home and eat a homemade meal with her family. Couchsurfing is good people.

That night, and for the next as well, we traveled around Massachusetts camping at a couple of different campgrounds, stopped at a couple of cool scenic spots, went fishing(caught a small catfish) and slept in the rain. The next night, we were tired of sleeping in wet conditions so we decided to visit Boston for the nightlife. On the way, we picked up Monica (She was bored at her parents house). Unfortunately there aren't any pictures of this excursion nor the camping as my camera met a watery demise in one of the most ill-fated days of my entire life which was at the jazz Fest the following weekend. See later story. Heres a picture of Turner's Falls

In Boston, we looked at hotels but due to their high cost, we decided to find a cheaper place to stay. Tony and mike were in a fraternity at USF, so we looked for it's Boston counterpart at MIT. They were cool guys, gave us a great room of couches in which to sleep, and showed us some cool bars around town. Salad fingers came to meet us as well.

The next day was Thursday, and I had to work at the IYAC, so dropped Monica off and headed back to Newport. I worked on a boat the next day and hung out that night, looking forward to Jazz fest. While it is normally a 2 day festival, our Saturday day was so eventful that that was it for us. It began with a larger than sensible group for our limited space. The group was Tony, Mike, Salad Fingers and his cousin, Katie and Kim from frisbee and Tony's friend from work, Hillary. She brought her Puggle puppy. She rides in Tony's boat with her dog. Salad, Mike and I ride in the canoe and pull Katie and Phil in the the walmart boat. Kim paddles in his kayak. We make it out there fairly uneventfully, watched some jazz and enjoyed the sunny day. Towards the end of the day, We decide that it is time to head back so Salad and his cousin paddle the canoe, Tony and Hillary pull me, Katie and Mike in the inflatable boat. Because a kayak is not meant to pull a boat with three people, this was hard work for Tony. Instead so discussing a reasonable alternative, a tired tony declares that he is going to swim the half mile back to the beach and demands that I get into the kayak. He tries to get off of the kayak, but instead flings himself, Hillary and her puggle puppy into the sea. So I get into his kayak and we begin again. Tony begins his impossible swim back to shore. He quickly tires and grabs onto Salad's canoe. For a tug. Because this gets a large amount in his mouth, he demands entry into the canoe, Despite pleas by Salad and Phil, Tony pulls himself into the canoe, which immediately begins to sink. The cooler, back packs, sandals and trash scatter in the sea. We spend a few minutes swimming around, gathering all of our belongings that we could and attempting to right the canoe. we get picked up by coast guard and taken to shore. Tony, due to all of the salt water that he has swallowed, spends the trip vomiting off of the side of the coast guard boat. So we all make it back to shore with most of our stuff, minus my camera which slipped out of my bag. Too bad, but its just a thing and can be replaced with a couple of shifts at the bar.

But our story doesn't end here. We load up the boats onto the car and begin organizing our belongings. When it is time to leave, we find that the keys are in the driver seat. This is usually isn't a problem when the doors are unlocked. Today, the doors were not unlocked. We just began laughing, because, what the hell? Not our day. We called AAA and walked over to the seaside park where we found some of our friends throwing a frisbee. We joined them and and got a 4v4 game going. Because this wasn't on a sports field, there were a couple of obstacles on the field. Namely, a large steel grate. Tony was the only one unfortunate enough to find the grate, stuff his toe inside one of the holes, do a front somersault and effectively pull his big toenail up and off of his nail bed. In his pain, he proceeded to chicken dance/walk around the park moaning and muttering. This was the hardest that I have laughed since i moved to Newport and continued to laugh for 25 minutes. Finally AAA came, we unlocked the car and went home. It is two days later, Tony is still in an incredible amount of pain and I am still laughing every time i am reminded of the day that was never meant to be.