In my excitement to go over the next bit of my life’s adventure, I neglected to write about a sizable portion of what I’ve been up to these past few weeks. My last day at UofL was August 28th. Everything before that is largely irrelevant. I left with zero fanfare. As much as I might have liked to throw myself a parade upon resignation, I was just as happy to skulk out with as few people acknowledging my departure as possible. Part of the reason I hated office life so vehemently was the phony social games that cube monkeys play. Maybe it’s true everywhere and maybe I’m bound to run into that office politics bullshit wherever I go, but at the very least I like to tell myself that the moments in between the blah blah blah might actually mean something. I might actually get to create something at AmeriCorps. I might get to make some kind of tangible contribution to a cause I believe in. For fuck’s sake, I might actually have a smile on my face when I tell people what I do for a living.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. I left the office downtown without so much as a muttered fuck-you, and got into my car to head to Kathy’s house. I got up early the next morning to catch a complicated series of transit varietals to Camp Orkila in the beautiful San Juan Islands. I spent six awesome days at camp hanging out with Theo, Jenny, Michael, and Dan, and I had an absolute blast. Michael, Theo, and the kayaking guide whose name I’ve forgotten (that NEVER happens, I’m awesome at names… Nate? Was it Nate??…) took the kayaks out at sunset one evening and it was, predictably, amazing. I’d never been in a kayak before, but the waves were calm and the boat I picked was, as Nate?TheGuide said, “a barge.” I didn’t flip over or drown, and I saw many harbor seals. One snuffed up to the surface a few feet behind me and I wished I’d brought one of those chunky throw-away waterproof cameras.

I had lots of great talks with lots of great people and I sincerely hope that wasn’t my last visit to Orkila. There was a fair amount of moping and griping from some of the camp staff peeps, but I suspect it was similar to the complaining that accompanies comps at Carleton. Sure, there’s a degree of unpleasantness involved, but mostly people can’t believe their luck that they’ve had the opportunity to experience something profound, are a bit unnerved at the prospect of moving on with life and leaving those times of condensed intensity behind, and are just bitching because it seems like you’re supposed to. Camp is magical and the end of camp is an emotional, unshowered roller coaster. It was cool to see that on everyone’s faces without really having experienced it myself.

Anyway, I said my goodbyes to Orkila, then Dan and I took his car onto the ferry and into Seattle. We had a few hours to kill before my flight, so we stopped at the store, bought a few dozen pounds of fresh fish and grilled it on the porch, attracting seagulls and probably breaking fire codes.

I got on the plane, slept a bit and landed in Atlanta in no time. I had a layover of several hours, so I’d booked a hotel room in a skeezy hooker Days Inn about a block away from the airport. My room was remarkably clean and despite the jets taking off right outside the window, I slept like a rock. I woke up early the next morning, caught a plane to Dayton and then drove down to Cincinnati to pick up Hal and Dan C, henceforth OtherDan.

The three of us struck up an easy conversation despite not knowing each other very well and after a few hours of driving, another stuck in traffic, and a brief stop at the Bakery in Louisville, we collected Cliff at SDF. Quick stop at home and Feeder’s Supply to feed the snakes and we were back on the road to the Lincoln State Park in Indiana. Dad, Jody, Granny, and Poppy were already there and had set up camp earlier that day. I’ll admit, I was a little worried about introducing my family to my friends and vice versa, but after some initial awkwardness, everyone got along really great. OtherDan and Hal bunked up together on one half-deflated air mattress and Cliff and I shared the other— a double level palatial mattress with lumps of pillow built in. There was another functionless lump in the mattress on one side so that I kept rolling downhill and accidentally snuggling up to Cliff, then climbing back up the incline to sleep on my own side. Needless to say, nobody slept very well and we were all pretty bleary-eyed in the morning.

Granny cooked up eggs, bacon, toast, and coffee for breakfast and after Dad opened up all 50+ presents, we headed down to splash around in the lake. There was a little snafu with the barbeque delivery, but eventually I set into a chopped mutton sandwich with onion and was delighted to see that the boys loved the stuff just as much as I do. The day was pretty low-key, but shortly before dinnertime, the heavens opened up and we started putting up tarps. Rain management became a highly efficient team-building exercise but I ended up sleeping in the car nonetheless. Fittingly, I slept better and longer in my backseat than I had for at least a week.

We left that day and headed for the farmhouse. We were in line for groceries at Kroger when OtherDan made a fatal error of judgment. Strawberry Milkshake Whoppers. Later the next night, the little skin-colored balls of vomit were distributed to the last place pick in Apples to Apples. We were all a little drunk; I don’t think we could have eaten them otherwise. We made pizza, we sang songs in the echo-tastic acoustic chambers of the septic tank room, and I tried to impress upon the boys how incredibly haunted the house undoubtedly is.

OtherDan had to go home on Monday, but Cliff and Hal stayed another night. The three of us fished a bit, drank more Carlo Rossi, made more pizza and I tried to teach them to juggle. They were both getting the hang of it by the time I had to drive them to the airport and I’m sure they’re both experts by now.

Cliff was flying out of Louisville that evening, so we dropped Hal off at the airport in Cincy and then headed south. I told him about my time in Washington and we both pondered what life would be like if we lived in a Little Carleton away from Carleton where the weather was nicer. In all, my Pacific Northwest vacation was amazing and the First Annual Carleton Regressive Labor Day Weekend Trip of Awesome went off fantastically well. I can’t wait until next year.