A Week and a Half Break

Ms Duncan has just finished her summer break ... it was disconcertingly short - 1 1/2 weeks. We were quite busy - planning a certain ceremony and visiting friends with whom we bonded over various bouts of intestinal diseases during our Peace Corps service.

First we went to Vermont, stayed at a friend's family cabin in the woods, went swimming everyday in an amazingly beautiful lake with a perfect island right in the middle, toured the Cabot cheese factory, went to the Ben and Jerry's factory (no tour as they weren't actually making anything that day - and no free sample as far as I can tell), played cards and other games, cooked out (yours truly built a glorious cooking fire), played tennis, and generally had a fabulous time reconnecting with the people who were too lame to move to Boston when we left DC. There was much rejoicing.

As a couple friends were departing, we learned that they would be returning to the Northeast next weekend to see family in Maine - they invited us along so we ended up picking them up at the airport and driving through hellacious boston traffic along I-95 (easily the most gridlocked interstate top to bottom in the country) arriving at the family abode after midnight, waking up at 530 to drive another hour and a half north to the river, bundling up in wetsuits as it was 45 degrees outside, rafting down the river for 5 hours (an interlude that was broken up by lunch at the mosquito breeding grounds - seriously the most infested place I have ever seen), getting a busted lip from a bouncing oar (Ms. Duncan) and nearly falling out of the raft during class 5 rapids (yours truly - Ms. Duncan dropped her oar into the river to keep me from falling out), driving back to Bangor to attend a folk music festival, driving out to another cabin on a lake, jumping in said lake at midnight despite 45 degree temperatures, sleeping on tiny beds, jumping in the lake again, and heading back to boston.

When put that way it seems like quite a lot.