Camping - NYC style
I spent this weekend camping/river rafting and I must say that it was one of the most ridiculous experiences in my life. It might just be that I'm used to doing outdoor activities with other people that do them often, or it might be the fact that all the people I went with are Manhattan residents by choice and would have it no other way.
First off, none of us have a cars so we all go to rent cars in Manhattan in order to get to the camp site. We head out to the camp site at the Delaware River Gap 2 hours from the city and arrive in a Lincoln Continental, a Buick old person car, and a Mercedes. Then we discover that the each of the cars had decided to buy beer for the entire group of 10 people, which put us over 150 beers not including the wine and hard alcohol. We grill some food, drink a bunch of beers, and go to sleep in the giant 10 person tent with a hinged screen door.
The next morning I realized how ridiculous my companions auctually were. The first one to wake up was Jeff. He gets out of the tent and walks straight to the bathrooms. He comes back showered and with his hair done up, gel and all. The next two to get up are the girls. They need to go to the bathroom too but the 2 minute/500 foot walk is to far for them so they proceed to drive to the bathroom. After this, everyone discovers that you can drive to the bathroom instead of walking and for the rest of the trip everyone proceeds to do this . (one guy Doug was auctually too lazy to walk to the bathroom so he ended up taking a shit in the river instead) After everyone is up we sit around for a while, we pass around a couple of issues of US Weekly and we pack the lunch cooler for the day of river rafting. About 20 minutes is spent mixing pineapple vodkas, 5 minutes is spent packing lunch food, and another 10 is spent filling the rest of the space with beer.
After getting safety instruction from a 10 year old boy we launch off in our two boats ready for an adventure. We hit the one and only set of rapids, they last about 10 seconds and we are still completely dry. For the rest of the day we float/sunbathe down the river at just under 1 mile/hour. Throughout the course of the day we finish an entire handle of vodka and probably about 2 cases of beer between 10 people. During the entire river trip everyone kept on throwing their trash into the rive and I would keep on picking it up and putting it in our raft. When my boat mates found a pile of wet lunch food at the bottom of our boat, they were disgusted and didn't know what to do except to sit on the other side of the boat in order not to touch probably 1/2 loaf of bread they had chucked into the river, but was now in our boat.
Once on shore we piled in the first van we saw thinking it was the raft company's. Turns out it wasn't theirs and we had just put 10 people in a strangers car and used their a/c for 15 minutes. We manage to get back to our campsite in and discover that we have new neighbors. On one side we had a group of Romanian ladies that sang drinking songs till 2 in the morning, and on the other we had a bunch of white guys who had amazing base in their Toyota Camery from which they blasted rap for hours on end. Actually the entire campsite was filled with people just like if not worse than our neighbors.
Being tired from a long day of drinking we went to bed early, around 12, only to be woken up a couple of hours later by firecrackers set off by our neighbors and more Romanian singing. I think some other people around the way tried to rap/karaoke at some point too.
We got up again and did the morning ritual of driving to the bathroom 500 feet away. Packing was easy, we threw the food we had opened away and then packed the 70% we hadn't touched into the car along with all our stuff and left. We finish up the trip with a stop at Chili's and head home. The guys went straight back to their apartments while the girls made a stop at the beauty parlor for a manicure.
First off, none of us have a cars so we all go to rent cars in Manhattan in order to get to the camp site. We head out to the camp site at the Delaware River Gap 2 hours from the city and arrive in a Lincoln Continental, a Buick old person car, and a Mercedes. Then we discover that the each of the cars had decided to buy beer for the entire group of 10 people, which put us over 150 beers not including the wine and hard alcohol. We grill some food, drink a bunch of beers, and go to sleep in the giant 10 person tent with a hinged screen door.
The next morning I realized how ridiculous my companions auctually were. The first one to wake up was Jeff. He gets out of the tent and walks straight to the bathrooms. He comes back showered and with his hair done up, gel and all. The next two to get up are the girls. They need to go to the bathroom too but the 2 minute/500 foot walk is to far for them so they proceed to drive to the bathroom. After this, everyone discovers that you can drive to the bathroom instead of walking and for the rest of the trip everyone proceeds to do this . (one guy Doug was auctually too lazy to walk to the bathroom so he ended up taking a shit in the river instead) After everyone is up we sit around for a while, we pass around a couple of issues of US Weekly and we pack the lunch cooler for the day of river rafting. About 20 minutes is spent mixing pineapple vodkas, 5 minutes is spent packing lunch food, and another 10 is spent filling the rest of the space with beer.
After getting safety instruction from a 10 year old boy we launch off in our two boats ready for an adventure. We hit the one and only set of rapids, they last about 10 seconds and we are still completely dry. For the rest of the day we float/sunbathe down the river at just under 1 mile/hour. Throughout the course of the day we finish an entire handle of vodka and probably about 2 cases of beer between 10 people. During the entire river trip everyone kept on throwing their trash into the rive and I would keep on picking it up and putting it in our raft. When my boat mates found a pile of wet lunch food at the bottom of our boat, they were disgusted and didn't know what to do except to sit on the other side of the boat in order not to touch probably 1/2 loaf of bread they had chucked into the river, but was now in our boat.
Once on shore we piled in the first van we saw thinking it was the raft company's. Turns out it wasn't theirs and we had just put 10 people in a strangers car and used their a/c for 15 minutes. We manage to get back to our campsite in and discover that we have new neighbors. On one side we had a group of Romanian ladies that sang drinking songs till 2 in the morning, and on the other we had a bunch of white guys who had amazing base in their Toyota Camery from which they blasted rap for hours on end. Actually the entire campsite was filled with people just like if not worse than our neighbors.
Being tired from a long day of drinking we went to bed early, around 12, only to be woken up a couple of hours later by firecrackers set off by our neighbors and more Romanian singing. I think some other people around the way tried to rap/karaoke at some point too.
We got up again and did the morning ritual of driving to the bathroom 500 feet away. Packing was easy, we threw the food we had opened away and then packed the 70% we hadn't touched into the car along with all our stuff and left. We finish up the trip with a stop at Chili's and head home. The guys went straight back to their apartments while the girls made a stop at the beauty parlor for a manicure.
posted by Charles at 8:53 PM
1 Comments:
I'm in awe..... this post should be titled "why I miss Drew and other people like him"
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