Oh, its so great to be back home among flushing toilets and a bed that is not on the ground. Well I guess I should start with Wednesday night. I went to the Johnson’s house so that Heather and I could go shopping for the trip. First though we had to take inventory as to what we needed and what we already had. Keith walked up with some bacon from his freezer which had expired in December 2003. You may find that a little bit odd, but the funny thing is that is not the strangest part of the story. He actually sat there debating about if we should bring it camping. Heather and I quickly talked some sense into him and we did not bring it, but he still said that he would keep it and “I’m sure its still good, after all, it has been frozen this whole time.” Ewwww. I think very highly of Keith, but sometimes, I have to wonder what is going on in that football crazed head of his.
Thursday morning I made it back to their house about 9:45 with a goal of us being on the road by 10. I’m proud to say that we made it on the road by 10! Unfortunately though, the 10 o’clock we made it by was PM and not AM, as we did not leave until almost noon. Traffic was kinda rough on the way up there, what is normally a 5 1/2 hour drive took us nearly 7 hours, which included an hour stop for lunch/dinner. We finally arrived around 6:45pm and immediately started to set up camp. This year I bought a brand spanking new tent which I was both excited and concerned to use. As it turned out, it was actually pretty easy to use and also VERY big. Clearly as you can see, I was compensating for something. That night I would sleep in a tent by myself for the first time ever. Ok, so it was no big deal, I just wanted to make it seem like a big deal so that I look like a big boy, sleeping all by myself!
The next morning we pretty much all got up about 7:45. I was taking a walk when I saw the guy that runs the camp ground, a friendly guy by the name of Lance. I should mention that this campground we go to is owned by Keith’s grandpa’s cousin, so we all know the owners since we have been going up there since Jefferson was president. Anywho, he gave me a cup of coffee and we chatted for a while. I really should have left this last paragraph out, since its boring and this is going to be a long post. Fuck it, do your own damn editing you lazy ass fucking readers.
Flash forward to 11 in the am when we heard a horn honk from the road. I instantly said it was Randy to which Heather told me I was a dumb ass fucking moron and it wasn’t him. Within minutes though, he came driving up, confirming that it was him that honked. In your face Heather!!! Damn. I’m such a dick. I should take this paragraph back as well………….ahhhh, fuck it too.
Most of the day was spent just hanging out at camp, talking and reading and whatnot. Soon Keith’s grandparents, Grandma and Grandpa, arrived. At one point during the day, I went to get something out of the van and saw something inside the van move after I opened the back door. It moved so fast and I though it was a mouse. I quickly came to my senses, realizing that it could not have been a mouse. About 20 minutes later we saw a bag of chips had been chewed open on the bottom, leaving us with only 2 conclusions, either 3 year old David had decided to chew on a bag or we indeed had a mouse taking up quarters in the van. Since David can not open the back of the van, we assumed it was a mouse. Also, Keith said he thought he saw something in there earlier as well. I know what you are thinking, “how the fuck does something like this happen?” Honestly, its none of your damn business, but I will tell you anyway. The working theory is that either the van gave birth to a mouse in some miraculous way (that was my theory!) or the mouse had climbed into the box of food when we had it outside the van.. Nevertheless, having a mouse in the van is not funny, at least according to Grandpa. Honestly, its not funny, but when we look back on it some time, we will laugh.
That night things got kinda goofy around the fire. Ok, really goofy. For example, I invented a new treat around the fire: cookies and s’mores. See, what I did was roast a marshmallow and then stick it along with a piece of chocolate in between a couple of Chewy Chips Ahoys. It was really fucking good, which made me take it a step further the next night, except slightly different. I traded the Chips Ahoy for Oreos and instead of calling it s’mores, we called it S’mOreos. Next I took 2 chocolate fudge Pop Tarts and had some S’mop Tarts. They were all very good, but as you might imagine, kinda bothered my stomach. Great. I managed to remove the healthiest part of a smore, the graham cracker and replace it with things that are far worse. Here is to contributing to America’s obesity crisis!
Anywho, back to Friday night. Sometime after midnight (although to be honest, I’m just guessing at the time) some people showed up to set up camp next to my tent, where there would normally be a bus parked. They seemed nice, but were older then us, perhaps in the mid 40s and early 50s. They were setting up when we saw a scene that would cause Heather and I to laugh very hard for about 10 minutes. Now I do realize this is one of those “you had to be there” moments, so please, use your imagination. One of the guys from that group was inflating his air mattress which he had placed on a table . But the way he went about doing it made it look like he was fucking the damn mattress and table. Honestly, my piss poor description of the scene does not do it justice, if only there was a way for you to see it for yourself. After seeing that though, we became pretty slap happy. The 4 of us (Randy, Heather, Keith and I) would spend the better part of the next hour laughing so hard, I was crying and my stomach hurt. We started making fun of the way Bush talks, complete with bad impersonations and crazy shit he might say. This was also the same time I came up with the phrase “mouth fart” which also became a running joke for the rest of the weekend. I know it may not seem funny to you, but I have to write it down to show how the weekend went.
Fast forward to the next night. About midnight, I got up to look for something to smore (maybe onions? who knows, I’m not past anything) when I saw the mouse in the van. I quickly called everybody over and we started to attempt to find and remove the mouse. Ok, I should be honest here, I was the only one that even looked for the damn thing, everybody else sat on their assess, to scared of mice to even consider looking. All right, so maybe the opposite is true, although I did see the mouse in the van, I’m not crazy about mice so I did not attempt to remove it. Soon though, we had some other hot guys that were camping near us helping us try to get this damn mouse. It turns out he was hiding in the wheel well behind the jack. One of the cute dudes said he saw another mouse in there. At first I didn’t believe him, but right after that, I saw the 2nd mouse too. Every now and then one of them would come out of their hiding place, sending 6 humans into a frenzy to try to catch the damn things. Heather even had a mixing cup that she was going to try to use to catch them. After more then an hour of this shit (I really don’t know if it was an hour, we really don’t have a concept of time up there) Heather and I went walking to try to find the guy that works the gate at the campground to see if he might have some mouse traps. We were unable to find him, sometimes he does go to sleep if they are not busy and it is late. I tried to talk everybody into going into town to try to find a place that was open that sells mouse traps, but being as town is 40 minutes away and it was 1:30 in the morning (Randy has a watch!), it was determined that it is not worth the drive since there is probably nothing opened. In the meantime, our best option of catching these 2 fucking mice was Randy shining his flashlight in the wheel well while Keith’s hand is next to the wheel well waiting for a mouse siting. It seemed to happen a million times in which the mice would crawl out and we would be too damn slow (or maybe those little sons-of-bitches were too damn fast……….come to think of it, that was it) to get them. Finally, Keith gave up, knowing it was a futile chase. Shit, if Tom the cat from Tom and Jerry can’t catch a fucking mouse, what chance do we have? So Keith came back to the fire and he, Heather and I made an onion in the fire. Good shit, like gay sex, don’t knock it until you have tried it. Randy on the other hand, seemed to have a death wish for these mice. We could hear him pounding on various parts of the van to try to whack these mice. As it turned out, the mice had made it into the roof of the van, you know, under the lining of the roof of the van. Clearly, we were fighting a lost cause. Keith decided to leave the back hatch open all night in hopes that they would get the fuck out. We removed……………ok, they………..removed all of the food from the van and put some sunflower seeds and pstaccio nuts (HEHEHEH, stapaccios!) on the ground in front of the van to try to lure them out. Personally, I thought he was nuts, I mean, what if more mice came in. Lo and behold, one of the mice came out of the wheel well, inched towards the end of the bumper and thought about jumping and going after the seeds. Unfortunately, the damn mouse had second thoughts and ran right the fuck back in the wheel well.
Fuck I’m tired. I need to end this, so I will summarize the rest of the trip. The next day we got up and came home, not knowing if the mice were still in the van. I need sleep now.
