meow

new adventures
by john ryan gallagher
 
i’ve been trying mercilessly to nail the pants off  this summer. more experiences, swims, friends, and laughs. here are a few from this past hot week:

raptor birds not last thursday, the thursday before, i went on a guided night hike and owl prowl in little river state park, waterbury, vermont (for more info on the park and prowl click: http://bit.ly/dgCSNC). while we didn’t see any of the birds, a screech owl did respond to our guide’s call. the climax of the evening involved telling ghost stories with a bunch of strangers in a former maple farm settlement’s graveyard. it was super creepy, but no scared boners. it was a good evening, but when i heard about a presentation being given last tuesday at the plum island refuge visitors’ center on raptor birds, i jumped at the chance to see some up close. i went with my mom. don’t make fun. it was great seeing the birds from a short distance. there was a really funny part during the presentation when this little fat kid in front of us farted really loud and the look on his brother’s and sister’s faces was priceless. a number of us were trying desperately not to laugh out loud. i saw a lot of myself in that fat little fucker.

 
indoor karting four of us went to this place in haverhill (sketch city) and raced each other on go-karts indoors. it was a blast. we did two twenty-lap races. alice won the first race and jeff won the second. i was hoping we were going to get to race with randoms because i deeply enjoy giving strangers a run for their money. one time on lake ontario a whole group of us drunkenly went bumper boating and i located a naive male tourist whom i insisted all of us gang up on. we soaked that fucker, but that’s the point of bumper boats: taking out your aggression on people you’ll never see again. i’d recommend checking this place out, but they’re super super serious there. we got yelled at for taking a trophy out of an enclosed case and posing with it after we’d raced. lame.

take a pregnant person tubing day it never dawned on me that when you’re preggers you can’t lie on your stomach. i’ve told you before. i’m not very bright. it was dumb luck that the activity i chose to do with juliet was an excellent idea. it was fun floating in the sea and bouncing over waves, but i was a little nervous that she was gonna get fucked up from a wave and hurt the cargo. idk. i don’t know much about pregnant chicks. i don’t think i’d ever even driven a pregnant person in my whip before. i’m very happy for juliet and brian on their exciting addition to their family.

the continental fucking time warp on route one i’ve driven by this place my entire life and never been inside. actually, i may have been there once when i was bombed but i definitely didn’t remember until a few years afterwards, and even still, it’s an intense haze that drifts over my mind when i try to think about it. i seem to recall my father telling me he’d been banished from the place at one point. to make a long story short, my aunt loves this place so we went there. the lighting is amazing and dank and reminiscent of a tarantino movie (think jackie brown). to start they give you these weird bean dip and chicken wing appetizers, along with these rad puff pastries. the waitresses that work there, who despite the dyed black hair, look like they’re well into their 90’s. i totally ate like an asshole here and i definitely discovered the cleanest bathrooms between boston and newburyport. i took a mental note for the next time i’m heading in either direction and need to make a sudden deposit. 
 

lost in the woods perhaps I finally learned a lesson in refraining from wandering from the intended hiking trail. jenny and i got really lost on mt. pinnacle in stowe last week. i opted to try an alternate route down from the summit and we wound up lost in strange meadows and on dirt roads for hours. it wasn’t cool. we ran out of water. it was hot, and the only person we saw looked like a rapist. jenny was pissed at me, but not as much as she was when we were in montreal the day before and i bit into a diet coke can and it sprayed soda on strange french candadians in a crowded park in the old part of town. apparently i need to work on finding better ways to channel my anger.
 
any ideas for adventures this week? what are some adventures you’ve had this summer? thank you for reading.