Sri got out there early on Friday and they all went to an O's game before I came in. Even though my bus was almost an hour late, they picked me up and we wasted no time in getting to the downtown apartment we had for the night, changing and pre-partying in a rushed 20 minutes and getting a cab to a place called Bond Street Social on the Baltimore Harbor. As Palak was climbing into the backseat of the cab, she called to the cabbie: "Excuse me, sir? This is a really good song, could you please turn it up?" That's how good the night was. It was perfect! It was a great bar with a big dance floor, good music, and my friends! Afterwards we went to some pizza place in a nearby square and as Sri was shaking peppers and oregano onto the pizza, I thought it was funny to hit the jar so mounds of them fell onto the entire pie. Oops.
Doug was up front chattin' it up right nice while we had a photo shoot in the back
I think I made Doug take this picture, so he was out another as well.
But we got all four of us eventually!
For Saturday, Doug had arranged some river tubing down the Shenandoah River. In the morning we packed it up, got Starbucks, and hit the road to Harpers Ferry, in WEST VIRGINIA! In the Hunger Games, District 12 is only described as being in a region that once was referred to as Appalachia, but my understanding is that West Virginia is sort of the heart of that operation, so we took comfort in the idea that Katniss and Gale wandered about these roads... such as the Appalachian Trail!
Palak and I have a tradition of the black and white cookies from Starbucks, so we introduced Sri and Doug to these and made them a complete legacy
The rolling blue and green hills and farm houses were almost beyond anything I'd seen before. It was so beautiful! And the clapboard walls and wooden fences and little American flags everywhere just really made you feel as though you were in Small Town America, USA's capitol. It was really beautiful.
I think this was the Potomac, and what didn't show up in the picture so well, is the little town nestled at the end, with a church steeple and spire and houses at the river's bend.
But even just a few miles into West Virginia, things turned into hickville 101! The pimply-faced boys working at the place held paddles and dodged "traffic" (one pickup truck) to come to our car and ask "Do you wanna park... there?" Inside, we were checking in and were told we should wear shoes with backing that wouldn't slip off, but we all had flip flops. "Oh that's fine! We can give you some string!" Although we laughed hysterically later, we all used the string to tie our shoes around our ankles like morons. We waited for a little while, rented a floating cooler to hold our beers we were taking with us, and amused ourselves in the West Virginia countryside. It was leafy with lush hills and trees, and the insects gave off a loud buzzing hum all around, and it was warm, even with the overcast sky.
We had to watch a safety video on the porch, and they opened a small wooden cabinet that housed a TV and the lady selected our video. Palak said "Wow guys, this is really high-tech for West Virginia" and Sri just said "Palak, it's just a TV..." and for some reason that had me cackling over the side of the table, which was probably rude while the video was going, but it wasn't exactly helpful. You can imagine the low-quality contrived video of awful West Virginian actors we were watching that only gave us ideas rather than teach us safety.
They then gave us all life vests and drove us out further into the hills and upriver to drop us off and give us our tubes. Being out on the Shenandoah River in West Virginia was the most relaxing and beautiful thing I have done in a long time. I really wish we hadn't been so scared to bring our phones and cameras, because it was incredible. Rolling hills and a red bridge in the distance, storks and other birds flying and landing on the shores, dragonflies flitting around, floating on a cool river with friends next to me and a beer in the cupholder with not a car or plane or disturbing noisemaker in sight.
We had the entire afternoon to do this, so after the initial half hour or so of relaxing, taking it in and peacefully enjoying this, we somehow found ourselves grouped together with our tubes tied to the cooler and other tubes via the string from our sandals and the buckles of our life vests, which were either only halfway on or off completely, jumping out into the water, swimming sidestream and trying not to be the one left to hold the floating fortress, playing Six Degrees of Separation and wondering what the Civil War must have been like here. (We had Doug, a history major, to hold us to reality when we started bringing email and Tapatio into the idea.) When it started to sprinkle, Palak and I relished it and sang Just Around The River Bend and Colors of the Wind from Pocahontas. I'm not sure why this makes sense, but it added up at the time. It was perfect.
After the river excursion was complete, we drove back to Palak's little Maryland town and bought a volleyball and played 2's until it got too dark, and even shining the car lights on the sand court weren't enough, then had a nice sit-down dinner (still in bathing suits and bedraggled attire) and then went home to shower and clean up, and somehow still made it out of the house, even though it was 11:30 or midnight, to a bar in the city for a few drinks and shuffleboard for the evening.
We have a habit of sending pictures of ourselves at any given moment in the group chat we had going on our phones, and Doug and I sent this gem when we ran into CVS for two seconds for me to buy cough drops (and emerged with cereal and Poptarts too...)
On Sunday, my voice was gone completely. I tried to sign, but no one knew sign language, and Palak only knew the sign for "engineer" that I taught her once, but I had a few more things to say than that, so I took it all in, with a few bursts of throaty and squeaky monologues when I had some particularly good stories or strong viewpoints to add to the conversations.
It was a lazy, rainy Sunday of lunch and Starbucks and Palak with tofu...
(literally!)
And I was sad for the weekend to be over, although I only really needed to mourn Doug since Pal and Sri and I seem to be getting pretty consistent with seeing each other. But it really was perfect! On the way home I got on the subway right next to roommate but didn't even notice him until he waved to me! And since I couldn't stop talking, my voice didn't rest at all. And now my dad and Kathleen are coming into town today. So here goes nothing.
Fun fact: On this day in 2006, I boarded a plane from Los Angeles to Paris on my way to Bordeaux, France, to study abroad for the year. Oh what a difference six years makes!
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