Monthly Roundup
Well, I haven’t been very active here of late! That’s not to say I haven’t been writing. It’s just that my writing has been of a more board-game oriented nature, and hence I’ve done a number of geeklists and/or session reports:
Hiking
I’ve also done a fair amount of hiking over the past month or so. I went with a large group to do more of a nature walk, and then went out to lunch with a couple of the hikers about three weeks ago. This past weekend I went hiking on Sunday at Lamentation Mountain near Guiffrida Park in Meriden. I lead a group of intrepid souls into the wilderness, where we got slightly lost. For an hour or 2.
I’d gotten there with very little time to spare according to the schedule. We usually leave like 10 minutes after the appointed time, just to allow any stragglers time to get there. I went around and introduced myself to everyone. Paul (I’ve hiked with him before) brought his dog along, as did two other people. They all got along pretty well.
We went up and ran the ridgeline, took some pictures. I didn’t have my camera with me (unfortunatley), but others were kind enough to post them online. It was a very fair day, pleasing sun and a brisk wind with temperatures around 45oF.
The plan was to go up Lamentation, loop back, and go up Chauncy, then down to the parking lot. Somewhere we simply went too far. We went a couple miles out of our way, I imagine. There was some good trail out there, however, especially this one nice marsh that was caught up in sunlight in between the hillocks.
The trail was covered in a bunch of fallen leaves. It made for some fairly dangerous hiking, especially going down, but fortunately nobody was hurt (though we did have a couple falls!).
A couple of the women expressed concern when we got lost. Nobody freaked out, but I could tell they were worried. The guys took it in stride. As did I (I mean, I get lost in the woods all the time – isn’t that what “exploring” is?), though it wasn’t exactly in the plan and so I felt kind of responsible for getting us lost (and of course I was).
Tori had this cool dog waterer with her. It was essentially an open-faced watering bowl that was conformed to a water bottle. She’d detach it and squeeze some water into it and her dog would drink. Paul just gave his dog a squirt out of his water bladder hose.
The dogs got totally filthy a couple of times, prancing around in muddy water. It was funny when one of them jumped on another and forced her head into the mud accidentally. When we got back to Guiffrida Park, however, the dogs were able to swim and get all the muck off of themselves.
Upcoming
This looks to be a busy week for me. I’ve got games in Stamford tonight, cell group tomorrow (Dorene’s cooking!), games in West Haven on Thursday, either pool in Stamford or games in Norwalk on Friday (busy game week, eh?), a hike on Saturday, and church on Sunday. I might bail on the Friday night stuff, as I’ll likely be exhausted and I need to get up early for the Saturday hike.