Awesome weekend, definitely.

So my little weekend vacation thing to Simonne's house went very well. So here I will tell the tale.

Saturday I left my house around 5. Mapquest estimated the drive to be 46 minutes, and they were more or less accurate. I reached Simonne's without any delays or anything. There was a slight incident, however. When I was almost there I called Simonne. So I was just kind of talking to her as I was driving, and she was kind of guiding me along, telling me landmarks and such. I had the directions and the cell phone in my right hand, and I was holding the steering wheel with my left. Well, Simonne's driveway came up really quickly, despite the guidance, and I had to stop really fast and turn into the driveway, with just my left hand, going faster than I normally would on a turn. So incidentally that was the worst turn that I've ever made in my entire life. I had to stop completely, halfway in the road still, and turn the wheel completely to the right to make the turn. Oh well.

Simonne gave me the tour after that, and I met her Golden Retriever (Silky) and her two cats (Romeo and Blackie). They were both more social than Scott's cats, lol. And if I spelled the names wrong, Simonne can yell at me. She took me onto her beach (amazing) and David arrived while we were down there. We were actually walking up to meet David, because we figured he would be getting there, and he was already there. And Erin arrived soon after that. We all arrived within 15-20 minutes of each other, so it worked out rather well.

After everyone got there, we ate dinner and unpacked and just sort of hung out for a while. Then we had our bonfire on the beach. Hehehe, fire is great. I lit the fire because I'm a pyro. Brendan would have enjoyed it, cuz he's an even bigger pyro. I jumped over the fire a few times. I'd never jumped over a fire before, so that was pretty cool. Actually, it wasn't as exciting as it sounds, lol.

As the fire was burning, we decided to do that thing where someone starts a story and then other people keep adding more to it and we keep going around in a circle. And we constructed a very interesting--and very complicated--story. So my details may be a little off. Basically, there was this hobbit that lived on a planet with trees made of chocolate bars and lakes of chocolate milkshakes. But the hobbit wanted cheese, so he got into a space ship and travelled to a different planet, which had trees made of brownies. There was this prince on the planet, and he told the hobbit that he would give him a bunch of cheese if he rescued his lost cat. Well, I guess the cat stole the hobbit's spaceship and came to Earth and landed on the Hawaiian islands. So the hobbit had Captain Jack Sparrow commandeer a spaceship and take him to Earth. But they landed in the Atlantic Ocean, so the hobbit had to swim around S. America and through the Straight of Magellan. He saw fires on the beaches, so he came ashore. He spoke to the natives using his pocket dictionary, and found out that there was a witch that lived in a volcano on the Hawaiian Islands, so the hobbit set sail on a raft made of plywood, but he ended up in the Bermuda Triangle. He found an old pirate ship, and stole one of the lifeboats and came to Washington DC. There he discovered that the cat that he was looking for was the president of the United States. He had conquered the country because Earth people are so stupid. Then for some reason the Hobbit ended up in Ohio. I think the cat sent him to look for someone by the name of Jameson (hehe). Well, Jameson was being held captive by an evil princess in Ohio, and the princess wanted cheese as well. I guess Jameson was good at making cheese, but he needed silkworms to do it (why? I don't know, lol). So the evil princess sent the hobbit to Alaska to find someone named Jason who could get him to China to get silkworms. I guess Jason already had some, so they were brought to Jameson. Then the hobbit found out that Jameson lied, I guess, and something happened, I think. Then somehow the Hobbit ended up at Denison, and he gave the cat a vulture to persuade him to go back to the prince. I think it was because the vulture was better than ruling so many stupid people on Earth. So the cat, the vulture, and the hobbit travelled to Arizona, to a city called Mos Eisley, and they met Chewbacca and Han Solo and they took them back to the Prince's planet in the Millenium Falcon. Then the Prince told the Hobbit that there was a hobbit woman that knew how to make the best cheese ever, but she was under a spell and was magically asleep, and could only be woken up by a true lover of cheese. The cat somehow had a cheese factory in him all of the sudden, but the vulture killed the cat, and threw up cheese, and the hobbit took that cheese and stuffed it down the hobbit woman's throat, which broke the spell. The cat came back to life (with 8 lives left) and killed the vulture for his insolence. Then something happened, the hobbit woman could only make cheddar cheese, but the hobbit wanted American, so the hobbit and the hobbit woman (who had two names at some point, but I don't remember them) went to America. They talked to Jameson again, and were sent by him to Michigan. There they met Bob, who had a recipe for the best American cheese. But he would only give them the recipe if they could tell him all of the functional groups and recycling symbols for his chemistry test. They didn't know them, so they went to Hawaii to visit DC Finnen, and get them from him. He went off on some crazy tangent about combustion engines, and then I think he eventually said that Bob didn't know anything about cheese, and if they wanted good cheese they should go to Wisconsin and visit a girl named Liz. Liz was off running amock (sp?) outside, and the hobbit met her and she said "moo! I can get you some cheese!" Oh, and there was some animosity growing between the hobbit and the hobbit woman by this time. And then something happened, and I felt taht it had gotten quite rediculous enough, so I just said that the hobbit died. And the story ended there. I may be off on a lot of those details, but I'm sure David, Erin, or Simonne will correct me if that happens. Our creation, the Loch Erie monster showed up at some point, but I don't remember the exact context.

Wow, that story took longer to type than I thought it would. Anyways, we told our little story, and hung out on the beach for a little while longer, and then we went inside. We couldn't decide which game to play, so we ended up giving subjective Guess Who a try. Hehehe. Me and David tried to keep in tamer than usual, at first, since Simonne and Erin hadn't played. But it ended up getting just as sexual as it always is, lol. We rotated teams a few times, and there was definite disagreement at times between teammates. Most notably me and Simonne could not agree on a perception of Susan, I believe it was. Anyways, Simonne and Erin won two games, and they were the only team to ever win. They're good, lol.

After that I had some trouble folding out the couch, lol. And then we hung out for a little while longer, but ended up going to bed soon because we were tired.

And we finally reach Sunday. This update is long, but whatever. I woke up around 8 or 8:30. I'm not sure exactly, because I didn't turn on my phone until about 8:45, I guess. I think we ate breakfast around 9:30.

A little while after breakfast, we took the little boat out on the lake. I learned how to drive it, and then Erin had a turn, and then David. I think most of us agreed that David was the best at driving the boat. While we were heading back to Simonne's house (I happened to be driving, at this point), the boat ran out of gas. So me and Erin were rowing it, but we decided that it would be easier if I just rowed it alone. So Erin got out of the boat and pushed to make us go faster. And eventually Simonne got out to help Erin push, but with both of them out of the boat, it was light enough for me to be able to row faster than they could follow. So they didn't get to do much pushing, lol. When we got close to the house, we threw them seat cushions and then I just rowed the rest of the way back. After that, we sat around and snacked for a little bit, and then went to pick up the big boat. We got it to the house, and then we ate lunch. After lunch we played badminton for a little while. We played two games; me and David vs Simonne and Erin. I think that we each won a game, but I wasn't really paying attention to the score so I'm not sure, lol. Then me and Erin and David practiced for a little while, and David really improved after he realized that it helps to watch the birdie.

When we were finished with that, we took the big boat out and went tubing. Now, when I had gone tubing previously, it was not the same at all. It was when I was in Boy Scouts, way back in the day, and we basically just sat on tubes and let the river carry us down. It was pretty much an alternative to canoeing, since we had done that the day before. Tubing at Simonne's was much more fun. The inner tubes were tied to the boat, and it would drag us on the tubes. There was a red two person tube, and a black tube that was not as stable, lol. We all fell off the tubes multiple times. It's really hard to hold on, especially when you're going fast over waves! On the black tube, you could either sit in the middle of it or lay on your stomach (like on the red tube). Sitting on the black tube is a much different experience than laying. You really feel like you're going to fall out much more easily. Erin and Simonne wanted to each be on different tubes, and then switch while moving. That didn't really work out too well, even though they did almost get it once. Erin kept falling off, and she was really exhausted. Climbing onto the tubes from the water is actually a lot of work. So I replaced Erin, and me and Simonne were able to switch tubes.

After tubing we really didn't do much. David, Erin, and I pretty left at the same time. While I had no trouble getting to Simonne's house, getting back was a different experience altogether. It was the first time that I'd ever gotten lost. The mapquest directions basically had me take 480 W to 90 W to get there. There were 3 or 4 exits and such between the two, but there were a bunch of signs for 90 on 480. You basically didn't need the stuff in between in the directions, because the signs told you where to go. Well, I figured it would be the same on the way back, so I ignored the in-between stuff. Unfortunately, there were no signs for 480 E on 90 E. Plus a good portion of 90 E was closed due to construction, so I had a detour that took me off the highway for a few miles, and it confused me to no end. When I got back on 90 E, I just kept driving. I eventually got to Cleveland, and eventually drove all the way through Cleveland. Now, when things didn't look quite the same as the way I had taken to get there, I grew suspicious. I tried to call my mom, but the home phone and her cell phone were both busy for about 15-20 minutes. So I just kept driving, hoping that I would see something familiar. I was in Cleveland, after all. Cleveland ended, and I was then in Euclid, when I finally got through to my mom. She was talking Robin, and she had no clue what I was doing, so she asked Sam if he could help. Around the time that I called her, I decided to get off and turn around, so I was now on 90 W and I hoped to get to 480 from there. Sam said that if I keep going east, I would hit 271 S and it would be much easier to get home. So I turned around again. I'm on 271 all the time, so I knew where I was after that, and it was all nice and good, and my experience with being lost came to an end. Oh, and I forgot one thing. At one point, while talking to my mom, I decided to roll up the passenger window because the air was making too much noise. Well, I leaned over to do that, and I looked up and I was in another lane! Whoops. So the window didn't get rolled up. That was probably the stupidest thing that I've ever done while driving. But in my defense, there were not many people on the freeway, and had it been crowded I would not have attempted it. Still, it was pretty scary. But I got home in one piece, so it's all good.

And that's the end of my tale. It took really long to type, and I'm tired and sunburnt so I'm gonna stop typing now.