In one week and in one piece

  Hartford, Connecticut, United States
Saturday, September 6, 2008

It turns out that comatosing yourself for 14 hours after drinking margaritas and sangria, gives your head quite a muddy feeling... too muddy to worry about the fact that both your passport and wallet are not where they should be, nor could they be found in the obvious places. I put it to the back of my mind and decided that they'd turn up when they were good and ready, though I had a pretty good idea where they were.

Both Lake Houses

The day was spent meeting Kendra's extended family and then we headed down to the lake house where I would be spending my duration whilst in Connecticut. The day, to say the least, was absolutely delicious. Sunny, a light tickling of wind, the lake looked like glass.
Had a lovely dinner and reminisced about the 5 person police foot-chase in the mall yesterday. Clint and I made plans to fly the australian flag tomorrow and I was pretty buggered so had an earlyish night.

Misty Lakey morning

The Lake

I woke up excited and just before sunrise so I grabbed the camera and headed out for a walk around the lake. Mist gently bounced off the water and the squirrels danced skittishly about the trees. Today I simply relaxed and soaked up the areas wonderment. Which is much of what I did for the rest of the week. I wasn't interested going shopping or anything like that, I simply wanted to stop everything for a few days and reset the head, the senses, the heart.

Raising of the flag

A few things that came my way during the week were these:

1. Spike TV - You generally can't have any swearing on US TV outside the wee small hours of 1 and 3 am. Yet at 10:30am, you can watch back-to-back no fewer than 12 real life stabbings, someone get bounced off a car at 55mph, and a cop getting shot in the face. You get to enjoy these in real-time, slow-mo, zoomed-in again and again... and again. Koyanisquotsi! (spelling) (A.K.A "life out of balance")

2. Hospitality - Incredible Hospitality! It's like each persons house you go to is trying to out-do the other in looking after people, feeding them glamourous looking foods and general sunny connecticut entertaining.

3. Bad Food - The food unfortunately hasn't sat well with me at all. Have been either really hungry or really nauseous. So much fluffy cloggy wheaty products, and everything, yes 98% everything is infected with sugar. Yes, all square meals are rounded off with sugar.

4. Good News - The phone call that I'd been expecting rang and the whereabouts of my wallet and passport were confirmed.

1st Mate

The Catch

5. Big Fish - Despite ignoring recommendations about getting an Epipen or two prior to departure, I decided to tempt fate by going fishing for the biggest fish I'd ever tried to catch. 5 on the boat. 4 rods. 1 resting at a time. 20 rounds (each round was determined by 8 approximate minutes of running a pork skin lure from 180 feet, up the reef to 100 odd feet below.) 5 hours of promised successful fishing. We were all eager to get into it but we were also mindful of each other as to who would sit each round out. In the beginning this was just a take it in turns thing, though after we'd caught a few each, we began to tire and ache and weaken and jumped at the chance to rest. These fish, regardless of who you are, (especially if you have zero upper body) are hard work. 1 metre of fighting flesh. My back suffered for the next three days. What happened to the romanticism of Huck Finn and his dueling banjos?

Chilling out at the lake

5. Mix-Ups - Following the fishing, we had a BBQ to welcome and amalgamate the families and friends of the soonly-weds. I was buggered and had absorbed a substantial amount of sun during the day and should never have attempted anything that required employing my severely meager short-term memory. However I was feeling a little silly and decided to introduce one of Kendra's bridesmaids to the group of international males as "Stephen". Now I found this really funny but felt that amends was to be made as Kirin didn't seem to get the same amount of enjoyment out of it, so I told her that I did in fact know her name (although this may have been a teeny white lie as the sun had temporarily borrowed it from my memory). I decided to thank her for finding my passport and wallet, but this went down as well as me calling her Stephen (which is again really funny), as she denied any affirmation of due kudos. Puzzled by this I endeavored to make it clear a number of times that I was grateful for what she did until someone kindly and publicly reminder me that she was not who I thought she was... I decided then and there that beer was in order, and plenty of it.

6. A Touch of Romance - A little over a year ago, Clint and Kendra began laying plans to match a few of the singletons together. This included me and an american hippy-type girl who owned snakes and dreads that draped down the length of her back. I demanded to see a photo and all things looked interesting, however I put it to the back of my mind as best I could. Simultaneously though, my name was being dropped to hers, though both Clint and Kendra denied that either of us knew that the other knew... if that makes any sense. Anyhow, in the lead-up to the wedding over the year Clint and Kendra did their casual best to occasionally name drop and seeds were being watered. Friday comes, the day before the wedding, and a strange vehicle arrives at the lake house. Not recognizing the driver (nor expecting to see her until the following day) I busied myself going through an instruction book as thick as a car chock trying to get the hang of my new camera. The car disappeared and parked out of sight.
Moments later her name was welcomingly called and instantly my heart beat fierce the inner walls of my ribcage. I gave myself an emotional smacking and told myself to "Calm the fuck down. You're making too much of this. Pull your fucking head in". I fluffed around in an attempt to dissipate the girl-germ jitters before making an appearance an uncomfortable long moment later. And when I saw her, she was gorgeous. When we spoke in the comfortability of a small group, she was glowing in funness. And when we spent the afternoon shooting the breeze over a few beers, marooned on a pontoon in the middle of the lake, she was absolutely delicious... It wasn't long before the fantasies began and they flooded my day-dream screen well into the night...

That was friday. Tomorrow the wedding, and we have Hurricane Hannah on her way to grace our day.

Infrared Trial

Sunset at the lake house