I Solemnly Swear I Am Up To No Good

Let's start this story up on the twenty-sixth day of August, which, for those of you who didn't just check your calendars, i.e. all of you, was a Friday. Two Fridays ago, to be precise. I'm at home in Newport Beach on this particular Friday. In my room, again, to be precise. My dad walks up the stairs, hangs a quick pair of rights, and starts talking to me.

"So you know how we're supposed to fly out on Sunday?" he says. I am, of course, paraphrasing.
"Yup."
"And you know how the plan was to go from Long Beach to JFK (That's in NYC, Jason.) to Burlington?"
"Yup."
"And you know how there's a hurricane going on back east?"
"Yup."
"Well, we've had to rearrange our flights."
"And . . ."
"We're still flying out on Sunday from Long Beach, but we go to Orlando via Austin, spend a night in Florida, and fly up the coast to Burlington Monday afternoon."
"So what you're saying is we've got an entire morning in Orlando."
"Derek, why are you smiling?"


Yeah, that's why. The Wizarding World of Harry Potter at Universal Islands of Adventure Theme Park. See that picture? No, I didn't take it off of Google image search. I took it off my iPhone.
Now, let me be clear about two things. One, I am not easily impressed by theme parks. For instance, I think Disneyland has awful rides and Knott's is poorly run. And two, I'm not biased towards this park because it's Harry Potter themed. In fact, I went into it with much the same attitude I've carried into all of the Potter movies: low expectations. It just can't be that good, it's a theme park, right?
Um, no. It can be that good. And it was. They had Zonko's and Honeyduke's and Ollivander's, they had the Sorting Hat and Butterbeer (far too tasty not to cut off a significant chunk of your life) and the Hog's Head, and I even ate lunch at the Three Broomsticks. No Madame Rosmerta, though. The best moment of the day, however, did come at the Three Broomsticks, despite the Rosmerta-less state of things.
My dad says, "Yeah, I'll have a Diet Coke."
"There are no sodas in the wizarding world sir," says the waitress, with a completely straight face.
Slightly awkward silence with a hint of incredulity on my dad's part.
"Um, I'll just have a Butterbeer then."

The rides were pretty good. For the most part, they were high quality roller coasters, but they also had some awesome virtual reality rides. I won't go into much detail about them, so just know this: I highly recommend the park.
Oh, and I got Rowena Ravenclaw on my chocolate frog card, which was reassuring. That card, by the way, accompanied my Butterbeer mug, a Ravenclaw hat, and four pairs of socks (each one with a different Hogwarts house crest and colors) in the souvenir bag. Yes, I have Hogwarts socks. And yes, that has something to do with what Dumbledore told Harry in Book One. (If anyone but Nicole gets that reference immediately, know that I am impressed.)



And Jason, if you would be so kind as to tell Cole that the Incredible Hulk is a better roller coaster than he thinks it is, I would appreciate it.

But enough about Hogwarts. This blog is, after all, supposed to have something to do with Middlebury. Oh wait . . .

So after spending Monday morning at Universal, my parents and I boarded the plane that would take us to Burlington, Vermont. We spent Monday night in a hotel, then drove south to Goshen, a very small town in the mountains southeast of Middlebury, where my running camp was to take place. I spent Tuesday and Wednesday night in a cabin in the woods with the cross country team, none of whom I had met prior to my arrival. We had quite the good time, between running, sleeping, eating, and playing games, most notably Settlers of Catan and Bananagrams, both of which are really big at Middlebury.

Thursday was the big day. Move-in day. The nice thing about being an athlete here is that move-in day for us jocks ('cause that's what I am, right?) comes several days before everyone else moves in. In fact, the rest of the students, including my roommate, with whom I've conversed via Facebook and texting and nothing more, don't move in until tomorrow. So since Thursday I've basically had my hall to myself, which has been very nice. Nice and quiet. I think you guys know how much I like my alone time.
So no classes, no roommate, no orientation? How, you ask, have I been occupying what must be my considerable down time? And I answer you with, quite simply, a "What down time?" You see, college cross country, at least in my very limited experience, is like a girlfriend from hell (At least in my very limited experience. Just kidding! Ahh don't hurt me! It was a joke, I swear!). It takes up all of your time, and even when it's not taking up your time you're so sore you can't move, and the thing you do with it that gets you sore isn't even always fun, and if you mess up while doing it, it knows.
But that's a rather negative way to look at it. I really do enjoy it, and the team is great. There's actually a senior on the team who reminds me very much of you, Rich. Except slower. We were riding in the van back from a run, the girls in front were controlling the radio much to the chagrin of everyone from the second row back, and Rich Posert in Middlebury form yells out, "There are feces coming out of the radio right now. If you don't fucking turn it, I'll shove those feces down your throat!" Now I don't know if that sounds Rich-esque as you read it now, but it sure did when he said it.


While we're on the topic of personalities, I should mention that everyone at this school knows their fiction. A lot of the cross country guys seemed kinda jock-ish at first, but spend a few days with them and you realize, nobody goes to Middlebury unless they can quote at least two of Star Wars, Harry Potter, or Lord of the Rings ad naseum. And in most cases, all three. For instance, one of the guys got a text from one of the other guys saying "You're late." The reply? "A wizard is never late." And then both people in question proceeded to get exceedingly inebriated that night. That's what type of school I'm at. I've even heard a joke about Pachelbel's Canon. Now that is some nerdy humor.

One thing I haven't really talked much about: the scenery. Is it ever beautiful up here. It's greener than anything I've ever seen. It's greener than anything you've ever seen. I can't know that for sure but I'm stating it as fact anyways. Put a seasick Ralph Nader on a dollar bill and have it do photosynthesis, and you'll start to get an idea of how green it is here. It's so green I bet you the Latin teachers here don't have to imply anything. (Sorry for the inside joke, but I couldn't pass that one up.)
You know that last scene in The Fellowship of the Ring? The one where Frodo and Sam are hugging it out on a boat in the most gorgeous lake you've ever seen and James Galaway is playing Howard Shore's immortal flute solo while the three musketeers are preparing to track down the Uruk-hai who kidnapped Pippin (swoon) and Merry and Boromir's headed over the Rauros for the first and last time and "I made a promise Mr. Frodo. Don't you leave him Samwise Gamgee. And I don't mean to, I don't mean too."
Well, we ran around Lake Dunmore a few days ago. A solid nine mile loop. And Lake Dunmore, well, it looks like that lake in Fellowship. I just thought I'd share that with you. It's the type of scenery that makes me think, I can't be living here, this place is just too damn pretty to live in. But I am. And this pleases me. Immensely.

And you know what run we did on Saturday? Of course not, that's why I'm gonna tell you about it. We took the vans about an hour north of campus to a nordic ski center called Sleepy Hollow, and oh by the way it's summer so instead of cross country skiing we're cross country running, but I think you figured that one out. Anyway, 'cause it's a ski center, all the trails are named. And oh by the way in this particular spot, they are all named according to a theme. And oh by the way the theme is, drumroll please, Star Wars. Yeah, that's right. Star Wars.
"Alright guys, we're gonna start on Tatooine, but before we hit the two mile mark, we're gonna take a left on Millennium Falcon until it dead ends on Yoda."
And of course, we get to this one really narrow section and the leader calls out from the front, "Single file everyone!" and then it's only a matter of a second or too before someone else amends, "Yeah, single file. Just like Sand People. That's how they hide their numbers."
Only on Tatooine.

After the Sleepy Hollow run, we took the vans down south and helped clean up the hurricane-induced flood damage at some houses and farms. Now that was a sobering few hours. We get out and the FEMA official greets us and gives us a bunch of jobs to do. It was dirty work, but satisfying. You wouldn't believe the destruction a flood can cause. Just looking at the house and trying to imagine how it looked a few days ago, then wondering where the other half of the front porch is, and then walking a third of a mile downriver only to find the other half of the porch, but in ten thousand pieces, part of it on the ground, part of it ten feet up in a tree (Yes, the water was that high at one point.), and did I mention the porch had a solid concrete foundation? I guess that didn't matter. And the whole time I'm wondering, if this was Ron Paul's house, would he still want to shut down FEMA?

I haven't talked much about the food. And I need to wrap this up soon. So let's just say it's amazing. The pasta, the sausage, the turkey, the muffins, the yogurt, the chocolate milk, the soft serve ice cream. It's just not fair. I guess when you're in a state with more cows than people (that's a fact) you expect the dairy products to be stellar. But stellar doesn't even begin to explain it. And I'm not going to either, so I'll just leave it at that.

Needless to say, I've had a fantastic week. I definitely miss all of you, or at least I do when I'm not busy eating (I don't miss anybody when I'm eating). I hope you've all enjoyed yourselves as much as I have as of late, and I can't wait to read what you've got to say. And if Jason and Rich finish their blog posts on their respective days before it midnight on east coast time, I'll be pleasantly surprised. But don't rearrange your schedule on my account. Rearrange it on the accounts of Rachael, Nicole, and myself. (For the record, I really don't care when you post.)

Time to grab some lunch.