Only priests and fools expected the roads in that part of the world to be safe.

It's good to be back.

My journey began at just past 8:00 pm, Pacific time, on Sunday the 26th, when my I got in the car with my parents and dog and headed up the 405. According to my boarding pass, the flight was scheduled to depart from LAX at 10:36 PST and land in Newark at 6:45 EST the next morning. According to my memory, the flight departed a little after midnight and arrived around 8:30. If we are to assume that my memory and not my boarding pass is correct, we may also assume that I missed my connection to Burlington.

More succinctly put, it took me several more hours than I had intended on taking to reach my Monday evening destination, namely an old and showing it wooden house on the shore of Lake Champlain, just barely north of halfway between Burlington and Middlebury. Ah, it has just occurred to me how woefully ignorant of basic Vermont geography all of you must be. In that case, allow me to adjust my description: a house on a pretty lake.

Why a house, you ask? Why not a dorm at the college? Because, O Inquisitive Fictional Voice, my cross country team spends a few days hanging out at just such a place before we actually move in to Middlebury. And what did we do during those three days spent in the locale of Charlotte, Vermont? Well, aside from the human essentials (sleeping, eating, drinking, excreting, and running), we met, swam, canoed, danced, explored, and generally had one hell of a good time.

Yesterday (if yesterday is Thursday, which I believe it is), we packed up and drove down to Middlebury. Over the course of the last 55 hours or so, all of which I have spent on campus, I have, aside from the five aforementioned essentials, done more or less nothing that does not consist of shuttling possessions to and from various places with names like "storage", "house", and "dormitory", and unpacking those same possessions. This process has been as arduous as it will be satisfying upon its completion, or so I hope. And do not doubt for a minute, as I did yesterday, that this process will take any less time than the maximum amount of time you can possible imagine it taking.

And that was my week. Sunday and Monday notwithstanding, it was an excellent one.

Before I go, I ought to clarify one thing: Rachael and I did switch days. Don't worry about it. Just don't. And because I am now posting on a different day than I did last year, I will no longer be tagging my posts with a day name but instead with the tag "Derek Satterfield" to make it easier for me to find all of my posts. This means that I'll be going back and tagging all of mine from last year as well. Just not tonight. Because sleep is a good thing. So please do not use the tag "Derek Satterfield" for any of your posts. Or I will kill you with something just barely sharp enough to kill you with. And I will end my sentences with prepositions.

And I suppose, since this past summer was one of the better ones in my memory bank, that I ought to pay tribute to it, which I will do visually rather than literally.

Zion National Park, UT

Zion National Park, UT

Bryce Canyon National Park, UT

Bryce Canyon National Park, UT

Timpanogos Cave National Monument, UT

Pinnacles National Monument, CA

Devils Postpile National Monument, CA

Devils Postpile National Monument, CA

Kings Canyon National Park, CA

John Muir Wilderness, CA

Yosemite National Park, CA

 I hope you all are having a wonderful time wherever you are, though I do not hope that you are having as good a time as I am, for that would be a waste of a hope.