in the Commonwealth of Virginia

Howdy all! We've been in the lovely town of Fredericksburg since Sunday night.

But before I go on to all the incredible details since my last blog entry, let's go back in time just a bit further to Friday night, August 27th. We were having a standardly awesome Frisbee Sesh in the street and that dude popped out of the sun roof of a car, snagged the frisbee, and TOOK OFF! Do y'all remember this??? It was outrageous! I think I can speak for everyone when I say we all piddled ourselves with distress and anger and hurt--so much hurt--until the dude came back around the corner many minutes later and said, "You didn't really think I'd steal a frisbee, did you?!" And people laughed and cheered merrily. But I didn't. I still think that dude is a d-bag. He made me piddle myself with distress and anger and hurt. Ridiculous.

Anyways, I'm glad we talked about that. I feel better.

So last week I teased all of you with the Evil Raccoon That Tried To Kill story intro. Allow me to elaborate: while camping in Alabama Pete and I were confronted with an evil raccoon that tried to kill us/eat all of our food/possibly steal our souls. Pete, fortunately, is the craftiest of manly mans and whittled a weapon to protect us from this giant (I'm not kidding--GIANT) demonic critter. After the raccoon climbed on our picnic table a mere four feet from where we was chillin, Pete jumped into action. Using the handle of a spoon, eight raisins from our trail mix, the Style section of the New York Times and a hockey action figure he happened to have close by, Pete made the weapon an protected us from raccoon-harm. That, and he started wildly throwing pea pebbles in all directions until the critter scurried off. A hero? Pete won't let you call him that to his face, but let's just say Enrique wrote that song after he met a certain Minnesotan we all know and love...

So, after camping there we had a wild 20 hours in Atlanta with Stephen Crabbe, Pete's rather fantastic college buddy. We ate pizza, drank beer and I schooled both of them in darts. We were trying to be as American as possible. Also, we had BBQ for lunch the next day. Crabbe lives in this super sweet house in what's called Cabbagetown in Atlanta. Basically, there is a factory nestled into this neighborhood that smells like cabbage (carnie factory?...) and thus the title Cabbagetown. I'm not actually certain that's the story but I might have overheard someone saying something close to that. Maybe.



Then we headed off to Charleston to stay with Pete's other college buddy, Cameron Buchanan. Also fantastic. The town in gorgeous but my favorite part of the trip was when we spent a late afternoon at the beach. It's hard to say what was the most wonderful about being on the beach that day on James Island. It might have been getting to frolic on the sand and play in the water. It might have been watching the sky turn shades of blue you really only see sitting by the Atlantic ocean. Or maybe it was when Pete tried to play frisbee by himself. And did.

We camped a couple nights in North Carolina before making it to my homelands in the Commonwealth. First we stayed in the Croatan National Forest right by Emerald Isle. Camping was decent, but when we took this little path from the campsites down to the water, we sat on the beach and under these warm stars with some bourbon and it felt amazing. I saw my first shooting star! We just sat and laughed and then realized that there were people illegally fishing for oysters down the beach from us and we were totally alarmed and then we spent the rest of the evening deciding whether or not to make a Citizen's Arrest.

The next night's camping was on the beach in the Outer Banks. Pete and I had, without a doubt, the most successful and awesome B toss we've ever had. We were doing dives into the water to make catches. There was leaping and running and frolicking like never before. We watched the sunset on the sand dunes. We made friends with a Marine who was camping next to us with nothing more than a towel (we fed him a dank ass sammy and some beer). We laid on the beach and saw what was for me the most amazing, starry night sky ever.


And now here we are, in my hometown. It's been family central since we got here but tonight we'll head to Richmond to see some of my college girls and check out the capital of the Commonwealth. Naturally, the family adores Pete. The Watkins family seal of approval has definitely been given (success!). Lili won't leave his side (we babysat the littluns yesterday) and my stepdad, Marc, decided that they should stay up last night until 3am on the back deck and bond. Or maybe it was a team decision. Either way, there had been a lot more whiskey in that bottle when I went to bed last night than when I got up this morning. As in now it's drained. But if emptying a bottle of Wild Turkey can't bond two men into besties, than I just don't know what can.

Alright, off to bike around this lovely town of mine!

I miss all my Austin folk!