Every now and then we (as humans) need to go through a refresher course on being ‘us’. When I was younger I used to love being outdoors, going for bike rides and just generally being dirty. I loved camping, being scared to death by heights and walking through the woods. This past weekend, I did some of these for the first time in years, and I have to say I’ve not been this happy in quite a while.
Last Thursday (07/17/2009) I met up with my good friend Brendon around 8pm. We piled into his 330ci and started heading north towards Maine for the New England Forest Rally (NEFR). After driving through the night, we arrived at Sunday River Resort around 07:30. There was plenty of time before any of the rally-related events started, so Brendon and I walked/drove around the tiny town to get acquainted with the area and learn where to go for different parts of the race.
After deftly dodging the advances of two very drunk and very abrasive young ladies in a parking lot we eventually made our way to the service area for the cars and watched the first two stages of the day. During those two stages, Brendon and I made our way into separate parts of the forest to try and pick a better spot for grabbing pictures. Brendon was the braver of the two and got much better pictures, a common theme throughout the weekend. Regardless though, I started to get comfortable again with being in the woods.
This is the service truck for Ken Block and Dave Mirra (just in case the writing doesn’t make it obvious enough).
And this is Ken’s car, he came in 2nd overall for the weekend because he had a couple problems (one spin-out and a flat tire).
Finally one of the sad attempts at a picture by me on the first stage. There –is- a car in that picture, it was Ken Block’s wife Lucy Block driving an old VW.
Needless to say, I had a lot of fun on Friday. We didn’t watch all of the events -- after driving through the night it turns out your perception of time passage is greatly distorted; nothing like believing it to be 7:30pm and noticing that it is in fact only about 2:00pm -- but the ones we did get to watch were worthwhile. It was hot, we were sticky, but damn it we had fun!
Saturday was a little different. Rejuvenated from a long night’s sleep we set off to Berlin, NH to watch the beginning of the second day’s stages. We found our way into some really dangerous spectator spots, again because of Brendon’s fearless ‘leadership’, even finding ourselves standing on top of the finish line for one of the longer stages of the day. I’m waiting to get some of the footage that Brendon snapped with his camera, I’ll be sure to link to them whenever he gets them up.
Kind of wish I’d had a decent camcorder for this shot as Ken was warming up his tires and scaring the crap out of some of the locals.
Whenever you see two cars coming down the road you have to wonder which one was going slow or got into an accident…
Finally, we packed up camp on Sunday morning and headed back into New Hampshire to climb Mount Washington. I’ve been to the Rockies in Colorado, so I didn’t really expect to be very impressed with this mountain. There are times in life when we get to feel really stupid, and this is one of them for me. Regardless, we have a sticker for Brendon’s BMW and a certificate for me that serves as proof we climbed a very narrow and steep road for 8 miles to the summit of Mt. Washington. It should also be noted that despite the 35-40F temperatures at the top, we did it with the windows (including sunroof) open the entire time, without the heat on in the car. Additionally, I was in shorts and sandals in an attempt to win back some of the manliness I’d lost in the trips through the woods.
As a matter of fact, I –do- have a fear of heights. Let’s DO THIS!
Not where we were going, but damn is it a beautiful view…
We chose the one day each year that they allow cyclists to go up the road, go us.
There’s a peak up there, I promise.
At this point, I was doing my best to just stay calm.
6,200+ feet above sea level, less than 40F in actual temperature, 30+ mph winds constantly making the wind chill very palpable…oh yeah, I was rocking the shorts and sandals.
And just for a bit of scale, that guy was standing down in the parking lot where our car was resting.
I don’t know if I liked going down the road anymore than going up, was all kind of terrifying in a beautiful/fun sort of way.
Hope you enjoy the pictures. I’ll make another post once Brendon has some of his photos/videos up online to add to the Rally part of the trip.
- Andy
Labels: BMW, Camping, Maine, Mount Washington, New England Forest Rally 09, New Hampshire, Rally, Rally-America, Self, Travel
