Freedom isn't free.

And then the real party started. Friday morning we brought our packed bags over to Anita’s place for another round of World Cup breakfast, this time to watch Germany trounce Argentina 4-0. Then we headed out, myself and Seb with mom and dad… er Christine and Neil… in Christine’s car and Malte, Mike, Anita, and Diane (and her Chihuahua Oscar) in a rental car. Diane got far too drunk the night before and managed to puke in the car, forced to carry plastic bags of vomit for an hour on the road.

We all met up initially immediately after crossing the MA-NH border, where we promptly joined the throngs at the fireworks store. Conveniently, when you enter you’re herded to a counter where you show your ID (I looked 19 somehow according to the girl working there), and then sign a form that allows you to buy 1 get 1 free of any equally-priced item—of course, they then managed to price nearly every item slightly differently, thus requiring you simply to buy two of everything. There was a hilarious variety of patriotic-themed fireworks, many small but just as many packaged in quite large flag-draped cardboard boxes. We picked up the $70.00 fireworks assortment package (well, two of them), full of all sorts of goodies, as well as extra boxes of tanks, sparklers, loud spinning bright noise-makers, and other fun things. For the extras, we picked up two boxes of mini tanks like the ones we used to light in Quintin and Craig’s driveway back in the day, as well as two Tankinators, which were simply giant, awesome tanks. More on them in a bit.

We then picked up liquor and food (at Grant’s supermarket, this great little supermarket a few minutes away from the cabin) on the way up to our cabin in the ski town of North Conway, NH in the white mountains (though not really at altitude), about a 3-hour drive from Boston. Our little cabin was awesome, just off the highway, with a great deck facing away from the road and overlooking a small rocky stream 100 feet below. The interior had a nice kitchen, living room, and two bedrooms, as well as a decent screened-in porch. We first all hopped down to the babbling brook for a bit of a break and chilled out on a big rock for an hour or so at around 6p. Then we moved back up to the deck and began grilling on the nice gas grill available for our use. Veggie burgers and real burgers, chips, corn on the cob, yum. We capped things off by walking over to Gino’s (?) ice cream and soft serve a 1 minute walk from our place, where I had some peanut butter soft serve that was alright—its been years since I last had soft serve; others actually went to a DQ near Grant’s supermarket, so apparently soft serve is a big deal around here.

The night got started with continued drinking as we played first catch phrase and then charades, which kicked off with me completely failing at acting out Toy Story, including my attempts to get them to think of a child by demonstrating live birth followed by playing with toys in a way that apparently made no sense whatsoever. Neil somehow managed to one-up my ineptitude for “Catcher in the Rye” by outlining with his finger the shape of New Hampshire, the home state of the author JD Salinger, which of course nobody had any idea what he was trying to say. In any case, our team of Malte, Christine, Neil, and I picked up our level of play over time and began to match talents, as each side tried to come up either with tricky ones or overtly sexual ones (e.g. Missionary position, which I was lucky enough to act out directly ☺. After several hours of quality acting n drinking, the ladies headed to bed around 2a, which then prompted the guys to start a raging dance party via the iHome, including such classics as Save Tonight and The Way. At one point Anita even came out slightly annoyed at how loud we were and Malte yelled back “Anita hates freedom!”, which was brilliant.

We danced and sang and yelled until around 3a, when the now-infamous J-dawg (Jess) announced his arrival by knocking on our front door yelling “Police!”, which was distressing only until the silhouette of a baseball cap turned 45 degrees to the left emerged through the window. Our buddy Jess happened to be walking home from work as a head chef—“the youngest head chef in the Valley” (still not sure what valley he is talking about)—and heard the party and decided to crash it. He brought along his “bat” for smoking, which was just this little all-metal pipe that vaguely resembled a baseball bat. We stepped out on the porch since he apparently had no qualms about smoking inside our cabin, and then out emerged all the glory that Is J-dawg: a “jack of all trades” who “isn’t great at any one thing but can do a little bit of everything” including time working in New Mexico as an electrician for famous celebrities such as Julia Roberts (“a bitch with a horse mouth”) and Val Kilmer (“a dick”). But then he came back to NH—perhaps leaving his wife as well?—where his family is from and now lives life to the fullest as the aforementioned head chef extraordinaire, whose masterpiece item is none other than a chicken sandwich “with basil aioli, basil mayo, pretty much basil everything”. We were convinced he had stuffed his bat with basil as well. After we humored him for a good 20-30 minutes, we all were ready to crash and moved inside ready to sleep. Apparently during this time J-drizzle stepped outside to puke. Upon his return, he returned to knock on our door, unfazed by an interior that was now pitch black and a door that was locked. Mike opened the door for him and there was a momentary pause in the black silence, all of us in bed and awaiting sleep at 4am, followed by the incredible utterance “Aw, you guys are lame.” After a little coaxing, J-lo finally headed off into the night, only to live on in our stories and imaginations from now into the future.

On Saturday, we awoke around 10a, watched the all-too-predictable wimbledon final, ate some pancakes and 90% heated potatoes, and then finally headed out in the cars for some hiking at Sawyer Pond. The hike was very easy, only perhaps 2 miles one way and full of families with small children, and ended at a nice little pond. After battling through a not-so-nice wooded bit of trail that could have used a machete or two, we waded in the very shallow water near the shore and then ate the sandwiches we had prepared for lunch on a log lying at the edge of the water. Even Oscar was enjoying himself despite his obvious fear for venturing past his knees. We then headed back, picked up some more food and beer, got home, played a bit of soccer, prepped the fireworks, and a few of us took showers and naps.

Dinner consisted of frozen pizzas with our own red peppers and onions, as well as garlic bread, and salad. In the process, we began shooting off a few random fireworks here and there. After dinner, the fireworks celebration began. We blew up all sorts of things, most of which were small but a few of which were bigger and shot actual fireworks high into the sky. Importantly, we initiated the event by lighting one of our two Tankinators. And wow did it not disappoint. It had like 8 stages, shot things all over the place, and even launched little spinning fireworks that bounced all around it; all in all, it takes like 20 seconds to actually complete, which is pretty impressive. Even better, afterwards we proceeded to light it on fire. To honor its glorious existence, Malte began to sing our national anthem. And so we joined him, hands over hearts. It was amazing, singing the national anthem, led by a foreigner, in honor of our fallen battle tank. Clearly, we had redefined 4th of July patriotism.

Following a nice spark-induced burn hole in a pillow and a fallen firework that launched sideways but luckily not directly at us, the night came to a crashing halt when Scrooge came over and proclaimed “I’ve tolerated this for q while now, but I’ve got a 2 year-old kid trying to sleep and a wife with a heart condition” to which I replied “Oh ok we understand we’ll just finish up our last few and then head back in” which received then somewhat unexpected response of “Why don’t you just skip those last few” and then Grumpa marched on back to his cabin. We were all taken a bit by surprise by all this and so didn’t have a chance to think things through, which it became clear was too bad when we realized that it happened to before 10p on the 4th of July. I don’t care what your situation is, it is ridiculous to complain about people making noise at such an early hour in general, but in particular on the freaking 4th of July. In any case, after some brief debate, we went in annoyed and played some poker, making comments along the way mocking the guy and gradually feeling less and less bad about it as time passed. Poker was fun but devolved a bit at times into random yelling/bullshit, as often is the case in poker. Then that ended and we rocked a badass dance party for the second night in a row, this time with the ladies involved as well. Soon Mike and Anita sought out the beds but we were not keen on letting them get anywhere near sleep, barging into the room regularly to sing, dance, tackle, teabag, typewriter, etc. etc. With classics as our remix of Rhianna’s famous song “My Vuvuzela” (zela zela eh eh ehhhh-eh), you couldn’t go wrong. The dancing and singing continued through the night, ending this time around 230a. Incredibly, Mr. Grouchy Pants never complained about these ridiculously loud dance parties. If only he had seen the Tankinator, he would have understood.

Finally, on Monday morning we awoke at 830a, ate some cereal and cleaned up the cabin back to (semi-)new, then headed outside to fire off the grande finale of fireworks. Indeed it was not as exciting as it would have been at night, but nonetheless it was fun to blow them up, and then we were ready to head home. On the way, I cashed in multiple $3 and $6 winning crossword lottery tickets (the best game around!) for new lottery tickets. After beginning with $12 worth of tickets (4), I was down to 1 remaining ticket by the time we reached the NH border. Alas, it waits for the next trip across the border.

What a great weekend.