The Cranberry Wilderness

I spent last weekend camping, fishing, and mountain biking with my bro, Matt, in West Virginia in the Cranberry Wilderness. It was amazing and wet...but still amazing. Both my brother and I are easily amused so the trip was extremely entertaining.

Just after we left DC, we came to a stop sign. There was a girl at the corner of the street so I motioned for her to walk across. She acknowledged my wave and entered the crosswalk. When she had reached the halfway point, she turned and offered me the "thumbs up" signal, I found this fantastic. you never see the "thumbs up" anymore. It's so rare to see one so we just sat there for a minute and relished the moment. Even more peculiar to me was the fact that the girl appeared to be latino. I had no idea the "thumbs up" sign had made a resurgence in latin american culture. I was enthralled to see it and I hope any latinos reading this blog will start using the thumbs up because it's awesome. I would say a double thumbs up is unnecessary though; it's creepy and makes you appear to have an agenda. A single thumbs up is gold though.

We traveled 5 1/2 hours and arrived at the Cranberry Wilderness. We mountain biked several miles into the first shelter and luckily it was empty so we snatched it. We set up camp and later set off for some mountain biking - bad idea. The trail was so sloppy it was nearly impossible to navigate. Once again, I forgot to unclip my shoe pedals and toppled over right in front of a middle aged couple out for a walk. I tried to cover it up by saying something like, "this loose soil is treacherous..." The guy wasn't buying it, he immediately quipped, "forget to unclip did ya?" "You got that right," I replied, like a douchebag. We set off but both Matt and I kept wrecking, partially because the wet track made riding difficult and also because we are bad at mountain biking.

The next morning we awoke to some heavy rain showers. Fortunately, by 11:00 am the rain had cleared and it turned out to be a beautiful day. We spent most of the day trout fishing and riding bike and we saw a bear with two cubs ransacking a nearby shelter. Bears are amazing; they are big and fast and could easily destroy a human in seconds.

That night, we sat by the campfire and stared at the stars. Most of this blog is pretty gay so I'm going to make it ever more gay; stars are incredible. It's been a long time since I actually looked at the sky at night. When you are in the middle of nowhere and have nothing to do but admire nature's spendor, the stars are an obvious thing. When your life is filled with work, bills, responsibilities, etc., it's an easy thing to overlook. I encourage anyone reading this to check out the stars some time very soon. They are beautiful and abundant and make me feel insignificant and important at the same time.

We left the next afternoon and stopped for gas at the first convenience store. Matt purchased a bottled water and two gatorades for the road. When he placed the items on the counter, the convenience store clerk looked at the water bottle and replied, "honey...the sport top water bottles are buy one get one free." Matt immediately replaced the "regular" water bottle with the "sport top" and we were on our way. I was amazed at this clerk's product knowledge. She made sure we were aware of the best deals in the store and I gotta tell ya, I was impressed.

It was an amazing trip and I loved every minute of it. A friend recently told me about a girl he met on the road who made fun of his home state of Virginia. She said something about the Appalacian mountains being boring and her wanting to kill herself. I partially agree with her...she should probably kill herself.