A Guy Camping Trip

  This blog is from a girl MK's point of view. Today's post is straight from the mouths of a bunch of guys. Their views of their camping trip up in the mountains with their bikes. I have *ahem*  highly edited some of their stories and added notes, but this, as I said, is straight from them (and they agreed to the edits).  Some of you may find this boring, but I don't. It shows how their perspective is so much different from mine. And they are really funny.  (But getting them to sit still for the entire time was HARD. It took a lot of breaks...)

AIDAN: "After going straight to Club Hippique, we drove up to Arnaud (he was reading a book) and Tristan opened the window and shouted at him. (Editor's Note: M. Arnaud, our equestrian instructor, had invited the boys to go to a hotel up in the mountains where they could bike). After two hours, we saw the first mountain come into view; then in another hour we saw our mountain and after driving up by vehicle (which was very hard), we were able to see the hotel that we would be in."

JACKSON: "It was more like an hour and thirty minutes til we saw the mountain. Then we kept driving and didn't stop until we got there."

TRISTAN: "At the hotel, we unpacked, I pumped up my tires a little, and then rode part way up a trail with Jackson. After a while we went back and Aidan joined us, so we went further up the trail. Then Aidan wanted to go back, so we turned around. Somehow Aidan got his pants caught in the bike chain so I had to cut them loose with my knife. When Aidan disentangled himself, I went back to my bike and found that a thorn was stuck in it and that it was flat. I walked the rest of the way back to the hotel while Jackson and Aidan rode their bikes. The hotel was mostly concrete on the outside, but inside the roof was supported by four curving beams meeting in the middle, ingeniously supporting their entire weight. There was a picnic table in the center. "

JACKSON: "So, JACKSON had to cut Aidan out because Tristan wanted to cut half his pants off. And I even had to take Aidan's tire off. When we got back, Aidan reminded us that he had to use the commode, so we went and searched for it, then M. Arnaud told us we could set up our tents. My tent was about ten feet away from the edge so I could fall off if I wanted too. Tristan's was around ten/fifteen feet away from me and Aidan was to my right about seven or eight feet.  Once we finished we rode our bikes and waited for dinner. And I had a Coke. And after dinner I had a Coke. And, before bed, I had another Coke."

Jackson

AIDAN: "We were sitting there at dinner, having a nice discussion in French (while Jackson was very quiet because he could not understand anything) when all of a sudden Marcellin says "Ooooo, sorray!" and I turn toward Jackson and I see him move a cup away from his mouth with a W bitten in it."

TRISTAN: "Everybody laughed while Aidan and I said to our French host, "You feed him rice! You feed him bush chicken and good sauce! And he tries to eat glass!"

JACKSON: "Well, technically, it was part of the meal."

TRISTAN: "Define 'part of the meal.'   (Editor: Okay, guys....)

JACKSON: "One man kept saying, 'Good, strong teeth.' Or something like that."

Tristan, the cook, and Aidan.

The cook, Tristan, and "extra security dudes." :-/

TRISTAN: We had a dessert of bush bananas (not to be confused with American bananas which to me are bland and tasteless), but bush bananas, which are the most sweet and succulent fruits ever to be found in the African bush."

JACKSON: "Really, Tristan."

(Editor gives everyone a *look*)

AIDAN: "After our dinner, we all drank LOTS of soda."

JACKSON: "They were lying in their beds for about, like, three hours while I was dying because I couldn't sleep. Arnaud said that it might rain so I got up and made my tent rain-proof - hold on, before that I went and got a coke- then I made my tent rain-proof. I fell asleep then Aidan woke me up at 1 a.m. so he could go get something."


(DAD listening: "This was nothing but an excuse for you guys to drink Coke-I'm surprised you didn't slosh when you came back!"  *laughter from everyone*)

TRISTAN: "The shower had a block of white African store-bought soap and there was no ceiling so none of us wanted a shower. And Jackson's phone alarm set for 4:30 had a really dumb song-"  (Editor: TRISTAN-)

AIDAN: I woke up, then woke Jackson up to ask him what time it was and he said that he had muted his alarm before he went to bed."

JACKSON: "Technically he was the one awake, not me..."

AIDAN: "Then they started moaning and groaning about me waking them up. After going back and trying to convince them again to come, I gave up and went back to the hotel. M. Arnaud was getting his bike out to ride around the mountain, but told me it was too dangerous and to go back to bed."

JACKSON: "Then Aidan woke me up again to get a blanket then dropped dead. After a while I woke up a little."

TRISTAN: "I was asleep and didn't wake up til 9-"

AIDAN: "Technically, that's when we left-"

TRISTAN: "Didn't wake up til 8-"

JACKSON: "That's when we ate breakfast-"

TRISTAN: "Didn't wake up till 7:45 then we ate breakfast."

(*Editor laughing*)

AIDAN: "Then we went biking and went farther down the trail than we had ever been. Then Tristan went really fast and drove ahead, then went downhill. Whenever we reached the hill we decided we had been gone long enough and that they would be serving breakfast soon so we yelled, "TRISTAN, IT'S TIME FOR BREAKFAST AND WE'RE GOING BACK!!!!!!!!" 

JACKSON: "So, JACKSON yelled that..."

(*Editor laughing*)

JACKSON: "We went back and asked if breakfast was ready and they said no, they had to boil the water. So we asked Marcellin if he would take us in the van to find Tristan because he hadn't come. Marcellin decided to drive, and we drove up til we reached a fork in the road. We decided to go left for no reason, kept on going, then we found Tristan walking down the mountain with his bike. We got out and Tristan told us what was going on."

TRISTAN: "Whenever I went up the trail, I never heard Jackson and Aidan yelling at me. I kept going up the trail and soon after a long and scenic turn, came to a fork in the road. I took the left one and kept thinking that it would lead me to the main road again because I had seen a path leading away from the main road earlier. I had gone up a hill, and was going down sharply and was getting second thoughts. I stopped my bike and waved at a man driving a motorcycle. I asked him which way was the hotel Goldeneye. He pointed back up the trail I had walked. I asked what way did the road I was walking lead and he said the name of the village, then asked if I wanted to go there. I immediately deduced that I was going away from the hotel, and that the path was not a loop trail after all-"

AIDAN: "DUHHH-"

(Editor: AIDAN!)

JACKSON: "Anyways, so we went back down the mountain on our bikes to Goldeneye. Aidan stayed close to the van while Tristan and I sped ahead. Then we got back and ate breakfast. For breakfast we had bread and strawberry jam, with tea and coffee. Oh, and we also had some 'BUSH' bananas."

AIDAN: "After breakfast we packed our tents up and loaded our bikes into the van-"

JACKSON: "And we filled our cooler with 4 Cokes (haha) and 2 Sport Actife's. Tristan dropped a Sport Actife and it exploded when Aidan opened it. And made a big fat mess on a table that the cook JUST cleaned. Like, he literally had just moved away from the table when Aidan stood over it and opened his soda." 

AIDAN: "It kind of, like, EXPLODED EVERYWHERE, and got the whole table drenched."

JACKSON: "Then we got in the car and drove about 3/4 down and rode our bikes on some decently flat terrain." 

AIDAN: "That's me!"

TRISTAN: "We came to the road, Marcellin took some pictures of us, then in a fit of generosity told us we could ride behind the van and we did that as long as we were on the dirt road for around 6 km. After some construction, Marcellin pulled over and told us to get back in the van."

My favorite picture :-) I love Jackson's face!

AIDAN: "We all thanked him for letting us bike and went on a few more hours - 2 hours - then arrived where we were supposed to meet Arnoud."

JACKSON: "But he wasn't there so we decided to go up the road some more. Then Marcellin got a phone call from Arnoud-"

AIDAN: "It's ARRRRRRRRR (grind your R) nauauauauauauauauaua."  

JACKSON: "THEN we arrived back at the place where we had originally planned on meeting Arrrnaud."

AIDAN: "Then we boys went and ate lunch-"

JACKSON: "And Aidan made a big fat mess of his food, dripping tuna salad all over the floor of the car..."

AIDAN: " And Jackson ate Pringles and made a mess on the floor of the car..."

(Editor: AHEM!)

AIDAN: "Then we got a second phone call from Arrrrrrnaud. He said he was very far from where we were. We drove looking for him up and down the road and couldn't find him when he called again and said we had passed him, so we turned around and then I looked back and saw a French-man standing in the middle of the road in a red shirt waving at us. After picking him up, we went into another restaurant, and we all had huge bottles of Coke! *pats belly*" 

TRISTAN: "We nicknamed Jackson 'The Coke Machine' because he drank so much and finished Aidan's."

JACKSON: "The bottles were all liters."

(As the Editor typed this, Jackson remembered he had a Coke in his bag and pulled it out. He is drinking it as I type.)  

•  FACT:  In the whole trip, Jackson had over a gallon of Coke. Tristan and Aidan had about 3 liters of soda.

AIDAN: "There was a rat twice the size of your average cat on the floor of the restaurant. They were selling it. Gross. Once we were done we got back in the car and drove an hour and a half. Then we stopped at 'Burger and Pizza City.'  And had more Coke. Then drove home."

DISCLAIMER: These were the boys' wording, actions, stories, and so forth.  NONE of this was staged.