Storming the Fort

*added to Doodle Week: Greed - I'm sure you're all ENVIOUS with GREED that I've met the illustrious Claire and Aerten*

Also, read Aerten's account here.

Yes, there is a real photo that this stick figure drawing is based on, but you'll never see it. See, I promised Claire aka CRPitt from A Little Piece of Me that I wouldn't post the photo, but I never said anything about doodling it!

I've been a follower of her blog since June something or other, and when she announced she was coming to America, more specifically the Northeast, I thought there could be a chance that I might meet this lovely English beauty.

She had already planned a couple days with fellow blogger Aerten in upstate New York, as well as some time in Boston, which put her within 3 hours driving time from my residence in Vermont. That was certainly doable. When she mentioned that they would be making the scenic drive up to Fort Ticonderoga in the Adirondacks on Lake Champlain, along the New York-Vermont border, I almost wet myself, putting them 1.5 hours away. Very doable.

I then decided to take a mental day off of work, made the obligatory sick call into my co-worker who would tell my supervisor for me (ah... pressure is off), then it was off to run some errands before we got the text saying meet us there in 2 hours.

Sierra and The Girl accompanied me and the wee one behaved herself very well. We took the fort tour, then wandered around the exhibit, discussing everything from "what would the British side of the history of the fort be?", "but wikipedia is the BIBLE!", my woes of my computer temporarily dying Sunday night (only to spring back to life Tuesday morning), and inevitably Claire's near Liverpudlian accent, which did sound quite akin to that of Sir Paul McCartney's.

After seeing pretty much everything there was to see of this smallish fort, the five of us headed to lunch in the small town of Ticonderoga at a small country diner called The Hot Biscuit for some country home cook'n. Actually pretty good for this sort of rednecky frontier small town of 5167 souls.

Our quick 3 hours had come to an end and we reluctantly parted ways, but our day with Claire and Aerten will not be soon forgotten. Also, I will now be a regular follower of Aerten after meeting her and her very interesting wit and weirdness (I mean that in the best possible way!). All in all it was a fantastic day - the weather was beautiful, Sierra was well behaved and slept all the way back home, and the only downside was losing my computer for the day.












*Ticonderoga was the hometown of one of my first girlfriends when I was 12. I once rode a bicycle that summer the 50 miles all day over mountains along Lake George to Ti in an effort to visit with her. Alas, she was spending the night at her grandparents after getting wisdom teeth pulled, and her parents drove me the hour plus back home to Glens Falls after midnight. It was the same day as SummerSlam 88.