4th Of July Weekend

This past weekend to celebrate the 4th of July, and to take advantage of the always-needed 3 day weekend, my friends and I headed down to Lake Anna for some camping, fun in the sun, boating and tubing....oh and bridge jumping.

As fun as it always is to head down and play on the water all weekend, I always end up paying for it the day or two afterwards. I'm all kinds of beat up, and have also decided that I need to finally get a sleeping pad for under my sleeping bag. I used to be fine sleeping on the ground, but now find that I can't get as good a night's sleep as I would like without one. At least my brand new sleeping bag and tent performed flawlessly in the crazy weather we ended up getting. It was in the mid 90's and sunny each day, then both nights came torrential rain and thunderstorms. My tent got kinda dirty on the outside, but I was perfectly dry inside, which is what really matters. I'm looking forward to getting back into camping a little more this summer and fall. I camped all the time while in the Boy Scouts, but haven't done much in the past few years, so hopefully that'll change soon. Here's a quick video of the storm on Sunday night.

[Lake Anna Rain Storm]

Unfortunately, no one took any pictures of the activities, but upon cruising around in the boat yesterday afternoon, we came across a bridge and saw two people jump off of it into the water below. I of course had to do the same, so we slowed the boat down and I dove in and swam over to the shore. I crawled up a concrete drainage ditch of sorts, and up onto the road/overpass above. I waited for two boats below to pass by and then it was GERONEMO!!! It was only about a 30 foot jump, so not too bad, and lots of fun. I hopped back on the boat, but I should've jumped a second time. Oh well, we'll have to remember that spot for next time.

Last night there were some pretty good fireworks across the street from my neighborhood, so we walked to a nearby parking lot with hundreds of other people to check 'em out. Pretty solid ending to quite an eventful weekend. Here's a video of the fireworks from last night. Happy Birthday America [oh, and me too!] Enjoy!

[Fireworks]

Workin' For The Weekend

This post is a little late, but better late than never. A few weeks ago I took a random day off from work and headed down to Lake Anna with my roommate and his Dad to load our newly acquired toy into the water and explore the lake. It was a great day, no one out there, calm water, warm sun, and cold beer! Now that the boat is down there, I'm sure we'll be making many more random trips to the lake! Here's a few pics we got of that day.

Who knew Naty Light could look this good?

[seriously, enlarge the picture for full effect]

Backflip Sequence:

Hard day at the office for sure.

New Toy!

My roommate and I drove up to Delaware Friday night to visit some good friends of ours that have graciously donated their speed boat to us for use down at Lake Anna. They haven't used the boat in about two years and said if we had the space for it, we could take it and use it [provided we take care of it and maintain it of course.]

The trip up, complete with unexpected tour through some not so pleasant parts of DC at 11:00 at night, and an electrical failure in our towing machine IN THE TOLLBOOTH of the Bay Bridge, was actually a complete success.

We got up early and gave the boat a good cleaning, and fired up the engine [on its first try too!] and our friends dad ran through a whole list of stuff we needed to know about it. Chris then hooked the trailer onto his truck and off he went! [I hung around for an extra day to hit the beach!]

Anyway, here she is, in all her glory complete with tower for super awesome wake boarding action!!!