Somehow I got on the "hard" hike

Hello! Happy Monday everyone.

Last Thursday ended up being a really nice day. First up, The Real Housewives of HK (not, not AT ALL), met up in the hood for lunch around 1 pm. This group included me (obvs), Glitter and my English bar friend. We were also joined by the wife of a coworker of English bar friend's husband. Say THAT 3 times fast. Lunch was nice. We each had some cocktails and split some sides, and I had a bowl of lentil soup. That night, I met back up with everyone again at the local. It was a quick night though, just a few beers and then I headed home.

Because on Friday I finally had the privilege of meeting Blondie's work friends! His work took the team to the auto show, and then mid afternoon, the group meandered into our hood and ended up at our local. They are a great bunch of people, and the afternoon flew by. Many beers and many shots (it was also one of Blondie's coworkers last day) occurred, but I kept it under control because I had a day of hiking on Saturday!

I was up early Saturday and Glitter and I took a cab to Chinatown, where we met up with 2 of our other friends (yes, also from the bar. I've known them for forever - a year+ at least - but this is the first time they are getting introduced here. I have no nickname for them so they are just "2 of our friends" at the moment). Barkbox organized a hike in Connecticut for people and their dogs. Digressing somewhat but I am a cat person. I like dogs as well, it's not that, but my Tigga is most definitely my guy. And, on that note. You know how much it bothers me when dog people tell me they don't like cats? Or when non-NYC people tell me they could never live in NYC? You don't have to like cats and you don't have to like NYC but you've got (what you got?) to respect other people enough to keep your mouth shut at some points (this is very much directed at two people in particular who don't read my blog, I promise. I mostly just wanted to vent). Can you spell off topic?

Okay, so Barkbox in Chinatown around 9 am, and we split into two buses for the ride into Connecticut. Halfway there, the Barkbox coordinator on our bus got a call from the bus behind ours that our bus driver had never locked the panels on the side of the bus and all the goodie bags they had loaded for the dogs had spilled all over the highway. Barkbox coordinator tells the bus driver who drives for 10 more minutes before pulling over to fix the issue.

Then, my favorite bus driver also took us 3 exits past the one we needed to get off at because he wasn't paying any attention to where we were going. And the bus driver behind ours didn't even have a GPS so he had to follow us as well. But finally, we were in Danbury (home to the prison from OITNB and were Teresa Guiduce is staying). The hike was... unorganized. They had easy, medium and hard trails and my friends and I all suffer from the same problem which is we like to eat and drink and not work out. So the four of us and our two dogs decided to go on the easy trail.

There was no easy trail. Our guide led us in circles and finally was like "oops!" At that point, she told us we could either turn around and head back up the hill or go down a steep hill to look at the water. I was about 5 people behind my friends and figured nobody would want to do the steep hill (because you had to come back up it) so I turned around and headed back up the normal hill. Where I joined right on up with the hard hike people. I'm not sure how that happened except they happened by when I got to the top of the normal hill and I thought I was supposed to go with them. Uh yeah. It SUCKED. I ended up doing the peak hike (up to the top of the "mountain" or "large hill" depending on where you live), and thought I was going to DIE before it ended.

At the end of the hike, you had to cross a large field and that's where I ran into my friends again. They had gone down to the water and hung out and then came back the easy way. I chugged a ton of water when we were done and then the bus took us back towards New York but with a stop for lunch. Barkbox had already coordinated with the place and they had a ton of food ready for us (we think there were about 50 people between the two buses), but it was cash only and Barkbox didn't have cash on them so we had to wait for them to run to an ATM after we were done eating and before we could head back to NYC. Lunch was nice though - it was honestly the best tasting burger I ever had in my life (b/c I was STARVING after my inadvertent foray to the top of the peak) and then it was back into the bus and back to New York.

It was a good trip, just unorganized. But they did stop in our hood on the way back and drop us off instead of making us go back to Chinatown. Traffic was horrible so that was really nice of them.

Saturday night was spent sitting in a hot bubble bath with a glass of whiskey and then eating a ton of sushi. Awesome.

Yesterday I met up with all of our friends at Pony for the afternoon. I thought I'd be fried from Saturday because my legs were killing me on Saturday already but I felt fine on Sunday. A lot of beer and food filled our afternoon and then it was time to head to the Winchester for one last drink. Which turned into 3 last drinks.

Today my legs hurt though, from the knees down. So I cleaned the house a bit and then did a workout. First workout in like 3 months if you don't count the hike. And now I'm going to work on my second book again - incorporating the scene change from book one.

On the going-back-to-work front, I'm rolling forward with something and should know if it's a go by end of next week.

Plans this week include... nothing! Well, I'm meeting my girlfriends tomorrow night for wine night because one of them heads back to England for over a month on Wednesday, but that's it.

Have a good one!

--K