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Okay so first of all I have to say sorry for being so absent for the past few months. But I want to thank you all for your support and love and care and understanding during this period it has really helped me and I am so grateful for all of you!

second: this fic is based on a prompt I recieved ages ago from @gellbellshead-

“So saw your post that you have some time for writing and couldn't help myself from sending you this one. Person A and Person B are camp counselors and Person A gets all flustered because Person B is really good with kids and it’s adorable.”

which kind of inspired 30 pages worth of content haha ps. sorry I took forever to get this done love!

third: THANKYOU TO @rileybabe for this STUNNING aesthetic I mean I can’t even with her talent! I would also like to dedicate this fic to her and @ms-maj for being so kind and lovely and always sending me such cute messages and supporting me even when I was MIA.

Again thanks everyone for the love I hope you enjoy!

warning: light smut

as this is long af, here is the AO3 link-

http://archiveofourown.org/works/11821416

CAMP SWEETWATER-

“Welcome to Camp Sweetwater”

Betty let out a defeated sigh as she read the faded words scripted in yellow paint across a crooked wooden sign. This was not how she wanted to spend her summer.

“Really Elizabeth stop acting like such a child, “ her mother scolded from the driver’s seat, shutting off the car’s engine and opening the door. Betty groaned, letting her head thump back against the seat.

All she asked for was a carefree summer; one where she was free of her “perfect” girl next door persona and could just be a teenager. But of course that was not acceptable to Alice Cooper. Betty had been furious when her mother had excitedly relayed her acceptance as a camp counsellor, shaking the neatly opened letter in her face. It wasn’t that she didn’t like kids or the outdoors, no it was the principle of having her time stripped of her against her will. But her objections were no match for Alice’s lectures on the importance of broadening her skill set, and the need to fill her college applications with extra curricula’s- as if she didn’t have enough. So her bags had been packed, and here she was.

Deciding there was no point in further delaying the inevitable and beginning to become uncomfortable inside the stuffy vehicle, Betty opened her own door and stepped out into the summer heat.

She had to admit the location was beautiful, with lush greenery all around and the sounds of the river trickling through the air. Maybe it wouldn’t be that bad.

Rounding the vehicle, Alice placed Betty’s duffle bag on the dusty ground beside her and grabbed her reluctant daughter’s shoulders.

“It’s only seven weeks, who knows it might surprise you,” her mother placated softly, offering a warm smile.

Internally Betty scoffed, only seven weeks, but she knew her mother truly just wanted what was best for her even if she had an overbearing and odd way of actuating that. So instead she returned the words with a soft smile of her own and pulled her mother into a hug.

“I’ll call you when I can, have a safe drive home.”

And with that she was gone.

Taking a deep breath and pushing her hesitancies and irritations aside, the blonde tightened her pony tail before bending down to pick up her duffle bag, slinging it over her shoulder. Her sneakers hit the ground with purpose as she crossed through the open gateway, her green eyes scanning across rows of log cabins with brightly painted accents and dirt pathways, all the way to the tree line that led into the forest.

“Betty Cooper?”

Betty turned her head from the view, only to be completely taken aback by the new one. A boy about her age was approaching her with lazy steps that held a subtle air of arrogance. He was tall and lean; the plaid button up he was wearing, the sleeves rolled up on his forearms made sure she was very aware of that fact. Rogue strands of his ebony hair fell over his impossibly blue eyes tantalisingly while the rest was tucked beneath a beanie that she was too stunned to question the use of in this weather. And god his jawline looked sharp enough to cut glass.

It wasn’t until his dark brows furrowed and his mouth twitched into an amused smile that Betty realised she had been straight out ogling him and if that wasn’t embarrassing enough, she had totally failed to respond to his question. Trying to ignore the flush that was quickly rising to her cheeks, Betty summoned the social skills she had acquired over years of Cooper indoctrination and flashed him her best girl next door smile.

“That’s me! Sorry I was a little distracted by the view,” the blonde recovered in an upbeat tone, internally commending herself on constructing an excuse that wasn’t entirely a lie.

The boy chuckled shaking her politely extended hand.

“Yeah it’s some view,” he replied, a cheeky smirk gracing his lips, making it obvious they both knew she wasn’t talking about the geographical scenery. Betty felt her cheeks flame even more and cast her eyes downward shyly.

“Jughead Jones, welcome to Camp Sweetwater.”

Betty was extremely grateful that he didn’t feel the need to loiter on her embarrassment and found the courage to meet his eyes again. God did he have nice eyes.

“Thanks, I’m assuming this isn’t your first time?”

“You’d be right. I’ve been friends with Fred’s son since birth really, so of course every summer I’d come with them here and then when we got old enough it was kind of a natural progression into camp counsellors,” Jughead informed her, rubbing the back of his neck.

“So you’re the welcoming committee?” She half joked, feeling her stomach flutter at the good natured smile he offered her.

“Something like that.”

She quirked a brow, the tone of his voice indicating he knew something she didn’t.

“Well I’m your welcoming committee,” his smirk reappeared and Betty bit her lip at the sight.

“Lucky me,” she returned softly, her eyes widening as the confession slipped out. Letting out a nervous chuckle she shuffled her converse through the dirt, attempting to play it off as friendly jest.

Jughead raised an eyebrow- his eyes seeming to twinkle with something unknown- but didn’t comment.

“Come on, I’ll show you ‘round.”

Maybe this summer wouldn’t be so bad after all.

Twenty four hours later Betty would uncover the meaning to Jughead’s cryptic message about being her welcoming committee.

Her first day at Camp Sweetwater was spent acquainting herself with the place. It was beautiful. The main part of camp was built on a large clearing just near the river. Cabins made of log, a large rec room/dining hall and a fire pit. While multiple trails led to the areas where various activities took place. Betty was impressed and made sure Mr Andrews was well aware of the fact. The campers weren’t arriving till the following week and Betty was glad for the time to settle in.

Jughead had introduced her to her bunk mate first. Veronica Lodge was a dark haired girl with impeccable makeup and a socialite attitude straight from New York City. Her mum and Fred were old friends. The two although having seemingly juxtaposing personalities had hit it off instantly and Betty was grateful for Veronica’s taking her under her wing. The other girl had quickly given her the rundown on the regular’s; Archie, Fred’s son, football player, heart of gold but not necessarily the sharpest tool in the shed. Kevin Keller, “resident gay”, always up for an adventure and kept the atmosphere light while not afraid to be straight up with people. Cheryl Blossom, bitch by nature, cheer captain, but good with kids and a nice person “deep, deep down.” She hadn’t said much about Jughead though, much to Betty’s disappointment and she knew better than to ask in fear of making her new found curiosity- easily mistaken as “crushing”- too obvious. All she got was that he was basically Fred’s surrogate son, a bit of a lone wolf and always had a sarcastic remark ready.

They had spent the day breezily, playing ice breaker games and just hanging out really, as well as doing some admin all together. It was during that portion of the afternoon that Betty had really made an impression on her peers. Her aptitude for making schedules came in handy for kitchen duty and cleaning rosters etc.

But god she was not prepared for today.

The plan for the rest of the week was for the counsellors to run through all the activities so that they were well equipped to run them when the kids came and then to brain storm some other activities for the evenings and free time.

“So you’ll just run through each activity with your co-counsellor which will help you guys to bond before your campers arrive,” Fred explained, while they were sat at the picnic like tables inside the dining hall eating breakfast.

“We have to be paired together B! We’ll be like Thelma and Louise and our group will be totally empowered,” Veronica whispered conspiringly in her ear, placing an excited hand on Betty’s arm while Fred looked for the list of “teams”.

Betty laughed at her new friend and nodded, “Oh yeah, we’d have them all attending feminist rallies by the end of the summer.”

“Well if you’re allowed to brain wash America’s youth and use them to your advantage, I’m going to make sure my group are all attending pride marches before the summers out!” Kevin added, with a wiggle of his eyebrows and a mock serious tone.

“Kev you try and do that every year anyway,” Jughead mentioned off-handedly while pretending to be engaged in Archie’s rambling about the necessity of compiling a list of classic camp fire “jams”.

Both girls laughed while Kevin feigned shock.

“Ah here it is!” Fred broke through their chatter once again, with a sheepish grin.

“Okay Archie and Ethel, Cheryl and Reggie, Jughead and Betty and Kevin and Veronica.”

Betty froze, spoon buried in her bowl of cereal Did he just say-

“Bummer girl! Oh well we can always kick ass together in the kitchen,” Veronica interrupted her sudden brain malfunction, before getting up from her place and taking her plate toward the kitchen with an excited Kevin on her heels.

Betty’s stupor was fading as she processed the idea of working with Jughead, closely, every day for the entire summer. She blinked at her all bran, before taking a deep breath and looking up. Jughead was watching her from across the table with the corner of his mouth upturned. Yeah bummer, Betty thought as she once again felt her pulse jump under his scrutiny. She offered him a pleased- but not too pleased- smile of her own and met his eyes fully now. It was then that she became reacquainted with that cheeky twinkle. Oh.

“Well that explains the personal welcoming committee,” she threw at him with a teasing tenor.

Jughead shrugged, his face twisting into a passive expression, though his eyes still sparkled under jest. Rising to his feet he moved to clear both of their dishes.

“Weird coincidence right?” and then he was walking away and all Betty could do was chug her juice to prevent the wide smile threatening to split her face in half.

Yeah this summer was going to be far from bad.

“So you knew we were going to be paired up together all along?” Betty prodded, while she and Jughead ventured down the path toward the boat shed; their first activity was canoeing.

“Yeah,” was all he offered, hands tucked into the pockets of his worn light wash jeans.

Betty nodded, trying not to pry too much while also finding herself parched for knowledge about this boy. His voice entranced her, his words intrigued her and his demeanour attracted her. She was unsettled by how much she was responding to his presence, by how much she wanted to know him. It was strange but also electrifying and she had to remind herself that she had all summer for that.

“And may I ask how you gathered that information?”

“World class investigative skills.” He retorted dryly, his playful expression daring her to oppose him as they rounded on the shed.

“Well in that case you should come and write for my school paper,” Betty responded with her own sarcastic quip, accepting the colourful oar he handed her from the row hung on the side of the shed.

“Yours as in your schools or yours as in you run it?” the dark haired boy asked nodding his head so that she followed him round the side.

Betty was a little taken aback by his sincere question, stalling for a second before her trainer clad feet followed him.

“Both. This is my second year as editor but we are severely lacking in writers who possess talent and the ability to chase a story,” she explained trying not to sound too nerdy as she watched him reach up to grab life jackets from the top shelf while she leaned against the door way.

His shirt rode up a little with the action and Betty bit her lip as a strip of olive skin and lean back muscle that was exposed to her. Jughead turned around clasping the objects and she quickly averted her eyes from his figure, trying to act nonchalant despite being almost caught checking him out for the second time in the very short span of time they had known each other.

“That’s cool. Well except for the shitty journalists part.” He threw a life jacket at her and Betty mumbled a thanks, pushing off the door way to put it on.

“You think so?”

“Yeah, I’m partial to the literary types and especially to mysteries so…” Jughead trailed off making a non-committal gesture with his hand and putting his own life jacket on.

Betty nodded, feeling satisfaction warm through her veins, knowing they had found some common ground.

“Anyway you’re dodging my question and as a ‘world class’ investigator myself I will not be deterred so easily!” the blonde proclaimed as they moved to where the canoes were lined up by the bank of the river. Jughead sighed, tugging on his beanie before pausing to examine her for a moment.

His scrutinising gaze wasn’t harsh in the way her mother’s often was- searching for flaws- but rather, it seemed as though he was searching for something positive within her. Something he could trust.

“Fred told me.” They pushed the canoe into the shallow depths of the water, both their shoes becoming soaked, before they jumped in themselves. Betty was praising her choice of jean shorts while Jughead seemed completely unfazed by the damp cuffs of his jeans.

Betty scoffed and shook her head at him, eyes squinting.

“That part I figured.”

Jughead smirked looking out at the water before turning back to her.

“I hate surprises okay? I know that sounds stupid but I like to know things before they happen, I don’t know it helps me prepare. Been that way since I was a kid and Fred knows me well enough to not spring things on me.”

Betty nodded, understanding better than maybe he realised. She knew that feeling well. In fact anyone with anxiety would probably understand that… she couldn’t help but realise the common symptom, even though he had played it off as coolly as he could.

“Plus Fred likes to have new counsellors with Archie or myself. We’re basically prodigals,” he continued after a moment, his tone less strained while he transgressed into a joke.

“That makes sense. And I’m sorry,” Betty spoke softly knowing firsthand how difficult it could be to discuss your anxieties with others.

Jughead furrowed his eyebrows, clearly confused by her apology.

“Well I can imagine for someone who doesn’t like surprises it must be hard to work with someone completely knew, who you know nothing about. It’s like one big surprise in a human package,” she elaborated, watching the sun gleam off the clear water while she spoke almost shyly, before turning back to him.

A strand of dark hair had fallen from his beanie again and was sitting dangerously over his eyes, the sun was highlighting his jaw line and making his skin look flawless; the envy of every teenage girl for sure.

“I don’t think I’m going to mind this surprise.”

Her eyes widened as he studied her cautiously. A soft smile spread across her lips as she held his gaze, the sounds of the breeze and birds the unaccompanied symphony to their rowing.

“Oh shit, Fred asked me to gather paper and pens, so that we could schedule some evening activities during dinner!” Veronica exclaimed as her and Betty made the short walk from their cabin to the dining hall.

“I’m going to go back and grab them from our cabin, meet you there?” the raven haired girl asked already backtracking toward their room.

Betty nodded her mind preoccupied with the view a few metres away.

“Sure V,” she called, not taking her eyes from Jughead who was sprawled across the grass near the dormant fire pit, notebook in hand, barely registering Archie sat in one of the chairs near him strumming away at his guitar.

Her legs began moving to cross the distance before her brain registered what she was doing, though it didn’t object.

“So when you said you were partial to literary types, what you were really saying is that you’re partial to yourself?”

Jughead looked up at the sound of the teasing voice that had quickly imprinted itself into his memory as her voice.

Betty stood in front of him clad in a pair of well-fitting athletic shorts that showed off her long legs and an old hoodie, hair still in that pony tail. He had to remind himself to breathe as she completely dwarfed the scenery around her.

Rolling his eyes Jughead snapped the leather skin journal shut and rose up on his forearms.

“I think literary type and narcissist are synonymous Betty,” he fired back smoothly, revelling in the way she shook her head at him with that soft smile playing at her pink lips.

“How silly of me Jughead,” she exclaimed gracefully perching next to him on the grass.

He shrugged at her, leaving a purposeful silence for her to fill if she wanted to.

“So what were you writing?”

“Nothing really,” he tried to modestly lay the subject to rest.

Archie scoffed but didn’t say anything and Betty looked at Jughead curiously.

“Okay not nothing. I’m in the process of writing a novel,” he explained sheepishly, not meeting her eyes.

Betty’s whole body seemed to light up with genuine enthusiasm as she gushed, “Jug that’s amazing! What’s it about?”

Jughead hesitated not really sure how to explain the inner workings of his dark mind and also not sure if he was ready to confide that in another person, especially one he just met. Though he had to admit there was something about this girl that made him feel as if he’d known her forever, or had always been waiting to meet her. He couldn’t explain it, couldn’t put his finger on it, but he just knew that there was so much more to her than the “all American” persona she was putting on, and god did he want to know what was behind it.

“Sorry, a good author doesn’t release spoilers.”

Betty felt a tiny tinge of disappointment spread through her, but respected his prerogative. Writing could be deeply personal. Writing articles for the school paper was one thing, but sharing something entirely concocted from your own thoughts, your own fantasises, your own imagination and having people see the way you view the world around you, allowing people a window into your experience, well that was something else entirely.

“Well, be sure to send me a signed copy when it’s number one on the New York Times best seller list,” she said fixing him with a look that was both serious and teasing at the same time. Jughead laughed- he found himself doing that a lot around her.

Ignoring the butterflies in her stomach at the sight of his grin, perfect teeth on full display, Betty rose from her knees, making her way toward the dining hall once again.

Jughead watched her retreating form, before shaking his head and falling back on the grass once more.

“Dude!” Archie exclaimed, eyeing his long-time friend excitedly.

“What bro?” Jughead grumbled, barely glancing up.

“You know what. You and Betty!”

Jughead shot up, looking at the red head like he had grown a second head.

“What about me and Betty?”

Archie noted the shift in Jughead’s tone and realised he was retreating back to himself. He had to tread carefully.

“I don’t know man, but when she came over you got this look.”

“What look?”

“Well let’s just say you don’t look at her like you want to kill her- which is how you look at everyone else just for the record,” Archie elaborated carefully, though the mischievous glint in his eye did not fade.

“Shut up dickhead,” Jughead flipped his best friend off, with a glare for good measure.

“Okay we really need to start talking strategies for capture the flag,” Betty announced as her and Jughead walked a track deep into the forest.

The dark haired boy looked at her incredulously, taking a long swig from his water bottle. The heat had really kicked up a notch over the week making their skin sweat and burn even though it was barely 10am.

“You do realise that’s like three weeks away right? And we haven’t even met our team yet,” he dead panned.

“Yes.” Betty shot him a pointed look, skipping a few steps ahead of him before turning so that she was walking backwards.

“But I figure with my strategizing skills and your experience we’re practically unbeatable. And if we start planning now we are definitely unbeatable!”

Jughead couldn’t help but chuckle at her animated hand gestures and the determined look in her eye.

“Why do I get the feeling you’re a competitive person?”

“Shut up!” the blonde laughed with him, shoving his shoulder before falling back into step beside him.

“Okay Cooper, what’s your plan?”

By the time they reached the rock climbing site they had devised a thorough plan complete with diversion tactics, the appropriate number of defensive and offensive players and flushed out the other team’s most likely strategies. Each of them had been impressed by the other’s wit and determination, while still maintaining a light air transfused with humour.

“Here we are,” Jughead noted as the track faded out.

A natural rock face stood tall while the area directly below had been cleared in a radius of a few metres before the trees started to encroach again.

“The starting point of the river is on the other side,” he mentioned trivially as he worked open the combination lock on the bin the harnesses were stored in.

“I can hear it,” Betty said, contented by the sounds of nature.

She watched Jughead pull out two harnesses, and he ran her through how to put them on and how to check the caribena was locked into place.

“Okay newbies choice- do you want to belay or climb first?”

Betty rolled her eyes at this use of the term “newbie”.

“I’ll climb.”

Jughead nodded, handing her a helmet. Betty took it from him yanking her hair out of its high pony tail to accommodate it. Jughead felt his breath hitch at the sight of her blonde locks falling in soft waves over her shoulders. She was truly ethereal.

Ethereal? Shit when did he become such a sap?

Snapping out of his daze Jughead moved to double check her harness again. Betty inhaled sharply at his proximity. The scent of his cologne mixed with something she couldn’t put her finger on was intoxicating. The way his body radiated heat toward her was enticing despite the harsh rays of the sun and she couldn’t help but follow the drop of sweat the slid past the collar of his t-shirt.

“Alright you’re good to go,” he said stepping back. His voice had taken on a breathier tone that sent shivers down her spine.

Betty gulped, “Thanks.”

She moved so that she was standing at the bottom of the now intimidating looking rock face and fidgeted with nervous anticipation. Betty had always been a fan of physical activity; she loved the release of energy, the surge of adrenalin and the escape it gave her. Though she had to admit, this wasn’t the same as running or cheer or rafting or hiking…

“Betts,” Jughead’s voice- back to its normal tone now- broke through her reverie.

“Hmm?”

“I’ve got your back.”

The words were simple, but the sentiment warmed her being in the way the summer never could. They had only known each other for a week but there was something about Jughead that made Betty trust him implicitly and right now she couldn’t think of anyone else she would rather have as her support system through this venture.

“I know.”

Taking a deep breath Betty began to climb up the rock face, taking her time and placing her feet in the most appropriate ledges. Jughead would call out useful instructions every now and then about where to place a hand or foot and some words of encouragement. But other than that he left her to focus and for that Betty was grateful.

She felt the familiar sensation of freedom rush through her veins once she started moving and all her nerves dissipated. The feeling of the heat bearing down on her and the physical exertion erupted a light sheen of sweat or her skin, but she barely noticed as she reached the top of the face and took a moment to appreciate the view ahead.

“Nice work Cooper! Okay when you’re ready just slowly propel yourself down!” Jughead called from below her.

Betty turned her upper body to look down at him and flash him a thumbs up, an action that turned out to be a big mistake.

Because it was in that moment that Betty realised just how high she had climbed. The blonde jolted and turned swiftly back around in the harness her hands pressing flat against the rock face as her breathing began to shallow. She suddenly felt out of control. Her thoughts were spiralling, she felt like she’d never feel the ground, like she was seconds away from falling. Everything was spinning. her hands gripped the wall tighter, suddenly only seeing the image of herself falling and her body manufacturing the pain that would cause while the jagged edge cut into the scarred flesh on her palms.

“Betty?” Jughead called out, his brows were furrowed with concern and his voice was strong.

He could see her chest rise and fall rapidly, the harsh sounds of panic filtering down to him. Her forehead pressed against the warm surface of the rock as her eyes were squeezed shut.

Shit, he thought.

He knew a panic attack when he saw one and his chest became uncomfortably tight with what he wasn’t sure was the memory of his own episodes or the beginning of one.

“Betty what’s going on?” he pried gently, testing her responsiveness.

“Jug I can’t… it’s so… I can’t… so high-“ she mumbled through shallow gasps.

“Okay Betty you need to breathe okay. In and out slowly, like this,” he said assertively demonstrating the breathing technique he knew all too well.

Betty took a moment but began to do as he instructed, her body recognising the familiar rhythm she had practiced many times before. As she worked through the breathing techniques Jughead continued.

“Good! Now I need you to focus on my voice okay? Just concentrate on the sound of my voice.”

Betty nodded curtly, eyes still shut and breathing in deeply.

“Betty you are attached to a harness. That harness is attached to a rope that I’m controlling. You are not going to fall because I’ve got you.”

Betty opened her eyes, repeating what he was saying in her head. You’re not going to fall Betty, he’s got you. Some part of her brain recognised what he was doing. It was cognitive process she had worked through with her own psychologist, focussed on recognising the negative thought and countering it.

“Betty I promise I’m not going to let you fall.”

His voice was so earnest and full of conviction she couldn’t help but believe it. Her chest still felt tight but she no longer felt like she couldn’t get oxygen into her lungs or like she was about to implode.

“You’re not going to let me fall,” she relayed down to him, her own voice sounding more sure now.

Jughead nodded enthusiastically. Some foreign feeling overwhelming him at the proof of her trust.

“Right. Okay I need you to put your hands on the rope and gently push off the rock with your feet. Can you do that for me?”

Taking another deep breath, Betty followed his instructions, her limbs shaking but managing.

Jughead instructed her the whole way down, constantly telling her what a great job she was doing. Eventually both her feet hit solid ground and she let out a relieved exhale. Jughead moved quickly so that he was behind her and placed steadying hands on her waist, but was still careful not to move too far into her personal space.

“You okay?” He asked softly.

Betty felt her cheeks heat up with the embarrassment and found herself hoping the ground would just swallow her up. Biting the bullet she turned around to face him. Jughead’s brows were furrowed as his gentle eyes studied her face.

“Yeah,” she breathed, averting his gaze and looking down at her feet, kicking the toe of her sneaker into the dirt.

He didn’t say anything but Betty could feel his eyes trained on her face looking for any sign of further alarm or distress.

“Honestly, I’m fine. Just embarrassed really,” she mumbled steeling her nerve and looking back into his face.

Jughead scoffed, his hands moving to unclip her helmet.

“I don’t know why. That was one of the bravest things I’ve seen.”

Betty looked at him like he was alien, eyes wide and disbelieving.

“Seriously Betty you had a panic attack 30 feet above the ground and managed to get yourself down. That’s brave.”

Searching his eyes she found nothing but the truth and her cheeks flushed for a completely different reason. His sincerity was endearing and staggering and made her more acutely aware of how wonderful this enigmatic boy was turning out to be.

“Thankyou,” she whispered as he removed her helmet and smoothed her hair down. The silky strands and her breathy voice were distracting him but not in an unpleasant way. He was suddenly aware of how close they were standing and was unable to work out which one of them had moved to eradicate the gap. He sure as hell wouldn’t be the first to move back though. He was entranced by the way her shirt clung to her damp skin, the curls that fell over her shoulders, the way her bottom lip was trapped beneath her teeth.

Betty hesitated, wanting to say more but unsure. But around him it was like she was helpless to restraint. His smell, his intense gaze, the strength in his arms, everything about him was pulling her in and pushing her inhibitions aside.

“I don’t think I could have done that if it hadn’t of been you that was with me.”

Jughead’s eyes flickered with something she could not discern but she noted the subtle way his breathing faltered and his hands flexed against the clasp of her harness that he was now working on removing.

“Yes you could have.”

Again she was struck by his conviction, set spinning by the heat his words filled her with.

“No you grounded me and not to overstep but you clearly knew what to do,” she spoke softly afraid of startling him or breaking the unexpected intimacy this moment had brought them into.

Jughead sighed, seeming to debate something within himself.

“Let’s just say I’m well acquainted with panic attacks,” he admitted, knowing that she was intuitive enough to decipher his meaning.

“Me too.”

The silence stretched between them again, only disrupted by the sounds of buckles and clicks. The harness drooped around Betty after he had undone the last clasp and she held his shoulders while she stepped out of it and then reluctantly stepped back, realising she had no reason to be in his personal space except for her selfish desires now.

Jughead cleared his throat, trying to clear some of the tension in the air with that action, while he moved to place the harness back in the bin.

“So fear of heights?” he asked conversationally as he began putting his own on.

“More like fear of falling I think,” Betty replied distractedly, feeling an unprecedented happiness at the fact that he still trusted her to belay for him minutes after she had just had a complete melt down. “One I literally just became aware of,” she added with a slight chuckle.

“Well Betts, I think you just kicked your fear of falling in the ass.”

She tried not to smile too wide at the newly founded nickname.

“So how are you and Jughead getting along?” Veronica asked her later that night as they lay sprawled across the floor of their cabin, the fans buzzing lowly in the background.

Betty looked up from the magazine she was flipping through and found Veronica looking at her with an expression that screamed ‘please give me gossip now’.

Reaching her hand into the mixed assortment of snacks between them Betty replied in her best casual tone, “Great.”

Veronica raised a perfectly sculpted eyebrow at her.

“Sorry B I’m going to need more than that.”

Betty rolled her eyes, turning back to an article about the best foods to promote clear skin- as if she didn’t already know that with Alice Cooper as a mother.

“I don’t know what you want me to say V. He’s smart and funny, and really nice and I think we’re gonna have fun working together,” the blonde said somewhere on the verge of exasperated.

A cat like smile stretched across Veronica’s face.

“Yeah you are.”

“Oh my god-“

“Relax Betty, I’m just teasing,” the raven haired socialite placated, flipping a page in her own magazine.

“He is cute though,” she added nonchalantly.

Betty responded before her brain could catch up to her mouth and send a big red warning signal.

“He’s hot.”

Both girl’s heads shot up, eyes going wide as Betty’s sentiment hung in the air.

“Oh my god!” They exclaimed in unison, one voice filled with horror the other with glee. And then they both collapsed into fits of laughter.

“So are you ready to meet our troops?” Jughead asked sliding into the seat next to Betty at breakfast.

It was Monday morning, “bright and early” as Fred put it and they were awaiting the arrival of their campers.

“You make it sound like war Jug,” Betty admonished, taking a bite of her toast.

“Summer camp is war, or have you forgotten about our tactile discussion on Friday?” he quipped back sardonically.

Betty laughed and nudged him in the side.

“Guys, dad wants us all outside,” Archie came up behind the pair placing a hand on each of their shoulders.

“Okay I’ll just quickly do the dishes,” Betty rose to her feet instantaneously and began gathering the dirty plates and cutlery.

Jughead felt a subtle wave of affection wash over him at her innate need to be useful and inability to do things that meant more work for other people or that went against etiquette. It was endearing really.

“Leave em’ we can do them with the lunch ones,” he cut in, placing a hand on her wrist. The slight touch sent sparks through them and Betty fumbled with the butter knife in her hand, barely avoiding dropping it.

“Reggie outside bro!” the red head hollered over them toward the jock who was taking aim at the bin with used napkins. The sudden noise broke Betty from her Jughead induced trance and she hastily moved her limbs away from his and set the items in her hands down.

“Shall we?” Jughead asked tentatively, recovering more rapidly than she had. The blonde nodded, pulling her pony tail tight before moving to follow the others outside.

Once they were all clustered in front of the dining hall Betty couldn’t help but appreciate the show of comradery in their matching “Camp Sweetwater t-shirts”. Fred had gotten each of them a few in a distinctive colour to distinguish their groups, ensuring they only had to wear them until the campers got to know who they were. Betty and Jughead had royal blue shirts with yellow writing. Betty praised the camp god’s for the way that had worked out, as not only was blue a colour she had no issue wearing, it also was one that looked fine as hell on her partner.

“Okay guys, campers will be arriving any minute now. We want to be as welcoming as possible, lots of energy and remember the whole point of the summer is to have fun and make memories.”

The energy around the camp had lifted tenfold within the hour, the arrival of fifty kids between the ages of ten and fourteen adding a whole new vibe to the atmosphere. Betty had quickly found herself embracing the “perfect” persona she so often wore, smiling brightly and introducing herself to an abundance of campers, helping those who were new find their way around. She had already begun mentally cataloguing names by the time Fred had gathered everyone to go through the basic rules of camp and the way things were going to run.

“And now the part where you meet the children who will become obsessed with you within the week,” Kevin whispered dramatically in Betty’s ear as Fred spoke. Glancing to her left Betty shared an amused grin with him, trying desperately to stifle her laugh.

A few moments later they had segregated and Fred was sorting out who belonged to which team.

“You ready?” Jughead questioned from beside her while they waited for the campers to filter over.

“To do what I signed up for? Sure…” she replied, slightly confused as to why he was asking her such a question.

Jughead smirked at her, mischief written across his face.

“I meant for having to share my attention now,” he teased, shooting her a wink.

Betty’s mouth fell open at the comment, fighting a swoon in her shock. But just as she conjured a retort a wave of kids flooded their radius.

“Jughead!” One of the younger boys shouted excitedly, rushing toward the front of the group and smiling so wide Betty thought his face might literally split in half.

“Hey buddy. Wow you’ve grown since I last saw you! How’d 6th grade treat you?” Jughead’s expression morphed into one that was soft and accentuated the youth in him. Suddenly he wasn’t just her really hot co-counsellor, but a guy who looked like a role model to these kids; like someone who genuinely cared about the kids in front of him.

The sight made Betty’s heart stutter in an unfamiliar rhythm, catching her off guard. The swoon she had managed to fight off before was back in full force now.

“Overall it was bearable,” the young boy sighed. “I worked on what you told me about ignoring people who piss me off and I’m getting pretty good at it!”

Betty’s eyes widened at the use of the cuss, while Jughead just looked purely amused, and maybe even a little proud.

“Good to hear Noah,” Jughead ruffled the boy’s mess of sandy hair and merely laughed at the affronted expression he received.

“Okay monsters time to shut up now!” Betty heard a demanding voice call from the next group over. Cheryl was rounding her and Reggie’s group up, making it clear she was not one to tolerate disobedience. Betty could see why Fred had paired her and Reggie up; the most likely to be too strict with the most likely to be too relaxed, hopefully they would balance each other.

Though, that knowledge didn’t stop her from shooting Jughead a mild look of panic at the firey girl’s demeanour. Jughead merely shrugged.

“Alright kidlets, listen up!” He called out, raising his voice just enough so their chatter stopped, but not enough to be intimidating.

“I’m Jughead- I know it’s a strange name and no you don’t get to know what my real name is- and this is Betty and we’re going to be your group leaders this summer. So if you need anything at all, we’re the people you should come and hunt down. If it’s during meal times though you should probably find Betty because food will probably win out over you guys sorry.”

The group laughed and Betty couldn’t help but feel a little entranced by his easy going personality and natural repour with kids. She had already worked out he wasn’t one to draw much attention within their group of counsellors, but he clearly was a natural at engaging people and a part of her thought it was kind of a shame he didn’t allow his charm to show through with everyone else all the time.

“Okay so now that the most important thing has been covered, we’re going to do the totally cliché thing where we all go around and introduce ourselves,” he continued with a lazy smile gesturing for them to form a circle, and sit down.

“Wanna start us off?” Jughead motioned toward her. Betty nodded.

“Hi guys, I’m Betty, and as Jughead said I’ll be one of your team leaders this summer. This is my first time at Camp Sweetwater actually, so any of you that have been here before will probably be able to help me out too. I’m sixteen, and I’m a cheerleader and I’m really looking forward to spending the next six weeks with you.” Her gaze may or may not have flitted to Jughead as she said the last part.

They moved around the group and Betty paid close attention to their names, already having memorised half of them. She learnt that the boy Jughead had spoken to earlier was here for a second summer. She also learnt that Jughead was seventeen, a piece of information she had filed away in the box in her brain labelled, “uncovering the enigma”.

“Awesome it’s really nice to meet you all. So the next thing we need to do is pick a group name. And this one’s completely up to you guys-“

“As long as it’s appropriate,” Betty cut in, sending an apologetic look Jughead’s way for the abrupt interruption. Jughead laughed, nodding to affirm her point.

“And I just beg you please not to pick anything that will make me cringe every time I have to say it,” he added and looking around Betty once again noticed how engaged all the campers were when he spoke, his mix of humour and authority clearly working for them.

In any other situation, with another person Betty may have felt that little spark of jealously birthed from the need to be the best enshrined into her from a young age. She was always taught to be the standout, the person who everyone relied on and wanted, but in this moment she found herself more than content to let Jughead shine in his element. It was new to her, and maybe a trait of the real her, the one she was unable to become fully acquainted with yet. She didn’t dwell too much on it but thought maybe it had a lot to do with him.

Their group tossed ideas around for a while, the older kids scrunching up their noses at some of the suggestions from the younger crowd; team unicorns had not been a hit. After a few more minutes of debate a girl with long hair tied back in an elaborate braid- Emily, 13 from Greendale- spoke up.

“What about the Blue and Gold? You know because of your shirts. And Betty’s all blonde and bright which fits the gold and Jughead’s kind of darker like the blue?”

Betty laughed at her description of Jughead, quickly forgetting her embarrassment at being called “blonde and bright” while her partner furrowed his brows for a moment as if deciphering whether he should be offended by it or not. The others all nodded their heads and a chorus of “Oh’s” and “I like that one’s” rang across the small circle.

“Well I guess that’s settled then?” Betty asked looking around the group for confirmation. Upon finding no objection she turned to Jughead with a smile.

“Okay then. So Blue and Gold who’s ready for lunch?”

Betty led the way inside, she was on Kitchen duty with Veronica and Ethel today and headed in that direction once she was sure all the campers were happy mingling. As she walked past the tables she caught sight of Jughead with Noah again. The younger boy was clearly a little obsessed with Jughead as Kevin had jokingly described earlier. Though it wasn’t really the sight of them that caused the bright smile to break across her face, but rather the snippet of conversation she caught on her way past.

“Is Betty cool?” Noah asked Jughead, as though he was wary of trusting and was seeking confirmation in the older boy.

“Yeah she is,” she heard Jughead reply. That was enough for the corners of her mouth to twitch, but it was the next part that made her beam, as she just caught it before the distance became too great for the sound to travel to her.

“She’s really pretty.”

“Yeah she is.”

It was the second official week of camp and the weather was beginning to border on unbearable. Due to the dry heat, Fred had called off all of the planned activities for the afternoon, not willing to risk dehydration and heat stroke with the more physical activities.

Veronica, Kevin, Betty and Jughead had offered to take a group of kids swimming in the river, while Archie and Reggie were running a table tennis competition in the rec room/ dining hall and Ethel and Cheryl were preparing dinner.

“Stop looking at me like that!”

“Like what?” Jughead asked, his face twisting into an expression of both amusement and curiosity.

Betty huffed, self-consciously tucking a loose strand of hair behind her ear. The two of them were sitting on the little jetty Fred had built extending onto the water, while Kevin and Veronica sunbathed on the grass. Betty was reading while Jughead wrote in his journal. Although, she was pretty sure he was casting more glances at her then he was writing words on the page.

“I don’t know, like… like I’m special or something,” she muttered shyly, not meeting his eyes under the guise of watching the kids and then flicking them back to page before her. She didn’t absorb any of the plot.

A silence stretched between them for a long moment. The only sounds to be heard were the echoes of splashing water, kids laughing and the rustling of trees in the wind.

Finally after what felt like an eternity, Jughead’s quiet yet earnest voice broke through the tense barrier of unspeaking.

“You are special.”

Betty looked at him then to find his gaze was already trained on her. His dark hair was falling in his eyes, which were such an intense shade of blue she felt a shiver run down her spine and her heart skip a beat. He wasn’t wearing his usual beanie today and the sight of his locks, freed was already making her knees weak. She felt as though her body was on fire as her mind went blank.

Special.

It was a word she hadn’t really associated with herself before. Perfect, yes. But never special. Because most of the time she felt like a carbon copy of her sister and pretty much every other all American girl that existed across the country. The blonde cheerleader type wasn’t exactly a rarity.

But here was this boy, telling her she was; special that is. This boy that seemed to know a lot about being different, about things that were unique. And she believed it.

A wave of affection ran through her blood at the sentiment and all she could do was blush under his stare, and bite her lip as her sanity slowly returned.

“Thank you,” she eventually mumbled a sweet smile on her lips- it was different to the award winning one she gave everyone else Jughead noted. This smile was small, a subtle quirk of her lips, a light in her eyes. It was real, and it was for him in this moment, right now.

The weight was not lost on Jughead and he offered his own grin in return, not the smirk he used on most but an actual smile. And Betty felt her heart flutter at the beauty of it- of him.

It felt like time no longer existed. It was just them in this moment, just them and the stars in their eyes, no kids, no co-workers, no nervousness, and no expectations. It was just them revelling in the new feeling of seeing someone, and them seeing you.

It was kind of startling in its magnitude. They had only known each other three weeks, but somehow it felt much longer than that. As a team they were in perfect sync, easily bouncing off each other in their banter and joking tendencies which enthralled their campers, easily matching one another in determination, which had worked to their advantage in the morning’s game of capture the flag, which their tactics had convincingly won them. And as people they were beginning to discover the ways in which they complemented and contrasted. They had similar taste in books, similar interests in writing, and although at this point it was unspoken, each got the feeling that the person they presented to the world and the person they really were, were not necessarily one in the same; though around the other, each felt their true self shining through more with each passing day.

“Betty!” a shrill voice broke through their little bubble, as each of them blinked hazily, the moment fading rapidly.

Turning her head the blonde recognised one of the girls in their group swimming over to the jetty looking disgruntled. Sarah was a charismatic eleven year old, who had quickly taken a shining to her camp counsellor who embodied her dreams of becoming a straight A student and cheerleader with an aptitude for outdoor activities. Kevin wasn’t wrong about the whole obsession thing.

“What’s up?” the older girl asked with concern, placing her book to the side.

“Can you please come and swim with us? We’re playing tag and the boys are cheating!”

Betty laughed, internally rolling her eyes at the dramatic flair the kid had, but agreed none the less.

“Sure.” Seeming appeased by her confirmation, Sarah gave a curt nod and headed back toward her peers.

Jughead held his hand out for her book and Betty smiled gratefully at him, placing her well-worn copy of Romeo and Juliet in his possession.

Standing up Betty pulled her t-shirt over her head before bending at the waist to rid herself of her shorts. Jughead swallowed hard at the sight. She was clad in a navy one piece bathing suit that was definitely not designed to be overtly provocative. But damn if she didn’t make it look like it was. Her long tan legs appeared to go on for miles and her small waist was accentuated by the fitting material. She was an expanse of smooth skin and soft curves that made his fingers itch to reach out.

His mind was quickly heading down a track that was not suitable for their current situation and he had to bite his lip from restraining a groan.

Using physical effort to pull his eyes away, he eventually made it back to her face. Betty was looking at him with a pretty blush colouring her cheeks and her own bottom lip trapped by her teeth. God even looking at her face wasn’t helping his hormones. He knew she was gorgeous already, but now he couldn’t help but think about how far her blush spread, and what that luscious looking lip would feel like beneath his teeth as he nipped at it….

Shit.

“Juggie?” Her soft voice broke through his lust induced haze… barely.

“Sorry, I was distracted by the view,” his voice was teasing, though an octave lower than usual and it sent a thrill down her spine as he threw her own words from their first encounter back at her.

“Yeah it’s some view,” she sent back at him with a coy smile before diving into the water.

Shaking his head Jughead hastily placed their belongings inside the backpack he had brought along and pulled off his own shirt diving in after her; he was suddenly in need of the relief of cool water.

Betty squealed slightly as he surfaced next to her. Jughead only laughed as she splashed him back, raising a hand to push his dark hair from his face in a way Betty had discovered was extremely enticing to her. And if that wasn’t enough to send heat pooling in her stomach, her eyes betrayed her and travelled down to take in his toned chest, his skin olive and glistening as water droplets invited her eyes to trail down to his lean but defined abs and the sharp v lines of his hips-

“Betty!” Sarah’s voice cut through her trance.

Shit he was going to be the death of her.

“I swear if one more of those little brats try’s to sneak out of their cabins there will be blood,” Cheryl exclaimed with irritation as she joined Veronica and Betty on their trek to the fire pit. Ethel who was trailing the red head looked horrified by her remark.

“Cheryl!” she protested, wide eyes looking to the other girls to gauge their own reactions.

Betty laughed, while Veronica shrugged and raised a perfectly sculpted brow.

“Remind me to hire a nanny when we have kids dear!” the socialite teased, while Cheryl rolled her eyes before storming ahead in a huff.

“I’m a masochist I swear, Ethel can you take these?” Veronica quickly handed off the bags of marshmallows she had been carrying before following after her girlfriend.

Betty was intrigued by Veronica and Cheryl’s relationship. According to her roommate they weren’t together because “long distance never works”. Veronica was in New York and Cheryl lived in Riverdale [the town Camp Sweetwater was just outside of]. But they hooked up every summer and whenever their paths crossed at events each of their wealthy families were invited to. It was complicated but it worked for them.

“They’re an interesting pair huh?” Ethel stated conversationally, motioning in the direction the others hand just gone.

Betty laughed, adjusting the bags of gram crackers and chocolate she was carrying.

“Yeah, I didn’t realise one relationship was capable of handling two personalities that big.”

Ethel chuckled. They had almost reached the fire pit where the other counsellors were waiting. It was rounding on 11pm so the campers were restricted to their cabins, bar use of the bathroom due to curfew. Deciding they deserved some fun the older kids had organised an impromptu bon fire for themselves tonight.

“So what’s being partnered with Jughead like?”

Betty was taken aback by the question, not expecting it and not sure why she was being asked. She stopped walking, and Ethel turned to face her waiting patiently for an answer. A million words raced through Betty’s mind but none of them seemed adequate, while all of them somehow seemed to be too invasive and personal to use.

“Ah it’s great. He’s a really good guy.”

She scrutinised Ethel’s reaction, the way she nodded slightly, the faraway look in her eyes, the way her head was titled toward said boy who stood by the fire, rolling his eyes at something Archie had said while Reggie cracked up.

“He seems like it.”

“Yeah,” Betty let the syllable hang between them for a second before steeling her pride and continuing.

“Is there a reason you’re asking Ethel,” she kept her tone light and trusting though the darkness in her was beginning to rear its head and begged to snap at the other girl.

“Oh, well it’s kind of embarrassing but I was wondering if maybe you could talk me up to him a little? You know leave a good impression?” the shorter girl blushed profusely as she spoke, unable to meet Betty’s gaze as she fidgeted on the spot.

Betty wanted to yell that no she couldn’t do that because if Jughead was interested in anyone it was her, but she didn’t really have indefensible evidence of that. And besides she didn’t own him, he was entitled to like Ethel if he wanted. They weren’t even a thing. Why did this bother her so much? Because you like him Betty that’s why.

“Um I don’t know Ethel-“

“Please Betty I’m not asking you to set up a date or anything. Just mention me or something.”

Betty sighed. She couldn’t really deny her that innocent gesture. So ignoring the bubbling feeling of nausea in her stomach, she nodded.

When they finally reached the camp site, it seemed that Veronica had made quick amends with Cheryl as the two were now cosied up on a lawn chair near the fire.

Upon noticing their arrival, Jughead excused himself from his conversation with Reggie and walked the short distance to them. Betty felt a smile naturally make its way onto her face at the sight.

“Oh my god Betts have I mentioned that you are my favourite human on earth!” he groaned at the sight of the food in her arms, taking some from her to ease the load.

Her whole being became warm with the compliment as they set the supplies down atop the drink cooler.

“Flattery will get you everywhere,” she returned with an equally theatrical voice. A soft defeated sigh to her left though reminded her of the conversation had not even minutes prior and the guilt she felt won out over her pettiness.

“I can’t take all the credit though, it was Ethel’s idea,” she added smoothly, putting her hand on Ethel’s back and nudging her forward.

Jughead looked at Betty quizzically for a brief second before turning to Ethel.

“Oh okay. Thanks Ethel, great idea.”

Betty couldn’t help the satisfaction that ran through her at the stark difference in the way he had responded to each of them.

A an hour later she was sitting on the ground with her back against a tree talking with Kevin about his boyfriend, while Archie and Veronica were singing together in the background, adding to the warm atmosphere.

“Okay I’m gonna go raid the pantry for more snacks, you want anything?”

“No thanks Kev,” as he walked away she let out a contented sigh, happy to absorb this moment, knowing these were the kind of memories that became stories.

“Hey,” Jughead’s voice reverberated through the air as he slid into the vacated spot next to her against the trees trunk.

“Hi.”

They were close enough that their thighs pressed against one another, and though he was wearing jeans, she could feel his warmth radiating through the fabric on the bare skin of her own leg left uncovered by her shorts. She shivered as it made her aware of how chilled she was in the evening breeze.

“Cold?”

“No I’m fine,” she insisted shaking her head.

Jughead looked at her with raised brows clearly not believing her and sat up slightly so that he was no longer pressed against the tree trunk, and then proceeded to shrug off the flannel he was wearing over his t-shirt.

Betty’s eyes widened as she realised his intention, her heart pounding obnoxiously against her chest. He held it out to her with a smirk and she sheepishly took the material from him. It was a faded blue and green one with grey and black accents. She shrugged it on half haphazardly protesting that he would get cold.

“Don’t worry I’m hot blooded,” he joked, as she snuggled into the fabric. It smelt like him; slightly spicy mixed with cigarettes and something fresh she couldn’t place.

“Capote would be so disappointed,” her sarcasm earned her a little nudge of his shoulder into hers.

“Well it looks better on you anyway,” Jughead said quietly, eyes locking on hers while his hands reached up to adjust his beanie. The blue was so intense she felt like she might down it in.

Betty gave him that soft smile again and he knew the forward statement was not misguided. It was odd how they could be flirting half naked at the river and he felt more sure of himself then than he did right now. Something about the soft glow of the fire and the melodic strumming of Archie’s guitar paired with the evening sky was inescapably intimate and he revelled in the fact that she wasn’t shying away.

Taking a deep breath she decided it was her turn to be brave.

“Juggie I’m still a little cold…” she whispered innocently, looking up at him through her lashes, green eyes piercing him in the best way. And it was ultimately the cheeky glint he found in those green eyes that made him completely confident in lifting an arm for her.

Biting her lip Betty shifted so that she was snuggled into his side. They stayed like that for the rest of the night, Betty on her part ignoring Ethel’s disappointed and jealous glances their way.

This was definitely the kind of night that made for a memory that made a story. Their story.

Betty couldn’t sleep. She had been lying awake for hours, tossing and turning and desperately willing herself to fall into slumber. Though it was to no avail. Her mind was plagued with images of a dark haired boy with lean muscles and a gorgeous smirk. She couldn’t shake the ghost of the feeling of his arms around her the night before at the bonfire, or the lingering feelings of his appreciative eyes roaming her body that day at the river. It was like every part of him had lit up every part of her and now that fire wouldn’t go to sleep.

She had barely seen him today. Maybe that was why he was so heavily on her mind tonight.

It was Saturday- well technically Sunday now- and Fred respected the sanctity of weekends in his schedules. They didn’t really do group activities and it was mostly free time. Though they still supervised certain areas, or organised some random things to do like water balloon wars and helped with the necessary chores, weekends were like their time off.

She had spent her morning writing in her journal and her afternoon on a hike with Archie and Veronica and she hadn’t really any idea where Jughead had been. She had seen him at breakfast but he hadn’t been at lunch and had sat with Noah at dinner. She figured that might have had something to do with it. But she didn’t really want to pry.

What she did know was that she missed him. And she kind of hated herself for that; how much of an impact his presence or absence was already having on her when they were still an unestablished entity. But more than that, she hated the aching feeling it left her with. She was starving for his jokes, his voice, his smiles, his laugh and the innocent touches they shared. She found herself wanting the less than innocent ones too but that was a fantasy at this point, one she was trying to avoid indulging in while her roommate slept only a few metres away.

A rapping at the window broke her from her reveries. Betty’s ears pricked up listening out for the sound to make sure her imagination was not manipulating the wind or making things up all together. But just as she was about to write it off as her brain playing tricks on her, the noise came again, more insistent this time.

Betty sat up, swinging her feet to the floor before creeping over to the window. She jumped when she saw a face looking back at her, hand shooting over her mouth to muffle her noise of surprise. Quickly glancing at Veronica to make sure she was still dead to the world, Betty slid the window open her eyes wide and incredulous.

Jughead was leaning against the pane, looking devilishly handsome with a smirk on his lips.

“Hey there Juliet,” he greeted, a twinkle in his eyes, though Betty didn’t miss the subtle ways he looked worn and defeated. His eyes though striking were framed by dark circles, his shoulders slightly tense and his jaw tight.

She shook her head in amazement at his brash gesture.

“What are you doing?”

“We’re going on an adventure,” he stated plainly as if it were obvious.

“Are you crazy?” she whispered harshly, though she couldn’t deny the giddy feeling overtaking her at the thought of sneaking into the night with him.

“We all are,” Jughead drawled tapping his fingers against the window sill.

“So are you coming or not?”

Betty sighed, looking over at Veronica again one more time before nodding.

“One second.” She moved quickly, grabbing a hoodie and chucking flip flops on, before moving back to the window.

It was a little bit of a squeeze but she thanked the cheerleading god’s for making her lithe and flexible enough to make it work. Jughead placed steadying hands on her waist to help her through the other side. He didn’t remove them immediately when she was on the ground, but rather looked down at her fondly.

“Hi,” he whispered, this time it seemed more intimate with them face to face like this, his hands burning her through the material of her hoodie and pyjama top.

“Didn’t we already do this?” She whispered back, hands resting on his shoulders as she quirked a brow.

“Smart ass,” he murmured, taking a slight step back but grabbed her hand before she had time to be disappointed.

He led her down toward the river without protest and she soon found herself sat with him on the jetty once again. He dropped her hand when they reached their destination and Betty immediately missed the way his thumb was rubbing small circles on the back of it.

“This is my favourite part.”

Betty’s brows creased in confusion at his erroneous statement. His tone was meaningful and she didn’t want to miss what exactly he was being so sentimental about. For she was beginning to crave these moments with him, when it was just them in their own world, uncovering new layers of one another.

She studied him for a moment. He was lying on his back, hands behind his head looking up at the sky, his eyes clear and deep, his lips slightly parted. He looked somewhere between wonderment and defeated and she found herself needing to know how he got there.

Following his lead she lay back too.

A gasp left her lips as she took in the sight above her. the stars stretched across an endless plane of ebony sky, dots of ivory lighting it up and inviting fantasies and dreams, belittling everything else in the universe and dimming it in comparison to the endless infinites that were written in the night.

“Wow,” she breathed transfixed.

“There’s nothing else like it. Not just aesthetically I mean, there’s nothing else that makes you feel so enraptured, nothing that can steal your breath like that and make you realise that you are ultimately a finite being in an infinite world.” Jughead spoke in a way that made her feel like his words were being inscribed in her skin.

They were beautiful and profound and filled with a sense of longing and loathing that made them all the more enamouring.

Betty tore her eyes away for a moment to take him in, he seemed more stripped back than she had ever seen him before and she didn’t want to miss it.

“That was beautiful Jug.”

He didn’t say anything for a while.

“I think this might be my favourite place,” she said after a few minutes of silence. She didn’t know if she meant the camp or this moment because couldn’t recall a time in her life that rivalled this moment of him and her and the endless sky, and the symphony of cicadas and the wind rustling the trees.

“Yeah?” She felt his eyes glance at her, and could imagine the way his eyebrows lifted with the question.

“I’ve never felt more myself than I do here.”

“That’s both terribly beautiful and terribly sad all at once Betty Cooper.”

He was right she supposed, and the thought made her smile ruefully.

“My mum has the image of who she thinks I should be. Perfect. It feels like everything I do is to please her. I don’t even really know who I am anymore. Ever since my sister Polly became a teen mum, it’s like she’s had this psychotic desire to dispel any possible fault anyone could see in me, like she has to compensate for that through me. It’s suffocating.”

She didn’t know where the sudden need to tell him that had come from, but she didn’t regret it, especially when he didn’t show her pity but rather left the air silent so that she could fill it with more words if she so wished.

“But here, there’s no expectation of who I should be or how I should act. I can just be. I kind of feel like this is the first time I’ve ever really had the chance to get to know the real me.”

“For what it’s worth, if what I’ve been seeing is the real you then I think she’s pretty amazing,” Jughead’s words were so sincere she would almost be scared if anyone else spoke them.

“And I’m not the only one. You have quite a stalker squad developing,” he continued, lightening the mood and little, causing her to let out a snort.

“What about you? Noah really looks up to you.”

Jughead seemed to tense again at that.

“He’s a good kid, been dealt a pretty shitty hand in life though and I know what that’s like.”

His voice had hardened with his expression, pain seeping through each word. She reached out until her fingers grazed his. Jughead linked them together.

“You were with him today.” It wasn’t a question but he nodded anyway.

“Yeah. His dad has never really been in the picture and his mum is a recovering drug addict. He just found out she had relapse today, she’s okay but he’s not. He’s mad and angry and scared and it’s not fair that he has to deal with all of that.” His own voice was ruff and sad, tinged with frustration.

Betty rolled onto her side, placing their clasped hands on his chest. And offering him the same curtesy he had given her. She left the air void of sound, letting him make the decision to fill it if he wanted.

“It just, it fucking sucks Betty to have a parent to consumed by their need to escape the shitty situation they put you all in to realise that you’re right there and you’re drowning. Kids shouldn’t have to take care of their parent, that’s not how it’s supposed to work. They’re not supposed to abandon you.” He finished much softer and defeated than he had started.

“You’re right that fucking sucks.” She said eventually. He didn’t need “I’m sorry’s”. They were full of pity. What he needed was acceptance. Jughead felt his lips twitch upward at her use of a cuss word. Hearing her swear was rare, but god he wanted to hear more dirty words fall from her lips.

“But for what it’s worth, you made yourself more than that, you didn’t let that define you and that’s pretty amazing.”

The look she was giving him, all doe eyes and sincerity made his chest ache. Her blonde curls were sprawled around them and her skin was illuminate in the moonlight. She was beautiful both inside and out and he couldn’t fight his magnetism toward her any longer.

His gaze was as tender and it was intense and Betty felt her pulse race and her breath hitch as it flickered to her lips. She couldn’t remember how to inhale as he neared and her own head began inclining toward his. All she think about was the desire to kiss him, the need to show him how wonderful he truly was.

He paused a millimetre away from her mouth, his whispering against her lips as he steadied. The anticipation was killing her, her heart was pounding so loudly she wouldn’t have sworn he could hear it. And then just when she was sure she was going to go insane from the hold up, he brought his mouth to hers in an earth shattering kiss.

The first contact of their lips was a ghosting sensation. She stuttered out a breath as he pulled slightly away his hand brushing her cheek, and then she was plunging into him again. Their lips met in a passionate embrace, sliding over one another in slow and sensual movements, words unable to be orated slipping between their mouths.

Betty sighed against his lips as his hands cupped her face more firmly to angle her head, as his tongue traced her bottom lips. She gladly gave him access and Jughead groaned at the minty taste of her warm mouth. They battled languidly for a while, hands roaming bodies over clothes and breaths being stolen with each caress of their lips and tongues. It was unlike any sensation either had experienced.

Breaking away she rested her forehead against his breathing heavily. A demure smile erupted on her face as both their eyes stayed closed and they basked in the bliss they had created.

They didn’t sneak back into their rooms till sunrise.

Betty was in a mood that rivalled sunshine itself. It had been two weeks since her and Jughead shared their moment in the middle of the night on the jetty and things were unfolding amazingly. They had kept it professional while running their group activities, however, they were unable to keep their flirting entirely at bay- a fact one their older campers had not so subtly pointed out making her blush profusely while Jughead just sported a shit eating grin. They spent their nights and free time together talking about anything and everything, uncovering each other’s secrets, scars and demons, while also learning what made the other laugh, and what their dreams were. The physical side of things had also been progressing quite nicely, and not just in the little touches around others like the way he would place a hand on her thigh during meals, or pull her onto his lap when they hung out after camper’s curfew. But in the heated moments alone, where his tongue would caress hers and his hands would roam the expanses of her skin.

The thought alone had her flushing and her thighs clenching.

Shaking her head Betty tried to focus on setting the table for lunch.

“Hey you,” a masculine voice whispered in her ear, arms wrapping around her from behind. A shiver ran down her spine at the feeling of his breath on her skin.

She span around in his arms, placing her own loosely around his neck.

“I’m sorry do I know you?” she teased, tilting her head in mock confusion.

“Ha ha,” was all Jughead gave in response, his mouth too busy delivering a kiss to hers to form a quip.

“Excuse me no PDA where I eat please!” Archie exclaimed, walking over to them.

Betty giggled as they broke apart, burrowing into Jughead’s side despite the warm weather making close body contact less than optimal.

“What’s up Arch?” Jughead asked, the good mood she always put him in, transcending into his words as he addressed his friend.

Archie smirked at Jughead, highlighting the juxtaposition between the Jughead he was around Betty and his normal brooding self. Thankfully the redhead had the decency not to say anything outright though.

“Dad just wanted me to make sure you’re all good for setting up the movie night stuff after lunch?”

Jughead nodded, already well aware of what needed to be done to set up the makeshift outdoor cinema for the evening.

And it was that outdoor cinema that became the perfect guise for them to sneak off to a secluded area and end up in the compromising positon they were in now.

Once the movie had started the pair had snuck off to what they now deemed as “their spot” on the jetty overlooking the water. The cinema had been set up on the other side of camp so they weren’t worried about prying eyes. Neither had any false pretences about their intentions either and they had quickly become a tangle of limbs.

Jughead’s tongue was exploring Betty’s mouth as she straddled his lap. Her hands were in his hair tugging on the dark strands while his were placed firmly on her ass. He tasted like the cola he had been drinking earlier, tinged with the cigarette had not long ago and she was fast becoming addicted to it. Nipping her bottom lip with his teeth, Jughead pulled his mouth away from hers.

Betty whined at the loss but that soon turned to a breathy whimper as his lips traced the column of her neck. Her hips ground down against his growing harness as he bit and sucked at her skin.

“Juggie,” she moaned as he bit down on her pulse point and then soothed the abused skin with his tongue. He groaned against her neck in approval.

“Fuck Betty. Do you know what hearing you say my name like that does to me?” He breathed into her skin.

“I think I have a pretty good idea,” was her equally breathy reply as she rocked against his arousal. Jughead dropped his head to her shoulder and bucked up against her making her gasp and arch her back.

“Off,” she ordered pulling at the hem of his black t-shirt, needing to feel his skin beneath her hands.

Jughead smirked, leaning back slightly to pull the fabric over his head.

Betty’s eyes darkened at the sight, her gaze hungry as it traced the dips and ridges of his muscles. Unable to resist any longer her lips slanted over his in a hot opened kiss as her hands felt the lines her eyes had been admiring, revelling in the way they quaked under her finger tips.

Jughead drank in the passion she offered him, his mouth consuming hers as he dominated the kiss. His hands moved from their place on her ass to her back before sliding around to her rib cage under her shirt. Betty broke away from his lips to trail kisses along his sharp jaw line, the feeling making him groan and cup her breasts in his hands. She rocked her hips against his in response, shuttering when he flicked her nipples.

“Juggie I-“ her ability to form coherent sentences was stolen by the hand tracing her inner thigh under her skirt. He could feel the heat radiating from her centre through the thin fabric of her panties and it only excited him more, but Jughead had learned quickly that teasing her was extremely enjoyable.

“Tell me what you want Betts,” he murmured into her shoulder, tracing the lace trimming of her underwear with his fingers. Betty whimpered, her face flushing in the most beautiful way that he now knew spread all the way down to her breasts.

“I want you to- Oh- touch me,” she gasped pressing herself against him more eagerly now, creating a delicious friction.

Jughead growled. The sight of her rocking against his lap, looking wonderfully dishevelled was too sinfully good.

His hand stopped its teasing and moved under the fabric of her underwear. He groaned at the feeling of her wet and wanting for him and quickly began rubbing sharp circles on her clit. Betty moaned and bucked against his hand, head falling back in pleasure as her eyes shut tight and her lips parted.

Smirking he left her bundle of nerves to slide his fingers inside of her, her breath hitching at the sensation and then coming out as a whimper.

“Oh god,” she groaned, rocking her hips against his hand as he curled his digits inside of her, loving the way she clenched around him.

“Please,” Betty whispered desperately as he continued his ministrations.

“You want more?” he asked, nipping her earlobe.

She was panting now and he could tell he was close.

“Yes,” she breathed, stuttering at the end.

And that was all he needed to pump his fingers harder into her a few more times, his thumb moving in tight circles around her clit pushing her over the edge and making her see stars as she came with a gasp of his name. He worked her through it before removing his fingers and licking her essence off of them.

She had quickly overcome her embarrassment and unsureness with him in sexual situations, only having experienced heavy petting with anyone else before him. He had been a great teacher though and made her feel sexy and confident. So the sight of that alone was enough to stir her wanting again, and she kissed him hard.

“Shit you’re beautiful.” Jughead breathed out, taking in her glory; swollen lips, crumpled clothing, messed up hair, hazy eyes dark with lust and clouded with bliss.

She smiled at him tender and bright and his heart suddenly felt two sizes too big for his chest.

“So are you,” Betty replied, giving him a sweet kiss and brushing the ebony hair from his eyes.

“I was wrong.”

She pulled back slightly, confused as to what he was talking about. The look on his face was so soft and pure and honest it sent her spinning.

“The first night we were here I said there was nothing else that could make you feel so enraptured and enamoured as the stars could. I was wrong.” His thumbs caressed her cheeks, while his eyes coerced her soul and Betty felt the breath leave her body with the intensity of what she was feeling.

She was completely and utterly lost for any words, finding none that could come remotely close to the beauty of what he had just said to her. Licking her lips, she let herself be pulled into the depths of his eyes and pressed herself tight against his body. She chose to speak what she felt, to let her body take over her mind.

“Make love to me.”

#Bughead #bughead fanfiction #bughead smut #riverdale fanfiction #betty x jughead

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the-master-cylinder · 4 years

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Lunch Meat (1987): SUMMARY Cannibals who roam the San Bernardino Mountains in search of victims! PAW & THE BOYS! BENNY, ELWOOD and HARLEY! Psychotic, meat-eating mutilators who get their kicks by ambushing young men and women, hunt them down, and cold-bloodedly. tear their bodies apart!

There’s HARLEY, who get his kicks by chopping off people’s heads with his AXE! There’s ELWOOD, his younger brother, who likes to DRILL HOLES in his victims with his PICKAXE! PAW’S favorite tool is his stainless steel MACHETE! He gets his thrills by tracking his prey down, taking a couple of swipes with the machete to draw BLOOD, and then likes to see them beg for mercy. He’ll move in with a chuckle and CHOP THEM UP into many pieces of BLOOD-DRENCHED MEAT and BONES to be thrown in TRASH BAGS and taken down to the nearest greasy spoon to be sold as lunchmeat!!!! Then there’s BENNY! Deaf and dumb and MANIACAL with an insatiable thirst for human blood and raw flesh!!!! BENNY does his best work with a shovel!!!!

BEHIND THE SCENES/PRODUCTION The film is the culmination of three years work and a virtually lifelong dream of its 39 year-old writer/director Kirk Alex. With a background that includes film school training, Alex had been making his living driving a cab. Eventually the frustrations of that job, and the passion to make movies, overrode the instinct to make a living and he sold his cab to raise the money to start filming LUNCH MEAT.

Alex is understandably reticent about discussing details that might affect the film’s value on the marketplace but it seems likely that it was shot on 16mm with a budget probably below $60,000. The film was made on a 14 day shooting schedule, most of which was haphazardly scattered over an almost three month period. “We’d shoot a couple of days here, a couple of days there,” recalled Alex. “Sometimes we’d stop because we ran out of film and had no money to buy more. Other stoppages were for schedule conflicts for cast or crew. The worst delays were for hassles from the law.”

Cast & Crew

Alex’s cast and crew frequently had to change filming locations due to run-ins with Southern California police or Forest Rangers. “The whole system is set up for big budget productions,” complained Alex. “If you’ve got a movie camera in your hand you’ve got to have a permit to breathe, and everybody is out to make a buck off you. I was supposed to have a police officer and a fire marshal on the set at all times, at $40 an hour. A piece! There’s city, state, and county permits you’ve got to have, insurance and lawyers and paramedics. I could have spent my entire budget without ever exposing a foot of film!”

Instead Alex opted for true outlaw filmmaking. He and his group would shoot in one location until the forces of the law showed up. They would feign ignorance of the rules and regulations and then leave, promising to return with the proper paperwork and cash. In reality they would simply move on to the next suitable location and go through the whole process again.

Surprisingly, few of the film’s problems arose from the cast. “They were all pros,” said Alex. “It was 95° to 100° every day we shot and they spent most of their time running around or falling down in the dirt. Sure, they complained, but they all kept showing up and doing their best.”

Chuck Ellis, who portrays the gargantuan, cannibalistic mute Benny, was the only member of the cast whom Alex knew before shooting. “I always knew Chuck was a fine actor, and his size creates an undeniable screen presence,” said Alex. “I think he did a great job as Benny. He manages to create some sympathy for this pathetic sub-human even while we’re watching him engage in some pretty barbaric acts on screen.”

One staple of low-budget exploitation films that LUNCH MEAT lacks is sex or nudity. “It wasn’t a conscious decision to leave it out,” said Alex. “I just didn’t see any place for it in the script and I wasn’t going to bring the entire film’s pace to a halt just to have some girl take her top off.” The film’s special effects, the backbone of any gore film, also suffered for the lack of time and money. “A lot of good effects sequences were dropped because they were just too time-consuming, or costly,” recalled Alex. “I think Lori Drucker and her effects crew did a real good job on the throat ripping that kicks off the crazies’ attack, and on the miscellaneous body parts. They could have done even more. It’s the classic story: all we needed was time and money.”

Post production of the film was even more protracted than its filming. Over eight months, in increments of a day here, a day there, were spent before the final project was ready to market. Many of the delays were in order to raise additional money to deal with the next phase of the postproduction chores.

Alex bypassed any thoughts of theatrical exhibition and shopped the film around to various video distributors. He had several offers, some of which appeared more lucrative than those of Tapeworm Video, but he felt he could trust its owners because they were struggling dreamers like himself. To date, LUNCH MEAT has sold over 2500 copies for Tapeworm. That’s a pittance in comparison to the hundreds of thousands of copies a blockbuster title might move, but it’s not bad for an unknown film, with a no-name cast. It is, in fact, Tapeworm’s top seller to date.

And hopes are high that things may get better still. The tape’s incredibly graphic cover, offering a wild-eyed Benny gnawing on a severed human arm, was an undeniable eye catcher but has proven too bold for many video stores. A new, tamer cover was eventually offered.

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CAST/CREW Directed/Written Kirk Alex

Produced by Kirk Alex Mark Flynn Al Goodrum Robert Oland Pamela Phillips Oland Ashlyn Gere (credited as Kim McKamy) as Roxy Chuck Ellis as Benny Joe Ricciardella as Frank Elroy Wiese as Paw Robert Oland as Harley Mitch Rogers as Elwood Rick Lorentz as Cary Bob Joseph as Eddie Marie Ruzicka as Debbie Patricia Christie as Sue Ann McBride as Waitress

Slaughterhouse (1987): SUMMARY Lester Bacon is an old nut-case farmer living with his simple-minded, obese son Buddy. Both of them lament the fate of the old skilled hog farmer, now giving way to modern factory-type slaughterhouses. The father and son go on a killing spree against people who trespass on their property. In the opening scene, Buddy kills two teenagers, Kevin and Michelle, who are having some time alone in their car on a remote area of Lovers Lane.

The next day, Harold – Lester’s attorney, along with his law partner Tom and the local police chief, Sheriff Borden, visit Lester at his house to offer him $55,000 to buy his property, along with the closed-down slaughterhouse next door. Lester is told that the demolition of the slaughterhouse would create employment opportunities for many people in town, as well as get the county tax assessor off his back. Lester grumbles about Tom’s equipment and bad meat and says that he could do better with his hands, knives and fewer men. The sheriff tells Lester that the assessor’s office is foreclosing his property and he has 30 days to vacate it.

Meanwhile, Liz – Sheriff Borden’s teenage daughter – is with a group of high school friends planning to shoot a “horror video” and suggests that the area around the Bacon Slaughterhouse would be perfect. Her friends – Skip, Annie, and Buzz – wonder the whereabouts of Kevin and Michelle. Back at Lester Bacon’s property, his son Buddy takes Lester to a room and shows him the dead Michelle and Kevin. Lester is a bit unsettled, thinking that they’re neck-deep in trouble, but he tells Buddy that Tom, Harold, and Sheriff Borden deserve such a fate.

Deputy Dave, after being informed by the worried parents of Michelle and Kevin, checks out the docks and then goes to the slaughterhouse. He walks inside and calls for the two teenagers. As Dave finds a dead hanging cat, Buddy appears and kills him by shoving large metal sliding door on Dave’s gun-toting hand, chopping it off.

Lester then calls Harold to tell him that he has accepted his sales offer. Harold goes to the slaughterhouse where both Lester and Buddy kill him. Buddy then puts on the dead Dave’s blood-stained police uniform and goes for a drive in the squad car. Dave’s girlfriend, Sally, sees him driving past and waves, but Buddy chases her and runs her car off the road. She tries to escape on foot, but Buddy catches up to her and slices her neck with a butcher knife. When Tom arrives at the slaughterhouse, Lester lures him to the processing room, where Buddy drops him into a saw machine.

That evening at the Pig Out, a town dance, the power goes out due to a rainstorm, and many people leave. Buzz says it’s the best time for filming at the slaughterhouse. Skip then makes a $20 bet that the girls cannot last one hour at the slaughterhouse. Liz and Annie are dropped off at the place while the boys are sneaking around with masks used in Liz’s video. Elsewhere, Sheriff Borden finds Sally’s car with the damaged windshield and Dave’s patrol car with the door open. The sheriff then goes back to his car and calls for backup.

Back at the slaughterhouse, Liz and Annie realize that the boys are outside trying to scare them. Liz looks for a way to get behind the two guys and scare them instead. The boys split up and Buzz gets inside the building. Skip is at the window, and Annie laughs until Buddy suddenly appears and whacks Skip. Annie screams and runs, but Lester appears and grabs her.

Liz walks to the front door and sees that everyone is gone. At the same time, Buzz walks into a room, hears a noise and gets hit in the face by Buddy. Liz finds a hanging Annie (still alive), as well as the dead bodies of all the other victims. The father-son duo is there and Buddy grabs Liz. Meanwhile, Sheriff Borden learns that Tom and Harold have mysteriously disappeared.

Buddy and Lester hold Liz down on a table, and Lester says that a meat cutter like himself and Buddy have the skills like a surgeon. Lester slices one of Liz’s fingertips to prove to her that it is one of the most sensitive parts of the human body. When Lester turns and hears Sheriff Borden enter through the front door, Liz kicks Lester and runs away. She finds her father and runs to him. Buddy appears and the sheriff tries to shoot him, but he hits the blade of his meat cleaver. Sheriff Borden and Liz run outside into the rain. As Sheriff Borden pauses at his squad car door, Lester appears and stabs him in the back. Liz picks up her father’s gun and shoots Lester. She then helps the wounded sheriff into his car. She also gets the keys to start up the car, just as Lester rises and knocks at the car windows. She turns around, shifts the car into reverse, and runs over Lester, crushing his head and finally killing him. The sheriff tells Liz to drive away and radio for help. Buddy suddenly sits up from the backseat and swings his knife at Liz. She screams, and the film suddenly ends.

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BEHIND THE SCENES/PRODUCTION Even before the new slasher movie Slaughterhouse played in its first commercial theater, it was in the black. Slowly squealing its way around the country, the film was a testament to the new Hollywood, where independent companies outnumber major studios eight to one, and where home video and foreign sales can more than pay for a film’s cost. Slaughterhouse, for example, was sold to 60% of the foreign markets, including Germany, England, and Japan, before its domestic fate had been determined. Embassy’s Charter Entertainment is distributing the video cassette

It helped that the movie was made on a very tight budget; in fact, only fifteen full-time crew mcmbers were employed. As a result, writer director Rick Roessler was faced with the task of making up credits to increase the film’s prestige. The first two weeks of a four-week shot were done without any days off. and at that point, Roessler joked, they had to pick a few people off the floor and take some time off.

The film marks a major launch for American Artists, in which Roessler is one of three partners. The San Diego-based production company was set up four years ago primarily to produce films. The partners proceeded to work on other people’s movies until they could raise enough capital, mostly from private investors, for their own venture.

They even wanted to distribute the movie themselves, but felt they were not adequately prepared for such a challenge. Instead, they gave that job to Castle Hill in New York, which splits the grosses 50/50 with American Artists. “They don’t normally do horror films,” Roessler explained. “It worried me in the beginning. because I wanted to go with a company that knows horror films. New World wanted to buy it out for the ridiculous figure of $400,000.” Castle Hill’s involvement marks a continuing trend: prestigious “art house” distributors who are resorting more and more to handling low budget horror films as well. In their case, they put the name of a subsidiary on it. JGM Enterprises.

“The name of the game is you have to make a living, suggested Roessler. “I know I dug into our bank account heavily to help bankroll this film. I got into the horror genre not only because I like it but because there’s a base audience out there. Being horror fans, the one thing we didn’t want to do was absolute schlock. We didn’t want to do porn. You won’t see any gratuitous sex.”

One thing Roessler did play up was the comedy element. “We enjoy tongue and cheek stuff,” he said. “There must be a measure of comedy to make the film more horrific; otherwise, it would be too dull. Some films have so much blood, like EVIL DEAD, that they become funny.”

Roessler said he used the FRIDAY THE 13th series as an example of what he was trying to avoid. “It started out well, I think. The first one was low budget, and I think a lot of effort went into it. But look what’s happened to the character in the next five. It’s just gone blithering on they haven’t really identified who this guy is. The last one, six, was this huge slugger walking around with huge boots, whacking people for. I guess, no reason.

For Slaughterhouse Roessler developed his own character, Buddy, who in the ads is described as “360 pounds of Cleavermania” (in real life, Joe Barton, who plays him, is 372).

“With Buddy, what we tried to do was establish a character. He’s human he’s not some abstract. There’s hopefully some sentiment, some pathos in this character. Doesn’t say word one through the whole thing, and he’s the so-called star. He snorts like a pig.”

The film works as a sort of revenge picture, with Buddy killing those who provoke him or try to evict him and his father out of their condemned slaughterhouse. Thus, the title provides an ideal double entendre for the movie. The film has played in Detroit, Nashville. Denver. Washington, D.C., Pittsburgh and Phoenix, with other cities to follow. Roessler is expecting Embassy to be pleased with its release path. “Embassy put money into it because they want it to get out there. The best advertising for home video obviously is theatrical release, and the best theatrical release for home video is the one-week hit ’em and then leave, because not everybody gets to see it. The word gets around, and then they rent the video.”

Poster for Unproduced Sequel

Roessler said raising the money to make the film, over a period of eight months, was the hardest part of getting his project on the screen. “We put on presentations for several investor parties,” he said. “We went door-to-door. We made phone calls.”

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CAST/CREW Directed/Written Rick Roessler Produced Ron Matona Joe B. Barton as Buddy Bacon Don Barrett as Lester Bacon William Houck as Sheriff Borden Sherry Leigh (credited as Sherry Bendorf) as Liz Borden Jeff Wright as Deputy Dave Bill Brinsfield as Tom Sanford Lee Robinson as Harold Murdock

CREDITS/REFERENCES/SOURCES/BIBLIOGRAPHY Cinefantastique v19n03 Cinefantastique v18n02-03

DOUBLE FEATURE RETROSPECTIVE – Lunch Meat (1987)/Slaughterhouse (1987) Lunch Meat (1987): SUMMARY Cannibals who roam the San Bernardino Mountains in search of victims! PAW & THE BOYS!

#80sHORROR

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ridingthatbike · 5 years

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Turn the bike around: Peregrination in Scotland

Photo album here.

We tallied it up, and realized we’ve seen each other in person no more than five times in the last 16 years. But we are important to each other, and in the last few years, we’ve lost some important people, so when Adam asked if I would come over and ride bikes with him, it seemed like the most obvious thing in the world. Of course I will come. Let’s do it. A peregrination is a long and meandering journey, often a pilgrimage of sorts. We named our trip before I’d even bought plane tickets, knowing that we -- two fairly anxious people -- were going to do our best to be open to possibility and not be stubborn about the plan. Our initial plan was to ride a loop in the Cairngorms. Our collective anxiety was high as we took the train up to Inverness and rode to our starting point in Aviemore. A big storm cell had moved in over the Highlands, and it was going to rain there for a week straight. Anxiety crept higher and higher. We looked at the weather forecast, and finally said out loud:

What if we don't do this route? What if we don't ride our bikes in a week of nonstop rain? What if we do something lower stakes? Where can we go to outrun the rain? ... and all of the pressure and anxiety we’d been feeling about making sure the other person had a good time just disintegrated. We took the train back home to regroup.

We cobbled together a new plan based on the Capital Trail, a 150 mile loop that starts and ends at Adam’s front door. We felt a little sad about giving up on the initial plan, and also maybe like our Plan B wasn’t very exciting or maybe wasn’t hard enough to feel like it "counted." But on the very first day, it got pretty hard, and we realized, oh, this is for real, this counts! And it’s so close to home that we can take all the risks! We can explore every dead end! We don’t have to hurry! We don’t have to say no to anything! We end up having incredible weather the entire time. Plan B is the best plan. Back in January, I set a theme for the year, which is to be unhurried. This is not Hurry-Up Life. Peregrination turned out to be the lowest-mileage, least-hurried, most exploratory bike tour I’ve ever done. I am living my goals even when I’m not trying to. There’s a lesson here.

I’m just a teenage dirtbag, baby, like you.

I am tired and feel heavy and slow as we roll through the Pentland Hills, but interestingly, I'm not stressed at all. Sometimes you push your bike. It's all just part of it. We open and push our bikes through and close about 20 gates, we sing Teenage Dirtbag out loud, and I marvel at the wool that has accumulated on every surface -- on every fence line, on every low branch, eventually on my derailleur and pedals too -- and I begin to suspect that Scotland has more sheep than people. I look it up later and confirm that it's true.

We come out into the village of Carlops, which has a bright red telephone booth and a bright red mailbox, and I can’t believe how bright and vivid they seem in the gray day. Our route takes us on the Cross Borders Drove Road, an old footpath for drovers bringing their cattle to market. It's waymarked with a cow emblem, and we love it. Follow the cow road! We find magical singletrack, a magical abandoned stone building, a magical dirt road, and a couple of sheep who have gotten out of their fields and are nervous and try to run away from us but in the same direction we're going. We don't want to stress them out, so we decide to backtrack a little and cook our dinner, sitting in the grass on the side of the road.

We roll into a perfect magical patch of woods and decide it's too lovely to pass up. We set up the tent together for the first time and I think about how cool it is to have adventured with lots of people, to have set this tent up with lots of people, and also how effortless and wordless it is to set it up with Q, my number one adventure partner. I think a lot about how possible adventuring is for me because of the stability in my life, and I feel so grateful for my partner and for my old friends and for the opportunity to see more of this big ol' world.

I have nightmares during the night, after seeing a flashlight pointed at us in the late evening but not seeing the person connected to the light. In my sleep, the person becomes a middle aged man named Kevin and he comes into our campsite and doesn't say anything, just looks around at things, and try as I might, I cannot make my voice loud enough to call out HEY! Adam gently elbows me, and I briefly wake up and fall right back asleep. Kevin is still there in my dream, creeping around. Get out of here, Kevin! You're not invited!

Spooky Wood

While packing up, we discovered that we’d been left a gift overnight: a long-legged dead bird, draped over Adam’s front wheel. Whoa. Was it a fallen hatchling? Or a failed hunt? We’d heard a lot of owl activity overnight. Or was it Kevin?

We pack up and roll into the town of Peebles for breakfast, and then hike-a-bike for several miles up a big hill, high-fiving at the top. Woof. We skip the mountain bike trails that are on the route, but deeply enjoy the waypoint labeled "top of Spooky Wood!" and refer to every patch of woods after it as Spooky Wood. We are delighted to find some huge carefully stacked cairns on a hilltop, and to ride along some beautiful old stone walls through sheep field after sheep field after sheep field.

The cloudy skies turn dark, and the search for a campsite becomes urgent. We find a patch of woods that is too dense to even enter, let alone put a tent up in. We ride along through scrubby heather-covered hills, scouting and scouting, and find a spot where two trails meet, where there is a perfect tent-sized patch of flat ground. I would not ordinarily put a tent so close to trails, but the sky is starting to spit. We lean our bikes, set up the tent in a flash, throw all the things under the rainfly that we think we might want for the evening, and climb inside. It starts raining immediately.

Adam cooks in the vestibule of the tent, and we eat dinner inside our sleeping bags. The rain eventually stops and a glow settles on the landscape around us that seems too beautiful to be real. We look at the trails around us -- a lovely doubletrack to the left, and an alluring singletrack to the right. We don't even check which way our planned route goes. The singletrack looks too good. We gotta take it.

Singletrack for Breakfast, Hail for Dinner

We are thrilled to be riding some grand and super fun singletrack first thing, get a little too stoked, and totally miss our turn. We get deep into some steep and technical singletrack that we have to walk our bikes down … and push our bikes back up. We sing “Turn the Bike Around” to the tune of “Turn the Beat Around" by Gloria Estefan. We make our way to the end of the singletrack, down some totally bananas little steep sections with gates that are clearly not designed for bikes (this is a footpath through some sheep fields, it’s ok, we make it work), have a picnic at the junction of two beautiful dirt roads, and then cut off-route to the village of Tweedbank via the Border Abbey’s Way, another old footpath that takes us past a massive field of dandelion puffs, ready to explode at the slightest breeze, and are delighted by our choice to go offroute.

We get some coffee at the only spot in town that’s open: the takeout place at the train station. It’s chilly and a rain is coming, so we hunker down in a covered bike parking area to drink our coffee and warm up. Temperature regulation on this trip is challenging. It’s warm enough to get hot riding, but cold enough that we need to pull out our puffy jackets every time we stop for more than a few minutes or we start to shiver. It requires a vigilance that is new for me.

We roll over to the next town via an urban pathway, and back on out of town via the chain bridge, past some nosy cows, and Adam narrowly avoids calamity when he rolls over a scrap of fence wire that wraps around his cassette. It is incredible: this whole tour, we got no injuries, no flats, no mechanicals of any kind. So lucky.

We revel in the double track that dreams are made of, lined with stone walls and huge blooming gorse blobs, under a vivid blue sky with cartoon clouds. It’s impossibly wonderful. We stop in Lauder, where we find a Very Fancy Cafe and Art Gallery, where we eat several slices of cake and charge up our phones and take baby wipe baths in the bathroom to remove some sheep shit and mud and pretend we are presentable enough to sit inside this lovely establishment. Here, we decide to hop offroute altogether, because we are enjoying this footpath and want to see it to the end. It’s the Southern Upland Way, which is waymarked with a charming thistle emblem. It goes coast-to-coast. Let’s ride to the ocean! A few miles out of town in a big open field, we find a stone wall that forms a perfect circle. We stand in the center of it and look at the menacing clouds gathering substance overhead, and decide we better find somewhere to pitch the tent pretty quickly. The thunder starts to rumble as we look for anywhere that’s less exposed than the hilltop we’re currently on. We roll down the other side of the hill, pick our way across a stream, and find a flat spot nestled at the bottom of another steep hill. We throw the tent up as fast as we can, and climb inside just as a hailstorm arrives. We laugh and laugh and laugh at our good fortune. The storm passes quickly, but leaves a chill in the air.

The moors, the wind, the sea

We linger at camp in the morning, having coffee and cookies in the tent for breakfast, drying off the tent, repacking everything after the mad dash of the previous evening. We find ourselves on a heavenly dirt road in the vast expanse of the moorlands of the Lammermuir hills, lined with heather and cotton grass and positively alive with grouse. The track leads us to the top of Twin Law, where we find a matching set of cairns that serve as a memorial to twin brothers who died fighting on opposite sides of an ancient battle. The plaque on the site reads:

And they biggit twa cairns on the heather And they biggit them round and high And they stand on the Twinlaw Hill Where they twa brithers lie.

We cannot believe how beautiful it is, how incredible these structures are, how tender humans are, and we goof around and take a million pictures before descending on a joyful lumpy track with big enough lumps that I get both wheels in the air several times on the way down. It’s good to get rowdy. I am grinning the whole way.

We take some double track through woods that feel like Pennsylvania, and look for a stopping spot for a snack break, just knowing something good will turn up. We pop out of the woods and find Abbey Saint Bathans, which has a bench and a map of the Southern Upland Way. We put peanut butter on our cookies, and ask a passerby if there’s somewhere we can fill up on water … and someone comes out of the house behind us and fills up our water bottles for us. What is this magic? What wonderland are we living in?

The wind gets stronger and stronger all day. On top of an exposed hilltop, we see that we’re level with the blades of the wind turbines in the distance. They don’t put wind turbines in places that aren’t windy. This is just how it’s going to be. Find peace. We lumpity lump along some sheep fields, and I am tired from the wind and the lumps. We joke that we skipped riding the Highlands and are instead riding the Lumplands. I see that the road we’re about to cross will take us right to the sea at Cockburnspath in 5 miles of pavement rather than 7 miles of Lumplands. Adam doesn’t want to ride any more pavement than he has to, but I am cooked, and so he acquiesces. And soon, we’ve ridden our bikes to the North Sea, where we hope to find a cafe and get out of the wind, and maybe get a hotel and take a rest night, but there’s really nothing in town at all.

We make camp stove coffee on the hill overlooking the sea and make a plan: we’ll ride the ten miles up the coast via pavement to the next town and stay there, I suppose. It isn’t very appealing. We’ve barely set out when Adam spies a dirt path that looks more fun. We take it, and it dead-ends on the beach. Rats. TURN THE BIKE AROUND! On the way back, we find a little spur trail and check it out. HOLY SHIT! It’s the most perfect secluded beautiful campsite you’ve ever seen. It’s a meadow full of blooming flowers! There’s a picnic table and a fire ring and a tree swing! There is no way in hell we’re going anywhere else.

Headwinds and pavement and castle ruins

The campsite is breezy, which means we get to pack up a perfectly dry tent in the morning. We are pretty tired, and the paved cycling route to Dunbar is brutal. Ugly. Industrial. Next to the highway. The headwind is mentally excruciating. It’s hot but cold. It’s sunny and windy. We get to town and have coffee and express our certainty that we would have cried if we’d tried to do this ride yesterday. Every choice we’ve made is the best possible choice. We eat some food, and then push hard back inland on pavement. We’ve got to get out of this wind. We’ve got to get off the pavement. This feels like a penalty day for our follies yesterday. Morale is low, even though we’ve turned onto some narrow beautiful flower-lined roads. And suddenly, when we can’t take it anymore, we are at the Hailes Castle ruin, and we have mountain bikes, so we ride down the stairs and into the castle. This is the fucking best.

The last few miles to the town of Gifford are less windy, and the hills are bigger rollers. We realize we've forgotten to eat enough, thinking only of the relatively short distance and not of the effort required to ride into a headwind all day. We eat a thousand snacks once we get to town, and get a room at the Goblin Ha’ Hotel, because if there’s a hotel called Goblin Ha’ … who would not stay here? It’s the whole reason we decided to stop at this particular town! We take glorious hot showers and lay around. I wonder what the story is behind the hotel name.

Summon the goblin army

Oh, the story of the Goblin Ha' is better than I could have hoped. Yester Castle was built by Sir Hugo de Gifford, who was something of a necromancer or alchemist or practitioner of the dark arts, and the story goes that he summoned an army of goblins to build a hall of his castle, and there’s maybe also a portal to hell. I mean, the goblins have to come from somewhere, so the portal makes sense to me. We must go there. Obviously.

We ask the woman who runs the village store for directions. She walks with me out to the street and points at the farthest building in our line of sight. “Go past that building, and cut through the opening in the fence. It’ll bring you through some houses, and then you duck off to a deer path on the right. You’ll know you’re going the right way when you pass some Highland cattle. You’ll go over a bridge with a sign that says ‘unsafe structure’ but it’s fine, we all use the bridge. You go down a steep hill and back up the other side, and you’ll see it. I don’t know if it’s the best way, but it’s better than the road, anyway.” These are the best directions I’ve ever been given in my life. We find the ruins, and immediately Adam finds a skeleton key in a cubby on the wall. Maybe it opens the portal to hell, I don’t know, I’m too scared to even look for a lock. We climb all over, enjoying the serendipity of happening upon something so terrific. What luck, what serendipity. The woods are full of blooming forget-me-nots.

We cut through a farm to get back to our original route, and get a proper scolding from a farmer who has had too many frustrating experiences with hikers to want to deal with us. It is probably pretty irritating to live next to a famous ruin, and have a bunch of people bothering your livestock and not closing your gates. I tell her I am sorry to have added to her frustration, and she softens. She directs us back to the road, past this little fenced in building. What is it? It’s a dovecot. What’s that? It’s a building full of little cubbies, for raising pigeons. It’s pronounced ducat. “You’ll get beat up if you say dove cot,” she says, and then tells us that we’ll get beat up if we try to pay for things in euros. It cracks me up, because nobody has even been a little bit salty with us on this trip. I apologize again for the trespass, and mention that it’s hard for me to tell, because where I am from, there would be private property and no trespassing signs all over. “Nobody wants to put up signs!” she protests. Well.

We head out onto the road past the dovecot and realize after a mile or two that we’ve gone the wrong direction. TURN THE BIKE AROUND. We find some pavement that turns into a great dirt road that turns into great singletrack that turns into an overgrown patch of stinging nettle and hurts our legs very much, and then suddenly a perfect little stone tower appears in the middle of the nettle. We get closer and see that it has a door. We nerve ourselves up and try it. It opens! God damn if it isn’t another dovecot, and now we know what it is and what it’s called and I laugh out loud. I would never have known if we hadn’t accidentally trespassed on Lucy’s farm. Thanks Lucy, and sorry, again.

We zigzag across some beautiful luminous golden fields of rapeseed and onto some fast pavement, and then duck through a hole in a stone wall onto an estate where Mary, Queen of Scots surrendered in 1567, and where there is a network of purpose-built mountain bike trails. How much magic is in Scotland if we’ve found so much in such a small area?

We are getting pretty close to the end of the route and it will either be some semi-urban camping, or an earlier finish than we want, so we stop in a small town and fill up our water, eat some ice cream, and re-route again: let’s go back to the Pentlands. It’s so beautiful there, and I want to go back! We cut west on a cycling route, and it’s a little hard to follow and not that fun and we are tired. It’s our biggest mileage day yet. But we make it just fine, and have a picnic dinner in the sun. Adam knows just where we should camp, and leads us to the little patch of woods I’d noticed on our first day of riding -- I’d commented “that looks like a great campsite for a quick overnighter from town!” Confirmed! It’s a great campsite! We find a flat spot among the trees, set up camp, watch sheep tv from the tent, and chatter into the night.

Sleep in among the sheep

I sleep hard, and wake up as usual at 4:15 when it first starts to get light out. The other days, I’ve just rolled back over and gone back to sleep, but this morning I get up out of the tent and am stunned by a vivid red sunrise. I pause to enjoy it a while before climbing back into the tent and sacking out for a few more hours. There’s no rush. We make breakfast and noodle around the hills. The wind picks up and my body is exhausted. It starts to rain lightly, and we call it a day and head home. Back in college, Adam and I formed the Piss Poor Bike Gang. I put gold foil star stickers on our helmets. I think the only “rule” of the gang was that you had to wear a helmet. I was trying to learn to be more confident riding in the city. Adam was working on learning to ride clipped in. Our cooler, more bike-savvy friends guided us on easy local rides. We fell over slowly. We ate a lot of snacks. I could not have known then that we were setting the stage for a grand adventure all these years later, but looking back, it’s plain as day.

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epacer · 5 years

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Rolando, San Diego

This is from a three-part series that ran in Rolando's community newsletter last year. I'd interviewed people who grew up in the area between the late '50s and early '80s, but the self-indulgent second part was the one best received and now featured permanently on the RCC website. Kevin B. Staff, February 15, 2019

Growing Up in Rolando, 1960s - early 1970s

On a hot summer day in 1960, a young musical group piled into a car for a drive to North County. They called themselves Rosie and the Originals. Their destination was an airplane hangar in San Marcos that doubled as a recording studio. Their saxophonist was missing because he had committed to mowing a lawn, and his mom wouldn’t let him out of it. Another group member knew the rudiments of blowing a simple instrumental break, and the unpolished nature of the recording that resulted is probably part of what makes it so hauntingly appealing, as if emanating from no particular place or time.

By fall, Rosie’s “Angel Baby” had become popular locally. By Christmas, it was an international hit.

In mid-September 1960, as the song was first getting airplay, our next-door neighbor on College Avenue walked me to Henry Clay School for my first day of afternoon kindergarten. My mom had broken a toe while chasing my little brother and me around the coffee table in our living room. The plan was to show me a definite route to follow—from College to Acorn Street to Seminole Drive to Solita—and, after a week of escort, to let me walk it on my own. There were no sidewalks along College Avenue in those days, but I was able to make the walk.

During that first week, a kid kept crying in class, and on one occasion tried to escape. Old Ms. Leber seemed to leap across the room in a single bound as she grabbed him by the collar and dragged him back. Resistance was futile. My best childhood friend, a year younger than I, spent several days with me trying to build an airplane out of bamboo strips and pinwheels that we thought we could use to fly away in, so that I wouldn’t have to go to school.

I came to like kindergarten after a while. I began to walk with a girl who lived in the back unit of a duplex near the corner of College and Acorn. I tried to impress her by breaking glass bottles on the wall of the Campus Drive-In until an old lady came out and made me sweep it up and that was the end of that. One day, I came to the girl’s door just as her father was rushing off to work. The screen door hit me and knocked me into a cactus garden by the side of the house. He actually seemed relieved to be able to call in late. While her mom telephoned my mom to explain what had happened, he took me into the bathroom, had me pull down my pants, removed a number of cactus needles from my bum and rubbed the area with Bactine. It was quite embarrassing.

The rest of my elementary school flew by, in retrospect, although a year seems to take forever when you’re a kid. Kennedy was inaugurated in January 1961, To me, he was President for a long time. It was hard to think of him as young, since all adults seemed old and he was even older than my dad! He was assassinated while I was in third grade. We heard about it just before recess and did talk about it on the playground, but it wasn’t as if the world had stopped. We played ball and ate our lunches; I even bought a bag of Planter’s peanuts for a nickel that day.

We moved to our new house on Seminole Drive on Veterans’ Day 1965. Although it was less than a mile away, I didn’t see as much of old friends and started hanging out with a different set of kids. The area west of Henry Clay had been developing steadily since the early ‘60s. The apartments on the south side of Acorn Street went up around 1963; we used to climb around on the building materials until the workers chased us off. An old-style ranch house with a big front porch was torn down, and four houses, including the one we moved into, went up on the west side of Seminole. The shopping center where the BLVD63 apartments now stand started out as a large dirt lot with just a De Falco’s Food Giant on the east end.

As the rest of the shopping center developed, Thrifty Drug Store and College Theater opened, with a few small retail businesses between them. There was a vacancy between Thrifty and Von’s for several years, until Straw Hat Pizza Palace opened. It showed old Laurel and Hardy films and such, and instantly became a favorite hangout for older kids. The back of Thrifty had a tall flat wall and a good-sized parking lot that quickly became a place for playing handball and racquetball. We got to know most of Thrifty’s employees, who let us go up to the roof to retrieve our ball if we somehow hit it up there. We bought candy bars that over the years went from five cents to ten cents to fifteen cents while becoming smaller and smaller, and could get a scoop of ice cream on a cone for a nickel, with two scoops for a dime.

Sixth grade at Henry Clay ended in June 1967, just before the weekend of the much-remembered Monterey Pop Festival and several weeks after the release of the Beatles’ much- overrated Sergeant Pepper album. In the fall, I moved on to Horace Mann. Because I went to Sunday school in the College Area and had joined the church-sponsored Scout troop, I already had a collection of acquaintances from other elementary schools that I now saw every day. It was quite a change, having to go to different classrooms and listen to bells ringing every hour. Miniskirts were much in fashion, and we guys were beginning to notice.

For those who went through adolescence in the late ‘60s, the era has always been something of an enigma. That time in a kid’s life is chaotic and confusing enough, but we also had to deal with living in one of the most tumultuous eras in modern history. There was a lot of anti-establishment posturing by kids my age—mainly aping older siblings, I suspect. At heart, I think, teenagers are the most reactionary of conformists. If you were going to rebel against society, there was a very definite way to dress and behave. But political posturing aside, kids will be kids. We enjoyed going through what we called the A&W and Uni-mart storm drains, identified by the businesses nearest the tunnel entrances. We had raucous impromptu after-school football, basketball, and soccer games. We took off on long bike rides without bothering to tell our parents where we were going or when we’d be back. We threw water balloons at each other in hot weather.

In fall 1970 I started high school in 10th grade at Crawford. It seemed a much more easygoing place than Horace Mann, with basically no dress code and fewer ringing bells and public announcements. I didn’t take part in many extracurricular activities, having embraced the current drop-out-of-society ethos. That fall I took drivers training, then offered by public schools. Dad occasionally let me borrow the car, but I really wanted a motorcycle. In July, after working a few months at Campus Chuck Wagon, I was able to buy a little Honda CB160. By the middle of my high school years, several of us had small bikes and would take them on weekend camping trips in the backcountry. Although my Honda wasn’t built for off-roading, we did a bit of that too, often in the area that is now Mission Trails Park. There weren’t a lot of restrictions on where you could ride then. Soon enough, the noise and dust got on people’s nerves and laws changed.

I participated irregularly in wrestling and track, but for the most part was uninterested in school-related activities. I did stay active in the Boy Scout troop throughout high school because of its outdoor program. A half-dozen other boys my age felt the same way and we’d all become friends. It was through the troop’s outdoor program that I got to know most of San Diego County, particularly Anza Borrego State Park. We climbed Mount San Jacinto in the San Bernardino mountains each year, in preparation for an annual week-long trek through the Sierras. I’d climbed Mount Whitney twice by the time I was 16!

Watergate was just getting underway when I graduated from high school and American participation in the Vietnam War had ended earlier that year. For us, the feeling was that the ‘60s were definitely over but nothing particularly cool had come along to take its place. There was a lot of soft rock music, and it was considered fashionable to be a “sensitive male.” On the other hand, it was the era of the Guitar Hero–all about making a lot of noise while playing fast. To me, most of the hard rock seemed much less tuneful than ‘60s music.

I left San Diego that fall of 1973 to become an auto mechanic in Arizona. It seemed like a practical thing to do until I realized I intensely disliked the work. After a year, I joined the army. Although I came back to San Diego for short periods, I didn’t live here permanently again until 1997. The Rolando area was basically recognizable as the place where I grew up, until about ten years ago when the shopping center was demolished to be replaced by BLVD63, the Thrifty became Rite Aid and moved to its present location by the Post Office, and Henry Clay got some upgrades.

When I taught at Palomar College in San Marcos, I had the chance to ask Rosie Hamlin, the lead singer of Rosie and the Originals, if she remembered the location of the hangar where they recorded “Angel Baby,” but it was all too long ago and far away from her current life. In March of last year, Ms. Hamlin died. *The author of this article is Kevin Bradshaw Staff, Class of 1973 and is on the Rolando News Staff.

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exysexual · 7 years

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hs au (part five)

(part one)(part two)(part three)(part four)(read on ao3)

Neil has to get the fuck out of Oakland.

That’s the only thought bouncing around in his brain as he runs home, duffel slapping against his thigh in a familiar rhythm.

Andrew Doe knows too much about him. Has too many reasons to think him suspicious.

Neil can’t believe he fucked up like that. His mom would– well, she wouldn’t be happy. A fucking panic attack? Just because Edgar Allen was mentioned?

Actually, it’s not that it was mentioned. It’s that representatives from there will be at his fucking school tomorrow and that someday Andrew Doe could mention to Kevin or Riko this weird kid he knew–

When Neil gets to the house, he stops himself from spiraling. Kevin and Riko couldn’t possibly recognize him just from Andrew offhandedly mentioning him. And it’s not like they’d be coming themselves tomorrow.

No, his biggest obstacle now is Andrew Doe.

Neil Josten isn’t in the room when Andrew gets to Stats on Tuesday.

He slides into his seat and tries not to watch the door too obviously. The bell rings, though, and Neil still hasn’t materialized.

Andrew spends the rest of class vaguely watching Rodriguez and cycling through wondering where Neil is, being annoyed that he’s curious, and thinking through the game tonight.

The Jamesons had somehow caught wind of the scout situation, so now Andrew is dealing with their excitement and hopes about Exy scholarships. He’s mostly kept up a fake smile, aside from last night, but he has no idea what will happen when the inevitable disappointment comes.

Mac lets Andrew play the entire game, and he gets a shutout, and the Jamesons hug him all at once and he only freezes for a second.

He glances around the stands, looking for Neil before he realizes what he’s doing. He doesn’t see him anywhere, and he barely has time to berate himself before Mac is pushing him to the office, where there’s a line of bored-looking people in collegiate apparel.

Cathleen squeezes his hand in comfort before following him into the room.

Neil skips out on school because he doesn't know if he's even going back. He organized and reorganized his bag, sorted through his documentation, thought about the money he had left, and tried to make a mental pro/con list for sticking around.

Pros: no wasting money on new IDs; no rent or money for the squatting; easy access to the school; knows a few people (mostly on the CC team) who make his days a little less lonely; no figuring out a new place, a new identity

Cons: Andrew Doe knows something is up

For his mom, that would’ve been enough. They would’ve left town as soon as Neil told her about it and she had sufficiently punished him. They would have gone to Montana or Arizona and she would’ve cussed him out the whole way, before her guy in Boise or Mesa got them new digs.

But now, it’s just Neil. It’s just Neil, whose disappearance from school would raise questions, and whose appearance in a new town would raise questions, and whose travel from Oakland to Boise alone would raise questions.

It’s just Neil, who already kind of hates waking up and going bed alone everyday, even with the guys he exchanges ‘sup nods with in the hall.

Being a teenager is a complicated thing, a mixture of wanting not to be quite so alone in the world and wanting everybody to ignore you at all times. Being a teenager on the run, trying to escape notice, with nobody to rely on or turn to– Neil isn’t sure if he wants to scream as loudly as he can or run away from it all.

He slumps into Stats on Wednesday with a plan, but he can hear the echoes of his mom’s constant vitriol as he drops into his seat. He ignores when Andrew Doe comes in, faces forwards and takes the most meticulous notes he’s ever taken. He hopes that he fades into the wall.

Andrew stares at the back of Neil’s head for the entirety of the class. Part of his mind is still reliving the discussions he had last night, when the Jamesons weighed Edgar Allen versus Berkeley versus Penn State, when Mac had grinned and slapped him on the back and said, “Good job, Doe.”

The other part is wondering what the fuck is up with Neil fucking Josten, who has a panic attack and disappears and then reappears without so much as a hello. Andrew may not be the most sociable of people, would ignore everybody if he could, but even he has to admit that Neil is fucking weird.

He’s probably embarrassed, Andrew guesses, thinking back to the panic attack. But to be embarrassed, he has to care what Andrew thinks to some degree, which doesn’t really compute.

At the end of class, Neil turns around and rubs at the back of his neck, his eyes fixed on the wall behind Andrew.

“Um, hey, Andrew,” he says quickly, “sorry about last time. Do you think we could meet today instead?”

Andrew raises his eyebrows and shrugs. “No practice the day after a game, sure. Library 3:30?”

Neil nods and then books it out of the classroom, the opposite of his usual slouch. Andrew watches him go in confusion.

The fuck?

Neil gets to the library at 3:30 on the dot only to find Andrew already sitting at a table in the corner, pushing his chair back onto two legs.

Neil drops into the chair across from him and digs out his Stats notebook wordlessly. No more slipups.

“You feeling better?” Andrew asks as Neil reemerges. Neil bites his lip and nods, then lets out the story he’d been stewing.

“Um, yeah, sorry again,” he replies, putting as much sheepishness into his voice as possible. “My mom made me stay home yesterday ‘cause she was worried about me.”

Andrew nods, studying his face closely. Neil runs a hand back through his hair and tries to look as embarrassed as he can.

“We, uh, think it’s just all the talk about college that’s got me nervous,” he continues. “If it happens again, she’s going to make me talk to somebody about it.”

Andrew nods again.

“Anyway, Stats?”

Despite what Andrew would have expected, Neil Josten appears to genuinely care what Andrew thinks of him. Andrew tries to puzzle this out as he walks home, goes over everything he thinks he knows about the new kid.

He runs cross country and track. He’s smart but freaked out about college (admissions? Tuition? Adjusting to the environment?). He and his mom (no dad mentioned, except once when he said “my parents”) moved houses recently. He dresses horribly. His family has a really shitty car and he doesn’t have a credit card or a cell phone. He continually asks about Exy and Andrew despite claims that he doesn’t care about Exy. He doesn’t appear to notice that half the upperclassmen have crushes on him, but he cares what Andrew thinks.

There’s a few conclusions that Andrew comes to as he climbs up the Jameson’s front steps: Neil’s family is dirt poor; Neil is trying to hide that his family is dirt poor; Neil thinks Andrew might spread around the fact that Neil’s family is dirt poor.

Plausibly, Neil wants to play Exy but can’t afford it, and doesn’t even give a shit about Andrew.

Andrew tries not to feel too disappointed that Neil doesn’t actually care about him, or that Neil apparently judges him so harshly as to think he’d cade about something like his family’s wealth or spread it around.

Regardless, Andrew pastes on a smile as he steps inside, and shares with Cathleen the latest updates on his project.

Neil Josten is nothing.

Neil has another panic attack that night. Alone, curled up under his blanket on the hard, cold floor, he tries to imagine the impression he’s made on Andrew, and it’s nothing good. He realizes he never asked about Andrew’s game and then wonders if he’s really being recruited by Edgar Allen and the next thing he knows he can’t breathe.

He doesn’t know how much time he loses, but he feels bone fucking tired when his breathing is back to normal, even though his mind is still going in circles.

He tries to picture Riko and Kevin and Andrew playing together. Tries to imagine the weight of a racket in his hand. Tries to remember his mom’s smile.

Neil doesn’t get much sleep that night.

Andrew almost stops dead upon entering the cafeteria the next day when he spots Neil sitting with a few of the guys from cross country. He has not once witnessed him in the cafeteria before, although he hardly looks out of place, leaning in and listening to Todd Jiang.

Andrew joins Tekien and Sam Reagan at the table they usually sit at, conveniently beside the cross country table. Andrew alternates between smoking and joining them at lunch, depending on how much he can handle inane Exy bullshit.

He sits as close as he dares to the CC table and can just overhear their conversation as Sam and Tekien continue discussing their defense at the game on Tuesday.

“C’mon, Josten, you gotta get a Facebook,” Jiang says with a grin. “You’re already withholding your cell number, so how else can we contact you?”

“I’m not getting a Facebook,” Neil replies. Andrew can see him picking at his protein bar out of the corner of his eye.

“Can you imagine how many friend requests he’d get, like, right away?” asks another guy who Andrew doesn’t know. “Half the junior class would be on him like that.”

Neil slouches further down in his seat at that. Andrew wonders why he keeps his unpopular act up even around his friends.

“Why don’t you want one, Neil?”

“I already see enough of you idiots at school. Don’t need that messing with my home life, too. ‘Sides, my mom doesn’t want me to get one.”

They laugh at that, and somebody jokingly says, “What a momma’s boy.”

Neil shrugs.

“Doe, what did you think about our third goal on Tuesday?” Tekien asks then, diverting Andrew’s attention.

“It went in the net,” Andrew says flatly. Sam cackles at that as Tekien rolls his eyes.

“Be like that, hoard your Exy knowledge. Just remember not all of us are getting recruited by the Ravens, though.”

Andrew shrugs and starts in on his lunch, ignoring the next table over and instead letting Tekien and Sam’s chatter wash over him.

Neil doesn’t know how Todd found out it was his lunch period, but he’s not thrilled at this development. Sitting on his stoop is weirdly peaceful. Getting ribbed by the CC team is not, especially when they want him to be a normal teenager.

“Oi, Josten, where do you think you’re going?” Todd yells out on Friday, when Neil tries to steer away from the cafeteria and head back to his stoop. He rejoins the CC table resignedly, where Diego offers him a fist bump and Phil gives him a ‘sup nod. God, why is everyone around him such a bro?

“So, Josten, you’re not hooking up with Katherine, are you?” Diego asks immediately.

Neil takes a measured bite of his protein bar and unsuccessfully tries to place the name. “Who’s Katherine?”

Phil laughs and Diego shakes his head. “I think she’s in your Spanish class.”

Neil pictures the blonde girl who tries to talk to him every fucking day. “Oh, Blondie?”

Phil continues chuckling. Diego puts his face in his hands. “Jesus Christ, Neil.”

“I think you can safely take that as a no, Diego,” Todd offers with a smirk. “Then again, maybe Josten is hooking up with her and doesn’t even know her name.”

Neil represses the full body shiver that threatens to break out at the memories of kissing girls in back allies and what followed. He takes another steady bite of his bar and lets them think what they will.

He looks around the cafeteria and catches Andrew’s eye. The other teen stares expressionlessly at him. Neil frowns and wonders if he should’ve left after all.

(part six)

#i wrote more things omg!#who knows if it's terrible!#not i!#hope it's not :)#my writing #tfc #andreil #the foxhole court #high school au

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happy-hiking · 6 years

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The Whitney Experience

Whitney Portal- June 12, 2018

On June 12, we set out from our hotel in Palmdale, CA, passing through our first taste of the agricultural belt that passes through California. I have watched a documentary on the shady dealings that go along with the water rights in this area. It is always fascinating to see in real life, a place you have only heard or read about. We crossed through Mojave and swung around to the East to approach the Sierra Nevada.

While stopping to pick up our permits at the Eastern Sierra Ranger Station, we caught our first glimpses of Mt. Whitney, popping up beside several sharp spires, a few layers back into the Sierra Nevada. The length of the long walk ahead of us became immediately apparent. Inside the visitor center, the Ranger solidified what we had been expecting- news that the switchbacks are still unusable and that the best route to the summit is still currently climbing the chute. Oh, well. Time and nature weren’t quite on our side this time. We make the best of it anyway.

After leaving the Ranger station, we made our way into the small gateway town of Lone Pine. Expecting it to be like most other little gateway towns (overpriced as hell), I was pleasantly surprised when we stopped in at a few shops to pick up some last minute items. Not only were prices fair, the shop owners all willingly help each other out throughout town- if you go into a store looking for something they don’t have, they will provide you with suggestions of other businesses in town to check out that will likely have what we need. One shop worker even leveled with us when we asked if there would be any cheaper options to buy elsewhere for a backpacking stove top. You cannot travel with used stove tops on an airplane, and seeing as how we already have several at home, we wanted the cheapest option available while still being conducive to carrying up a big ass mountain. We were sent to another store down the road, where he assured us we would likely find something cheaper (we did!).

Once we picked up the last of what we needed in town, we kissed our cell phone service goodbye and began winding through the Alabama Hills, on our way up the infamous Whitney Portal Road. I tell you, the early days of bringing public lands to the masses led to some insanely ingenuous road building. The Whitney portal road switchbacks precariously up into a canyon, bringing us and our huge rental SUV 4,000 vertical feet closer to the summit of Mt. Whitney. The road ends in a gorgeous little bowl of civilization nestled up in the mountains, complete with summer cabins, a campground, a store with burgers and beer, and various wondrous water works in the form of ponds, rivers, and waterfalls.

After navigating ridiculously narrow campground roads, we pulled into our home site for the evening, sandwiched between lots of other campsites occupied by a variety of people- hikers, like us, camping to acclimatize before heading up the trail, families looking to spend a week in the trees, retired couples running their generator in their big ole motorhomes, and everything in between. It was certainly strange to see people enjoying campfires. This has been a dry year in the southwest, and fire restrictions have been in place for months where we come from.

We decided that it would be infinitely easier to take advantage of our huge SUV and “camp” by just sleeping in the back. That would allow us to pack our backpacks today with everything needed for an early start tomorrow. While initially bummed that we had to be upgraded to this huge beast (gas money), it turned out to be a comfy home-chariot on wheels. We laid both the middle and back row of seats down, leaving us a huge, comfy sleeping platform that accommodated Kevin’s 6’5” tallness! After testing out our cozy digs, we tied up our hiking shoes and left for some Whitney Portal adventuring.

We set out from our campsite and took the trail passing by towards the Whitney Portal Pond. This hilly trail took us through some gorgeous wooded areas, following the raging river and crossing it several times with small footbridges. The trail lead us to a gorgeous pond, reminiscent of a reflecting pool, nearby the Whitney Portal store. Deer were grazing in the picnic area, people were discussing the trail conditions in the store, and all was right in the world. I was reminded in this moment of a song I once heard at a street fair in Farmington, MI. The Reflecting Pool- Steve Schriemer

While wandering through the picnic area, we came across a HUGE waterfall. Being unsatisfied with the view from the bottom, we began climbing up steep, crumbly surfaces ranging from granite to dirt to moss. Upon climbing a couple hundred vertical feet, we saw that we were still nowhere near the top of these falls. We enjoyed the cool spray from the water cascading over smooth granite. How refreshing, invigorating.

We spent the rest of our evening preparing dinner, packing our backpacks, and stuffing everything into the provided bear lockers to prevent bears from eating us or our stuff. Not only do bears just steal from campsites, they have really upped their theft skills and also enjoy breaking into cars (which apparently happens quite often!) After readying everything for our hike the next morning, we went to bed pretty early, although I can’t say that the butterflies weren’t keeping me up for a while. This hike has had months of planning going into it, from gear purchases to airline tickets to permits. A lot has gone into this. No pressure, or anything.

Setting Forth- June 13, 2018

5am. The alarm is ringing relentlessly at us. Kevin rummages around, finds the phone, and turns it off. I laid in my very cozy bed (okay, is an inflatable sleeping pad in the back of an SUV a bed? I think so) for about 5 minutes before forcing myself to emerge from my sleeping bag. That is pretty good time for me. Knowing we already had our bags packed and didn’t have much in the way of prep for the morning helped.

We planned for a nice, early start to avoid hiking up sunny switchbacks in the heat of midday. By 6am, we had stashed all of our scented items not going on the trip with us in bear lockers in the hiker’s parking lot. Bears really have a hankering for our deodorant and cheese sticks, apparently. We threw everything we could into our styrofoam cooler and our 10 cent walmart bags (Oh California, and your ways… why does no one warn you to bring your own bags to Walmart!?), labeled them with our name and return date, and then set off for the trailhead, which has a literal wooden portal that you walk through to begin your trek.

Before setting off, we stopped for the obligatory picture, and of course, to weigh our backpacks. I have always wanted to use one of those hanging scales to see how heavy my pack is. I usually suffice for weighing myself on my scale at home, and then weighing myself wearing my bag (but...math). Coming in at about 32.5 lbs, I was pretty pleased. It was about 6am and the sun was already coming up. Here we go!

The trail begins with some gradual switchbacks, seemingly leading us in the exact opposite direction of Mt. Whitney. Switchbacks have a way of throwing you off a little bit- they can be kind of mind numbing, while at the same time, making life easier for you at the expense of a little extra distance. After about a mile, we were treated to a gorgeous river crossing before passing into the John Muir wilderness.

I always wondered what the Sierras would look like in real life. Is it possible that they are really as beautiful as they look in pictures? Can these mind-bending alpine lakes, sheer cliffs, and towering trees really be all that I expected? As I marched on into John Muir’s personal church, a cathedral of pines, I considered the scenery around me. It really IS beautiful… but have all my travels turned me into someone who is no longer surprised by anything? In that moment, I longed for the days when I lived in Cortez, and stared awe-struck each day into the beautiful mesas of Southwest Colorado, constantly asking myself if any of what I was seeing could possibly be *real*. I’ve seen a lot of very real beauty, and while these places do not become less beautiful, that fleeting feeling of sheer amazement, that sense of being tiny in a grandiose world, comes to me less than it used to. As my mind wandered, I looked up to the sheer cliffs on either side, thinking of how they remind me of Zion, but gray.

Before long, we are hiding in the shade of a pine tree from the heat. I checked the GPS on my phone, and we were nearing Lone Pine Lake already!! This hike, thus far, has been less steep than I had spent months imagining it would be. The picture below shows the route we had hiked up until this point..

Leaving the trail to meander downhill towards the lake, my inspiration was renewed with an absolutely gorgeous view. There on the shores of this pristine, glasslike alpine lake, there were six teenagers scheming about what to do, while their proud dad-like person watched quietly from the side. All six of them wound around the shore of the lake to a huge boulder jetting out into the water. The fact that they were crazy enough to jump into an alpine lake at 8 in the morning invigorated my senses. Listening to them scream and cuss as soon as they hit the frigid water was quite entertaining! Kevin asked the older man if he planned to jump in. He said, with a twinge of nostalgia in his voice, “I’ve done it before, but not this time.” He continued to watch his kids (and maybe their friends, I don’t know), laughing on the shore, with a look that said more than words. Sharing nature with your loved ones can be so powerful.

After walking (uphill) back to the trail from Lone Pine Lake, we encountered some water on the trail. One section had lovely log bridges that allowed us to cross a swampy area without being (at least) ankle deep in water. Following that section, the trail passes through a gorgeous, life-filled meadow with a stream running through it. The stream, swelling with snowmelt from high up in the Sierras, could not be contained to its river banks and completely flooded the trail. There was a tiny scrap of hope of keeping my shoes dry by rock hopping, but soon the rocks became so small and far between that I just succumbed to the fact that my feet were going to be soaked.

I didn’t pull my phone out to take pictures of the flooded trail, but here is a picture below of the trail when it is not flooded (courtesy of californiathroughmylens.com)

We slogged through the flooded trail, knowing we only had about a mile until Outpost Camp. For my own personal mentality, I need to know the next landmark on the trail and how far it is until that point. Before long, we passed the sign signifying the boundary of the “Whitney Zone” (ooh, ahh, fancy!). Beyond this point, you need a permit to be there. We felt pretty legit with our pretty pink tags on our bag. Kevin commented on how fabulous it was that we were not inundated with crowds of people on the trail- the permitting system, although a pain, actually did a pretty job of ensuring that this wilderness trail actually *felt* like a wilderness trail, and not a bad-crowd day at Zion. (Can you tell I’m not fond of crowds?)

After switchbacking a couple more times, we came into Outpost Camp- a big, open, rocky area with a massive waterfall to the side, featuring campsites with fun, rocky walls built up around them. It also featured a few more water crossings, which for a person who is challenged with maintaining proper balance, was of course, super fun. I stepped off a rock and directly into the river at one point, filling my shoe completely with icy, fresh, water that was probably snow the day before. Luckily, that meant I had an excuse to stop and relax at Mirror Lake, just another half-mile up the trail. :-)

Here, you can see the big waterfall on the edge of Outpost Camp. I read some stories from last year’s hikers about a missing hiker who fell to her death on a chute, which apparently was right near this waterfall.

After climbing up some serious incline, we rounded the corner to the welcoming sight of Mirror Lake. This lake, quiet and serene, was teeming with fish (which just doesn’t make sense in the middle of the mountains.. .later found out the lakes are stocked...by USFS I’m assuming?). My shoes were still squishy with water, so we crossed a log to the far side of the lake where a huge boulder laid on the shore. Suddenly feeling incredibly relaxed, I kicked off my shoes, ate some moon cheese (Moon Cheese is life, you guys.), and promptly fell asleep on the boulder. I slept for almost an hour. I wasn’t even that tired, but just so incredibly relaxed that I couldn’t help myself. The warm sun felt incredible, there was no one else around, my heavy pack was off my shoulders, and everything was just quiet and scenic.

-My resting place-

Next, onward...above treeline, to Trail Camp!

After a while of picking our way across the rocks, we came to Consultation Lake on our left. This large lake was still mostly frozen over. I read that some people camp at Consultation Lake, as it is less crowded than Trail Camp, and only about a half mile away, however, I saw no one camping there, and no real campsites jumped out at me. I also had a little bit of tunnel vision at that point- I knew we were close to Trail Camp and I just wanted to get there already!!

About another half mile up the trail, we were finally greeted by a blank, beat up sign that I am assuming said “Trail Camp” at some point. 12,000 ft elevation, here it was. I imagined this place many, many times. It would be my first time camping above 12k feet, and my first time camping above treeline (although we did make it pretty close on Memorial Day, camping at 11,700 ft but below treeline). Lots of campsites were scattered about, delineated by little rock-walls constructed by campers past. We scooted into a campsite as a group was packing up their last items and leaving it. It wasn’t too far off trail, was close enough to the Trail Camp Pond without being too close, and gave us a tiny bit of wind protection Now, down to the business of setting up camp.

Since you can’t stake down a tent on solid rock, we found little boulders to stick inside our tent in the four corners to hold it down. I made sure all my snacks and such were stashed in the bear bin, and hid the bear bin among the rocky walls. No bears to worry about here, but marmots and chipmunks were running amuck like kids at recess. I hear they have absolutely no problem chewing holes right through your backpack or your tent to get to the goods.

Now, down to the important business of finding somewhere to pee when there are no trees to hide behind, and a bunch of random dudes lounging around. I climbed up some rocks to discover some really cool campsites perched up in the boulders, overlooking where we had set up our tent. Can you see our abode in the picture below!? I climbed up over another ridge and found a quiet spot to go pee. Luckily, I didn’t need my WAG bag (SWAG bag if you’re Kevin). Yes, you actually have to poop in a bag and carry it around with you when you’re up here. Good thing, too, because, I don’t know… camping among a bunch of piles of poop doesn’t sound so awesome. It’s not like there’s somewhere to bury it up here. I even accidentally came across some gross person’s poop spot. They just left it there. Sitting on the rock. Toilet paper and everything. PLEASE. I bet you didn’t think the conversation would steer towards poop. Sorry.

After returning from my bathroom search, I laid around on the rocks a little bit. I probably ate more Moon Cheese. I don’t know. After a little bit, I headed down to the shore of Trail Camp “pond” which is a really lame-sounding name. Ponds are gross. This body of water was gorgeous, and clear, and cold. I tried to soak my ankle in the water, as it had been hurting me and swelling a little bit since Memorial Day. The water was way too cold, though, and I only made it about 30 seconds of soaking in the water. I grabbed my filter and filtered a liter of water, sitting by the shore drinking it, watching marmots, and staring Mt. Whitney in the face. After a while, two men came over to filter some water for their journey down. They had summited that morning. I spent a while chatting with them about their hike (it was sketchy), and about their lives in general. They were from Indiana. It was the second time summiting for the one man. His friend hung at Camp while the other made the treacherous climb up the chute to the summit. The guy who summited was super awesome in that he had had a serious bike accident and several surgeries just a year ago. And then he summited the tallest mountain in the lower 48 despite that. Badass.

Later in the afternoon, Kevin and I saw a group of guys coming down the trail who were all wearing Detroit Tigers hats. I called out to them, asking if they were from Michigan. Sometimes, I talk to people a little bit. I only did it because after spending so much time reading about this hike, visiting the trail report pages and scouring Facebook group, I gathered that a big part of this hike is the social aspect. People up here on this hike look out for each other, adopt trail friends to hike with, and then, in a fleeting moment, leave them at the trailhead, never to talk to again. Or, you exchange numbers and become real friends.

The social aspect of hiking is something I’ve always felt very conflicted about. I don’t seek out conversation with those I don’t know very often (almost never), and I often tell myself that going out into nature is my way of getting a break from humanity. Yet, in all the obsessive reading/instagram stalking that I do, many people who hike, particularly thru hikers who are on multi-thousand-mile journeys, share how the camaraderie, friendship, and social aspect of the trail is what they cherish the most. So, knowing this, and knowing I should work on not being an antisocial weirdo, I decided to just go for it and talk to people! That I don’t know!!

It turns out that the group was from Michigan, and it also turns out that one man in their group just HAD to summit, and split from the entire rest of his group to pursue the highest point in the lower 48 without them. The rest of the group had turned around halfway up the chute, and were wondering if, since we were kind folk from Michigan as well, would be able to keep an eye out for their friend, a bearded, tall dude wearing a Detroit Tigers hat, on his descent. He had left his water bottle and filter with them, and they wanted us to return it to him whenever he passed through.

While we were happy to stop and have conversation, that request freaked me out. I was now obsessively watching the mountain to see if he was okay and coming down. After a while, I saw a group of four slowly descending the chute in the passing afternoon, the snow getting softer and slushier by the minute. Kevin and I discussed what we should do if this tall bearded John guy never showed. No cell service. Do we find someone with satellite phone or locator-beacon and call search and rescue? Do we look for him? It had been an hour since his friends passed through. Why would they leave him? But also, is it really their fault if John didn’t want to stay with the group? The first of the four descending the chute started a glissade. They were going super fast. They glissaded down, down, down, past a ridge in front of us that blocked our view.

“Okay..” we decided, “.we will give them 10 minutes to pop out from behind that ridge before we assume his self arrest did not go so well.” About 20 minutes of panic passed Then, the person FINALLY popped out from behind that ridge! “That’s John for sure,” I declared, but I really had no idea. (Guess what? It totally was John.) About 20-30 minutes later, as he approached our camp, the sun lined up so perfectly against the mountain, I had to snap a picture.

When he got close enough, I called out to him, saying “Hey, are you John from Michigan?” Looking thoroughly creeped out, he hesitantly admitted, that yes, he was. Kevin and I explained the situation, gave him his water bottle, and proceeded to have a pretty fantastic hour-long conversation with him. He had joined a group of three others to finish the summit when his group bailed (See!? People just adopt each other out here.). We chatted until the rest of his adoptive group made their way down to where we waited. They were all day hikers, got to us by 6pm, and still had a good 4-6 hour hike all the way back down to the trailhead. John was super honest and eagerly shared his experiences and photos with us. Great guy.

After they set off for their long and grueling hike all the way down to the Portal, Kevin and I cooked and retired early. I spent a bit more time staring Whitney down, and slept with my feet pointing right towards it, much like I did for Blanca Peak on Memorial Day. Maybe it would give me good luck, I thought. Our 2:50am alarm was going to come mighty early. All groups we talked to that day said to shoot for being on the chute by 4am when it is still nice and icy (so we could grip it with our traction devices better) However, most groups used crampons, rather than microspikes, and seemed pretty nervous when we said we were gonna go for it with microspikes. Let’s see how this goes. Butterflies, for sure.

-end of our first day on the mountain-

The Chute- June 14, 2018

The alarm rang bright and early at 2:50am. It only took me five minutes to get up today. I am nervous as hell. We packed our day packs, grabbed our ice axes, microspikes, and helmets. We left all the tent doors open so that if a marmot was feeling adventurous, he could come snuggle in our tent without having to chew a hole through it first.

In case you thought things happen differently at 12,000 ft, it was very dark outside. The moon was nowhere in sight either. It must have been hiding behind one of the many massive peaks surrounding us. We started off on the trail, which had gone from flooded and wet the night before to icy and sketchy in the early morning hours. The trail led us up towards the mystery ridge I talked about yesterday. The intention was to take the trail up the first couple switchbacks, and cross over onto the chute where we had seen people crossing over the day before. Well…things are easier said than done when you’re living by the light strapped to your head. We totally missed the crossover point. I still don’t know how we would have seen it.

We climbed switchback after switchback, wondering what the hell was going on, but unable to see more than ~25 ft in front of us? (I’m really bad at estimation.) We ended up on the switchbacks all the way up until the cables section- which is pretty much what it sounds like- a shelf of trail so sketchy that they installed cables on the exposed side to prevent you from falling down and going boom. The cables are still icy and questionable, a week later (although a group came through a few days ago and used their ice axes to cut a bit of a “path” to pave the way. On our way up to the switchbacks, we passed two people who somehow told us that they summited Whitney at midnight? And were on their way down? Why? Why would you summit in the middle of the night….but I was too nervous to be asking these kinds of questions.

When we realized we totally overshot and that the cables were impassible with our skill level, we backtracked down all of those switchbacks, searching for a good place to cross over to the chute. The switchbacks were incredibly icy in parts- the snow is melting off fast, and the trail is the path of least resistance. Parts of the trail became streams of snowmelt, and before sunrise, in the cold, many of the rocks you would use to stay out of the water are a sheet of ice. Guys, I only fell twice. I only soaked both of my feet and one of my gloves. At 4 in the morning. In the dark. Yeah!

I would say it was probably close to 5 by the time we had found a good crossover spot. The very first light of the day was dying the horizon a dark red-orange. We sat down, strapped on our microspikes, readied our ice axes, and plopped our helmets on. Here we go.

We began by crossing the snowfield where those two tiny people were approaching Trail Camp in the picture from yesterday. Although not as steep as the rest of the chute, it wasn’t a walk through the Great Plains. Along the way, we adopted two partners. They were both from LA, and both donned crampons. One of the guys asked if we were climbers (we had matching helmets). We told him no, and he laughed and said, “Me either”. I guess those helmets are a telltale sign- just like the many, many matching ice axes out on the chute. You could tell who knew what the hell they were doing, and who was out here just tryna figure it all out (like us.)

I really hated all the condescending comments from so many people online before coming, yelling at others about not doing anything to prepare themselves. If you live in California, it might be easy to sign yourself up for an ice axe course at REI, or go out and practice on your own on weekends. I don’t remember the last time I saw snow in Albuquerque, and even after driving 4 hours to Colorado for some practice, we were skunked. The southwest is bone dry this year, and it has been all winter. Oh, well.

As we were approaching the steeper part of the chute, the sun was coming up, opposite of the chute. The dark, burning purple glow on the horizon gave way to reds, then oranges, and then, a wave of sunlight which immediately began softening the snow.

Each step was a process of thrusting your axe into the crunchy snow/ice, kicking your spiky feet into the snow, checking to make sure you had traction, and so on. Over and over. I was able to maintain decent grip on the incline with my microspikes. I consciously tried to not stay directly behind anyone on the chute. The night before we left the portal, word came through of a terrifying accident that had happened that Monday. Someone was climbing the chute without an ice axe, slipped, fell, and began sliding quickly down the steep mountain. In the process, she took out two others below her on the chute, causing horrific injuries to two of the three people. I am talking smashed pelvises, crampon to the face, spinal injuries. Nothing like getting that kind of news the day before heading out for that very same chute. I kept an eye ahead of me, while also, stupidly, keeping an eye out behind me, just so I could panic at the steepness!

Our adopted climbing partners stuck with us, the younger one leading the way for the four of us. I looked over at one point to our other partner, climbing next to me. Suddenly, his crampon detached from his shoe. He didn’t notice at first, and kept kicking his right foot into the snow, wondering why he couldn’t get traction. I called his attention to this, and he got the most panicked look on his face. He positioned himself so that he could very carefully, take a seat on the steep hill to make some adjustments.

As he worked on his crampon, I kept climbing on. He took a while to adjust, and began climbing again. Boom. A few steps later, the crampon came off AGAIN. He again hunkered down on the steep slope to try to remedy this very scary problem. Within a couple minutes, he called it. He was going to descend. It wasn’t worth the risk. He encouraged his climbing partner to continue on and make the summit with Kevin and I, but being a respectable climbing partner of sound mind, declined. They needed to stick together. They summit together or they don’t summit at all. Our adopted climbing partners descended, leaving Kevin and I on the chute. Ahead a ways, about halfway up the chute, there was a large, exposed boulder to the left. Kevin asked if I wanted to try to make my way over to it to take a rest and discuss our plans.

After climbing up to the boulder, traversing the chute over to the left (I did not like that), we perched ourselves on the high side of the boulder. For a moment, I felt pretty anchored in my position. I wasn’t in immediate danger of sliding to an untimely ending. In all honesty, if our climbing partners had pushed on, we likely would have as well. We spent probably 15 minutes on that rock. I knew, in my mind, that I didn’t want to go past that point. After climbing the switchbacks to the cables that morning in the dark, and realizing how really not bad they were, I knew I could come back and make that summit in summer conditions without much of a hitch. I had been nervous about my skills, and just wasn’t 100% sure that I could get myself out of whatever I would end up getting into if we continued. I know Kevin wanted to go on, but I was frozen in fear. At that moment, I decided that I need to spend the remainder of this year working on handing my fears. There have been so many instances in life where fear has dictated my decision making, and in many cases, it has been unwarranted. I allow myself to get worked into a panic, created in my own mind. Ahh, life decision making on a mountain side. Classic.

I really sadly and disappointedly told Kevin I was pretty much done, we went back and forth for about five more minutes, and then decided that today wasn’t our day. We stepped out, onto the chute, out from behind our protective rock, and began the process of descending. It is not easy. The chute was riddled with a mixture of footprints, deep holes from people postholing (sinking into deep snow, sometimes up to your hip), and deep, rutted paths made by people’s butts while glissading. Using these glissade paths for walking or side-stepping down was out of the question. They were still extremely slick with ice. Slowly, deliberately, we picked out footprints in the icy Cliffside, slowly descending. One. Step. At. A. Time.

This was really tiring, as you can imagine (or maybe not, but take my word for it.) Once far enough down the chute that I felt like I wouldn’t 100% die if I couldn’t stop myself, I figured it was time to glissade the rest of the way. I am embarrassed to admit that this was my first time ever. I know, everyone hates those people. But, read above. What could I have done? I found a path where someone had glissaded before me, sat my butt down on the cold ice, picked up my feet, and let gravity do its thang, ice axe in hand, ready to self-arrest when/if needed. I let myself slide for about 10 seconds (or more or less, like I said, I am horrible at estimation. Especially when I am scared shitless). I got going pretty fast, which I did not like (I’m no adrenaline junky). Digging the bottom of my ice axe in as a brake was not stopping me, so I went for it. I wound up all my strength, gripped my ice axe hard, and dug into the snow over my right shoulder, flipping onto my stomach and picking my feet up. It worked! I actually stopped! #proud.

I decided that since I successfully saved myself once, I could maybe do it again. At that time, Kevin was below me. He glissaded, and when he dug in for a self-arrest, his grip was apparently not gorilla-glue level. His axe slid right from his hands, stuck in the snow while he kept going. He came to a stop below by digging his feet into the snow. I slid down to where his axe was and retrieved it. Once I returned it to him, I gave it one more go with glissading. This is where I saw almost everyone glissade yesterday, as I sat at camp obsessively watching every single person’s path. I self-arrested at the bottom to stop myself, and a random passer-by climbing up said it was YouTube worthy. Aw yeah.

A little sad, we traversed the last field of snow before coming back to where we crossed over from the trail. Taking off our crampons and helmets, and stowing our axes away, I felt disappointed in myself, while simultaneously being thankful that I am not so obsessed with a goal that I put myself or others at risk (real risk, not imagined risk.) We wound our way down the last of the switchbacks, and came back into Trail Camp.

I honestly don’t remember if we packed up right away or not. I had so much going on in my mind at the time. We eventually broke camp, filtered a ton of water, and headed down the mountain. My senses were already heightened from my adrenaline-pumping morning, and with the weight of making the summit off of my shoulders, I took the time to pause, observe, take pictures, and be as present as possible for the remainder of our time in the Whitney Zone. Here is where I was able to stop and crouch down a bunch of times to take pictures of the beautiful little flowers sprouting up everywhere. Crouching down repeatedly wearing a 33 pound pack is fun. You should try it.

As we made our way down, I again thought about how my experiences the last few years have shaped me as a person. I used to dream of grandiose places. No joke, I would spend hours scouring Google Earth, combing the surface of our planet, zooming in on places that looked like they might be something other than the flatland forests I grew up in. Years ago, I vividly remember coming across Mono Lake on a random Google Maps exploration. The lake looked abnormal from high up, so I zoomed in, got the name of the lake, looked it up, and went research crazy. Now, I thought about how I would have never imagined that I would be descending the tallest mountain in the lower 48, a mere couple of hours from that insane lake I discovered by chance on a map years ago.

Fast forward from exploring the world through my computer screen. I am now doing it in real life. Not because anyone told me to or anything. But because I made a series of choices that allowed me to do all of this. Additionally, the pure luck of having an incredible partner who wants to do these things with me has changed my entire life for the better. I also cannot leave out the fact that I was privileged enough to be raised in a good family with the ability to go into ridiculous debt to get the degree that allowed me to pursue a teaching career out in the mountains in the first place.

I then think back to the very start of my trip through the portal- worrying that my experiences have been so frequently humbling and frankly, unreal, that I have become somewhat numb to that pure feeling of exhilaration when you see nature in its most incredible forms. While I may not be able to go back to how things were when I came to the mountains for the first time, I think I can make a conscious effort to allow myself to continue to be humbled by nature. There are still so many beautiful places in this world that I have yet to experience. While every work of art/nature may not knock me flat on my ass, or make me feel like a speck of dust in the universe, I learn something about myself in almost every walk with nature. And while I may have failed at my goal this time, perhaps I needed to fail to realize that I still need to let nature humble me. And, while I may have not made that summit, I was able to spend two days in the wilderness, experiencing new and gorgeous forms of life, rock, water. I will take these memories with me everywhere I go, until I come back for another taste, and hopefully, a summit. It won’t be Mt. Whitney that I conquer, but rather myself.

PS- When we were about 1.5 miles from the trailhead, a SAR (Search and Rescue) helicopter flew over us directly towards Mt. Whitney. That helped me solidify and be at peace with my decision to call it (although it turns out it was just some a-hole who activated his personal locator beacon just because wanted a ride to his car from Trail Camp???)

See ya later, Whitney. Through the portal we went again, back to life that’s not in the clouds.

#backpacking #mt whitney #california

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thesylvalining · 7 years

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Back in the US, one of the first things I usually notice is the freaking roads are huge. It’s one symptom of reverse culture shock, to be sure and surreal is the key word. Then experiences like this happen which assure me yes, I have returned:

Two nights ago…

Benjamin (my gorgeous uncle): I think we left a bag of stuff at Walmart.

Me: Oh no! We should go back for it. But I’m in my pajamas…

Benjamin: So? It’s Walmart…

Me: Good point.

Dorothy, I am definitely not in Kansas (Italy) anymore, where leaving the house in PJs is socially uncouth. So where am I exactly? Colorado. “Home” but not home. If you haven’t seen Rudy Mancuso’s hilarious “Gosh Bless You” video please do so now so you understand the rest of this paragraph. Although I know there’s someone out there in particular who will appreciate this… it’s like I’m somewhere between Heck and Kevin. I am so grateful and excited to see friends and family but simultaneously, it’s a quasi-thank Gosh moment–mostly because I’m never, ever ready to depart Italy. So at least for now, it goes along with ping-pong balls that don’t bounce and having to stand pretty much all the time… 😉

Anyhow, I’m already on my next adventure before finishing my last. What a sin! So, let me redeem myself by catching us all up…

Day Five: Dobbiaco-Big Hike-Dobbiaco

Morning light shone on Tent City, illuminating the rare slivers of un-camped upon grass and a certain silver van housing the newest member of Operation Vacation: Loic! The door cracked, revealing a fancy black and red road bike. The morning sun glinted off three sharp butcher knives which came with their own set of jokes about Loic being either a Belgian master chef and/or a friendly murderer.

Either way, we welcomed him at our shanghai’d picnic table for breakfast. Finally the day broke chilly but with a promise of ample sun as the day progressed. Perfect set up for a long @$$ hike (for Lisa and I) and a million kilometer bike ride (for Loic).

After parting ways, Lisa and I hopped on our steeds and rode several kilometers on dirt to the start of a trail that only climbed, oh, 2000 meters. However, it was swallowed heartily by the massive landslide like a college kid chugging beer. A big yellow bulldozer parked at the trailhead told us–in so many words–to figure something else out. We pulled out our well-worn map and located number 33, which also marched straight up a mountain like a bighorn sheep on crack. Done!

On the trail, sweat began to swiftly collect and cascade down our bodies as if they were fast-melting Popsicles. We soon found ourselves teetering high above the valley floor, the sound of the roaring highway below lowering to a stubborn drone. After awhile we took a break at a high alpine spring to fill up and let things air out…

After a couple hours of steep, steady climbing the trail finally attempted a semblance of flatness. At the end of the day, the undeniably steep route on Lisa’s GPS–named Garminio–resembled something like a Redwood tree.

Holly landslide Batman!

Another world up here…

Even higher up, above 2000 meters (6500 feet), we found the expansive, rocky beginnings of yet another landslide from the recent extreme storms. We picked our way through an uneven, alien landscape which briefly eclipsed the trail.

After we picked it up again at a confluence, we popped over the first ridge, rewarded by a breathtaking expanse of alpeggi (high alpine pastures) and the piercing ridges of the mountains beyond. Behind us, a group of thick gray clouds gathered, like nosy old women peering through their blinds at the youths egging the house next door. We looked at each other; should we turn back, or press our luck?

Ha! Is there even a question? Besides, the skies didn’t feel menacing like they did on National Pressing Your Luck Repeatedly Day at Tre Cime. And just ahead, we were about to make a few new friends…

And then down, down, down we went like little rolling stones decked out in matching freaky light backpacks and a fine mist of dried sweat. By the end, we’d marched 20 kilometers (13 miles), climbed 1500 meters of elevation (4920 feet) and descended about the same. Near the end, uneven pavement was starting to look like somewhere I could sleep a solid eight hours…

We tried hitchhiking the handful of kilometers up the road to fetch our bikes but we had about as much luck as a nerdy, shy, acne-covered kid on prom night. Italians, it turns out, are not the pick-you-up-on-the-roadside type, even when you’re two cute girls with matching lightweight backpacks, a fine mist of dried sweat and big ol’ smiles. Resolutely, we tacked on a few more kilometers walking back to camp where Loic, bless his little creepily sharp-knife owning heart, saved the day. He left via van to rescue our bikes, leaving us to our own devices via Lisa’s tarp. We stretched and watched the clouds (and I devoured almost an entire package of cookies, which actually did semi-wreck my iron stomach for about six minutes).

Afterwards–so as not to evoke the curious tempers of the weather gods, in particular His Highness Rain–we made pasta. With everyone else. And then waited in line for a shower –a lukewarm shower. With everyone else. And then waited in line to do freaking dishes. Dishes are often painful enough already, without having to wait around to do them. With everyone else. That was it for me: I’d rather do math for 48 hours straight then endure one more day of organized camping. With everyone else.

Day Six: Dobbiaco-Val Visdende-Danta-Wild Camping

In the morning, it was time for another lovely, leisurely, sun-soaked cruise from Dobbiaco to Val Visdende. Although we didn’t plan it–we didn’t so much plan as let things evolve–the ride was beyond pleasant. Bike paths first, through the valley:

Then a really dope lunch at a Konditorei (German/Austrian confectionary/cake shop) with a view of the Tre Cime’s shapely backside:

And one small climb to the top of Monte Croce pass.

The rest was a literal bomb downhill. We zipped through a quaint villages and passed tons of road bikers heading up what we were going down (I was jealous–what a climb!).

Can’t argue with the views…

Flat City.

We lingered in one village for a time after Lisa’s steed Wanda got a flat. Tortured by the tantalizing aromas oozing out of the bakery on which Lisa’s limping steed leaned, we ogled the tiny, antique spike she pulled out of her tire. And then an entire, large family from Romania materialized from the pastry-laden air and proceeded to pump up Lisa’s tire. The dad literally dispatched his teenage army to help and they did so gladly as we grinned. So sweet and unexpected, these instances while traveling by bike!

At the riverside campground in Val Visdende, we decided against camping with everyone else (again). Our decision was cemented by egregious, suspicious glares from the odd proprietor, based on what exactly? He was overheard saying “Where is their car?” as we walked over and sat in the late afternoon sunlight enjoying a 2.5 euro Spritz at the campground bar (aka giving him our money). Although in retrospect, suspicions could have been exacerbated by Lisa and I grunting and cussing through dozens of push-ups by the big yellow Caterpillar (the heavy equipment, not the pre-butterfly) in the corner of the campground parking lot…

So we utilized the river just as you would expect a few vagrants would (please note Loic showering in the background):

Then we packed up, stashed and locked the bikes in a clandestine location and moved on in van to the tiny town of Danta, located on a steep hillside overlooking the majesty of the Alps. Loic–bless his murderous, beer-chugging heart–spotted a poster for a town festival there. Turned out to be a very, very good decision because of:

The views.

Don’t you wanna, wanna go to Danta…

Traditional antiques on the streets at the town festival. There were some amazing crosscut saws as well, which aren’t produced anymore, at least in the States…

The cheap, delicious food and drink (two euro Spritz and three euro, generously portioned grilled sausage and veal sandwiches).

The entertainment–starting with Lisa’s slightly drunken renditions of Italy’s pop darling Ligabue, courtesy of a cover band. Sorry Italy, but every single one of those songs sounds the same to me 😀 But the lead singer, wearing an ACDC shirt and belting out one cookie cutter tune after another with an unlit cigarette in his hand was literally priceless.

The antics–starting with the enthusiasm of the drunk crowd, particularly one fella who danced with airplane arms for hours on end and the time I had to pee and managed to do so in a pile of nettles. The pinnacle was a really drunk dude who looked like Adam from HBO’s Girls and who decided doing a buttload of pull-ups on the tent was a fine idea. He chose a spot front and center in front of the band, his face a picture of determination, like a baby pooping. He knocked over a beer and the tent looked like it was in an earthquake before a good Samaritan managed to pry him off of it.

The company 🙂

And then–with way too many Spritz still rattling around in our systems, particularly Lisa’s and mine–we popped up the road to find a “wild” camping spot. WITHOUT everyone else. In Italy, there’s just one small problem: camping outside of campgrounds is, well, illegal. Illegal… oh no 😉 Obviously we didn’t care as we located a sufficiently quiet, dark field off the top off the pass. Loic parked the van and we deployed our tent in the perfect, hidden spot. To say we pitched it would be a stretch… we kind of threw it up, staked the doors and passed out.

Day Seven: Wild Camping-M. Aiarnola Hike-Sappada

In the morning, we got a very good laugh out of our floppy, crooked tent. And the perfect, hidden spot? Not exactly. From the road, the bright saucer of a tent stood out on the green, soft grass like a Democrat at a Trump rally. In the morning, in fact, Lisa heard an older couple speaking in Italian (as they cruised by on the trail just across the road… oops), “They can’t camp there.” Of course I didn’t hear a single thing because I once slept through a fire alarm in college and nothing has changed since.

We breakfasted roadside (to many an amused glance at us smearing on sunscreen by a van strung with various tent pieces and bike apparel). And then, a hike. It began oddly mellow. I relaxed into an off-day pace, ambling past countless quaint and/or kitschy holiday cabins. I should’ve known then something was off…

An hour later:

Not that I wasn’t stoked to be dominating yet another steep, Dolomite ridge, with eye-popping views as far as the eye could pop. But there was a tired devil and a tired angel on either shoulder, in rare agreement: it was time to rest. Even my blood hurt. But of course by then we were here:

We had a couple more hours stomping around above treeline, watching the swirling clouds and chatting with the bazillion krummholz trees (German for “twisted, crooked or bent,” and appearing exactly thus, thanks to harsh, high elevation weather). And then there was the time we decided not to take the detour…

Trees=handrails, so as not to fall down…

This!

What goes doggedly up must come tiredly down and that meant us–but on a relatively nice trail with actual turns, this time.

Figuring out which way to go…

Look we’re still going up Sylva! You happy ’bout that??

Traversing up high.

The way down!

And then–and then!–we rested in the best way possible by locating a truly delectable restaurant at the base of a nearby ski slope. We gorged ourselves on local grub like canederli with cheese and speck, pizza, giant ravioli (casunziei), tiramisu…

Food coma settled in quickly; Lisa was quietly freaking out all night/day about leaving Wanda (her kick@$$ touring bike) in a hiding spot and we barely made it there to check on it and the GD Musing before succumbing to a nap. Loic enjoyed the undeniable comfort of a mattress in his van. Lisa and I enjoyed the questionable comfort of the tarp atop a cement landing near the river, smattered generously with rocks the size of walnuts. Screw the Princess and the Pea (or the Princesses and the Pebbles)–we passed out immediately.

Post-nap, we had enough go juice to ride up and over into the long, picturesque valley that housed the town of Sappada.

Loic parked his van down by the river and we scoped out a sufficient illegal camping spot in the woods on the other side.

Before we rode, we stocked up on groceries for a campsite dinner, after which we would set up our tent in the cover of darkness. We also scoped out a nearby “beerfest” but didn’t stay long: Loic the Belgian Beer Boss was nonplussed by Forst beer, the only chugging choice. Food prices were a bit high and inside it was hotter than the inside of a sweaty biker thigh. So off we went for dinner under the stars.

All of us were whooped, so we didn’t last long post-grub. But my excitement to lay down and pass out was dampened by two elements:

The terrible and terribly loud rock music resonating from the sweaty beerfest. Somehow, the farther we got, the louder the Metallica covers became. It was almost like the guitarist was playing in my ear, his long, straggly 80s rock hair tickling my ear. But no… that was just the…

Ants. Lots and lots of ants. Over the last days and as we scoped out our campsite by the river, we spotted anthills the size of small Mayan ruins. None of these ant-thropological wonders was within Forst beer can-throwing distance, so we figured we’d be safe. As soon as I stood outside in the dark, with ants racing up my legs like they were enrolled in the world’s largest ant marathon, I saw the error of our ways. Later on in the night, when I sat up to use the bathroom that is the forest, a flurry of ants dominated the tent’s mesh like a computer screen of binary code. When I opened the mesh hastily–with more than a little trepidation–a wave of ants crested the bottom of the tent like an army of peppercorns on legs. Lisa’s side of the tent wasn’t so bad–but I was screwed.

Day Seven: Sappada-Ovara

Convening at the van after reclaiming our tent from The Ants (the ground literally moved under the vastness of their army), we had some breakfast. Loic was itching to road ride so he took off shortly after, leaving Lisa and I to our own devices. Our devices included a whole lot more downhill–we couldn’t have planned our route better if we actually planned it. And it was gorgeous, twisting like a piece of licorice through a lush, wooded canyon containing a river and any number of ivy-laden, whitewashed, tile-roofed fairytale villages.

In quiet, scenic Ovara, home to the infamous Zoncolan climb (another thigh-busting Giro d’Italia classic, which Loic was currently dominating), we pulled off the main road. And went straight uphill. For a moment, Lisa and I wondered if we hadn’t accidentally landed ourselves on the Zoncolan–but the views from our camp were well worth it.

Finally, this camp was just our speed: simple, cheap and deserted. Once Loic returned, tired but exuberant after punishing himself on the Zoncolan, we set up shop. Soon, we were sipping Spritz before walking into down for dinner:

Across the way, a certain green roof enchanted us, appearing clothed in dragon scales.

“How are those tiles so green?” Lisa said, sucking down a block of cheese.

“I wanna go up there,” I said, sucking down a Spritz.

“Mmmmm,” said Loic, sucking down half a bag of potato chips.

The next day, we’d get a closer look at the mysterious green roof, and much, much more… but of course, we hadn’t gotten that far yet. Until then bye-bye–or mandi mandi (pronounced mahn-dee mahn-dee) in Friulano dialect!

As Easy As DEF: Dobbiaco, Esercizio, Fruili Back in the US, one of the first things I usually notice is the freaking roads are…

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