#Yoo**Heart**Jason

peeps have engagement parties, they're usually a rented out bar or venue and for good reason, it's convenient and easy for people to get to.  We had to be the different a$$holes that made it a camping trip at my parents house in western new york, a 6+ hr drive and really put out a lot of people out including my parents and all our friends.  After the inconveniences are overlooked it was an amazing weekend.  Thanks friends and family.  Oh and the #yoo heart jason hashtag is what the girls made up for instagram.  I think they're gonna to think of something else for other social media cuz as of 8/26/15 the other platforms don't support emoticons in tags.

friday evening fresh out of the car after the 6+ hr drive, walking up the hill to set up camp with beers in the sun is a pretty nice feeling.

rented two 4 person tents from Traverse Outfitters in Brooklyn.  They deliver to your house and pick it back up for free.  and they were the cheapest http://www.traverseoutfitters.com/  Check out the Canisteo Valley

They were modern Marmot tents with a ground pad and a rain cover.  Very simple set up

4 people for a 1 man job from Jason Raish on Vimeo.

parents bought a portable fire pit and we set up by the pond for lots of drinks and funny stories

thanks steven for making me look like the funniest man in the world again.  I'm a one trick pony though.

bed time, at least a few people can climb onto the Teryx 4x4 to get up the hill

didn't freeze at all.  Morning overlooking the Canisteo Valley

Chris and Virginia and Antonio's tents.  Bird watching blind in the back

feelin' a little hairy this morning guy?

Steven Hedley yearned to be a mountain man.  He tried his best via unbridled enthusiasm

at 8am he wandered into our woods and shortly found himself lost.  He saw a gully and thought, I should go down that gully.  Once down there he was even more lost and so he scrambled back up the gully only to be even more lost.  He walked in a big circle and eventually gained his bearings when he saw an ancient mattress in the river that he recognized from before.  In The Adventures of Winnie the Pooh chapter 3, Pooh bear walks in circles for hours, lost muttering rhetorical nonsense to himself.  Thusly Steven Hedley gained the nickname Pooh bear on this weekend.

He was tasked with procuring s'mores sticks for later that evening and eagerly accepted.  Armed with his trusty leatherman that he obtained from his roommate he bound into the woods and came back with 6 too short very very dry sticks.  After my dad and Thaler (both raised wilderness men) chided him and directed him towards a prime stick switch finding area he came back with a bundle of excellent marshmallow roasting sticks.  I very much enjoyed whittling the ends of the dry sticks though proclaimed Pooh.

it was up for a while, then came down.  I was once cool for a little bit

Up to Raish Hill from Jason Raish on Vimeo.

The girls went to Keuka Lake, one of the finger lakes to Dr. Frank's and Keuka Lake Vineyard.  They got very friendly at Keuka Lake Vineyard and even had to turn down a private tour to make it back at dinner time.  They loved it and highly recommend it.  They server their wine at a lot of the big restaurants in NYC.  Props to Mom for taking us there a while ago so then I was able to recommend it to them. 

BBQ time.  Steamed little neck clams too.

a keg of Yeungling

our grand Lifetime sports champions cup tournament idea got waylaid by the girls finger lakes winery expedition ending late and also the fact that they didn't want to play anyway.  It was to be tournaments in wiffle ball, corn hole, horse shoes, and croquet and it would have been splendid fun.  We even had a 3rd place skiing trophy we found on the street to give to the 3rd place winner.  Getting 3rd place on purpose is way harder than getting 1st place.  

Steven Hedley had never had s'mores before and this was his very first bite.  Sh!t eating grin if i've ever seen one.

he was getting so many instructions from 360 degrees around him on how to do s'mores properly.  Poor British guy, all eyes were on him.  Does he like america in his mouth or doesn't he?

Cori

Virginia

Sandra

Liz

Antonio

Thaler Barnes being Thaler Barnes

thus commences the highlight of the whole trip for me at least.

see antonio moving in the back behind Thaler?  That's the last moment before he fell in the pond.  He was trying to get into position to make a J with light sparklers for the camera and inadvertently fell down the steep and muddy bank of the pond.  He yelled out "MY PHONES!!!" and slipped on his first attempt to scale the frictionless steep muddy bank of the pond and finally squirmed out only walk 5 steps and fall straight onto his back like in a cartoon on the steep and slippery grassy dyke of the pond.  As hee lay there he must have heard me, thaler, bob, and steven laughing uncontrollably, Thaler fell on the ground from laughing so hard.  And it was all fantastically lit by long burning sparklers to top it all off.  The perfect storm.  Who couldn't do for a little sparkler action to light their embarrassment?

pants falling down probably adds to the embarassment

there is something so funny and ironic about this blurry photo.  The people staring on in awe as they hold their fun time sparklers, while Antonio lay there, surveying his options, having just been sh!t on not once but 3 times.  Fell in pond, 2 phones in pocket soaked, fell on back.  It's also funny to note that he had not 1 but 2 phones on him.

Thanks Antonio for inadvertently making the highlight memory of the trip.  And FYI he's ok and his pride seems ok too.

you can always count of good 'ol steven hedley.  He contributed this the previous night also

Antionio's soaked smoked BBQ shirt and white pants and boat shoes.

Morning was white

Bob wants to kill me.  He wanted to sleep in the house cuz he knew he wouldn't get any sleep in the tent and had to drive for hours and hours back to NYC and I told him he needed to have camaraderie with us in the tent and participate.  He got like 1 hr of sleep.  We got like 3.  In all fairness 3 hrs of sleep a night 2 nights in a row makes driving 6+ hours pretty bad.  We had to drink more coffee.  If you like (which you don't) you can insert bob's voice in the background going "Dude I knew this sh!t was gonna happen!!!!" in his animated bob voice.

Tatooine

Thaler also did not sleep in the tent.  He had no idea where his spot was so he slept in his sweet 2001 Toyota Echo

clean up and final beer drinking up on the hill while the Chinese kite finally does it's thing.  A calming end to the weekend, except for Bob who was chomping at the bit in his mind to get up back to NYC at a decent time.  But he didn't verbalize anything so I sat there in my pink sweatshirt drinking beer in the sun solidifying 100% that he had to drive the first leg.  I'm sure that made him happy.

Enjoying middle America Steven?  Anyway thanks friends and family for making our engagement party camping extravaganza memorable!