Matt's Wedding: Day 1 | 06/03/04
Happy Birthday Mom!
I started driving around 9am towards Oxford, OH. There were a number of setbacks so I didn't even hit I-10 until about 10:00am. I cruised up I-65 through Alabama, fighting off the rain and hail that forced me to drive 25mph or stop entirely (in sections). I made it to Nashville by about 6pm and to Oxford around 1am. Other than some weirdo giving me an FSU-mocking tomahawk chop for a quarter of a mile on I-65, the rest of the trip was rather boring. Fortunately XM Radio got me through it.
I figured once I arrived in Oxford, I would be able to get some sleep. Nope. The bachelor's party was still going. I had missed the drive-to activities (bars, strip clubs) but going to "the bluffs" was the next thing on the agenda. We walked to this forest and blazed our own trail to the now-off-limits top of the bluffs. It was an impressive view, but to get there we had to cross this river/waterfall. Not being particularly outdoorsy, I was nervous about being the one to plunge to my death, but that didn't happen thankfully. We then went to the "rope course", one of those summer-camp-trust-courses. After playing on the torture devices, we got lost. There were eight of us and the seven of them that weren't me had grown up in the forest. It had been raining heavily for two days and some of the trails had been washed away. Against my better judgment, we split into three groups. One of the groomsmen, Matt C. went by himself and was the only one to make it out in a reasonable amount of time. Matt's brother Jamie, their friend Noah, Matt and I decided to blaze our own trail through the heart of the forest. We walked through muddy fields, on our hands and knees as we cleared paths tree by tree, trudged through weeds taller than any of us but we still were lost. The worst part was getting stuck in the dense forest. As I said, we were on our hands and knees, clearing trees as we went. Of course, this is a slow and arduous process so when Noah suggested we turn around, we discovered that wasn't a possibility because we hadn't cleared enough room for us even to turn 180 degrees. Eek. Eventually we made it to the river bed, which we saw from atop the bluffs three hours earlier. Jamie and Noah slid down the 30' drop but Matt and I walked back to a path (I was certain I had seen one nearby on our first trek up) and met them at the bottom, where Matt C. was waiting. Joe, Ty and That Other Guy eventually met back up with us at Jamie's house. They had been stopped by the police but we were freed once they had explained they had been lost in the forest. Joe and I went back to Matt's mom's house to crash, but only after stripping down because the carpet had just been washed. I think I fell asleep in about one second.
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