Go East, Young Bobcat

This weekend the team took a brief trip “down east” (I still don’t know how that makes sense) to Acadia to get away from campus for a bit and get some solid training in. Friday evening we pulled into our digs - the “Winter Haven” - with the ever-generous Milliken family waiting for us at the door. Becky and Dylan passed out goodie bags of new gear, and everyone was looking good as they tried it on before bed...that probably wasn’t just the clothes though.

Saturday morning we went for a team jog along the beach (in matching new apparel, of course) and rolled into the national park to do a skate time trial up Cadillac Mountain. It was a mere fifteen minutes into our warm-up when the law showed up to shut down our endeavor, the white park ranger Suburban screeching to a halt with lights flashing, idling during the interrogation (shouldn’t they be a little more conscientious?):

“Are you with Bates College?”

“Umm...yeah.” [Panting from an L4 warmup piece, wearing 100% new, Bates-logoed clothing]

“You know you aren’t allowed to rollerskate [not what we were doing] in the park?”

“Umm...no?”

“Your van is parked on Cadillac, right? Go back there right now.”

“Umm...okay.”

After some deft legal maneuvering by Dylan and Becky, we escaped the authorities and made our way to another road for some hard - but probably less exciting - intensity.

The afternoon consisted of wood-stacking, lobster-eating (in the “traditional” way - boiled in seawater over a wood fire on the beach and cracked with a nice-sized rock), and the Acadia Bowl, which saw the men’s team taking on the girls, who were aided by Dylan, Tucker, Tess and one-hand-touch downs. Despite this formidable opposition, the boys pulled out a win as the sun set, turning the view of the harbor orange - it coulda been a TV show.

Tired warriors were treated to a spectacular dinner and a long-rehearsed rendition of Old Crow Medicine Show’s “Wagon Wheel,” with Jordan on the fiddle, Dylan on the guitar and pretty much everyone on vocals.

The next morning we rose early and went for a (totally legal) OD run, starting outside of the park and hitting summits on our way in. The girls headed up and over Sergeant Peak to Penobscot Ridge and down to Jordan Pond; the guys opted to take a slightly more roundabout route, with a casual six peaks bagged on the day, including the addition of Cadillac after reaching Jordan Pond. It was gorgeous: 50 degrees, sunny, and hardly windy at all. Oh - the views were alright too.

All in all, the weekend definitely didn’t suck. ENORMOUS thanks go to Peter, Linzee, Lucas and the whole Milliken family for their incredible generosity - we can’t wait to do it again!