Craig's Blog: When the Wedding Guest is a Tropical Storm

When the Wedding Guest is a Tropical Storm

So jenny and I went to maine last weekend for a wedding of some friends of hers (who I'd also met before, though only briefly). This was a different kind of wedding, in that it involved camping; as you might suspect, the bride and groom are pretty outdoorsy. The wedding was at a lake house in the middle of nowhere in Maine. The lake house is a house and not a hotel, which is why the wedding guests camped in the 'tent city' in the backyard. (Others, including I'm guessing all the old people, stayed at the closest hotel, an hour away.) The bride and groom camped too, though they did make one concession to luxury and inflate an aerobed in their tent. :-)

Trouble started early. We had to fly (to Portland), and I didn't want to carry much luggage, and my sleeping bag took up like 80% of my suitcase. So I didn't pack very many clothes, and no camping "essentials", like an air mattress. We managed to finagle an extra tent from one of the wedding guests, so at least we didn't have bring our own of those. But it was still a tight fit.

When we got to the airport, our flight to portland was cancelled, because of a hurricane or some other lame excuse. They wanted to fly us out the next day, when the weather was supposed to be even worse. We asked them to reroute us to Boston instead, which they did. We got on the plane, and it taxied out to the runway, and then it just sat there. The captain came on the PA: "It's Ted Kennedy's funeral tonight, and they've closed the airport in Boston until all the VIP planes land. It'll be a little while." We finally got non-VIP clearance to Boston after like an hour.

In Boston, we went to the car rental place -- no easy feat, and it was interesting to reflect that all the times I've been to Boston before, I've never needed a car -- and trid to get a car. "You're supposed to be in Portland!" they said, but they gave us a car anyway. We drove drove drove -- into the hurricane -- and arrived at the wedding/camp site at like 11:30pm. Luckily they had set up our tent for us! We took all our stuff and crawled into bed.

At 5am jenny woke up with, "Why am I all wet?" I was wet too. So was all our stuff (including our wedding clothes, though we ended up making do). It turns out the tent leaked. I was wet and the ground was cold and it was pretty miserable. I decided I might as well get up. There was an 8am kayak trip scheduled ("rain or shine!", and it was definitely "rain"), and while I had originally checked that off in the "not in this lifetime" category, I decided to go; after all, I wasn't going to get any wetter. I changed into my (wet, like everything else) bathing suit, and headed to the lake. It was like 50 degrees out. But I figured I would warm up in the kayak, which to be fair I did. The problem was after I was done kayaking. I stepped out of the kayak and started shivering uncontrollably. "Your lips are blue!" another of the kayakers said. "You should really take a shower."

I guess I didn't mention that there were no showers here. (We were advised, if we wanted to clean off, to swim in the lake.) Where there were showers, was in the Nuns' Retreat House across the street. So we went over there (it is an actual nuns' retreat house, but luckily, no nuns were retreating this particular weekend) and I took the best shower of my life, until I had to turn off the water, and I remembered my towel was also sopping wet. I dried off as best I could and decided to spend the rest of my day in the Nuns' House, where it was warm and dry. Others had the same idea, and we ended up passing a fun day.

It rained all day, including during the wedding, but we didn't let that stop us. The bride and groom stuck to their original plan of processing via kayak: they kayaked from the middle of the lake to shore, and then walked up from the lakeshore to the tent, while we all lined the path and shouted hurray. The groom wore a poncho, and the bride had a kayak-mate hold an umbrella over her. (We all brought our umbrellas too.) The wedding took place under the tent, which wasn't *quite* big enough for everyone to dance at the same time, but we tried our darndest.

The wedding ended up being lovely, and the next day -- we slept on the floor of the nuns' house that evening, rather than brave the Leaky Tent again -- was sunny and beautiful. "What a great day for a wedding this would have been," the bride said. But she was in good spirits, and we all had a nice time regardless. And a story to tell, which I've told you just now.

(Special bonus feature: a video of the synchronized swiming routine created expressly for this wedding.)