Lake Placid Recap

Jaimi and I returned from our Lake Placid, NY mini-vacation on Sunday evening.

I had never been to the LP before. Here are a few things I learned while on the trip – about Lake Placid, and about life in general:

- “Lake Placid,” the 1999 Bill Pullman/Bridget Fonda blockbuster about some kind of monstrous alligator, was set in Lake Placid, FL, not Lake Placid, NY. This was incredibly disappointing for me. I never saw the movie, and it supposedly really, really, really sucked. But still, I had hoped to wrangle me one of them huge-ass alligators and have it stuffed by the local taxidermist.

- Lake Placid has some of the slowest drivers on the planet. They’re not bad drivers, necessarily. They’re just very, very, very slow. Like 20 mph in a 35 slow. It made my blood boil - literally. Which gave me a headache, and left me badly dehydrated.

- Lake Placid has very good beer. There are two decent brewpubs there – Lake Placid Brewpub and The Great Adirondack Brewing Co. Good beer. Below average food. Stick with the liquid diet if your constitution can handle it. Great smoked porter at the Great Adirondack place. Excellent English red ale called “Ubu Ale” at Lake Placid Brewpub.

Enjoying a miniature glass of some very light-looking beer. The thin mountain air left me drunk after 3 or 4 sips.

- Hiking is hard. I was out of breath after a few minutes of traversing a “moderate” difficulty trail. The path looked like the boulder-strewn mountains of Mordor. Except with more boulders and less fire. There was nothing moderate about it. I can only imagine what an “advanced” or “difficult” trail would be like. I picture a lot of quicksand, and many sheer cliffs. Also, some angry natives.

I find our precise location by triangulating the angle of incidence of sunlight, current time in China, and pointing in a random direction. In the end, we just followed the path.

Pretty sure we weren't supposed to eat these. Oh well. The convulsions stopped after a day or two. Or three.

A serene mountain lake. What evil lurks beneath?

- Driving is better than hiking. We drove to the top of Whiteface Mountain - and no, there is no Black face Mountain, you racist jerk. At nearly 5,000 feet, the view from the top was spectacular. It was SO much easier than climbing to the summit on foot. Hell, it was easier than running a 12-minute mile downhill with a tailwind.

Whiteface on Whiteface.

Lake Placid in the distance. I tried, but could not skip a stone from here.

- Battlestar Galactica, Season 3 totally rocks. During our downtime, we watched a few episodes (8 to be exact) of Battlestar on DVD. The action doesn’t quit during the 3rd season, and neither does my enthusiasm for this show.

- Work is good, but vacation is better. Also, as a corollary, time off from work is good, but 3 days of vacation (and 2 days of driving) is not nearly enough. We really only had 3 full days up in the LP. It wasn’t enough. I guess we’ll have to go back soon!

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