Well, here's my account of the weekend.

Friday night- I meet Oleg and Boarderphreak on the side of the road near home. (When I say, side of the road, I mean SIDE OF THE ROAD). We make our drive out to Shamokin on Rt.78 West. We are talking on the FRS the entire way out. A stop for gas and food put us out in the middle of NOWHERE. The attendant was a very nice person, and asked Oleg "Are you heading into the mountains with those THINGS?" She called the X a THING!

Anyway, we hit the campsite around 9:15-9:30. Vikram, Medhi, Pikachu and Goliath are there waiting. We park the X's and meet and greet. The first words out of Pikachu's mouth is "Night Run?" So I run with Boarder, and Medhi, Goliath take their rigs. Pkiachu is kinda broken from an earlier run in PA, so he rides with Vikram. we do some cool stuff, nothing hardcore b/c of the darkness. Vikram, however, decides to take a stab at the Jeep Hill. (If you've been there, you know the one) He makes it about 1/5 of the way up before calling it quits. We run around a little bit more and play in some mud before going back to camp around 1:30 or so. Bob had shown up and Rich walks in not too much later. He brought gifts for Dave and Medhi, while sporting a few new mods. (And 2 very pretty Swedish Girls.) We hit bed around 4AM. DAMN- cold night... Still defrosting the feet.

Saturday morning- I get woken up by a shaking of the X. I look around and Oleg pops his head up in the window... God- what a scary sight JUST after waking up. We get ready, I take off the stock rails and mudflaps. While Oleg and I are doing that, CK and Steinism show up. Frontier Gary shows up next and the last to arrive was Carlos. Small trail meeting and we're off. We stop at the small gas station to get gas, air down and grab lunch to bring with us. Oleg leads us into Shamokin, and we start running. Couple of hills and what not... We hit the rock garden, and breezed through that (THANKS VIKRAM AND PIKACHU!!!) We hit this little land bridge (the one where you have to be perfectly centered or you end up in the gully) Steinism and Vikram take on the gully b/c they're armed with ARB's. We split up into half and half. Half go to the WAAG Eater (from what I got told, almost became Frontier Eater) and half went to watch Vikram run the Jeep Hill. (which he did- excellent. I was watching, so somebody'll have to fill in the WAAG Eater story) After that, we head to the Towers for lunch. (It felt like a scene Jurassic Park driving through the brush. We hit the tower and park the X's next to the satellite dishes for lunch. The microwave tower was accessible so we took some great air shots of the X's and the scenery. After about an hour, we make our way to the playground for some fun. We see some other ground to play in, and some great places for group shots. We all head down there, taking pics and what not. There's this REALLY big pond (I guess you could call it. Maybe a swamp or something) Anyway, Oleg shoots around the edge of it, and on his way back, gets stuck. We quickly get him out, and Medhi forges a trail through. Soon, they're not only going AROUND, but THROUGH, throwing mud EVERYWHERE. Even Frontier Gary took the perimeter. After this, we head out for dinner at the 901 Pub. On the way out, Goliath and Oleg disappear. Turns out, they go and hit the rock garden from the other direction. Minor setback on the way out though- Gary punches a hole in his sidewall. We fix it quickly and move on. We meet our two other trucks at the gas station, and then head over to the pub. Rich and Carlos head back to camp to pick up Rich's brother. We get to the pub and order dinner. Steinism gets shot down by the waitress and Vikram is the absolute LAST person to get his food- Mozarella sticks... But, Mike took charge and came back from being shot down by buying dinner. THANKS MIKE!!! We head back to camp and start the fire. Gary pulls his Frontier up to the wood pile and just starts loading up. It was nice, just sitting around the campfire and talking about funny stories. We heard something about Rich and Santa, and BoarderPhreak's running from the law. Around 1:30, I pack it up and get to bed, as do most of us.

Sunday Morning- I get up because I heard CK packing up his X. I get all prettied up and head to the firepit, which was STILL smoldering. Everyone gets up and motivated and make plans for another run. CK and I bail, as well as Pikachu b/c he was kinda busted in the 4x4 department. Somebody else is going to have to post about Sunday.

On a personal side- I had a great time. We hit MUD and the trucks were SO happy. I was very impressed by what a Stock X could do. I can say, I came out without any damage. Most of that is due to good spotters.

In conclusion- DAMN GOOD RUN!

[ 09-17-2001: Message edited by: Dayspring ]