The Saybrook Blog

Word of caution to the readers: I have taken the liberty to be sarcastic and/ or superfluous at a few limited places in the space of this text. Please understand that everything below has been written in good humor. If nothing else, please disregard these places, and the text contained there within, as instances of a bad sense of humor genuinely possessed by me.

23rd October, 2009. 6 PM. A quiet gathering in the SYMH. Twelve Saybrugians were quietly thinking about the stress that had been occupying their minds, and that they were to release themselves off this weekend, as the semester had come storming in with mid-terms, interviews, papers, and what not. Master Hudak walked into the quiet gathering, car keys jingling in his hands, and said, “You guys and gals ready to have some fun.” (For those interested in sentential details: Master Hudak also annotated the correct usage of the word ‘gals’ versus ‘girls’ at this point) Even though it was getting darker, the skies in the minds of the twelve Saybrugians began to open. Horizons seemed clearer, and fresh air already started flowing into the nostrils. We were on our way to Vermont for the weekend!

The drive up to Master Hudak and Miss Van Dyke’s abode in VT wasn’t uneventful. In a typical Yale fashion, everything from politics to music to “I have slept for two hours this week” was discussed. Rest of the details are confidential—period

We reached VT around 9:30 PM. May I take a moment here to describe the geography of the premises. There is a main house, with a parking garage (with a loft above) next to it. The main house has a hot tub as well as a pond right behind it. Several interesting trails start from around the main house.

Upon entering the main house, the first thing to note was the array of liquor bottles (true Friday night style?) that lay above our heads. See the picture below if you can’t believe this. Master Hudak has managed to preserve liquor bottles that he has shared with his guests/ friends at his VT house over the course of the past two decades or so. In fact, each bottle is signed by the friend/ guest who partook of the alcohol. Skies, of all sizes, shapes and materials, hanging around also did not escape the eye.

The house was extremely cozy, with Avi (Master Hudak’s cat) or better still, Avogadro, only adding to the peace that had already begun to enter the minds of the twelve Saybrugians. This cat, mind you, is delightful. She plays with everyone, and is a complete anti-thesis of the popular cartoon character, Garfield.

What followed has made me rethink about my ideas on human motion. Almost naturally, everyone went and sat in the kitchen. Satiation followed. We then settled to some card games such as Set and Egyptian Rat Screw, as well as to a 1000 piece puzzle that we really could never get around throughout the course of the weekend (I would advise you to not make any judgments about the intellect of the twelve Saybrugians on board as well as about the puzzle; I can assure that the intellect was advanced and the puzzle was really hard).

The morning of 24th October was a wet one. Looking back, it seems reasonable that we were faced with bad weather that particular morning. In 1933, this morning saw High Fog enveloping London due to a temperature inversion. In 1951, this morning saw Sacramento recording a barometric pressure of 29.42 inches to establish a record for October. So you can understand that history was against us. But we had decided. A hike was boiling in our bloods, and we simply couldn’t return to the Have without one. The torrential downpour that could be heard outside the main house simply could not dampen our spirits. I remark Master Hudak’s choice of words at this point. He appropriately categorized what he was witnessing in front of him as youth.

It rained heavily throughout the four hours of the hike. However, it was kind of epic hiking through the rain. I would like to turn the course of this paragraph (and perhaps the next one) to a discussion of this epic-ness. At a fundamental level, we knew we were walking past landscapes and paths that the rain would change completely by the time we would be retracing our steps. However, we continued undeterred. Completely drenched jeans left with no inclination to stay put on waists, the most water-resistant of back-packs filled with water, marshy lands, and cast iron remnants of a village that existed at some point in history (not existing anymore perhaps because of the harshness of weather conditions)…I hope you are understanding the epic-ness of it all.

I hate to be destroying my carefully organized chronological account so far. However, I feel that a mention of one of the discussions that followed the hike is in waiting here. We all observed that we didn’t consume a single drop of water throughout the course of the hike. I find the words of Samuel Taylor Coleridge particularly soothing to help explain this phenomenon:

“Water, water, every where,
And all the boards did shrink ;
Water, water, every where,
Nor any drop to drink.”

Coleridge figuring in was just the final stamp to mark that hike on the morning to afternoon of October the 24th as epic. I apologize for my musings on epic-ness that have been the subject of the past few lines but I do want my educated readers (what’s up y’all?) to feel what it was like to be in our shoes (or erstwhile shoes to be precise; the rain hardly permitted reuse of these commodities).

Though we were majorly concentrating on the path below throughout the course of the hike (for obvious reasons), there were some breathtaking sights along the way: the fall colors, and Little Pond (the destination of our hike) serving as the most explicit examples of the above mentioned sights. And then there was all that fresh (though slightly moist) air…truly refreshing!

Of course, the rain stopped as soon as we stopped hiking.

The evening kicked off to a great start with a visit to the local Vermont County Store. Udles (‘11) and (Mihan’10) presented a 1000 piece puzzle as a gift to Master Hudak and Miss Van Dyke, from the side of all Saybrugians, for their truly fantastic and generous efforts that had gone into the success of this weekend.

The evening was marked with fun events. A fierce competition in Taboo ensued between boys and girls. Even after taking into account the facts that Josh’s prowess in the game was hard to keep pace with and that Max was writing his paper, it would be safe to say that the girls thrashed the boys. I mean, they made such connections as “When you have a jacket, you ___ it” as referring to “zip.” Master Hudak showed us the famous Cork Trick. For those in the dark, here is the YouTube version: The Cork Trick.
Stop at 0:55 in the video, ask Cameron or Kate for some leftovers from this Friday’s –OH treating proceedings and try to do the trick yourself. Set (card game) was yet again on the cards for the evening. Another feature of the evening was a moving documentary on the lives and families of gamers.

Perhaps the most mysterious part of the night was that Josh, Max and Lana spent 3 hours in the hot tub. For those of us who didn’t participate in the exercise of relaxing one’s muscles by increasing skin temperature, this mystery remains unsolved. The facts of the case are as follows: Lana is quite the quiet type, and Max is just a freshman. So really one has to figure out what Josh was up to.

May I use the penultimate paragraph of these musings to talk about the food throughout the course of the weekend. To be quite frank and literal, Miss Van Dyke and Master Hudak ‘pampered’ us as if we were their own kids. Everything was flowing—grilled hamburgers and chicken, berry pies, pancakes, and English breakfast sandwiches.

Which brings me to my subject for the ultimate paragraph of this article. Really, this subject cannot be condensed into just one paragraph but I will try. I think I will not be wrong in assuming that the twelve Saybrugians on the trip cannot thank Miss Van Dyke and Master Hudak enough for the wonderful experience. It is truly incredible how they made the organization of the getaway look so simple. They truly treated us as if we were their children. Thanks to them again! One week has passed since that weekend in VT and I already miss it. It gave the twelve Saybrugians the stress release that they much needed, and lubricated all their mental machinery together once again.

Finally, for those of you who couldn’t make it up to VT last weekend: don’t sorrow. I have heard that a cross country skiing trip is in the making.

Cheers for now

Nimit