Had been on a cabin trip weekend of Sep 20^th. The cabin was about 2 ½ hours drive from Seattle. What started out as a 10 person trip eventually came down to 4. You know how these things go. People dropping out at the last minute with some excuse or the other. I also tried my best to get out of it but with no luck. What was my excuse – well I had none – that was the problem. I have no complaints now. It was four guys in a cabin all by ourselves. Now don't jump ahead of yourselves and get the wrong idea.

Anyway, the cabin is East of Seattle and the weather was beautiful. Clear skies, sunny weather. This is supposed to be a good place for star gazing, astronomy and it really was. The night sky was just beautiful. We saw many stars which is rare for a place in Wa. We saw the constellation Leo. I think it is Leo – I am not sure. It is the one that looks like a Question Mark ? Most of our time at the cabin was just spent sitting around the fireplace and idle talk. We did spend some time trying to cut wood. Note the word "trying". We never were successful. Eventually we ended up just taking small pieces of wood and throwing it into the fire rather than try to cut the big ones. I cant imagine how people from old times spent most of their time cutting wood. I think we the new generation have had too much luxury of just sitting around in front of a computer to realize how it was in the stone age J . We also cooked – Sambar, curry and rice for dinner and this was fun. There was only a small 2 burner stove that didn't work that great and what takes usually an hour to cook at home took almost 3 – 4 hours. By the time we had dinner it was already 12 am.

The most painful part of any cabin trip is spending the night in the cold. Agreed , the burning fireplace will provide the warmth. The problem is it has to be burning all night long and sooner or later everyone is going to fall asleep and the cabin starts getting colder and colder. For us, the cabin organizer R didn't inform everyone to bring blankets assuming there would be some at the cabin but as luck would have it there were none. So couple of us (not me) ended up just spending the night without blankets. Infact, S became so cold that he was just standing near the fire rather than sleeping. We all blame R for this. Hopefully next time we will be prepared.

Overall it was fun!!!