And someone does make one. I bought a Timbuktu Laptop Messenger bag and tried it out for the first time. I couldn’t be happier. Lined with a waterproof liner, the bag is ideal for transporting your laptop in the rain. I don’t know that I would trust it in a total downpour, but I did use it yesterday and I’m quite pleased.

The two second update:

1. We just ran some AWESOME trips to Mexico and Costa Rica

2. Last week’s happy hour rocked with 200+ Escapers and lots of great conversations

3. Expansion is going well! We’ve already started putting together trips and are super excited about launching the new sites in the next few weeks.

Okay, that’s all for now. I’ve been out of the office for a full month (Mexico, Costa Rica, Boston…) and it’s time to get working. The highlight of my 4 weeks of “work”? Whitewater rafting on the world-famous Pacuare River in Costa Rica

And then something happened. The sun came out. And it stayed out all weekend long! What a concept. The night hike was great–we had 30 people stomping around the woods until 1 am on Thursday night, with more s’mores and hot chocolate than Harriman State Park had seen in a long time. And that’s how the weekend started. Then we had a few more days of beautiful sunshine where we enjoyed beautiful hikes, canoe rides, and lakeside loungings. I was an engineering major, so you’ll have to forgive me for not being able to describe the beauty that we experienced this weekend. Thankfully we have flickr, so go take a look and you’ll see serene lakeside viewpoints with plenty of ‘Escapers’ basking in the sunlight.

And we finished off the weekend with the inaugural ’Shootin’ & Drinkin’, our newest baby. It was a blast! We spent the morning sporting clay shooting at a gorgeous course and finished off with an intense shoot-out between the two teams. It was close and I think we all surprised ourselves–everyone hit more than 50% of the targets! And of course, no shootin trip is complete without the drinkin’ part. The day ended at a beautiful whiskey distillery where we all enjoyed a whiskey tasting and picnic lunch. 

And now it’s Monday morning and I don’t think we’ve ever been so exhausted. It was all worth it though, we had our biggest weekend yet, tried out some new trips, and all in all just had a wonderful time. 

The rain held off for most of the drive and we got to the trailhead with high spirits. What rain? HA. As soon as we stepped out of the van, it started pouring. And I don’t mean raining hard, I mean actually pouring. And that’s when I realized that we were going to have a blast. Everyone embraced the rain and we hiked for hours, splashing, getting muddy, and even swimming in the ice cold waterfalls!

Then the next part is the one I wasn’t ready for. It was still pouring when we got to the campground so we had to ax the campfire idea. Not sure what to do, we heard loud music coming from the other end of the campground. Now we had no idea what to expect, but it definitely surpassed everything. It was a boy scout dance party, but no one was dancing! So what do we do? We got right in there and started throwing down. In about 30 seconds all of the boy and girl scouts came to see what was going on, and within minutes we had a full-on party, with Urban Escapes at the lead. It was a blast, and we went to bed in such high spirits, albeit the fact that we were soaking wet.

And then I can’t even begin to describe the rafting. All of the rain made for the best rapids they’d had in two years. We had one raft capsize, one raft where everyone fell out, and ten very, very happy ‘Escapers’. It was just one of those weekends that will go down in Urban Escapes history.

And that’s how I ended my weekend: a Monday morning skydive with the words ‘live the life you love’ ringing in the background. It’s been a pretty stellar week. I came up to New Hampshire for my little brother’s college graduation and took the opportunity to enjoy this mini-roadtrip. It took some engineering, but I manged to cram my mountain bike, parachute, sleeping bag, tent, and hiking boots into the trunk of my Honda Civic. And that basically describes the past few days–morning mountain bike rides followed by hikes to the top of various ski mountains.

But the best part is that this was actually a scouting trip too. All of these activities and locations are exactly what we do at Urban Escapes, which is cool because it just reiterates that we’ve actually created a company that helps pepole live the life they love.

We started with a steep climb, which didn’t exactly spare our thigh muscles, but within the first 20 minutes we had a 270 degree view of the Hudson Valley. The day continued on like this, with lots of ups and downs, which meant a lot of those moments when you come up to the top of a hill and you’re rewarded with a view of hawks soaring just feet away from the cliff. Pretty cool stuff.

And of course, we capped off the hike with some frosty (luke-warm really, but frosty sounds better) beers. Congratulatiaons to Elliot and Lana–our two newest Silver Escapers!

At the top of Storm King Mountain

The party started at 8 and by 7:55 we already had a huge line to sign up. And who wouldn’t want to enter the raffle? The guys at Gore very graciously donated beautiful GORE-TEX jackets and Crunch came through with some free 6-month memberships, not to mention we gave out some free hikes and t-shirts, so of course everyone wanted to get their name on the list.

The whole thing was a blast. The beer flowed freely all night and there was a great combination of people just hanging out in the main area and people sampling the rock wall and other classes. We had about 150 Escapers show up and we’re really happy with how our happy hours have been turning out.

We’ve got a staff meeting this week and we’ll definitely think about other cool ideas for happy hours. If you’ve got one, feel free to send our way!