"The clocks stopped at 1:17. A long shear of light and then a series of low concussions."

          Note: I should take a second to explain my naming policy with David. At turns, I'm prone to call him that, the Delivery Man, Dave, or Cyber David. These are all the same person. No questions.

          I was last to rise in the morning, but given that I was up before 11 and how late we had stayed up, I felt like I was up early. We broke down the campsite before going out for a long walk on the other side of the island. We took some shortcuts that worked, some that didn't, and met a variety of hikers, campers, anglers, and even some people who live there. At one point, we walked hundreds of meters past the shoreline on a sandbar coated in broken shells. Everyone vowed to return. We got back in time for the 2 p.m. boat back to Georges and on to Boston, and this time, we had our pick of the seats. I was exhausted in that pleasant way that only comes after a few days of nonstop action, drained right down to the core and ready to sleep for a year, but for some reason I didn't want to nap on the boat. Instead, I began to read The Road and very quickly fell in love. Cormac McCarthy's abandonment of most punctuation, sentence fragments, and tautly constructed dialogue are all eminently readable. He also has an excellent command of vocabulary and is masterful at painting pictures of scenes, though conservative with words; the book is quite short when you account for all the line breaks. (One reviewer described it as "a quick, lacerating read.")
          Someone was playing a mellow guitar at Long Wharf when we stepped back on to the mainland. Brief goodbyes were said, promises exchanged, and we were off. Dave, Sean and I obtained Wings Over to sate our raging hunger, then went home to (for me) finally complete Princess Mononoke. In short: It's a great animated film, definitely on par with Howl's Moving Castle, and the important characters are interesting and multifaceted. The opening scene with the demon-boar is true terror; the dark quality of the film sets it apart from even the creepy Howl's. My main complaint about the film is that Miyazaki's "evil artifice vs. nature" dichotomy is applied in a very heavy-handed way. It easily trumps both Spirited Away's poisoned river spirits and Castle In the Sky's parable of greed and nuclear weapons. When the movie ended, I went for a Fens run around 10:45 and ran into far fewer people than I expected, and life was peaceful.
          Quotes of the day:
"You're cue-ballin' it!" - David
...
Me: "We're all bits of exploded stars, right?"
David: "But what is a star but gravy that's on fire?"