The great deep woods rescue

OK, so I recently moved to a new town, started grad school, and joined Match.com just for shits and grins. So, all in all things have been pretty interesting for me lately. I'm happy where I am now, and working on meeting people and trying to get into a more "normal" dating frame of mind. Picking up drunk guys while drunk at a bar just is not so cute anymore. Now it's just pathetic, and I really don't want to aim for the title of "cougar" EVER!

This brings me to the joining of the dating website Match.com. So I knew some people that had had some good experiences with it, and some that had had some baadd experiences with it. But isn't that how dating is in general? So I gave it a go figuring at the very least I could meet some people to hang out with etc. So I end up talking to a few guys one of which I ended up going on two dates with. The first date was fun, rather uneventful, and I laughed my ass off the whole time. We went to a demolition derby (yes, I have all of my teeth and no, I do not value the confederate flag as a major wardrobe and decorating staple) for our date. I like demo derbys. Senseless violence and breaking thing with the occasional car fire. What's more interesting than that? Not to mention the prime people watching that you can participate in while in the stands!

OK, so date one went relatively well so I agreed to a date number two. This guy is very sweet, plans the date out, gets a bottle of wine, and some cheese, and heads over to my place. Well, he had decided to take me hiking. Normally this would be a great plan. I love non-traditional dates and being in the outdoors. So, all excited we head out and find a trail to blaze, or walk along as the case may be.

We got a late start since there was a small rain shower that afternoon, but it had cleared up enough to be hike worthy. So we set off on this trail just B.S.ing and chatting away. Little did we know what was in store.

We kind of got lost. Of course we start to realize we are probably lost about the time it is getting way dark outside. At this time we can no longer see clearly while on the trail and head out to a clearing for some better light. As the sun sets and the coyotes start to howl closer and louder I become a little freaked out. OK, a lot freaked out, and started to plot where the most comfortable and coyote free spot to sleep would be. We didn't have enough light to head back into the woods, and so we were pretty much stuck in the large clearing. Suck...hard core suck.

Luckily the guy I was with had his cell phone on him ( I had left mine in the car. A mistake I will never ever make again!). So after some male ego prodding he calls 911. Actually I think it was something like "You better call someone right now. I don't care what your ego thinks!" That came out of my mouth at the time. I am not a fan of sleeping in the woods with no tent, no lighter, and not even a tarp or ground pad. Ick.

So as my date is discussing our options with the park ranger I hear people talking close by. So, I pull out the damsel in distress act and start yelling for help. Amazingly after a bit they hear us. Yey! Rescue!

So they get closer thanks to my date's waving of his cell phone light, and I can just barely make out shapes in the near distance. They have no light I realize. Interesting. But, they are on horses. Ok, maybe this isn't so bad after all.

Apparently they are frequent campers at this particular park, and ride there horses there at night all the time! How awesome! I felt like the rescued damsel in some bad action flick! To top it all off, as we were getting on our horses they offer us Busch Beer! My personal fav, sadly, and a wonderful nerve calmer which I was very much ready for at this point in time.

The sill park ranger guy tells us not to go with the horse people. I guess some weird safety rule about not going with strangers. At this point neither my date or I cared. We were just so relieved we didn't have to sleep in the woods and eat each other to stay alive.

The guys take us back to their camp where they...gasp...offer us more beer and we sit around shooting the shit with them for about an hour or so. This was officially one of the most interesting nights of my life. Talk about your dumb luck. I so should have bought a lotto ticket that night.

In the end the ranger came by the camp and got our info to verify that we were still alive and had not been axe murdered by a bunch of beer toting horsemen. The beer toting horsemen took us back to the truck we came in and we drove off into the long ago sunset happy to be not sitting on mud and general nastiness.