Patrolling the Northeast: Camel Humps, Sugar Benders and Grand Theft Jeep

Image credit: Joe Daly 2025

I haven’t blogged in a while. Been on the road — two weeks deep in the overgrown belly of the great Northeast, patrolling its woodsy lungs and concrete arteries with a pack of feral homies and a sugar-to-alcohol ratio that would make Keith Moon weep.

First stop: Central Mass. Headquarters. The Mothership. Touch base, stock up, remind the locals I still walk among them. Then it was off to Vermont, to the lush, gleaming hills where time moves slower and the Wi-Fi forgets your name.

Not before our annual pilgrimage to Shaw’s, however — the ceremonial raiding of the snack aisles. Four hundred American dollars later, we emerged victorious, carts groaning under the weight of candy, cakes, crackers, chips, protein shakes, and enough beer to rehydrate Valhalla’s front line after Ragnarok. Diabetes and gout could wait. We had trails to climb.

Camel’s Hump was the objective. The Burrows Trail was the route. Normally a moderate, technical ascent — something you’d attempt with a Clif bar and a podcast — but overnight rains had turned the rocks into polished tombstones. Hiking up felt like trying to tango on a Slip ‘N Slide with greased feet and no dignity.

At the summit, we were greeted not by panoramic serenity but by an icy wind screaming like a banshee with an axe to grind. A girl and her dog huddled stoically on the far end, like a still from a Nordic arthouse film. Dogs, in fact, were everywhere — bounding over boulders and panting like furry lunatics, completely unbothered by the steep, merciless terrain.

My crew cracked open celebratory beers. I crushed a lukewarm bottle of water and a sleeve of peanut butter crackers like a man who had grossly overestimated his internal thermostat. Then I retreated to the tree line, back where the wind couldn't chew through my bones and mock my refusal to bring a jacket. Rookie mistake.

Back at base camp — one of the guys owns a condo at the foot of the mountain, because of course he does — we devoured whatever snacks hadn’t been pulverised in the backpacks. Then came the next spiritual waypoint on our North Country odyssey: Ben & Jerry’s headquarters. A temple of dairy-fuelled hedonism. We scaled the absurdly long staircase to the visitor’s centre like wounded gladiators. Behind us, a busload of sugar-rabid tourists spilled out, shrieking with anticipation. We barely beat the onslaught, sliding into the ordering queue just ahead of the wave.

Outside on that sun-drenched patio, there were no survivors. Sundaes were annihilated. Shakes were reduced to foam. A Mini Vermonster — that unholy chalice of whipped cream and caloric despair — was sent screaming into the void. We left no trace but a cloud of burps and regret.

Then it was off to Montreal.

The Canadian Grand Prix — a glittering jewel in Formula 1’s spiked, fuel-slicked crown. For three years now, we’ve made the pilgrimage. But this one had the air of finality, like the last tour of a band that’s already said goodbye three times.

The racing? Top notch. Beyond the gauntlet of Formula 1 practice sessions, qualifiers, there were several showcase events for the F1 Academy, as well as a bunch of rich lunatics in Porsches playing Mad Max on meth — it’s a petrolhead’s Mardi Gras. But the logistics? Biblical suffering.

The event takes place on an island. A lovely little chunk of land near downtown Montreal, accessible by bridges and burdened by ambition. This year, the Canadian GP lured over 350,000 racing-obsessed lunatics to the shores of Montreal — the second highest attendance of the 2025 season to date. With 100,000 people all exiting the island at the same time, simple egress becomes an exercise in psychological warfare. Picture that many people trying to escape together through three exits and two bridges — if you’ve seen the Omaha Beach sequence in Saving Private Ryan, you get the idea.

On Day Two, it took two and a half soul-sucking hours just to reach the shuttle buses. Once off the island, the real circus began: the cab gauntlet. One night, we took two separate cabs home — same pickup time, same drop-off point. One charged $20. The other? A crisp, soul-curdling $100. There was no logic. Only chaos.

Then came Monday morning. The moment where the trip’s narrative took a hard left into true crime.

We were one Jeep short.

Sometime during the night, some piece of Québécois merde had tried to boost the vehicle by ripping out the odometer, which apparently is the fast pass to hotwiring a Jeep. The attempt failed — barely — but the damage was done. Disabled and impounded. We had to CSI the whole thing from scratch, bleary-eyed and under-caffeinated.

The impound lot was run by a suspiciously upbeat attendant who informed us, cheerily, that this sort of thing was “very common” in Montreal and that, if the theft had succeeded, the Jeep would already be on a container ship headed for the Middle East.

Cool.

So: $5,000 Canadian to get the Jeep towed back over the border, $300 for a one-way rental, and the psychic cost of feeling like the dumbest marks in Quebec. No Ben & Jerry’s on the way home this time. Just a transcendent maple whoopie pie from a roadside gas station that briefly made everything okay. Briefly.

On Tuesday, it was back to HQ for a couple more meetings, dinner with an old friend, and then a 6:30 a.m. flight back to the Republic of California, where the pups greeted me with full-body lunges and the kind of whimpering joy you only get from beings who don’t care where you’ve been, only that you’re home.

And damn, it’s good to be home.