Podcasts about Finger Lakes

dj tour merch finger lakes

Play Episode Listen Later Aug 7, 2025 51:05

We continue our tour of the Finger Lakes with a visit to Seneca Falls – a small town with a big legacy. Seneca Falls is home to just under 9,000 people, but it holds a major place in American history. It was here, in the summer of 1848, that a group of women gathered for tea and changed the world. More than 175 years later, the legacy of the Seneca Falls Convention and the women's rights movement is foundational to the town's identity. But this town isn't something out of a history book. It's a living place shaped by the people who live and work there, and keep its stories alive. Guest host Veronica Volk talks to four of those people.In studio: Pam Becker, historian of Seneca County Nellie Ludemann, museum and community relations manager for the National Women's Hall of Fame Andrew Olden, Ph.D., executive director of the Seneca Falls Museum and Tourism Center and Home of the Seneca Museum of Waterways and Industry Ahna Wilson, superintendent of the Women's Rights National Historical Park and Harriet Tubman National Historical Park

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Episode 159: Finger Lakes Tour 2025

Lizard Brains

Play Episode Listen Later Aug 7, 2025 74:11

Tom and DJ talk about the Finger Lakes National Tour and spiralsDiscord LinkShow your lizard brains on the outside with Merch!CLICK HERE FOR THE MERCHYoutube Link

Ep066: From Silicon to Steel with Ronak Shah

The IC-DISC Show

Play Episode Listen Later Aug 7, 2025 49:04

In this episode of the IC-DISC show, I sit down with Ronak Shah to discuss his transition from a corporate career at Intel to entering the scrap metal business, to founding a successful scrap metal business in New Caney, Texas. We talk about the motivation behind his career shift and the mentors who guided him along the way. Ronak opens up about the challenges he faced while transitioning from a large corporate environment to a smaller, more hands-on business. We also explore Ronak's decision to sell his business and the unexpected opportunities that arose from that choice. He reflects on the experiences gained throughout his career, emphasizing the importance of taking calculated risks and adapting to change. His story offers insights into the value of connecting past experiences to current ventures, even when the path isn't always straightforward. Finally, we discuss navigating today's fast-paced digital world and the importance of maintaining a low profile on social media. Ronak's journey highlights the balance between professional growth and personal fulfillment, making this episode a thoughtful exploration of entrepreneurship and resilience. SHOW HIGHLIGHTS I explore Ronak's remarkable transition from a corporate role at Intel to establishing a successful scrap industry business in New Caney, Texas, emphasizing his desire for more tangible work and the influence of key mentors. The episode delves into Ronak's career progression at Schnitzer Steel and Alter Trading, where he gained critical insights in non-ferrous recovery and learned the importance of agile, smaller teams in driving technological advancements. Through journaling and introspection, Ronak clarifies his professional desires, leading to the creation of Levitated Metal and reflecting on personal challenges, including his late wife's battle with cancer. We discuss the financial strategies Ronak utilized in his entrepreneurial ventures, such as leveraging IC-DISC tax advantages and aligning financial decisions with personal values. The conversation highlights Ronak's leadership insights, his decision to pursue a smaller business for personal fulfillment, and the impact of selling his business on both his professional and personal life. Ronak shares reflections on his entrepreneurial journey, touching on the lessons learned from his career, the importance of taking risks, and the role of hindsight in connecting the dots of his experiences. The episode concludes with a discussion on navigating the complexities of the modern digital landscape and the importance of maintaining a low profile in a rapidly changing social media environment. Contact Details LinkedIn - Ronak Shah (https://www.linkedin.com/in/ronakshahpdx/) LINKSShow Notes Be a Guest About IC-DISC Alliance About Levitated Metals Ronak ShahAbout Ronak TRANSCRIPT (AI transcript provided as supporting material and may contain errors) Dave: Hi Ronak, how are you today? Roank: Good David, Nice to see you again. Dave: Likewise, and where are you calling into from? Where are you in the world at the moment? Roank: I'm at my factory in New Caney, Texas, just a little bit northeast of Houston Great. Dave: Now are you a native Houstonian. Roank: I'm not, so I moved out here in 2019 to build this factory and start this business. I think I've been to Houston once in the prior year to visit for the first time and never before, other than perhaps through the airport. So, I didn't know a lot about Houston. I'm not saying that I know a lot about Houston now, but it's been a great place to build a business. It's been a fine place for my kids to grow up. Dave: It's been good it's been a fine place for my kids to grow up. It's still good. Yeah, it's. Uh, it's kind of a, it's kind of a hidden gem in a lot of ways. Uh, you know houston is, it's got a lot going for it that if your only experience is just driving through town or going through the airport, you know, I mean you hear traffic, humidity, heat, urbanl and you're just kind of like, you know, yeah, it doesn't sound like my kind of place. Roank: Yeah, well, it would be a lot more believable if you did not have a Breckenridge background behind you. Dave: True, yeah, that is the Breckenridge background for sure. So where did you grow up then, if you didn't grow up in Houston? Roank: I grew up in upstate New York so my dad was one of the many immigrants that came over in the late 60s, early 70s. They were looking for people with medical training and background. So he came over from India, lived in New York. I was born in New York City but very soon after grew up in the middle of the Finger Lakes. We moved to Syracuse when I was in middle school and then I went to Boston for undergraduate and I bounced kind of between Boston and London and back to Boston, then to Portland, oregon, which is where I came into the scrap industry and lived for some time in St Louis. I lived there for about nine years and from St Louis to here. Dave: Okay. So what made you get into the scrap business if you didn't have a family history in it? Roank: Yeah, it was just very random, my interest in the scrap industry. I think, the truth of the answer is probably the more interesting one. So after mba I was working, I was an operations guy and I was working at intel corporation in portland, near portland oregon, and loved being in portland. It's a fine place to live. But intel was, I mean, a huge company, right, 80 000 people, and just like the process of making something that was about this big, the the size of the core diet, multiprocessor, microprocessor this wasn't sufficiently interesting to me and I was too far from it, as well as my chain organization. Yeah. It didn't feel tangible enough, and so that was one part of it. But then the other part of it as well was you know I was there as a worker bee, you know, in a reasonably senior job for someone of my age, but then, you know, in a reasonably senior job for someone of my age, but then you know intel was having difficulty. So they bring in bane and company to kind of work on strategy or whatever and so two of the guys that I went to school with that, I knew well, were like literally working literally seven layers in the organization above me, and I'm like what? and so I just hit that, I tapped out, I extracted, I was like this is just some horse crap. I, this isn't the place for me. I need to go somewhere where I'm, you know, in a, in a smaller pod, where I can really touch and feel a thing. And so I just started throwing resumes out and wound up at Schnitzer Steel. Now really, yeah, and oh really. Yeah, and it was great. It was a time of transition for Schnitzer. I don't know if it was a great transition time for Schnitzer. They were transitioning from an older style scrap company to a more professional slash corporate company of the style that it is today. So they had parts of the parts of their business were both things and for sure I liked the old thing a lot and just tons of fun being in places like Boston and Portland scrapyard when they were building big mega shredders and new factories and driving the continuous improvement process there and trying to get metrics around things. It was really a good time. I enjoyed a lot of it. I came to Alter Trading in 2010 and that was wonderful right, I owe so much of my career everything I learned everything to the team at Alter, to Jay Rabinovitz and Rob and Michael Goldstein. I learned a lot there. I did a lot of really fun stuff for them that helped transform the company into the highly successful privately owned scrap company it is today. Dave: Like on the technology side, correct yeah. Roank: So I built a few factories, non-ferrous recovery plants to process not steel non-ferrous portions of the shredder and extract more metals out of stuff that would otherwise have gone to the landfill. And it was you know, exciting to do that, and it wasn't just building the factories but really growing out the entirety of the division that became, you know, a kind of center of excellence around that function, and it's an area that you know Alter remains very strong in today. Dave: Okay, well, I am excited to get into the next part of your story. So you're living in St Louis, working at Alter, being involved in some cool stuff and forward thinking technology. So how did from there? How do you end up starting a company in New Caney, texas? Roank: Yeah, so it's no reason not to be as open and honest about it as possible. So Alter was amazing. For the first six or seven years I was there, the job was like a nine and a half out of 10. I remember I was in New York going to make this time up sometime in 2013 or something like that. I've been there for three years and the Powerball was like some huge number, like a billion dollars, and so me and some buddies that were in finance, we all bought Powerball tickets and we talked about what we would do if we won the money, and I remember I determined to say I don't know if I would necessarily quit my job, right, like I really love what I do. I still think about that today. Dave: Did any of them have the same thought? Roank: No, they thought I was just completely crazy and they weren't necessarily wrong. I think I think perhaps again I loved it, but the point of it is I really enjoyed it. It was fulfilling, I had impact, things were changing. All of that when I struggled is as that phase of what Alter needed ended and I needed to move and assist alter with other things, primarily helping them grow a tier of management that had come from the art management level into being the next business leaders of the company. Just, you know, it's kind of standard transition planning type stuff and succession planning. I struggled with doing that successfully, a role that perhaps would have been viable or successful or satisfactory for me to do had it occurred during a standard line management. You know, hierarchical management structure was hard for me to find value in fulfillment, in and I would say success in doing. Yeah, as a matrix manager, you know, as a, as a guide, as a internal consultant. I just didn't love it. I hate to put it that way. I just sure, sure and at the same time, alter was going through a certain amount of a a ton of growth, right, a lot of growth that I participated in through acquisition and internal growth as well disbanded organic growth. But it was going through a lot of growth and so the company that felt small and familial at 40 yards suddenly felt just large and 70 for me. Dave: Too much like it felt too much like Intel. Roank: Nowhere near that level. There's nothing like that. It remains a really effective, well-directed company today. But, it felt different for me and I also realized that I wasn't good at that bigger company stuff. You know, my way of thinking about things didn't scale successfully to that level. I would not be the right guy at that level and this is an unfortunate thing to say. But I chose to. I did not want to change. You know, I thought about so. My boss for many years there was Jay Rabinowitz, who was, until he retired recently, the CEO of Alter Trade. He was fascinating. His ability to grow into the mindset required, the management rank that he was in at the time, or growing into, was phenomenal. And so a guy that if you only knew him 30 years ago was a rough and tumble scrap guy was and you've seen him on podcasts and things like that. It became and presents fully as and fills the shoes of a methodical, thoughtful, mature and a CEO who does a great job of leading A 1,200, 1,500 person organization. You would have never thought that if you only knew him 25 years ago perhaps, but his ability to grow was really phenomenal. For, by choice or by capability or whatever it was, I did not have or want that and so I wanted something dramatically smaller. Dave: Okay. Roank: And so I spent a bunch of time not just thinking about it but literally journaling about it. Because when you just think about these type of problems in your mind like hey, what do I want to do professionally? Yeah, you can just ping pong in your brain. And what I found helped me through the process was writing it down. And if you remember, back in high school, your English teacher would tell you to you know write a draft of the story, or an outline, and then a draft and then the final essay. I mean, I don't know about you, but I would never do any of that crap. But I did this time and I found that, like the first draft was, you know, just vomit on a page of orally thought out concepts and beliefs. And so I wrote it again and it was clear. And I wrote it again, it was clear. It helped me really understand what I liked and didn't like and what I wanted and didn't want from the next phase. And it was a time when, you know, my kids were just about to graduate middle school. If I was ever going to leave St Louis, this was the time to do it. It was not going to be easy. It was not easy for them to leave St Louis, but that's when. That's how I made that choice. I was uncertain as to what I would do. Right, I was out there both looking at shredder yards to buy as well as businesses. To start, I looked at a wire chopping plant. I ultimately built a heavy media plant. I did look at and made successful offers on a couple of different shredders, but none of that actually panned out and in the end I raised a bunch of money, moved out to Houston, built this thing. Dave: That is a great story and your kids ended up adjusting okay to, because I believe you live in one of the really nice master plan communities around Houston. Roank: Yeah, and they've adjusted well. I think my son is glad that we moved down here. My daughter is a little bit on the fence, but she was younger when we moved. Both my wife my late wife and I in many ways would have probably preferred where we lived in. Dave: St Louis, it was a small town in Kirkwood. Roank: You're familiar with it, but here it's been great. The Woodlands is a, you know, magical little bubble of a place to live. It's got everything you need. It's 25 minutes to the factory. All of it has been, from that perspective, just fine. When my wife got cancer, we were right here at MD Anderson. You know a lot of that stuff worked out. Dave: That is great. So tell me what your business premise was for Levitated Metal. So maybe give just a little background. What does the company do? Roank: Sure, so we're a heavy media flotation platform. What we do is we buy a thing called Sorba and we make aluminum Twitch. But stepping back from that to people that don't know what any of those words mean, our suppliers are the largest scrap metal processors in the region. Right, the states who will buy something like an old 2008 ford 500 sedan that's at the end of its life, yeah, shred it into fist size and smaller pieces, extract all the steel out with a magnet and then extract all the other metals like aluminum from the engine, copper, brass zinc, die, cast through other technologies. That aluminum, copper, brass zinc all is mixed up together in little pieces in a giant pile and that product is called a made up word Zorba by the industry. They make lots of it inside of houston. probably 15 million pounds to 18 million pounds of it is made every month right I buy that it's useless the way it is because you can't melt it, because it's got too many different types of metals in it and it doesn't make a useful alloy. But if you can get the aluminum out, that aluminum is super valuable because that aluminum you know used to be the engine block of a old car. It's a pretty tight chemistry match to the alloy required for the engine block of a ford f-150 a 2005. So through a density flotation process using water and ferrosilicon, we can change the density of that water so we can actually float the aluminum out. Dave: Hence the name levitated. Roank: Yeah, it's not a novel technology. I buy the equipment from some dude in Italy. There are well over 100 of these kind of plants in the world, maybe a little less than a dozen when levitators started up in the united states and a very what it sounds like a simple process is a royal pain in the rear. That actually managed because it's a very analog system with all sorts of weird chemistry and other things involved and a challenging plant to rot. But you know, we do a pretty decent job of it. Dave: Now, why did you pick New Caney, texas? I've been to St Louis, in fact, I was just there last month. They appear to have plenty of land around that place, you know, especially across the river in uh, is that illinois? That's just east so why? Didn't you just buy some land and do it up there? Roank: so where these plants, where the competitive plants exist, are relatively close to where their consumers, the aluminum smelters that would buy the recycled aluminum, are, and that's generally already in that area. So there are plenty of plants in that area. Dave: Okay. Roank: Down here in Houston. What was the case when I chose to move down here it became very quickly not the case, because two other people also built plants was that there was a large market in Mexico that did not have access to this type of material because there were no media plants in Texas or along the Mexican border. And aluminum manufacture in Mexico was growing incredibly well, much like the rest of their economy, and so what I saw was a consumer need right mexican heavy media plants, a set of suppliers in the texas area that did not have a domestic buyer for their zorba and so good supplier footprint and, at the time, a relative lack of competition. But I didn't realize. So, like two months after the financial raise was done and everything like that was, there were in fact, two more plants that were in the process of being built. They both started, you know, six to 12 months after mine did not so far away. There's one up near dallas, there's one up in arkansas so it became a little bit more competitive, though in truth that has not really changed the calculus on anything in a great way. It hasn't really improved the deal too much. Dave: Okay, and it was you started with, just a green field, right? Roank: Yeah, it was some trees and dirt and 10 acres. It was some trees and dirt and 10 acres and I started with dirt work and stormwater and concrete and buildings and equipment and built the whole thing. Dave: What year did you? Roank: start COVID 2020. Oh, it was the heck of a time. Dave: That was the construction was during COVID yeah. And when did you open? Roank: Then we started processing. At the end of December we shipped our first 2020 and we started shipping material in full January 2021. Dave: Oh wow, that really was in the midst of COVID. It was Most of it wasn't? Roank: that big a deal. There was some delay in equipment delivery because it came from Italy, and so if anybody had a rougher time COVID wise, it was Italy. So it came from Italy, and so if anybody had a rougher time COVID-wise, it was Italy. So it came from Italy but that might have only cost us a couple months. What was really frustrating and challenging and ultimately we were able to get through it was simply the difficulty of bringing process experts from Europe to the US during the COVID timeline. You know, like I can't tell you how many voicemails I left at the US embassy in Milan to sorry the US consulate in Milan to try to, you know, accelerate the review of the visa for the texts to come in from Italy, but I can tell you how many times somebody probably listened to it with zero, so just a royal pain in the rear. You know, just because the pain in the rear to get that all done, it got done. But those were challenging times. Dave: So started January of 2021 and, uh, at the time, had you given any thought to how long you might want to, that you and your investor group might want to run the business or own the business? Did you have any thought when you started it about what I honestly thought? I? Roank: would run it and own it for like nearly 10, 15 years years and grow it over time and continue to be in the space, et cetera, et cetera. It was meant to be a longer term cashflow, not one necessarily built on an exit strategy of selling at some point in the future. That was the original intent. Dave: How did that-year plan end up working out for you? Roank: Well, it turned out to be much shorter than that. So, as it turned out, in 2023, we had an unsolicited offer from Murfrees Industries to purchase the business assets. Dave: Wow, just two years later. Roank: Yeah, two years of operation later. Yeah, and for a number of reasons, it was the right choice for me and my investors to do the sale and it's been absolutely phenomenally good, I think, for both sides. The transaction itself, you know, from my perspective, great because you know it was an accelerated exit, but an exit nevertheless, and it still gives me the opportunity to continue to do the same job in the same office every day that I really enjoy doing that. I find great fulfillment and mental stimulation and sense of purpose in without the undeniable and underestimated stress of being a business owner. Dave: Yeah. Roank: So that's been absolutely great. It occurred at a time when my wife was battling cancer and took a lot of stress off. Taking that business stress off the table Sure Just made it easier to get through that entire process. Yeah, and it's just been a good. I think it's been fun for everybody. You know Adam and Michael Mervis were the you know fourth generation. Perhaps Adam and Michael Mervis we're the fourth generation perhaps owners of Mervis Industries enjoy having the levitated team in their company. We enjoy being part of it. Both of us have to do better together. It's been really just great. Dave: That is awesome, because not all transactions work out that well. Roank: Yeah, I'm sure there's some number out there that I would have sold the company at, knowing full well that I would not have wanted to work there afterwards. I'm sure there is, but I'm glad I didn't have to. Dave: Because you were I'm guessing you were the. Were you a minority shareholder? Did your? I was a minority shareholder. Roank: Oh, you were the majority, okay. Dave: So it was ultimately your call Correct and your but the the deal clicked, checked all the boxes and and were your investors disappointed that they were going to lose their cash flowing business. Roank: No, they were very pleased with the cash they got all up front. They were fine. That is great. Coincidentally, I did this math when we were doing the sale. I think that the net result of it was the same. Dave: IRR or plus or minus one within 1% of the IRR. Roank: That was in the financial presentation for the business itself. Really, yeah, very unexpected. Yeah, again, nothing more than a coincidence yeah what do you, what do you enjoy most? enjoy the most about the business is building and growing things. What I have realized is that is not sufficient to be a great leader. Right, there's building and growing things. A great leader right, there's building and growing things. But there's also all the other things that a leader should gain and find value in a business that I'm just not personally built to enjoy nearly as much. Right, I enjoy growing the skillset for the people that work for me. I enjoy seeing them be successful, but I don't think I enjoy it as much as I really should, or that a leader really should. In many ways, I think what I've discovered is I almost enjoy being an individual contributor more than. I enjoy being a leader and in in many ways, that's why I enjoy being at such a small company. Right, yeah, here the leadership I have to do is very direct. It's in the office, with people that are no more than 15 feet away from me right now. It's a very old style of working. You, you know, I have one remote employee and thank God she is very self-directed and capable and intelligent and proactive about reaching out to me, because otherwise she would be really disappointed and I would suck at that job. And so when we talk about you know what do we like about the job? I enjoy the improving of things. I enjoy the new thing to be done. That is not as much of it's not that much of running a business as you would want it to be. Sure, it's not like about a small business, though are just the variety of stuff I get to do I wear slightly fewer hats now than I did before the acquisition, but I was the CFO. I was, unfortunately, the lead IT guy, even though portions of these functions were outsourced as well. I sold all the metals. Having never sold a pound of metal in my life prior to levitated metals, I sold all the amount and then I was the president. I was the lead on any plant improvement projects of great size that we had again support throughout the organization on all these little pieces. But that's a lot of little hats to wear okay, okay. That a bigger company would have a head underneath every one of those hats. Sure, so I enjoy being able to do the breadth of those activities. I think it's rare that people can do the breadth of those activities. You and I talk about ICDIS stuff all the time and I would wager at a level that maybe less than five company owners that you interact with are able to discuss the situation. Is that probably correct, or am I? I think it's probably less than three yeah. Dave: And I can't think of who the other two are, so you might be in a class of your own. Roank: Yeah, I enjoy that thing right when I think about things that I would have been in a different life. Perhaps tax accountant could be one of those. But man, this is a very different life than tax accountant. Dave: Yeah for sure I think you made the right call. Well, as we're kind of rounding the home stretch, I've just got a few more questions. One is when you were leaving Intel, if you had a time machine, or maybe right after you left Intel and you had a time machine that you could go back and have a conversation with the younger Ronak 20 years ago, what might you have told yourself? What advice might you have had? Roank: or wisdom that you might've wanted to share. I don't think I would've shared anything. Dave: No, wouldn't want to, but I would've wanted that. Roank: With the exception my wife's death, there is not a single thing that I would have changed that is a you're. Dave: I asked that question on my guest and you're probably the only one who's ever answered it that way. Roank: So I would say, yeah, what type of things do people say? Oh, you know the number one, because I'm not just saying that because I don't want to watch other podcasts, I just yeah, well, no, I can give give you the rundown. Dave: The most common answer is they wish they would have taken a risk sooner. They wish they would have started their company sooner. They wish they'd been more willing to take a chance. Now, granted, many of my guests are self-made first-generation entrepreneurs like you know, are, you know, self-made first generation entrepreneurs like you are meaning? You know they formed the company, but some of them may have worked at other companies. In hindsight they realize, oh, I should have done this five years sooner, you know it. Just, it would have only been better if I'd done it five years. That's kind of. The most common answer is just, they wish they'd played it less safe. You know, they wish they'd taken, you know, more risks in college. They wish they. That's kind of the most. But that one is consistent with what most people say near the end of their life they don't regret the things they did, they regret the things they didn't do. So that tends to be the answer. But that, to me, is a really good. That's a really good answer for somebody who's pretty content with where their life is. Roank: Yeah, other than you know your wife, obviously, and I see what everybody else describes, but I feel that everything I did, I was learning something that became foundationally valuable. Dave: Yeah. Roank: You know there was a period of time I got laid off from Schnitzer in early 2009. And I didn't start up at Alter Trading until, you know, about a year later. But I did some consulting in the middle for a wonderful company, Steel Pacific Recycling in Vancouver Island, Victoria, British Columbia, and I was there for three months and it was a magical time because we were there in the wintertime. The whole family moved up. My kids were very young. We had an apartment right in Victoria. I rode a bicycle to work to the scrapyard. But I did a bunch of really interesting financial cost accounting structure set up that helped them understand their business better and those were super useful skills when I had to do a chart of accounts setup for levitated metals. We were able to slice and dice our financials. You know extremely well and I don't know if I would have used an erp system nearly as well as I do here had I not had all those little formative experience things in the end I think for me at least. I don't feel like I had a lot of wasted years throughout any of that time I learned steve jobs, as you say. Dave: Steve jobs has the saying that you can only connect the dots when you look backwards, that at the time you can't. It's not like you had some grand plan, I'm guessing you know when you left intel. It just you know. Because steve talks about. He took this calligraphy class that he audited in college and, uh, you know, and that influenced everything at apple design and fonts and and other stuff that it only makes sense looking back so that's. Roank: That's interesting. Yeah, I can. I can see that, and it is hard to connect the dots until yeah until you look back so. Dave: So here's kind of a fun one. I think you've been a like me, you're a. Well, I consider myself a naturalized texan. My wife's a native texan, so, uh, you know, if you you know. So you're also a non-native texan, but I think you've been here long enough for this question. Tex-mex or barbecue. Roank: Barbecue makes me fall asleep. I'm not saying Tex-Mex, I've always loved Tex-Mex. So yeah, we've got some great barbecue. Actually, right near the plant Rusty Buckle is some great barbecue. Near my house is Corkscrew, which just got a Michelin star, which. Dave: Oh nice. Roank: Yeah, which I still struggle to understand how that all plays out. But Texas I guess you get a star. But I love me some Lupe Torquillo yeah yeah, I am with you. Dave: Well, is there anything I didn't ask you or we didn't talk about that you wish we had or we should have? Roank: No, but I'll do you a favor and I'll plug a little bit the IC disc. I know that's not the goal of this podcast, but it is why we know each other. Yeah, so I'll tell this story if I may. Yeah, absolutely, the IC disc and levitated metals. Yeah absolutely, yeah, absolutely, disc and levitated metals. So I called you on my birthday, three months before I, a little bit before I sold the company, and I had talked to you many times previous to that about setting up an icy disc. We, like many scrap companies, are well suited to the icyDIS because the profile of our sales are high margin exports and lower margin domestic sales, and the value of, as a pass-through entity, being able to translate ordinary income into dividend income, has great benefits to the investors of a company. I think there's probably some advantages, even if you're a C-corp, but you can detail that kind of At most. I think there's probably some advantages, even if you're a C-corp, but you can detail that kind of stuff out. I don't really know. Dave: Sure. What was? Roank: interesting when we talked about it is I was in the process of selling the company and when you sell a company that's done a bunch of bonus depreciation because it built a big factory, there's always depreciation recapture that shows up as ordinary income at the time of the sale and so whatever normal ordinary income there would have been that year it was going to be much, much higher because we would have clawed back a ton of depreciation. I put a recapture on depreciation. It's ordinary income. We, like many scrap companies again, have an IC discable kind of amount of headroom of income translation from ordinary income to dividend income Well in excess of the ordinary income we normally make in any particular year, and so, like most scrap companies, there should be no reason to pay ordinary income tax. Dave: Right. Roank: Again, most scrap companies that are Nazi corpse or whatever. But in the year of the sale, all that extra headroom suddenly became valuable because I was going to have this abnormal ordinary income from the depreciation recapture, and so what would have been X million dollars of ordinary income that would have turned to dividend income wound up being something like 2.5, x, yeah, all of which I was able to use because I had so much ordinary income, yeah. And your shareholders as well. Yes, absolutely yes, I and my shareholders. And that was phenomenal. And then on top of it, I think I got to. The ICDIS lets you defer some of that dividend income into the following year. So just sat there in our bank accounts making 5% or whatever we chose to do with that money for another year more than a year, excuse me. Just truly phenomenal. The impact of the ICDIS in my space. Not an easy thing to kind of think through. You and I were just spitballing stuff. We popped it up as an option. You had to go back and think about it, but it looks like it works. And I don't know if you have done it before. Dave: No, yeah, it was just such a unique fact and it was mostly because of how new the business was. Right, if the business had been open for 10 years, we would have started the IC desk probably in year four or five it was coming, and then you would have been using it and then you would have had that transaction, the depreciation recapture, and it would have given you a bigger benefit. It would have happened anyway. It was just your circumstances were so unique is how it all fell out, and I doubt we'll ever see that. That circumstances, because it's so rare to start a business and sell it so quickly, you know I think the takeaway of it is the one. Roank: So one of the takeaways I have from this is I should have started the ICS earlier, because of the bonus depreciation as a startup of the company and the complete depreciation of the entire factory. In the first year, I and investors had a ton of NOL and net operating losses that were just going to take a while to turn into a cumulative net gain and before that happened we sold the company. I was planning on doing an IC disc in 2024, I think was my expected timeline, which is when we would have clicked over to a game and then suddenly there would have been income that I wanted to translate over into dividend income. But I really should have just done it before into dividend income but I really should have just done it before. Dave: So the question I should have asked you was if you could go back in time two years and do anything different. Give any advice to yourself. What would it have been? I mean, it's a joke, right? You would have said start the ICDISC sooner. Roank: The real advice I would have given would have been understand how your NOLs work so that you can do a donor advice fund for the ordinary income you thought you were going to. But outside of that, in truth it's a minor esoteric thing that doesn't really matter. Dave: And so, since you brought it up I rarely talk about this. Since you brought it up, just a couple quick questions. One, because the cpa firm you use actually has some icdisk expertise and you know you could have used them. So do you recall what aspect of our I remind you. Roank: Yeah, because you're, I see this guy. Okay, and the thing that I was talking about felt esoteric enough that I didn't want to click just on a cheap bastard. I didn't want to click over, you know. CPA for billable hours while they tried to figure it out and roll me in a show or something like that. That's not how I want to play now, but the truth is I just needed something done quick and fast because every day that I waited to do the icy disc was another day of revenues that I couldn't utilize. And the second reason is, you know there's a time there's time it takes to create an icy disc and set it up and all that kind of stuff. You have that down to a science and had a method to kind of quickly get me rolling on it. While you and I both know you made a bunch of money on that transaction for a couple of years of work on it, it was completely worth it to me and a very satisfying business and personal relationship that tested both of our intellectual capabilities to kind of put together and work on. I enjoyed doing it right, like when we talk about what we enjoy and work. Dave: Yeah, that was a fun thing it was, yeah, no, it was for me too, because so yeah, so few of my clients, you know, know, have that much interest, you know, getting into the weeds there, and it caused me to think of some things I hadn't thought about in this. And again, since you brought it up, in the experience, you know, the team was the responsiveness Good, I mean, was the? Is the experience been positive? Oh yeah, it's been great, yeah what about coordinating with your CPA firm, because sometimes a CPA firm who has an ICDIS practice will sometimes say things like yeah, but it'll be more seamless if it's all under one umbrella right. Umbrella right, I mean, it's the. Did you get the sense that? That it created a lot of of extra work by the cpa firm, or that balls got dropped because you didn't have one entity doing it all? Roank: I don't think I got that sense, because the cpa firm is made up of multiple people too. That, oh, it's a good point, right? I mean, it's not like the ICDISC person is the CPA that you're working with, right? Dave: You know, I hadn't thought about that, and you're right, and there's some level of communication that is required regardless. Roank: Yeah, and that. Dave: IC-DISC practice, if I recall, for that particular firm. I think it's out of a different office. Roank: Anyway, I don't think, even if they were next to each other right which are of course not next to each other because they all work remote Even if they were next to each other, still two people having to talk, and so there's still coordination that has to happen, and you know what you're talking about. In the end. There is enough esoterica on optimizing the ICDISC usage, that especially trying to maximize the ICDISC capability that I don't think others really understand and not all of them need to understand it. But what I mean by that is for many companies they can just use the stupid simple approach for doing ICDISC and it'll still let them translate all the income they have right. In my particular case, it was important to look at the transaction by transaction optimization capability of the ICDISC in order to fully utilize and maximize the amount of income I could translate to dividend income. I use shared logic as my ERP system. There is literally an ICDISC button that creates the report that you care about. Dave: Right, and so that's one of the benefits of not to interrupt you, but people ask me because, like my, our IC disc business is almost impossible to sell. In fact your CPA firm even talked to me a few years ago about buying the ICDIS practice. The problem is we're not very sellable. We have a huge, we have a concentration risk because it's all tied to one part of the tax code. So they wanted to discount that, or they would have wanted if the conversation on that far. And the second problem is I'm a craftsman, I have the primary relationship with all of the clients. So they would have made me stay around for three or five years and I'm like you know and it would have been tied to some kind of an earn out because they're going to say well, what if the IC just goes away next year? You know we want you to basically keep some of that risk. So I don't know what got me off on this tangent of that risk. Roank: So I don't know what got me off on this tangent. I hear you, and I've thought about that question on your behalf as well, because from my perspective I think your job is kind of interesting and fun. Right, you get to visit a lot of different scrap yards, talk to a bunch of different scrap dudes about a thing you're very knowledgeable about that you know really could trans dramatically improve their financial position, and yet it's still a tough sell. Right, it should be like selling. You know it's not like selling ice cream to eskimos, and yet sometimes it probably feels that way. It is that way, yeah, yeah, and also the question of how to. Because you have a couple of people, I think that work for you, right, at least? Dave: one, yeah, yeah, there's a whole team, yeah. Roank: And so, yes, if IC-DISC went away, it would be I don't know what else you guys do, but pretty close to the end of the company and that's a rough gig. And you know, the low-grade communist in me certainly is shocked, shocked by all the awesome and incredible tax code optimization tools that exist for business owners tools that exist for business owners. Dave: I mean between the IC-DISC, new market tax credits opportunity zones right Bonus appreciation just it's Cost segregation, research-. Roank: Absolutely phenomenal, right, I am now a W2 employee like a putz, you know it's just phenomenal. But if that went away then, yeah, this does die. It's a really difficult thing to try to sell, right. It's the type of thing that, I don't know, if you can't keep some level of skin in the game or risk on it. It feels like the type of thing that if you have the right person in the organization that could be the face, should be kind of employee acquired in some capacity. Dave: Well, and that opportunity exists Some of my partners, I mean I have a standing offer to basically sell my part of the business and in many ways are you familiar with the inside. Roank: I am the. Dave: There's a deep dive of tax yeah, yeah, the structure for us I've already looked at it just doesn't. It doesn't really, it's not not the right fit, but yeah, I thought this thing. You know the funny thing about the disc it's been around since 1972, but it's been quote going, going away since 1973. So I've been doing this 20 years, and I thought I might have five years before this went away or there was a change. But the key, though, is that and that's true the concentration risk is there, but on the flip side, there's also a premium. You get a specialization premium that comes along with it. It's the reason if you look at a lawyer, the more specialized they are, the higher their billing rate, and so there's a premium that comes with that specialization. I know what I was going to say, and then I doubled down further where we have a concentration of risk within the scrap metal industry. But the benefit of that, though, is that when I show up to a scrap metal conference, I'm the only one there talking about IC disc, and I'm the one that well, a scrap guy introduced us. I mean, in fact, I won't mention him by name, but I call him my best unpaid salesman. He's referred as multiple clients. For a variety of reasons, they don't use us, but he's still a big fan of uh, of the work we do. So, yeah, and then the. Finally, there's this concept that has not caught on with a lot of americans. But there's this concept of saving Like you don't have to spend all your income in any given year, so there is this concept of you can make money, put it away and then, if the business goes away, you have this thing called like a nest egg, or you know. So People should think about it, yeah, but yeah my clients, my clients who I have a relationship with, that's. Oftentimes they'll ask me hey, dave, I'm a little worried about you, like as a friend, what happens if the IC disc goes away and I'm like I'll just spend more time there? That's what will happen. Roank: If it makes you feel better, I don't worry about you. I just think it's a very interesting company sale situation. I just think it's a very interesting company sale situation. Yeah, and you know, when you look at the environment today, you could be a tweet away from getting doged. Yeah, yeah, exactly yeah. So one of the you know, keep your head down and stay quiet, kind of things which appears to be the standard business approach to today's situation. Dave: It does seem to be. Roank: Well, hey Ronak. Dave: I can't believe how fast the time has floated. This has been a blast. I really appreciate it and I hope you have a great afternoon. Thank you, it's good to talk to you. Special Guest: Ronak Shah.

Outlook 2025-07-14 - Asking Questions & Stoking Curiosity With Theatre Professor H. Mayhem May

Outlook on Radio Western

Play Episode Listen Later Aug 3, 2025 58:04

K: “Community is so important. To knowing you're not alone and then showing up for each other. H: 100 percent. K: even when a situation is scary and people are thinking about their own situations of course but also thinking about their loved ones and their neighbours. H: We will only survive this with community. We will only survive this together. We will only survive this by showing up for each other. That is our only way out. This is an exchange between sister/co-host Kerry and friend and returning guest Professor H Mayhem May on this week's show. We're continuing the celebrating of PRIDE on Outlook this week, as we did almost exactly to the day (three years ago) when May was on with us that first time to share about their short film, “Finding Tiresias”, an inclusively designed experimental piece about identity and diversity and change. Ozzy Osbourne, legendary rock performer died since having H May on this time. In his band's song “Changes” he sings: “I'm going through changes”. This is the theme of our second discussion, live in studio, with H from just across the border in The Finger Lakes region of New York State. Canada and the States both celebrate birthdays during the month of July along with Pride and Disability Pride, just within a few days of one another, as we're right next to each other. We're illustrating the need to recognise that closeness and connection and that need to keep connections between us strong in the face of so much chaos and adversity, both as neighbouring countries and in overlapping communities. So we're talking interconnection, intersectionality, and interdependence along with examples of loss and grief and accepting of changes as H considers a guide dog for continued outdoor adventures, keeping up blindness skills in an ocularcentric world since being in community with us and others at a Drama Club Camp week in Maine, and in the expanding possibilities developing the ideas from last year's Maine gathering into a future inclusive and representative theatrical statement with Dr. May's growing lived experience and directing stage knowledge and expertise at its heart. For more on our friend and ally Professor H May, visit their website and learn more about “Finding Tiresias” and other projects and perspectives: https://www.drheathermay.com Check out last summer's Maine experience on the two-parter episode we put together featuring our week in community with H and others: https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/outlook-2024-10-14-our-week-in-maine-well-figure-it-out-pt-1/id1527876739?i=1000673780980 https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/outlook-2024-10-21-our-week-in-maine-well-figure-it-out-pt-2/id1527876739?i=1000675516532 And go back 3 years to hear H's first appearance on the show: https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/outlook-2022-07-11-awaiting-tiresias-with-professor/id1527876739?i=1000569782476

canada pride theater states maine curiosity outlook mayhem new york state ozzy osbourne finger lakes stoking professor h

Town Hall Meetings in Rural New York

Hudson Mohawk Magazine

Play Episode Listen Later Aug 1, 2025 9:22

What form do politics take in rural spaces? Spencer, New York is a small town of seven hundred, in the Finger Lakes region. Town Supervisor Allen Fulkerson provides insight on the political dynamics of this community. Reported by Grace Zahm.

new york rural reported finger lakes town hall meetings

Exploring Geneva

united states american science guardian sciences blue sky advancement new york state american association national academy cutting edge r d national science foundation federal reserve bank finger lakes credits produced tom butler get your tickets here field reports

Play Episode Listen Later Jul 31, 2025 51:15

We continue our summer series highlighting communities across the Finger Lakes region. Seneca Lake is the deepest of the Finger Lakes and one of the most well-known, both for its natural features and for the communities along its shores. And at its northern tip: Geneva. Geneva has deep Indigenous and agricultural roots, a complex history, and a diverse range of identities today. It's been called the “Lake Trout Capital of the World,” and is also known for its arts scene, culinary offerings, and sustainability efforts.Our guests: Susie Monaghan, executive director of Smith Center for the Arts Jan Regan, photographer, board member of Geneva Industrial Development Agency and president of ReUse Systems, Inc. Steve Valentino, mayor of Geneva Jessica VanDeMar, marketing director for Visit Finger Lakes

world indigenous finger lakes smith center seneca lake steve valentino

Field reports from the cutting edge of science

Outside/In

Play Episode Listen Later Jul 30, 2025 30:53

It's a weird time to be an environmental scientist. The proposed cuts to federal science funding in the United States are profound, and if they come to pass, it's not clear what American science will look like on the other side. But for many researchers, science is much more than a career: it's a community, lifestyle, and sometimes even a family business. Outside/In producer Justine Paradis tagged along with researchers in the field to learn what it's like to be a scientist right now. We visit one of the oldest atmospheric monitoring stations in the country, and venture onto the Finger Lakes with an ad-hoc group of researchers struggling to understand an emerging threat to water quality: harmful algal blooms.This is a glimpse of the people behind the headlines, navigating questions both personal and professional, and trying to find ways to continue their work, even as much of their funding is simultaneously collapsing around them. Featuring Bob Howarth, Joshua Thienpont, Irena Creed, Nico Trick, Anita Dedić, and Tom Butler, with appearances from Roxanne Marino, Renee Santoro, and Garreth Smith. SUPPORTTo share your questions and feedback with Outside/In, call the show's hotline and leave us a voicemail. The number is 1-844-GO-OTTER. No question is too serious or too silly.Outside/In is made possible with listener support. Click here to become a sustaining member of Outside/In. Subscribe to our newsletter (it's free!).Follow Outside/In on Instagram and BlueSky, or join our private discussion group on Facebook. LINKSNY67, one of the oldest atmospheric monitoring stations in the U.S., was established by Gene Likens, who helped discover acid rain in the 1960s (The Guardian). More on the cuts to the National Science Foundation from The Guardian. It references a Federal Reserve Bank analysis, finding that for every dollar spent on R&D by the major federal agencies, there's been a return to U.S. taxpayers of $1.50-$3.00—in other words, 150-300%.The American Association for the Advancement of Science has been tracking the federal science budget for decades, and publishes an ongoing analysis breaking down the proposed cuts.A map tracking harmful algal blooms in New York State. In the early 2000s, some wondered if seeding the ocean with iron could be a climate solution. They hoped that the iron would trigger the growth of marine phytoplankton and sequester carbon in the ocean. But when Charlie Trick and his colleagues studied it, they learned it had unintended consequences: it triggered the growth of highly toxic algal blooms.A paper on the rise of ammonia, using data from the National Atmospheric Deposition Program and co-authored by Tom Butler.A letter condemning the proposed cuts to science in FY26, signed by more than 1200 members of the National Academy of Sciences. CREDITS Produced by Justine Paradis. For full credits and transcript, visit outsideinradio.org. WIN A NEW CAR OR 25K IN CASH DURING NHPR'S SUMMER RAFFLE! GET YOUR TICKETS HERE.

MLB Trade Deadline and NASCAR Returns to The Glen .::. Fresh Takes 7/30/25

Fresh Takes with Russo & Felice presented by FingerLakes1.com

Play Episode Listen Later Jul 30, 2025 45:40

The MLB stove is getting hot with the trade deadline at the doorstep. Nick Felice and Paul Russo discuss the latest as teams look to buy and sell. NASCAR makes its annual trip to the Finger Lakes next week. The guys preview the race weekend at Watkins Glen.

mlb nascar mlb trade deadline finger lakes watkins glen fresh takes paul russo

Hiking for Love: Part 2

Steamy Stories Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Jul 27, 2025

Mountain Chemistry.by T. Foxal. Listen to the ► Podcast at Connected.Chapter 9.With the sun dipping behind the mountains, the air was changing. It had to be around 50 now, and it would probably get a bit colder. We walked back to the campsite. Carrie had to use the restroom, so I went with her, and also took care of business. Once back at the site, she went inside a put on a sweatshirt. I did as well, after she reappeared from the tent.We then sat around the fire ring. I'm sure I must be a bore to her. But she too, is kind of quiet. We did talk more about life, and things we had done. I found out she loves to ski, both snow and water. She even likes to fish, and can bait her own hook. She told me that she hasn't dated since moving here, and it's been four years since she dated anyone, since that guy who couldn't handle her mom and her being part black."Carrie. Where do you see yourself in 5 years?" I asked. She giggled, "That's a real deep question coming from a Jarhead.” I gently shoved her a little. "Really. I have no idea. I'd like to meet a nice guy and settle down and hopefully grow old with him, and help Jenny any way I can, especially if it involves grandkids. But who knows. I am pretty picky. I settled once, and I won't do that again. What about you?""I'm kind of like you and don't know. I don't go out much, and I'm not a bar person. Plus, I don't think you can meet a quality person in a bar. I'd like to meet someone special and see where it goes. It'd be great if I could meet that one I could grow old with, but those prospects look kind of bleak. I mean my sister, Ann, has tried setting me up with her friends, but I hate those dates. I only do it to make her happy, and to quit bugging me. But who knows."It was very dark now and I told her to look up and look at the stars that seemed like they were closer than ever before, to us. "God. It is so amazing up here. Had I been by myself, I would probably scared shitless about now. But being with you, makes me feel safe, and the company has been quite good."I started banking off the fire, so it would go out in a little while. I suggested going back to the bathrooms and changing into sleepwear. She agreed. As we walked down, she grabbed my hand, which was quite warm, and felt so good in mine. She was making it very hard to act like a gentleman. I wanted to just scoop her up, and take her to the tent and make love to her all night.After changing, I came back out, in just my marine shorts and a t. She emerged a few minutes later, with that new flannel she bought the day before. The shirt was cut like a dress shirt. Tails in the front and back and scoop up on the sides. though I couldn't really see all that well. We had to look a sight though, we both had on our hiking boots. Not the sexist combination, that's for sure.She laughed as we started back to the cabin. "Bet we make a sight, the way we are dressed. The boots really set us off.", then laughed again, and so did I.Once in the tent, the only light we had was from the flashlight I had on. But boy, did she look sexy as hell kneeling there, unzipping her bag. I also noticed she had the top 3 buttons undone again, like she did last night. "She's killing me" I thought. She was rubbing her arms, like she was cold. Granted it was chilly out now, but once in those sleeping bags, it would be fine. We both had the same type, except for color. Her's was blue and mine was black."You know", she stated, "It might better serve us if we put our bags together and made it one big bag. Our body heat will help keep us warmer." I wanted to chuckle at that, but thought better of it. "Sure. If you feel that would be better." She didn't hesitate. She opened them both up and then zipped mine to hers. She had me get in first, so the zipper would be on her side. I guess in case she needed to escape from me.We were both laying on our back's, and I was just closing my eyes when Carrie spoke softly."Mark?, do you think we'll be bothered by bears tonight?""No. We put our food up and away from them and nothing is in the tent with us, so we should be fine. And, if feel the need to use the head, please wake me, so I can go with you."She grabbed my hand and squeezed it. “okay. I will, but I probably won't need it until morning."I started closing my eyes again, but also felt that she did not release my hand. That made me feel good, actually. A minute later, she said, "Mark?" softly. "Yes" I answered."Remember out on that rock, after we kissed?" "Yes. I do remember." I said. she sighed, then said, "Remember you said if you got the chance again, you would like to kiss me again.""Yes. I do remember, and I meant that. I hope I didn't offend you." She giggled, "You Jarheads are pretty thick aren't you. Will please just kiss me, and mean it too."I turned towards her. She let go of my one hand, then grabbed the other, as I leaned in and touched her lips with mine. As our lips touched, her mouth open and so mine also and our tongues met. The longer our kiss continued, the hotter it became. "My God. This woman can kiss"Our tongues now explored each other, our eyes open to each other, looking into each other's souls. Her hand then took mine and brought up to her chest, then under her shirt, and placed my hand on her one tit. Her nipple was like a rock, and her tit, small yet filled my hand. I started to massage it as we continued kissing. She took her hand then, put it around my neck, as she rolled to her side and pulled me in closer to her.She moaned in my mouth as I lightly pinched her nipple. So many thoughts moved in my head then. All the things I wanted to do with her right now, but, I wanted her to lead this, wherever it was going to go.We continued kissing, and she also kept moaning more and more. I moved my hand to her other tit and massaged it as well, again, lightly pinching her nipple. It too, was hard as a rock, and her tit seemed to get firmer, the more we made out.I pulled my hand from her tit, then reached it around her and pulled her into me. She kissed me now with a passion I have never felt from any woman. My hand was rubbing her back, and her knee slid between my legs now, so I know she could feel my hardened member against leg.When my hand slid down her back, and then over her ass, she moaned loudly into my mouth. I couldn't resist, and moved it so it would go under her shirt until it felt her naked ass cheek. I lay there caressing this beautiful ass of her's and her moans grew louder still. She somehow got both her arms around my neck, and I was hoping it wasn't too uncomfortable for her.Our lips have yet to part, but neither of us cared at this point. We both knew in short time, we'd have full carnal knowledge of each other. He hand then came down my chest, as I moved slightly, to give her access. She snaked her hand under my shirt and was rubbing my chest and nipples now. I too was moaning into her mouth. How could I not. This beautiful woman was making love to me. It was so sensual, and sweet. My hand was now exploring both cheeks and now started toward her crack. "God. will she freak if I go further than this?" I thought.But, her hand made its way down my belly, then went under the waist band of my shorts, where she lightly grabbed my hard cock. "Oh God." I moaned into her mouth. She lifted her one leg, which now gave me access to her sex. My fingers found their way to her moist thong, and gently moved it to the side. I started rubbing her labia, which was coated already soaked with her fluids of delight.She broke the kiss, and softly said, "yes. make love to me Mark." Her hand was now stroking my cock gently, yet with a firm grip. Every time she would come up to the tip, her finger would play with the head and smear my pre-cum all over. My finger was gently massaging inside her, which was driving her crazy.I started teasing her some. Slipping my finger in, then pull out and rub her clit, which was quite pronounced. God I would love to see that right now. I love eating a woman, but right now, I don't think that is in the cards at this point. She kept darting her tongue into my mouth, with each entry of her cunt. I loved hearing her moan, as I did this.I now inserted my finger again, but this time deeper, and took my thumb and rubbed her clit. When my finger found that rough patch of her g-spot, I concentrated solely on that.Then her body tensed up, "Oh God, Mark. Oh God" and she started cumming for me. She couldn't kiss now, as her orgasm took over her body. I could feel her body tremble, and I know it wasn't because she was cold. We were both hot now.I held as she kept cumming, then as she started to relax, she removed her hand from my member and then tried to push my shorts down."Mark. I need you inside me. Make love to me. Please"I got to my knees and removed my shorts. I then unbuttoned her shirt, and opened it. I left it on her, so she was protected from cold on her arms. I unzipped the bag, to give us more room to move and got between her legs. I carefully then started to remove her thong, and when I had it off, started kissing up her leg. When I got to her thigh, she said to do that later. Please get inside me. I can't wait anymore."Are you sure Carrie? I mean we are definitely crossing a line here that I have never crossed before."She smiled up at me "Yes. Please. Yes"I already knew she was extremely wet from her orgasm, just minutes before. I line up my ridged member to hew slippery sex and gently pushed in. In unison, we both said, "Oh God.” With good reason too. Her cunt was so hot, so wet and yet felt velvety soft as it engulfed my cock."Go slow Mark. It has been 4 years since I have done this. Oh My God, you feel so good."I slowly, and I mean slowly, inched my 6 1/2 inches into her. I am not a big man, by porn standards, but pretty thick and can usually last a long time, but right now, I could feel I could cum in no time flat. Once I was in all the way, I stopped and rested. I could feel her cunt muscles contract all around my cock, like it was milking it. I was still kneeling, keeping my weight from on top of her, but my hands were on the ground, next to her shoulders. Her hands were gripping my forearms tightly.I pulled back slowly, then forward again slowly, thinking of anything I could to stave off my impending orgasm. She was moaning and cooing, as I did this. "Faster Babe" she said."Sweetie. If I go faster, I am going to cum quickly. It's been a long time for me too.""Don't worry about that. I want your cum. I need you to cum"I leaned my head down and took her one tit into my mouth. I could suck the whole tit inside. Then, while sucking, pulled back to suck only her nipple."Oh God Mark Yes" is all she said. Then I did the other. In my mind, her tits were perfect, and her nipples were divine, and so sensitive to the ministrations I was performing.Her arms came around my head and pulled me tighter to her tit, then her legs came up around my waist and she called out, "Aw God" and started cumming, yet again.That did it for me. I couldn't stave this off any longer and grunted, "God", and started pumping rope after rope of cum, deep inside her. My mouth left her nipple and found her lips, as we tried to kiss as we rode our orgasms out, but all either of us could do was touch lips and moan. I then had to concentrate on keeping my weight off of her. I'd be too heavy for her, since no bed was under us.After a good minute of heavy panting, I somehow got my arms around her neck, grab firmly and rolled us over, so she was on top now. Surprisingly, I did not lose my erection, and was still inside her. She giggled when I did this. "Good Job Jarhead"We started kissing again, but this time I had free reign to her ass. My hands immediately went there. Gently squeezing her round cheeks, then massaging them. She was laying on me as I started to pump in and out of her again. She would moan into my mouth with each penetration I delivered. Her cunt fit to me like an expensive glove. My one hand did leave her ass to find the top flap of the bag and pulled it over us, keeping our body heat inside."Oh God Mark, you feel so good" she whispered in my ear."Oh Carrie, you have no idea how you feel to me. Incredible. Just Incredible. You are beyond beautiful and sexy my Dear"As we continued to make love, she pushed up some, revealing her tits to me again, which I took advantage of and began sucking them both again. This I am finding out, is a huge turn on for her. Her moans were soft, yet reassuring, that I had her where she wanted to be.I started picking up the pace. I didn't want her to work at all, trying to keep any pressure off of her ankle, which I was trying to be mindful of. We were still going at it for now almost ten minutes when she pulled my head into her chest, harder, and moaned out, "Christ Yes. Oh Mark: and started cumming again.Her whole body began to quiver and shake. This then set me off again, and all I could do was grunt loud, and started cumming again. Once I was done shooting deep inside her. my body felt like it did, when we had to do 10 mile run's, in the service. I was totally spent, as she was.She put her arms around my neck, loosely, and her head on my shoulder, and all I wanted to do, was lay there and listen to her breath. All I could think of was how she is a woman that I have never known before. A woman who could make you forget everything going on in life, except for her. I have never felt like this before. All past lovers, including the one I lived with, never had me feeling like this. It was strictly sex, for the sake of sex. Once I came a few times, I was done. I would either then leave, or roll over and go to sleep, like I did with my former girlfriend. But Carrie, I did not want to let go of. We lay in there for another 10 minutes. Neither saying anything. My hand would lightly rub her back, and she would just coo.After those ten minutes, she rolled off, and onto her back. My whole groin area was soaked with our combined juices, and it felt great. I did reach over to my pack and fished out the toilet paper. I know most women don't like the feel of cum draining from them, and I am pretty sure Carrie would feel the same. I ripped a good portion off and leaned over and began wiping it up from her cunt."You are a Sweetie, aren't you? But here, let me get that." After she did herself better, she took some more from the roll and cleaned my groin area, then threw the tissue's to the corner of the tent. I then kissed her lightly on the lips and thanked her.We didn't say a word to each other. I didn't for fear of what I may say. I am having very strong feelings for her, but if I said that, she'd probably freak out, or something. When she nestled her hand in mine, I knew she was good with what just took place. Love making twice, and by me. Not the normal fuck, like I was accustomed too. This had feelings involved and meaning.It must have been a good ten minutes of lying there. I really thought she was starting to sleep. I figured we could discuss this in the morning, if at all. Then, as I slowly started to close my eyes, she spoke."Mark. You awake?" I had to smile at that one." Like really? you really think I could sleep after what we just experienced?" I thought to myself."Oh yeah." I said. "Me too" she said, then giggled. "What we just experienced is beyond words for me right now. No man has been that selfless in bed with me. It was fantastic for me and I have a lot of feelings running wild right now. But, if this was a one-time thing, then so be it. It was fantastic and I will cherish it. But if it is more, then we'll deal with that, if you want too. I guess I'll know in the morning, after you can process it and sleep on it, just like I will."I started to say something, but she just put a finger to my lips, to hush me up. Then rolled over on her side, facing away from me. At this point, I was very unsure of what to do. Leave her alone? or cuddle up next to her and hold her against me, spooning, like real lovers would do. I chose the latter and cuddled up to her. To my surprise, she grabbed my one hand and held it softly, as her ass wiggled into me. She felt so good, molded into my body like this. "Is this how a couple really acts like?" I thought. I fell asleep a few moments later.Chapter 10.At some point in the night, I awoke, and felt that we had not moved. Her ass was still nestled against my thigh and groin, but my cock was hard. My hand was still with her's, yet it was also pressed against her one boob. God I loved her boob's. Seeing I didn't have my watch nearby, all I knew that is was oh dark thirty out, and went back to sleep.When I awoke, the sun was up. The tent felt warm inside now, but Carrie was gone. "Uh oh", I thought. My mind was reeling now. I figured she got freaked out over last night. "Well, this could be an awkward hike back down to the cabin." I got up and put on my watch, which said it was almost 8am. "Damn. I never sleep like this." I got out a pair of sweats, and a sweat top, since it was probably still chilly out. Took my kit and exited the tent. Carrie was nowhere around the area. I headed to the john, since I had to pee real bad. After relieving myself. I washed my face, then brushed my teeth, and exited the bathroom.I finally looked up towards the summit, and saw Carrie sitting on the outcrop of rocks we first kissed on. I hesitated at first, going up there, but being a true Marine, we never run from anything. Once I made the trek up the hill, she saw me. She too, had sweats on, which were navy blue, with Navy written on front of the top and pants."About time Gyrene. Plan on sleeping your life away?" All I could do is just chuckle, then looked out over the valley below. It had a nice haze, or fog enveloping the ground below, or at least it gave that appearance."Sorry. I didn't hear reveille this morning." as I smiled at her. "Well, watch it next time bucko, or if we were on a ship, you'd be up for Captain's Mast" she said then laughed.Well, at least she was in good spirits and not freaked out. "What time did you rise today? I'm kind of surprised I didn't hear you leave." I said."About an hour ago. I had to pee and got up very quietly. I tried not to disturb you. Guess I was good. By the way, you do snore, but softly. Not like my dad, who could wake the friggin dead at times."I just chuckled. I didn't know if she did too, except for the time I awoke a few hours ago, and then, she was just softly breathing. One thing I did know, after looking at her now, with no makeup on, she is one woman I could see myself waking too on a daily basis. She just has a natural beauty to her. Right now I was getting lost in her eyes. I really wanted to pick her and take her back to the tent and make love again, but that was something I wouldn't permit myself to do, until I knew exactly how she felt.She then stood up and started walking back to the campsite. I caught up to her and was walking next to her. "What's for breakfast" she asked. I just shook my head. She was acting like nothing took place last night. “okay.” I thought. "So nothing happened last night. It was a dream. Either that, or she thought it was a huge mistake and ignoring it, would make it go away." I continued in my thoughts."You have your choice, Fruit and nut power bar, or peanut butter and chocolate chip power bar." I said,"Hmm. nothing else on the menu then? Guess I'll do the peanut butter and chocolate bar. Hope the service is better than the menu."I took out a couple of bars and handed her one, plus a bottle of water. Right now, I had no idea what is going through her head. And I am too damn afraid to ask. Maybe this was a get back on me, for how I have treated others in the past. Like sex was no big deal. No emotions or feelings involved.We talked little, as I tore down camp and packed everything away. Once we geared up, we started our trek back down the mountain. It should take a lot less time to reach the cabin, since it was all downhill. I did ask how her ankle was and she said it felt good. Almost back to normal.When we came upon that lookout, that overlooked all the streams in the valley, she yelled out, "Selfie Time.” There was a mist still hanging over some of the streams, but this time, no moose were there. She took a few of her, alone, then asked me to join her. Just before she said 3, on the count of 3, I Ieaned in and kissed her on the cheek. She didn't say a word, but just put her phone away, and said "Let's go. I could use a nice hot shower."We were about a half mile from the cabin, when she finally slowed up and walked next to me. I mean I really didn't mind the view I had of her ass swaying in those sweat pants, but this felt better. She grabbed my hand and squeezed it tight."Thank you for a wonderful time. I just loved it up there." and then smiled at me. I smiled back to her, "It was a pleasure, and I too, had a wonderful time up there, especially sharing it with you."She picked up the pace, like she had to pee or something, and before too long, we were on the back porch of the cabin. I opened the door and she ran to the bathroom. While she did whatever she was doing in there, I started unpacking my backpack. I put the tent over in a corner, and took out my clothes and all the other crap I was carrying. I felt like I just crossed a 100 miles, even though it was just a couple.About 10 minutes later, she came out with a robe on. It was one of my aunt's. All pink and fluffy, like an aunt would wear. She basically marched right up to me, put her arms around my neck, and kissed me deeply. We stood and kissed for a few minutes, until she broke free and told me, "Come. Shower with me.""Whoa" I said. "What?" she asked. "What do you mean What. This whole morning you acted like nothing took place last night. I don't know about you, but that was pretty god damn special to me, then not to even acknowledge it."She looked down at the floor, like a child getting ready to be scolded, then looked back up at me. "You don't think I found that special last night? Christ Mark. I was made love too last night. I wasn't fucked. I have never orgasmed from intercourse, and you had me twice like that. It was wonderful and amazing and I loved it. It's all I thought of since I went to sleep and all day now. When you didn't press the issue at first, I thought you didn't want anything to do with me, but then I realized you were giving me space, to let me think this out. When you kissed me on the cheek for that selfie, I just knew in my heart, you want more than a roll in the sack.""I don't want a roll in the sack either. I did make love to you last night. I've never actually done that before, and it felt fantastic to me. I'm falling for you big time, and if that scares you, then walk away now. By the way, you are the first woman since the ex-girlfriend, that I didn't wear a condom."She looked me in the eye then, which looked like they were smoldering now, "Good. Let's go shower, then go to bed and make love again. Then spend the rest of the day in bed making love. But, you need to know, I too have primal urges, so a good fucking thrown in would be nice too"I chuckled then watched as she turned and walked back towards the hall leading to the bathroom. As she did, she let the robe slip off of her, exposing her naked body to me. "Holy shit", I thought. "What a sexy body." After picking my jaw off the ground, I stripped right there in like 10 seconds and caught up with her in the bathroom. She was leaning over turning the water on and getting it warm for us. I couldn't help but check her out, bent over like that, exposing her sex to me. My cock must have noticed too, because it was growing to its full potential now.Carrie turned around and gasped. "Oh My. You are even more impressive now that I see you. God. You are one sexy man."I just blushed a little. She was equally as impressive. One thing I did notice is that when she tans, she wears a thong style bikini. Her but cheeks had just a thin line above her crack and then around her waist. It barely covered her cunt and she only had a landing strip of hair above her clit. Her tits were lighter in color too. To me, she was an angel sent from heaven. "My lord Carrie, you are breathtaking to me. I have never been with such a beautiful woman before.""Come on Gyrene. We have a bed awaiting us."We did wash each other, and it was quite sensual. We paid particular attention to our private parts, in between kissing a great deal. Once done, we helped each other dry off, then damn near raced to bed.Once in bed, I pulled her on top of me and kissed her deeply. As we kissed her body kept moving back and forth across my cock, soaking it with her love juices. Somehow, she reached down and guided my aching member into her love hole."Umm, I love how you fit me so right. I want to stay here all day like this." she cooed out"Fine with me. I love you just like this. You are so beautiful."She sat up, letting me take in her beauty even more, then smiled down at me, "You know. I do love oral too. Both giving and receiving. Something to look forward too later.""Good to know. I love giving, and really don't care if I receive. But will never turn it down. But, one thing I really adore on you, besides your ass, is your beautiful tits. They turn me on big time.""God. I loved how you sucked them last night. I've always been self-conscience of them, but you, you made me feel like a woman with huge one's."I sat up and took one in my mouth, and that was all she wrote. She came like a minute later. Then came again after only a few minutes of faster penetration. She was on fire.We made love one more time that afternoon, then took a nap. After our nap, we did leave the cabin for a good dinner. Neither of us felt like cooking. After dinner, we went walking around Lake Placid again. This time holding hands, and kissing like two teenagers out on a date.As we walked along we talked about our next adventure. Which mountain we were going to try next. I really didn't care if we went at all. I'd be happy to spend the next 10 days, holed up in the cabin making love to her and shut out the rest of the world. Then she shocked me when she said,"You know, you made me wet the first time, when I caught you looking at my ass, as we climbed the mountain. Don't know why, but you did. For some reason, I felt super sexy then. Then after you kissed me on the rock, I had a small orgasm, but nothing compared to later that night or today.""I was hoping you didn't notice." I said with a laugh. "Oh, I noticed Bucko. I also caught your remarks too about the beautiful sights, when the whole time your eyes were on my ass. I notice everything JH. I just choose not to say anything. But, it did make me feel good.""Shit", is all I could say. She laughed, which I find intoxicating to hear. We then headed back to the cabin. We both changed into comfy clothes. Me in shorts, no boxers this time, and she in her one flannel again. I hope one day I can ripped that off of her and make passionate love to her.We both drank a beer and watched a little TV. Her mom called about 30 minutes into our relaxation, and she excused herself to go talk with her. I can just imagine what she is telling her. "Christ. I hope she leaves out a few parts. Last thing I need is her dad on my ass." is all I could think.Just then my phone beeped with a message. It was the picture of us kissing on the rock, Her dad sent it. Then another text right after."You piss ant fucking Jarhead. I said take care of her, not put your stinking lips on her."I was going to reply back that it wasn't my fault, but got another text."Relax Mark. You just be good to my baby girl. She needs a good man in her life, and I can't think of a better one than you, son.""I will be, and thank you." is all I wrote back to him.Carrie came out smiling at me. "Daddy gave you some shit huh?" I chuckled, "Yeah, then turned nice on me.""You're lucky, he really likes you. Just like his daughter. Tell you what. I'm ready for bed, but tonight, come share it with me."I got up and she led me to bed. Once in the bedroom, we stripped down and crawled in bed. I was already hard, just looking at her. She smiled as she lay down and slightly spread her legs. I grabbed her hurt leg, and gently brought up by my face, and kissed her ankle gently.She looked at me with a weird look on her face, "Foot Fetish?""No. Actually this is the one part of you I totally love all ready. Because of this ankle, it brought us together. Had you not been a klutz, we may never have met. And now I working hard on falling in love with the rest of you."She smiled then softly said, "Well hurry up and fall quicker, so you can catch up with me Mark. I am in love with you.Love definitely blossoms for these two lonely souls.Chapter 11.It was around 7:30 am now. I was on my side, hand propping up my head, as I watched her sleep. She is so beautiful to look at. I could see me waking every morning to her. We kind of professed a love for each other last night, but that actual phrase has yet to be spoken. It will come, I know it will, at least, from me, sometime soon. It scares me too. I have never given myself like that to anyone. Right now though, she has my heart like no other.As I lay there watching her, my mind replayed the previous evening's love making. It was slow, it was extremely passionate. It was though our bodies melted into each other the whole time. There was little foreplay. Some mindless groping of our groin area, but we were both primed and ready for intercourse. Again she orgasmed while we did it, twice, as a matter of fact. Once when she was on the bottom, and then again when she took control and being on top. And again, my mouth was drawn to her amazing tits. Large A cup, or small B cup tits, with long nipples. I love a woman with small tits. Her whole tit fits inside my mouth and I love sucking them hard as I pull away from them. She too, loves this, I have noticed and makes her orgasm.A strand of her hair lay across her angelic face, and I reached over and gently brushed it back. When I did this, she stirred, and her eyes opened. A soft smile crept across her face, then looked at me and said“Good Morning Sweetie.” I leaned in and kissed her forehead and said good morning to her too. “How did you sleep?” she grinned and said, “Very well thank you. How long have you been staring at me?”“Oh, about 15 minutes or so. I have to admit, you are a very beautiful woman when asleep.” I said in a low voice, as my hand lightly caressed her face.“Oh stop. I look a fright right now. I've seen myself when I first get up. I'm surprised you haven't run and hide yet.” she shot back.“Honestly. You are quite attractive in the morning. But if you want me to run and hide, I will.” I laughed as I said it. Carrie poked me in the shoulder, but also laughed with me, as I feigned being hurt and rolled to my back. She then slid over to me and nestled her head on my chest, as her hand rubbed my belly and chest. My arm slid to her back and gently rubbed.“Oh God” she said. “I could get used to this Mark. You make me feel so safe, and dare I say it, so loved right now. I could stay here in your arms all day.”“Mark?”,“Yes Carolyn. ““What's your middle name?”“Now that's a strange question. Anthony”“No way. Like as in Mark Anthony the Roman Ruler?” I laughed and said “Yeah. Guess my parents wanted a future ruler of the world. What's yours?”“Ann.. Carolyn Ann Reynolds.” she said. I chuckled then and told, her “You and my only cousin share a name”I then asked, “Where do you live at exactly?” She chuckled then spoke, “I don't know if I want you knowing that. You may be a stalker, or something like that.” then giggled“Actually, I live on Crawford off of Meadowbrook. Close enough to the campus, yet far enough to give Jenny space. She stays on campus, but usually comes home on weekends, unless she has a date or something else to do.”“Oh wow, Ann lives on Houston, which I believe is a few streets from you. I'm about ten minutes from you guys.”She laughed and said, “Oh great, you are going to stalk me now. Guess I better get my 9 millimeter ready.”I lightly spanked her on her bare ass. “Owe” she said, then said, ”You can stalk me anytime you want. But just so you are totally aware of this, I am a packaged deal. Jenny is part of me and my life. Granted she college age now, and hardly there, but still, is part of me. To accept me, is to accept her, and that is non-negotiable.”I kissed the top of her head, “I wouldn't want it any other way Carrie. How would you feel about dating, once we leave this place and get back to normal lives? And I mean exclusively too.”She looked up at me, her eyes were misty. Then crawled up on top of me, and slid my already hardened member inside her. “You scare me sometime Jarhead. I keep thinking you could be some Neanderthal, but in actuality, you are a very smart man, who seems very loving. So yes. I want us to date exclusively. I have totally committed to you in my mind and I expect the same from you.”She leaned down and kissed me. Although we both had morning breath, neither of us cared right now. She started to grind on me, but I stopped her. It surprised her and asked, “Is something wrong Baby? Did I do something?”“No Babe. I just have to pee and it hurts my bladder when you move like that. I really want to make love to you again. Hell, I never want to stop making love to you, but I really need to go.”She started laughing hard, and kept on laughing for a good minute. “Finished?”“Yeah. But that has to be a first. I'm here, with you so deep inside me, and you have to pee. You got to admit, that is funny.”She then got off of me. I looked at her and asked, “Why don't we get some breakfast, then figure out our day. Trust me though, we will include love making into it.”I got up and went and relieved myself, then brushed my teeth. When I came out, Carrie had that robe on and went to the bathroom as well. I went and put on shorts and headed to the kitchen to make breakfast.As we ate, we decided that we would take in the sights of Lake Placid. Visit the Olympic Village and stuff. Be real tourist this time. I told her of a winery near us, we could do this weekend, if she so desired. She agreed to that, as long as I gave her some time in that morning to go shopping for herself. We also made plans to hike up Mt. Colvin on Friday. Then we'd see which other mountain peak we would climb early next week.Chapter 12.During our day, we started touring the Olympic Village. We did the normal of visiting the Ice Rink, where Team USA beat the Russians in the semi-finals of the 1980 Olympics. As we visited the ice skating rink, Carrie said she always wanted to learn how to skate like the ice skaters did, but never had the chance. Not many ice rinks in all the different bases she used to live on.We then went up to the ski area and rode up on the ski lifts. The views are actually breathtaking from up there as well. Wherever we went, if her arm wasn't hooked into mine, we were holding hands, like two young lovers.That evening, we decided to eat at this one Italian place. The food was outstanding. The place was crowded too. A lot of young couples, and some, not so young. One woman Carrie had pointed out to me. She was dressed in this very short mini dress. I never paid her any attention. Which is why Carrie had to point her out.“I could never wear anything like that. Besides my ass getting cold, I'm not into showing off my wares like that. Girls these days. You should see how they dress around campus. Some should just come out naked with a big sign saying, Here I am, let's have sex.”I had to laugh at that. She was right though. Girls these days, don't cover up to much. Leave nothing to the imagination. Had she not pointed her out, I would have never noticed. My eyes were locked on Carrie though whole time. I think she did it to see my reaction, but who knows. One thing I have learned about women. They do things with a purpose for almost everything.Later that evening, after taking home a bottle of wine, and then sitting on the couch drinking a glass, she thanked me. “For what?”“When you didn't sit there with your tongue hanging out over that woman in the mini.” she remarked“Why would I. I have no interest in her, or any other woman, as a matter of fact. I have eyes for only one.”“Well. The dumbass Ex was always looking at other women. He thought he was sly, but many times I caught him doing that. He made me feel small, when he did things like that. I'm sorry too. I should have never thought that you would do that. You have more class in your pinky, than he ever had in his whole body.”I guess I could see her point. She was totally hurt by her ex, and not just the fucking around he was doing. But I do hate when people compare someone from their past, to someone they are with now. But I thought better to tell her. If it persisted, I may have too, or this relationship could be grounded before it even really gets out to sea.“I am truly sorry Mark. This was totally unfair of me to compare you to him. I will never do it again. You are 100 times the man he will ever be. I am so so sorry.” she said, then started crying.I pulled her into my arms and told her to please stop. No need to cry about it. You did not hurt me. But I also told her she is the only woman I need and the only woman I want to be with, both emotionally and physically, and the only woman I will ever undress with my eyes.She sniffled, then smiled. “Take me to bed and make love to me.”That time, she was a little more boisterous in bed. Moaning loudly, and even yelled out she was cumming. I'll admit, hearing a woman like that is a turn on. I yelled out too, when I finally came. We only did it once this evening though.The next day, we went canoeing on Lake Placid. What a great time we had too. Once we were in the water, I let her do the paddling. She turned back around and said to me, “What gives?”“Hey, you are the Squid, this is your bailiwick. I'm just a landlubber” She then proceeded to take the paddle and splash me. I got the hint and helped out after that. I had to be a smartass. It can't be all lovey dovvy between us.We did see two moose as well, as we paddled around out there. They were on the outer shore line, but not on Moose Island, where I figured the moose would be. It was a fun day for us. But both of us were pretty tired when the afternoon rolled into the evening. We cheated when it came to dinner. We got a pizza to go, and went back to the cabin.After eating, we both crashed on the couch, trying to watch a movie. I know it was past midnight when I awoke. I woke her then and guided us to bed. We didn't even strip down. I left my shorts on, and she left her flannel on.The next morning, I was up early. Not sure why either. I figured I should do some workout though. I had not done anything since last Friday, before I got up here. An hour later, Carrie joined me for coffee in the kitchen. We then got dressed and headed to Mt Colvin.Let me tell you, what a beautiful area. So many waterfalls and streams. This place is like heaven on earth. Carrie's phone got used a great deal in taking pictures. Of course, we had to do those selfie's. I do wish it was summer now. I'd love to take her behind this one waterfall, get naked and make love to her there, and I told her so. She smiled and agreed. Maybe next year she said. That put my mind at ease. This was not just a week or ten day adventure to her. She is committed.This time though, when we came down off of our hike, we drove into this one town and stopped to eat at this quaint little restaurant. Food was so good there. She was asking me about my sister and the kids. I told her how I know the kids, but don't really. Now that they are teenagers, in fact Kyle is almost 16 and Katie turns 14 a week from tomorrow. I informed her that I have to go there next Sunday for a family party for Katie. I asked if she would come.“Are you sure your sister would be okay with this?” “You're kidding right? A chance for her to meet the woman that captured my heart. Shit lady. I probably won't even get a chance to talk. She'll be so busy talking to you and getting to know you.” Carrie laughed, “okay. I'll go..”Chapter 13.The next morning we both woke up around 7. Carrie was in a frisky mood, but I begged off, stating I had a headache. I know what you are thinking, guys could care less about a headache if sex is involved. But I wasn't lying. I did have a slight one. I sometimes get them when it is going to rain. She was very understanding and rubbed my temples for a few minutes.The real reason was, is because I wanted to save myself for this evening. I was going to try and make this a very romantic night. Cook for her. Light candles in the bathroom and run her a bath, complete with a glass of wine, then leave her be while she soaked. Have candles lit in the living area and find a radio station that played soft music, and slow dancing with her. Keeping my fingers crossed there. I want her to see that I am not a Neanderthal and can be romantic. Then seduce her and do everything to her that I have wanted to do with her, mainly set her on fire with my oral skills. We have yet to do that, and it is something I have wanted to do.I already knew she was going to go shopping this morning, so I figured I would too, once she left. I planned on Filet Mignon, along with shrimp, a salad, and something I noticed at their grocery store, twice baked potatoes in their deli counter.After dressing and a small breakfast, she set out for town. She said she should be back by noon, and then, if I still wanted to, head off to that winery. Which was also part of the plan. I didn't need to get her drunk, that's for sure and was going to make sure she didn't.I waited a good 30 minutes before I left for my adventure. My first stop was Target. Thank god for Target. I found candles. Like two dozen worth of these cute little type. Then two bigger ones and holders for them, for the dinner table. Now understand, I have no idea what I am doing, since I have never done stuff like this before. I just remember my sister always saying that if you ever find that special girl, you need to romance her, not just take her to bed and have your way.I was walking past the men's grooming supplies and I thought back to something I saw with my brother in law once. We were changing to go swimming, when they rented a cabin by this lake. When he stripped down, and he was totally shaved. I looked at him and asked, “Really?” He chuckled and said “Oh Yeah. Your sister hates hair down there and getting into her mouth.”I had to laugh, but later asked Ann about that and she confirmed it, “Hell yeah I make him shave. He wants a blow job, he can at least be hairless. Hell I shave mine too. You ever get a girlfriend, she'll love you for it.” My sister is never one for holding back what she thinks.I picked up an electric razor. I'm still old school using blades and shaving cream. This razor has a trimmer too. Then I went to the clothing section and found robes. I fumbled around a bit until I found a burgundy one for her, and then one for me, same color, over in the men's section. Both were floor length. Can't wait to see her in that, then slowly remove it from her.After I left there, I noticed a shop that catered to women with bath and body stuff. Now understand, I am like a fish out of water here. Luckily, there was a kindly lady who helped me pick out, bubble bath and bath oil. It was lavender scented, which I knew she must have liked because she had a body and hand cream with that scent.Next stop was the grocer, where I picked out two very nice filets, a pound of cooked shrimp, a bag of pre-made salads, and two twice baked potatoes. I was pretty proud of myself. My ultimate plan was to finally tell her I love her and want no one else in my life. I just hoped she still felt the same. We had not spoken those words since that night we got back from camping. I hope it wasn't just the heat of the moment to her. If it was, then oh well, I'll just look like a fool, lick my wounds and move on.I got back by 10:30 or so. She wasn't home, so I put away the food and then hid everything else I bought, sans the razor. That was next on my list of things to do. That took a while, and quite honestly, looked kind of weird seeing it bald down there, but also felt good actually. After showering, I changed into a pair of Dockers I brought. Not even sure why I had them with me. I had on a nice button down shirt too. I then settled in and started reading some hunting magazine my uncle had lying about.About 12:30, Carrie came through the door. I stood up and looked at her. My jaw must have hit the floor. There stood a completely different woman, that left earlier. She had cut her hair. It was much shorted now, off of her shoulder and sculpted, with blond highlights throughout it. She look amazing.“Pick your jaw up Jarhead. I just got my hair done is all.” she said, then chuckled.“Oh My Carrie. You look absolutely amazing like this. I didn't think you could be more beautiful than what you are, but you topped it now.”“Oh stop” she said. “I just thought it was time for a change. I have a new man in my life, and he deserves something better than that old hairdo I had, since I left in the Navy. You really like huh?”I smiled at her, crossed the distance between us, and wrapped her into my arms and kissed her tenderly. “Yes. You look fantastic, and honestly, quite sexy” She then kissed me back, and very passionately. My manhood began to rise and she took notice.“Umm. I think something else likes it too. Why don't we go to bed and let me take care of that for you.” she whispered in my ear then.I put my hand under her chin and then kissed her lips lightly and said, “In due time Sexy. No offense, but I don't want a quickie from you. I want you all night tonight. Let's grab our things and head to the winery.”She had this twinkle in her eye, but then made a pouty face and said, “Oh alright. But be forewarned now, I will be waiting for this tonight, ALL Night long”, then kissed me and broke away, giggling as she moved. My mind was running rampant now. I knew from this point on, she would accept what I was going to say tonight. Unless, unless I am missing signals here.Chapter 14.We spent a very relaxing afternoon at the winery. We got to tour how it is made, plus sampled a few different types, until we found two that we really liked. Neither of us are wine snobs, like so many that were here. We just knew what we liked.They had brochures of all the wineries in New York state too. There was one that caught our eye, that was down by the Finger Lakes section, which is south of Rochester. Besides the winery itself, it had a bed and breakfast that looked quite cozy.“Now that would be a great weekend sometime. Relax and forget all of your troubles.” she said.“It does look nice. Have anyone in mind who you would like to accompany you?” I asked, with a sheepish grin.“Oh. I may have a person in mind, that I think I could share that with.” she said, then giggled and kissed me on the cheek.I don't know where the time went, but it was already after five, and I was getting antsy, to start heading back to the cabin. We decided to buy these two types of wine we really liked. One was a red, and the other white. Neither too dry or too sweet. She laughed when I bought six of each type. I said we each can have three bottles of each for our houses. She liked that idea, and then said if need be, can be a quick gift for someone at Christmas.Of course my mind is thinking, “Wow. She is thinking of Christmas with me. God I hope I don't blow this with her.”Once we got back to the cabin, it was already close to 7pm. I went out and fired up the grill, then went in and prepared the salad. She wanted to help, but I said, no, this is my night for you. So she just sat down and pulled out her book and red while I prepared it all.When I set the table, she smiled when she saw the candles in the candle holders. “Wow Jarhead, you are just full of surprises aren't you.”We then sat down and had a fabulous dinner. She loved the cooked shrimp for the appetizer, and then cooed about the filet mignon. “You know Sweetie. If I didn't know any better, I'd say you are trying to seduce me tonight. But Marines aren't like that.” then giggled. I let the comment go.After we finished, I started cleaning up. She was gung ho on helping me, but I told her wait, and then left the room. I went into the bedroom, retrieved the bath oils and bubble bath, and also the candles. I figured twelve would do. I had to save some for the living room. I started the bath water. Poured in the recommended amount of oil and soap. While the bath filled, I lit the candles. Next I went and got her robe and then came into the kitchen area.She had already started do the dishes when I tapped her on the shoulder. She turned around and said, “Christ, where did you go? I thought you got lost, or something.”“Nope. Just preparing something special for you. Here, take this and retire to the Bath, where the water is warm and inviting, just for you.”She took the robe and headed off. But was back like ten seconds later. She came up and kissed me hard and had a tear in her eye. “You amaze me Mark. I love all of this. No man has ever done this for me.” she said as she composed herself. Then she held out a white, silk pair of boxers. “While I bathe, please put these on for me. Oh, and I see you have a matching robe. I'll meet you out here soon.” then kissed me and left.I lit the candles and turned on the radio. Luckily, there was a soft rock station playing some really good slow stuff. About 20 minutes later, she arrived into the living room. I got up and met her in the middle and took her into my arms. I breathed in her aroma. God she smell delightful. She kissed me tenderly, then asked, “How?” I asked “How what?” “How did you know that was my favorite oils and such?”“I noticed your body lotion and figured you must like that. I do notice stuff you know. Even though I'm a Marine.”“Well. Just for that, you are no longer a Jarhead. You did good Mr. Roberts.”We then started swaying to the music. Now I'm no dancer, but just us holding each other moving about like I knew what I was doing, was great with me. She must have thought so too, for she moved with me. Her head on my shoulder,. Her hand around my back, while mine went around her tiny waist. She then backed away from me and grabbed the sash holding my robe together, and lightly pulled it and revealed my almost naked body, except for the white silky boxers. Her hands moved to my shoulders and gently pushed the robe off of me. Her hands then slid down my chest and rubbed gently all over.“God baby. You look so sexy right now.” she whispered to me.I now did the same to her, opening her robe and pushing it off of her. For her, she was in this silk White gown, that reached her feet. You talk about what an angel looks like, this was it. It hugged every curve too. Her tit, though small, pushed out like she was a D cup. It had a somewhat plunging neckline, that showed the top of her perky tits.“My Lord Carrie, you look stunning. I mean no woman looks as beautiful as you do.”My cock was sticking out, and I didn't care. I wanted this woman in the worst way now. I pulled her into my arms and kissed her. It started softly, but grew into a passionate. Our hands explored everywhere it could reach on our backsides. I love the feeling of the material as I gently grabbed both ass cheeks. She was moaning the whole time as I did this.“Mark?” she cooed out. “Take me to bed and make slow, passionate love to me.”I turned slightly and scooped her up. She giggled when I did this, but wrapped her arms around my neck and showered me with kisses all over my face. Once in the bedroom, I set her down. She then sat on the edge of the bed. I noticed she had candles lit all over the place. God, she looked so sexy.She reached out to the waistband of my boxers and pulled me close. Then slowly started pushing them down, until my hardened member sprung free of its confinement. They fell to the floor and the stepped out of them.She gasped when she saw me now, naked. “Oh My God Honey. You are full of surprises. God you look sexy like this.” she said softly. Then leaned in and licked the head of my cock. It was already saturated with pre-cum. Her tongue danced all over the head, then down the shaft. She licked back up to the head and looked up at me, staring into my eyes, when her mouth slowly took my hardness in. “Oh God” I moaned out.She lifted her head and said, “I have been dying to do that to you Baby. I love doing this, so you know.” She then went back to giving me a slice of heaven. Her mouth was like velvet, as she took most of me in. She was slow and deliberate with her actions. She would speed up some, then slow down. She was driving me crazy. She continued until I told her she really needed to stop or I was going to explode.She lifted her head again, “Awe Baby. I really want that. I need to taste your love. Promise me you'll let me finish you later.” “I promise” I said.She then stood up, and I kissed her, then with my hands on her shoulders, I pushed the thin straps holding her gown up, off of her shoulders. She pulled her arms out from the straps and the gown slid to the floor, revealing her nakedness to me. As I took her in, I saw now that she had shaved her landing strip too.“I'd say we are both full of surprises tonight. God you look incredible and very sexy”“I don't why I even did it, except I wanted to give you a look you haven't seen. No man has seen this look. I'm glad you like it.” she said.. “Like it? No Sweetheart, I love it.”She then got on the bed and lay back, crooking her finger for me to join her. I couldn't help but stare though. No woman I know, ever looked this beautiful to me.I gently lifted her injured ankle again and kissed it. “I love this ankle more than you'll ever know.”Then kissed her other one, telling her I love this ankle as well. I kissed both calves, then both knees, telling her I loved these as well. Then I kissed her thighs, and moved to the inner thighs, again telling her I loved them. Then I found heaven. Her musk scent, and her body oil, from her bath, was intoxicating. I kissed her cunt, which sent a tremor through her body.I took my time here. I wanted this to be the best she ever experienced. I've always enjoyed tasting a woman. Making her orgasm with my tongue. Almost every woman I have been with enjoy my ministrations, except for one. A friend of my sisters, that I actually went out with. She did not enjoy having this done, yet performed oral on me. Kind of weird, I know.Carrie's labia was glistening with her secretions and I found it very delightful to taste. I kissed all around her swollen lips, then licked down some to her perineum. This whole time she was moaning and mewing. Her hands were on my head a few times, or she was grabbing the pillow.I came back up and licked her lips lightly. Stopping just before her engorged clit. I was surprised how big it was. I wanted to suck it right into my hungry mouth, but I needed her to enjoy this a great deal, before she had an orgasm. My tongue started splitting her lips now, as I went back down towards the perineum.“Oh Mark. Oh God, you feel so good.” she moaned out.Now I parted her lips and let my tongue explore her inner wall. She was secreting quite a bit of tasty juice to my tongue now. Her hips started rocking, helping my tongue go deeper inside her. I knew she wanted to cum, but I wanted this to be the best she ever had. From the sounds of how her ex was, he never paid all that much attention to her in this department. When I thought she was getting close, I backed away and just lightly kissed her vaginal lips. This caused her to tell me,“Oh Please. Don't stop Baby, Don't stop. I'm so close”As she would come back down a little, I would then resume my licking, all the while, avoiding the prize she was offering me, her clit. Then she surprised me by bringing her legs and knees up. Her hands grabbing behind her knees, showing me her cunt and her ass.I stuck my tongue as deep as it would go in her. Her moans got louder. Her body moved more. I snaked my tongue down through her open lips and down over the perineum, to her waiting ass hole. I did not know if she would enjoy this, but only one way to find out.I started kissing it, then licking it. As I did this, she started thrashing around. “Yes. Lick it” she said. So I continued to lick her puckered hole. I know the anus is very sensitive, but many women do not like playing there, but apparently, my lady does enjoy it.Her one hand then pushed my head harder into what I was doing. I could feel my tongue open her hole some. So I stiffened my tongue and tried screwing her hol

christmas god tv love jesus christ new york trust babies starting giving olympic games hell passion story food russian girls italian holy plan fantasy target driving captain fruit navy romance daddy mt tears sexy lust incredible shit falling in love cook dear intimacy honestly sexuality marine relax connected roberts bet stopping finished cleaning virgin rochester bath team usa affair hiking crawford shower granted oral babe anal squid tails arial my god erotic lick experimentation fantasies neanderthals gently oh yeah poured slipping oh god sensuality mast oh my god lake placid umm sweetie mark anthony coupling finger lakes moaning olympic village colvin intercourse foot fetish descriptive jh owe christ mark all night tryst jarhead filet mignon bucko ice rink meadowbrook lurid christ yes

Hiking for Love: Part 2

Steamy Stories

Play Episode Listen Later Jul 27, 2025

Mountain Chemistry.by T. Foxal. Listen to the ► Podcast at Connected.Chapter 9.With the sun dipping behind the mountains, the air was changing. It had to be around 50 now, and it would probably get a bit colder. We walked back to the campsite. Carrie had to use the restroom, so I went with her, and also took care of business. Once back at the site, she went inside a put on a sweatshirt. I did as well, after she reappeared from the tent.We then sat around the fire ring. I'm sure I must be a bore to her. But she too, is kind of quiet. We did talk more about life, and things we had done. I found out she loves to ski, both snow and water. She even likes to fish, and can bait her own hook. She told me that she hasn't dated since moving here, and it's been four years since she dated anyone, since that guy who couldn't handle her mom and her being part black."Carrie. Where do you see yourself in 5 years?" I asked. She giggled, "That's a real deep question coming from a Jarhead.” I gently shoved her a little. "Really. I have no idea. I'd like to meet a nice guy and settle down and hopefully grow old with him, and help Jenny any way I can, especially if it involves grandkids. But who knows. I am pretty picky. I settled once, and I won't do that again. What about you?""I'm kind of like you and don't know. I don't go out much, and I'm not a bar person. Plus, I don't think you can meet a quality person in a bar. I'd like to meet someone special and see where it goes. It'd be great if I could meet that one I could grow old with, but those prospects look kind of bleak. I mean my sister, Ann, has tried setting me up with her friends, but I hate those dates. I only do it to make her happy, and to quit bugging me. But who knows."It was very dark now and I told her to look up and look at the stars that seemed like they were closer than ever before, to us. "God. It is so amazing up here. Had I been by myself, I would probably scared shitless about now. But being with you, makes me feel safe, and the company has been quite good."I started banking off the fire, so it would go out in a little while. I suggested going back to the bathrooms and changing into sleepwear. She agreed. As we walked down, she grabbed my hand, which was quite warm, and felt so good in mine. She was making it very hard to act like a gentleman. I wanted to just scoop her up, and take her to the tent and make love to her all night.After changing, I came back out, in just my marine shorts and a t. She emerged a few minutes later, with that new flannel she bought the day before. The shirt was cut like a dress shirt. Tails in the front and back and scoop up on the sides. though I couldn't really see all that well. We had to look a sight though, we both had on our hiking boots. Not the sexist combination, that's for sure.She laughed as we started back to the cabin. "Bet we make a sight, the way we are dressed. The boots really set us off.", then laughed again, and so did I.Once in the tent, the only light we had was from the flashlight I had on. But boy, did she look sexy as hell kneeling there, unzipping her bag. I also noticed she had the top 3 buttons undone again, like she did last night. "She's killing me" I thought. She was rubbing her arms, like she was cold. Granted it was chilly out now, but once in those sleeping bags, it would be fine. We both had the same type, except for color. Her's was blue and mine was black."You know", she stated, "It might better serve us if we put our bags together and made it one big bag. Our body heat will help keep us warmer." I wanted to chuckle at that, but thought better of it. "Sure. If you feel that would be better." She didn't hesitate. She opened them both up and then zipped mine to hers. She had me get in first, so the zipper would be on her side. I guess in case she needed to escape from me.We were both laying on our back's, and I was just closing my eyes when Carrie spoke softly."Mark?, do you think we'll be bothered by bears tonight?""No. We put our food up and away from them and nothing is in the tent with us, so we should be fine. And, if feel the need to use the head, please wake me, so I can go with you."She grabbed my hand and squeezed it. “okay. I will, but I probably won't need it until morning."I started closing my eyes again, but also felt that she did not release my hand. That made me feel good, actually. A minute later, she said, "Mark?" softly. "Yes" I answered."Remember out on that rock, after we kissed?" "Yes. I do remember." I said. she sighed, then said, "Remember you said if you got the chance again, you would like to kiss me again.""Yes. I do remember, and I meant that. I hope I didn't offend you." She giggled, "You Jarheads are pretty thick aren't you. Will please just kiss me, and mean it too."I turned towards her. She let go of my one hand, then grabbed the other, as I leaned in and touched her lips with mine. As our lips touched, her mouth open and so mine also and our tongues met. The longer our kiss continued, the hotter it became. "My God. This woman can kiss"Our tongues now explored each other, our eyes open to each other, looking into each other's souls. Her hand then took mine and brought up to her chest, then under her shirt, and placed my hand on her one tit. Her nipple was like a rock, and her tit, small yet filled my hand. I started to massage it as we continued kissing. She took her hand then, put it around my neck, as she rolled to her side and pulled me in closer to her.She moaned in my mouth as I lightly pinched her nipple. So many thoughts moved in my head then. All the things I wanted to do with her right now, but, I wanted her to lead this, wherever it was going to go.We continued kissing, and she also kept moaning more and more. I moved my hand to her other tit and massaged it as well, again, lightly pinching her nipple. It too, was hard as a rock, and her tit seemed to get firmer, the more we made out.I pulled my hand from her tit, then reached it around her and pulled her into me. She kissed me now with a passion I have never felt from any woman. My hand was rubbing her back, and her knee slid between my legs now, so I know she could feel my hardened member against leg.When my hand slid down her back, and then over her ass, she moaned loudly into my mouth. I couldn't resist, and moved it so it would go under her shirt until it felt her naked ass cheek. I lay there caressing this beautiful ass of her's and her moans grew louder still. She somehow got both her arms around my neck, and I was hoping it wasn't too uncomfortable for her.Our lips have yet to part, but neither of us cared at this point. We both knew in short time, we'd have full carnal knowledge of each other. He hand then came down my chest, as I moved slightly, to give her access. She snaked her hand under my shirt and was rubbing my chest and nipples now. I too was moaning into her mouth. How could I not. This beautiful woman was making love to me. It was so sensual, and sweet. My hand was now exploring both cheeks and now started toward her crack. "God. will she freak if I go further than this?" I thought.But, her hand made its way down my belly, then went under the waist band of my shorts, where she lightly grabbed my hard cock. "Oh God." I moaned into her mouth. She lifted her one leg, which now gave me access to her sex. My fingers found their way to her moist thong, and gently moved it to the side. I started rubbing her labia, which was coated already soaked with her fluids of delight.She broke the kiss, and softly said, "yes. make love to me Mark." Her hand was now stroking my cock gently, yet with a firm grip. Every time she would come up to the tip, her finger would play with the head and smear my pre-cum all over. My finger was gently massaging inside her, which was driving her crazy.I started teasing her some. Slipping my finger in, then pull out and rub her clit, which was quite pronounced. God I would love to see that right now. I love eating a woman, but right now, I don't think that is in the cards at this point. She kept darting her tongue into my mouth, with each entry of her cunt. I loved hearing her moan, as I did this.I now inserted my finger again, but this time deeper, and took my thumb and rubbed her clit. When my finger found that rough patch of her g-spot, I concentrated solely on that.Then her body tensed up, "Oh God, Mark. Oh God" and she started cumming for me. She couldn't kiss now, as her orgasm took over her body. I could feel her body tremble, and I know it wasn't because she was cold. We were both hot now.I held as she kept cumming, then as she started to relax, she removed her hand from my member and then tried to push my shorts down."Mark. I need you inside me. Make love to me. Please"I got to my knees and removed my shorts. I then unbuttoned her shirt, and opened it. I left it on her, so she was protected from cold on her arms. I unzipped the bag, to give us more room to move and got between her legs. I carefully then started to remove her thong, and when I had it off, started kissing up her leg. When I got to her thigh, she said to do that later. Please get inside me. I can't wait anymore."Are you sure Carrie? I mean we are definitely crossing a line here that I have never crossed before."She smiled up at me "Yes. Please. Yes"I already knew she was extremely wet from her orgasm, just minutes before. I line up my ridged member to hew slippery sex and gently pushed in. In unison, we both said, "Oh God.” With good reason too. Her cunt was so hot, so wet and yet felt velvety soft as it engulfed my cock."Go slow Mark. It has been 4 years since I have done this. Oh My God, you feel so good."I slowly, and I mean slowly, inched my 6 1/2 inches into her. I am not a big man, by porn standards, but pretty thick and can usually last a long time, but right now, I could feel I could cum in no time flat. Once I was in all the way, I stopped and rested. I could feel her cunt muscles contract all around my cock, like it was milking it. I was still kneeling, keeping my weight from on top of her, but my hands were on the ground, next to her shoulders. Her hands were gripping my forearms tightly.I pulled back slowly, then forward again slowly, thinking of anything I could to stave off my impending orgasm. She was moaning and cooing, as I did this. "Faster Babe" she said."Sweetie. If I go faster, I am going to cum quickly. It's been a long time for me too.""Don't worry about that. I want your cum. I need you to cum"I leaned my head down and took her one tit into my mouth. I could suck the whole tit inside. Then, while sucking, pulled back to suck only her nipple."Oh God Mark Yes" is all she said. Then I did the other. In my mind, her tits were perfect, and her nipples were divine, and so sensitive to the ministrations I was performing.Her arms came around my head and pulled me tighter to her tit, then her legs came up around my waist and she called out, "Aw God" and started cumming, yet again.That did it for me. I couldn't stave this off any longer and grunted, "God", and started pumping rope after rope of cum, deep inside her. My mouth left her nipple and found her lips, as we tried to kiss as we rode our orgasms out, but all either of us could do was touch lips and moan. I then had to concentrate on keeping my weight off of her. I'd be too heavy for her, since no bed was under us.After a good minute of heavy panting, I somehow got my arms around her neck, grab firmly and rolled us over, so she was on top now. Surprisingly, I did not lose my erection, and was still inside her. She giggled when I did this. "Good Job Jarhead"We started kissing again, but this time I had free reign to her ass. My hands immediately went there. Gently squeezing her round cheeks, then massaging them. She was laying on me as I started to pump in and out of her again. She would moan into my mouth with each penetration I delivered. Her cunt fit to me like an expensive glove. My one hand did leave her ass to find the top flap of the bag and pulled it over us, keeping our body heat inside."Oh God Mark, you feel so good" she whispered in my ear."Oh Carrie, you have no idea how you feel to me. Incredible. Just Incredible. You are beyond beautiful and sexy my Dear"As we continued to make love, she pushed up some, revealing her tits to me again, which I took advantage of and began sucking them both again. This I am finding out, is a huge turn on for her. Her moans were soft, yet reassuring, that I had her where she wanted to be.I started picking up the pace. I didn't want her to work at all, trying to keep any pressure off of her ankle, which I was trying to be mindful of. We were still going at it for now almost ten minutes when she pulled my head into her chest, harder, and moaned out, "Christ Yes. Oh Mark: and started cumming again.Her whole body began to quiver and shake. This then set me off again, and all I could do was grunt loud, and started cumming again. Once I was done shooting deep inside her. my body felt like it did, when we had to do 10 mile run's, in the service. I was totally spent, as she was.She put her arms around my neck, loosely, and her head on my shoulder, and all I wanted to do, was lay there and listen to her breath. All I could think of was how she is a woman that I have never known before. A woman who could make you forget everything going on in life, except for her. I have never felt like this before. All past lovers, including the one I lived with, never had me feeling like this. It was strictly sex, for the sake of sex. Once I came a few times, I was done. I would either then leave, or roll over and go to sleep, like I did with my former girlfriend. But Carrie, I did not want to let go of. We lay in there for another 10 minutes. Neither saying anything. My hand would lightly rub her back, and she would just coo.After those ten minutes, she rolled off, and onto her back. My whole groin area was soaked with our combined juices, and it felt great. I did reach over to my pack and fished out the toilet paper. I know most women don't like the feel of cum draining from them, and I am pretty sure Carrie would feel the same. I ripped a good portion off and leaned over and began wiping it up from her cunt."You are a Sweetie, aren't you? But here, let me get that." After she did herself better, she took some more from the roll and cleaned my groin area, then threw the tissue's to the corner of the tent. I then kissed her lightly on the lips and thanked her.We didn't say a word to each other. I didn't for fear of what I may say. I am having very strong feelings for her, but if I said that, she'd probably freak out, or something. When she nestled her hand in mine, I knew she was good with what just took place. Love making twice, and by me. Not the normal fuck, like I was accustomed too. This had feelings involved and meaning.It must have been a good ten minutes of lying there. I really thought she was starting to sleep. I figured we could discuss this in the morning, if at all. Then, as I slowly started to close my eyes, she spoke."Mark. You awake?" I had to smile at that one." Like really? you really think I could sleep after what we just experienced?" I thought to myself."Oh yeah." I said. "Me too" she said, then giggled. "What we just experienced is beyond words for me right now. No man has been that selfless in bed with me. It was fantastic for me and I have a lot of feelings running wild right now. But, if this was a one-time thing, then so be it. It was fantastic and I will cherish it. But if it is more, then we'll deal with that, if you want too. I guess I'll know in the morning, after you can process it and sleep on it, just like I will."I started to say something, but she just put a finger to my lips, to hush me up. Then rolled over on her side, facing away from me. At this point, I was very unsure of what to do. Leave her alone? or cuddle up next to her and hold her against me, spooning, like real lovers would do. I chose the latter and cuddled up to her. To my surprise, she grabbed my one hand and held it softly, as her ass wiggled into me. She felt so good, molded into my body like this. "Is this how a couple really acts like?" I thought. I fell asleep a few moments later.Chapter 10.At some point in the night, I awoke, and felt that we had not moved. Her ass was still nestled against my thigh and groin, but my cock was hard. My hand was still with her's, yet it was also pressed against her one boob. God I loved her boob's. Seeing I didn't have my watch nearby, all I knew that is was oh dark thirty out, and went back to sleep.When I awoke, the sun was up. The tent felt warm inside now, but Carrie was gone. "Uh oh", I thought. My mind was reeling now. I figured she got freaked out over last night. "Well, this could be an awkward hike back down to the cabin." I got up and put on my watch, which said it was almost 8am. "Damn. I never sleep like this." I got out a pair of sweats, and a sweat top, since it was probably still chilly out. Took my kit and exited the tent. Carrie was nowhere around the area. I headed to the john, since I had to pee real bad. After relieving myself. I washed my face, then brushed my teeth, and exited the bathroom.I finally looked up towards the summit, and saw Carrie sitting on the outcrop of rocks we first kissed on. I hesitated at first, going up there, but being a true Marine, we never run from anything. Once I made the trek up the hill, she saw me. She too, had sweats on, which were navy blue, with Navy written on front of the top and pants."About time Gyrene. Plan on sleeping your life away?" All I could do is just chuckle, then looked out over the valley below. It had a nice haze, or fog enveloping the ground below, or at least it gave that appearance."Sorry. I didn't hear reveille this morning." as I smiled at her. "Well, watch it next time bucko, or if we were on a ship, you'd be up for Captain's Mast" she said then laughed.Well, at least she was in good spirits and not freaked out. "What time did you rise today? I'm kind of surprised I didn't hear you leave." I said."About an hour ago. I had to pee and got up very quietly. I tried not to disturb you. Guess I was good. By the way, you do snore, but softly. Not like my dad, who could wake the friggin dead at times."I just chuckled. I didn't know if she did too, except for the time I awoke a few hours ago, and then, she was just softly breathing. One thing I did know, after looking at her now, with no makeup on, she is one woman I could see myself waking too on a daily basis. She just has a natural beauty to her. Right now I was getting lost in her eyes. I really wanted to pick her and take her back to the tent and make love again, but that was something I wouldn't permit myself to do, until I knew exactly how she felt.She then stood up and started walking back to the campsite. I caught up to her and was walking next to her. "What's for breakfast" she asked. I just shook my head. She was acting like nothing took place last night. “okay.” I thought. "So nothing happened last night. It was a dream. Either that, or she thought it was a huge mistake and ignoring it, would make it go away." I continued in my thoughts."You have your choice, Fruit and nut power bar, or peanut butter and chocolate chip power bar." I said,"Hmm. nothing else on the menu then? Guess I'll do the peanut butter and chocolate bar. Hope the service is better than the menu."I took out a couple of bars and handed her one, plus a bottle of water. Right now, I had no idea what is going through her head. And I am too damn afraid to ask. Maybe this was a get back on me, for how I have treated others in the past. Like sex was no big deal. No emotions or feelings involved.We talked little, as I tore down camp and packed everything away. Once we geared up, we started our trek back down the mountain. It should take a lot less time to reach the cabin, since it was all downhill. I did ask how her ankle was and she said it felt good. Almost back to normal.When we came upon that lookout, that overlooked all the streams in the valley, she yelled out, "Selfie Time.” There was a mist still hanging over some of the streams, but this time, no moose were there. She took a few of her, alone, then asked me to join her. Just before she said 3, on the count of 3, I Ieaned in and kissed her on the cheek. She didn't say a word, but just put her phone away, and said "Let's go. I could use a nice hot shower."We were about a half mile from the cabin, when she finally slowed up and walked next to me. I mean I really didn't mind the view I had of her ass swaying in those sweat pants, but this felt better. She grabbed my hand and squeezed it tight."Thank you for a wonderful time. I just loved it up there." and then smiled at me. I smiled back to her, "It was a pleasure, and I too, had a wonderful time up there, especially sharing it with you."She picked up the pace, like she had to pee or something, and before too long, we were on the back porch of the cabin. I opened the door and she ran to the bathroom. While she did whatever she was doing in there, I started unpacking my backpack. I put the tent over in a corner, and took out my clothes and all the other crap I was carrying. I felt like I just crossed a 100 miles, even though it was just a couple.About 10 minutes later, she came out with a robe on. It was one of my aunt's. All pink and fluffy, like an aunt would wear. She basically marched right up to me, put her arms around my neck, and kissed me deeply. We stood and kissed for a few minutes, until she broke free and told me, "Come. Shower with me.""Whoa" I said. "What?" she asked. "What do you mean What. This whole morning you acted like nothing took place last night. I don't know about you, but that was pretty god damn special to me, then not to even acknowledge it."She looked down at the floor, like a child getting ready to be scolded, then looked back up at me. "You don't think I found that special last night? Christ Mark. I was made love too last night. I wasn't fucked. I have never orgasmed from intercourse, and you had me twice like that. It was wonderful and amazing and I loved it. It's all I thought of since I went to sleep and all day now. When you didn't press the issue at first, I thought you didn't want anything to do with me, but then I realized you were giving me space, to let me think this out. When you kissed me on the cheek for that selfie, I just knew in my heart, you want more than a roll in the sack.""I don't want a roll in the sack either. I did make love to you last night. I've never actually done that before, and it felt fantastic to me. I'm falling for you big time, and if that scares you, then walk away now. By the way, you are the first woman since the ex-girlfriend, that I didn't wear a condom."She looked me in the eye then, which looked like they were smoldering now, "Good. Let's go shower, then go to bed and make love again. Then spend the rest of the day in bed making love. But, you need to know, I too have primal urges, so a good fucking thrown in would be nice too"I chuckled then watched as she turned and walked back towards the hall leading to the bathroom. As she did, she let the robe slip off of her, exposing her naked body to me. "Holy shit", I thought. "What a sexy body." After picking my jaw off the ground, I stripped right there in like 10 seconds and caught up with her in the bathroom. She was leaning over turning the water on and getting it warm for us. I couldn't help but check her out, bent over like that, exposing her sex to me. My cock must have noticed too, because it was growing to its full potential now.Carrie turned around and gasped. "Oh My. You are even more impressive now that I see you. God. You are one sexy man."I just blushed a little. She was equally as impressive. One thing I did notice is that when she tans, she wears a thong style bikini. Her but cheeks had just a thin line above her crack and then around her waist. It barely covered her cunt and she only had a landing strip of hair above her clit. Her tits were lighter in color too. To me, she was an angel sent from heaven. "My lord Carrie, you are breathtaking to me. I have never been with such a beautiful woman before.""Come on Gyrene. We have a bed awaiting us."We did wash each other, and it was quite sensual. We paid particular attention to our private parts, in between kissing a great deal. Once done, we helped each other dry off, then damn near raced to bed.Once in bed, I pulled her on top of me and kissed her deeply. As we kissed her body kept moving back and forth across my cock, soaking it with her love juices. Somehow, she reached down and guided my aching member into her love hole."Umm, I love how you fit me so right. I want to stay here all day like this." she cooed out"Fine with me. I love you just like this. You are so beautiful."She sat up, letting me take in her beauty even more, then smiled down at me, "You know. I do love oral too. Both giving and receiving. Something to look forward too later.""Good to know. I love giving, and really don't care if I receive. But will never turn it down. But, one thing I really adore on you, besides your ass, is your beautiful tits. They turn me on big time.""God. I loved how you sucked them last night. I've always been self-conscience of them, but you, you made me feel like a woman with huge one's."I sat up and took one in my mouth, and that was all she wrote. She came like a minute later. Then came again after only a few minutes of faster penetration. She was on fire.We made love one more time that afternoon, then took a nap. After our nap, we did leave the cabin for a good dinner. Neither of us felt like cooking. After dinner, we went walking around Lake Placid again. This time holding hands, and kissing like two teenagers out on a date.As we walked along we talked about our next adventure. Which mountain we were going to try next. I really didn't care if we went at all. I'd be happy to spend the next 10 days, holed up in the cabin making love to her and shut out the rest of the world. Then she shocked me when she said,"You know, you made me wet the first time, when I caught you looking at my ass, as we climbed the mountain. Don't know why, but you did. For some reason, I felt super sexy then. Then after you kissed me on the rock, I had a small orgasm, but nothing compared to later that night or today.""I was hoping you didn't notice." I said with a laugh. "Oh, I noticed Bucko. I also caught your remarks too about the beautiful sights, when the whole time your eyes were on my ass. I notice everything JH. I just choose not to say anything. But, it did make me feel good.""Shit", is all I could say. She laughed, which I find intoxicating to hear. We then headed back to the cabin. We both changed into comfy clothes. Me in shorts, no boxers this time, and she in her one flannel again. I hope one day I can ripped that off of her and make passionate love to her.We both drank a beer and watched a little TV. Her mom called about 30 minutes into our relaxation, and she excused herself to go talk with her. I can just imagine what she is telling her. "Christ. I hope she leaves out a few parts. Last thing I need is her dad on my ass." is all I could think.Just then my phone beeped with a message. It was the picture of us kissing on the rock, Her dad sent it. Then another text right after."You piss ant fucking Jarhead. I said take care of her, not put your stinking lips on her."I was going to reply back that it wasn't my fault, but got another text."Relax Mark. You just be good to my baby girl. She needs a good man in her life, and I can't think of a better one than you, son.""I will be, and thank you." is all I wrote back to him.Carrie came out smiling at me. "Daddy gave you some shit huh?" I chuckled, "Yeah, then turned nice on me.""You're lucky, he really likes you. Just like his daughter. Tell you what. I'm ready for bed, but tonight, come share it with me."I got up and she led me to bed. Once in the bedroom, we stripped down and crawled in bed. I was already hard, just looking at her. She smiled as she lay down and slightly spread her legs. I grabbed her hurt leg, and gently brought up by my face, and kissed her ankle gently.She looked at me with a weird look on her face, "Foot Fetish?""No. Actually this is the one part of you I totally love all ready. Because of this ankle, it brought us together. Had you not been a klutz, we may never have met. And now I working hard on falling in love with the rest of you."She smiled then softly said, "Well hurry up and fall quicker, so you can catch up with me Mark. I am in love with you.Love definitely blossoms for these two lonely souls.Chapter 11.It was around 7:30 am now. I was on my side, hand propping up my head, as I watched her sleep. She is so beautiful to look at. I could see me waking every morning to her. We kind of professed a love for each other last night, but that actual phrase has yet to be spoken. It will come, I know it will, at least, from me, sometime soon. It scares me too. I have never given myself like that to anyone. Right now though, she has my heart like no other.As I lay there watching her, my mind replayed the previous evening's love making. It was slow, it was extremely passionate. It was though our bodies melted into each other the whole time. There was little foreplay. Some mindless groping of our groin area, but we were both primed and ready for intercourse. Again she orgasmed while we did it, twice, as a matter of fact. Once when she was on the bottom, and then again when she took control and being on top. And again, my mouth was drawn to her amazing tits. Large A cup, or small B cup tits, with long nipples. I love a woman with small tits. Her whole tit fits inside my mouth and I love sucking them hard as I pull away from them. She too, loves this, I have noticed and makes her orgasm.A strand of her hair lay across her angelic face, and I reached over and gently brushed it back. When I did this, she stirred, and her eyes opened. A soft smile crept across her face, then looked at me and said“Good Morning Sweetie.” I leaned in and kissed her forehead and said good morning to her too. “How did you sleep?” she grinned and said, “Very well thank you. How long have you been staring at me?”“Oh, about 15 minutes or so. I have to admit, you are a very beautiful woman when asleep.” I said in a low voice, as my hand lightly caressed her face.“Oh stop. I look a fright right now. I've seen myself when I first get up. I'm surprised you haven't run and hide yet.” she shot back.“Honestly. You are quite attractive in the morning. But if you want me to run and hide, I will.” I laughed as I said it. Carrie poked me in the shoulder, but also laughed with me, as I feigned being hurt and rolled to my back. She then slid over to me and nestled her head on my chest, as her hand rubbed my belly and chest. My arm slid to her back and gently rubbed.“Oh God” she said. “I could get used to this Mark. You make me feel so safe, and dare I say it, so loved right now. I could stay here in your arms all day.”“Mark?”,“Yes Carolyn. ““What's your middle name?”“Now that's a strange question. Anthony”“No way. Like as in Mark Anthony the Roman Ruler?” I laughed and said “Yeah. Guess my parents wanted a future ruler of the world. What's yours?”“Ann.. Carolyn Ann Reynolds.” she said. I chuckled then and told, her “You and my only cousin share a name”I then asked, “Where do you live at exactly?” She chuckled then spoke, “I don't know if I want you knowing that. You may be a stalker, or something like that.” then giggled“Actually, I live on Crawford off of Meadowbrook. Close enough to the campus, yet far enough to give Jenny space. She stays on campus, but usually comes home on weekends, unless she has a date or something else to do.”“Oh wow, Ann lives on Houston, which I believe is a few streets from you. I'm about ten minutes from you guys.”She laughed and said, “Oh great, you are going to stalk me now. Guess I better get my 9 millimeter ready.”I lightly spanked her on her bare ass. “Owe” she said, then said, ”You can stalk me anytime you want. But just so you are totally aware of this, I am a packaged deal. Jenny is part of me and my life. Granted she college age now, and hardly there, but still, is part of me. To accept me, is to accept her, and that is non-negotiable.”I kissed the top of her head, “I wouldn't want it any other way Carrie. How would you feel about dating, once we leave this place and get back to normal lives? And I mean exclusively too.”She looked up at me, her eyes were misty. Then crawled up on top of me, and slid my already hardened member inside her. “You scare me sometime Jarhead. I keep thinking you could be some Neanderthal, but in actuality, you are a very smart man, who seems very loving. So yes. I want us to date exclusively. I have totally committed to you in my mind and I expect the same from you.”She leaned down and kissed me. Although we both had morning breath, neither of us cared right now. She started to grind on me, but I stopped her. It surprised her and asked, “Is something wrong Baby? Did I do something?”“No Babe. I just have to pee and it hurts my bladder when you move like that. I really want to make love to you again. Hell, I never want to stop making love to you, but I really need to go.”She started laughing hard, and kept on laughing for a good minute. “Finished?”“Yeah. But that has to be a first. I'm here, with you so deep inside me, and you have to pee. You got to admit, that is funny.”She then got off of me. I looked at her and asked, “Why don't we get some breakfast, then figure out our day. Trust me though, we will include love making into it.”I got up and went and relieved myself, then brushed my teeth. When I came out, Carrie had that robe on and went to the bathroom as well. I went and put on shorts and headed to the kitchen to make breakfast.As we ate, we decided that we would take in the sights of Lake Placid. Visit the Olympic Village and stuff. Be real tourist this time. I told her of a winery near us, we could do this weekend, if she so desired. She agreed to that, as long as I gave her some time in that morning to go shopping for herself. We also made plans to hike up Mt. Colvin on Friday. Then we'd see which other mountain peak we would climb early next week.Chapter 12.During our day, we started touring the Olympic Village. We did the normal of visiting the Ice Rink, where Team USA beat the Russians in the semi-finals of the 1980 Olympics. As we visited the ice skating rink, Carrie said she always wanted to learn how to skate like the ice skaters did, but never had the chance. Not many ice rinks in all the different bases she used to live on.We then went up to the ski area and rode up on the ski lifts. The views are actually breathtaking from up there as well. Wherever we went, if her arm wasn't hooked into mine, we were holding hands, like two young lovers.That evening, we decided to eat at this one Italian place. The food was outstanding. The place was crowded too. A lot of young couples, and some, not so young. One woman Carrie had pointed out to me. She was dressed in this very short mini dress. I never paid her any attention. Which is why Carrie had to point her out.“I could never wear anything like that. Besides my ass getting cold, I'm not into showing off my wares like that. Girls these days. You should see how they dress around campus. Some should just come out naked with a big sign saying, Here I am, let's have sex.”I had to laugh at that. She was right though. Girls these days, don't cover up to much. Leave nothing to the imagination. Had she not pointed her out, I would have never noticed. My eyes were locked on Carrie though whole time. I think she did it to see my reaction, but who knows. One thing I have learned about women. They do things with a purpose for almost everything.Later that evening, after taking home a bottle of wine, and then sitting on the couch drinking a glass, she thanked me. “For what?”“When you didn't sit there with your tongue hanging out over that woman in the mini.” she remarked“Why would I. I have no interest in her, or any other woman, as a matter of fact. I have eyes for only one.”“Well. The dumbass Ex was always looking at other women. He thought he was sly, but many times I caught him doing that. He made me feel small, when he did things like that. I'm sorry too. I should have never thought that you would do that. You have more class in your pinky, than he ever had in his whole body.”I guess I could see her point. She was totally hurt by her ex, and not just the fucking around he was doing. But I do hate when people compare someone from their past, to someone they are with now. But I thought better to tell her. If it persisted, I may have too, or this relationship could be grounded before it even really gets out to sea.“I am truly sorry Mark. This was totally unfair of me to compare you to him. I will never do it again. You are 100 times the man he will ever be. I am so so sorry.” she said, then started crying.I pulled her into my arms and told her to please stop. No need to cry about it. You did not hurt me. But I also told her she is the only woman I need and the only woman I want to be with, both emotionally and physically, and the only woman I will ever undress with my eyes.She sniffled, then smiled. “Take me to bed and make love to me.”That time, she was a little more boisterous in bed. Moaning loudly, and even yelled out she was cumming. I'll admit, hearing a woman like that is a turn on. I yelled out too, when I finally came. We only did it once this evening though.The next day, we went canoeing on Lake Placid. What a great time we had too. Once we were in the water, I let her do the paddling. She turned back around and said to me, “What gives?”“Hey, you are the Squid, this is your bailiwick. I'm just a landlubber” She then proceeded to take the paddle and splash me. I got the hint and helped out after that. I had to be a smartass. It can't be all lovey dovvy between us.We did see two moose as well, as we paddled around out there. They were on the outer shore line, but not on Moose Island, where I figured the moose would be. It was a fun day for us. But both of us were pretty tired when the afternoon rolled into the evening. We cheated when it came to dinner. We got a pizza to go, and went back to the cabin.After eating, we both crashed on the couch, trying to watch a movie. I know it was past midnight when I awoke. I woke her then and guided us to bed. We didn't even strip down. I left my shorts on, and she left her flannel on.The next morning, I was up early. Not sure why either. I figured I should do some workout though. I had not done anything since last Friday, before I got up here. An hour later, Carrie joined me for coffee in the kitchen. We then got dressed and headed to Mt Colvin.Let me tell you, what a beautiful area. So many waterfalls and streams. This place is like heaven on earth. Carrie's phone got used a great deal in taking pictures. Of course, we had to do those selfie's. I do wish it was summer now. I'd love to take her behind this one waterfall, get naked and make love to her there, and I told her so. She smiled and agreed. Maybe next year she said. That put my mind at ease. This was not just a week or ten day adventure to her. She is committed.This time though, when we came down off of our hike, we drove into this one town and stopped to eat at this quaint little restaurant. Food was so good there. She was asking me about my sister and the kids. I told her how I know the kids, but don't really. Now that they are teenagers, in fact Kyle is almost 16 and Katie turns 14 a week from tomorrow. I informed her that I have to go there next Sunday for a family party for Katie. I asked if she would come.“Are you sure your sister would be okay with this?” “You're kidding right? A chance for her to meet the woman that captured my heart. Shit lady. I probably won't even get a chance to talk. She'll be so busy talking to you and getting to know you.” Carrie laughed, “okay. I'll go..”Chapter 13.The next morning we both woke up around 7. Carrie was in a frisky mood, but I begged off, stating I had a headache. I know what you are thinking, guys could care less about a headache if sex is involved. But I wasn't lying. I did have a slight one. I sometimes get them when it is going to rain. She was very understanding and rubbed my temples for a few minutes.The real reason was, is because I wanted to save myself for this evening. I was going to try and make this a very romantic night. Cook for her. Light candles in the bathroom and run her a bath, complete with a glass of wine, then leave her be while she soaked. Have candles lit in the living area and find a radio station that played soft music, and slow dancing with her. Keeping my fingers crossed there. I want her to see that I am not a Neanderthal and can be romantic. Then seduce her and do everything to her that I have wanted to do with her, mainly set her on fire with my oral skills. We have yet to do that, and it is something I have wanted to do.I already knew she was going to go shopping this morning, so I figured I would too, once she left. I planned on Filet Mignon, along with shrimp, a salad, and something I noticed at their grocery store, twice baked potatoes in their deli counter.After dressing and a small breakfast, she set out for town. She said she should be back by noon, and then, if I still wanted to, head off to that winery. Which was also part of the plan. I didn't need to get her drunk, that's for sure and was going to make sure she didn't.I waited a good 30 minutes before I left for my adventure. My first stop was Target. Thank god for Target. I found candles. Like two dozen worth of these cute little type. Then two bigger ones and holders for them, for the dinner table. Now understand, I have no idea what I am doing, since I have never done stuff like this before. I just remember my sister always saying that if you ever find that special girl, you need to romance her, not just take her to bed and have your way.I was walking past the men's grooming supplies and I thought back to something I saw with my brother in law once. We were changing to go swimming, when they rented a cabin by this lake. When he stripped down, and he was totally shaved. I looked at him and asked, “Really?” He chuckled and said “Oh Yeah. Your sister hates hair down there and getting into her mouth.”I had to laugh, but later asked Ann about that and she confirmed it, “Hell yeah I make him shave. He wants a blow job, he can at least be hairless. Hell I shave mine too. You ever get a girlfriend, she'll love you for it.” My sister is never one for holding back what she thinks.I picked up an electric razor. I'm still old school using blades and shaving cream. This razor has a trimmer too. Then I went to the clothing section and found robes. I fumbled around a bit until I found a burgundy one for her, and then one for me, same color, over in the men's section. Both were floor length. Can't wait to see her in that, then slowly remove it from her.After I left there, I noticed a shop that catered to women with bath and body stuff. Now understand, I am like a fish out of water here. Luckily, there was a kindly lady who helped me pick out, bubble bath and bath oil. It was lavender scented, which I knew she must have liked because she had a body and hand cream with that scent.Next stop was the grocer, where I picked out two very nice filets, a pound of cooked shrimp, a bag of pre-made salads, and two twice baked potatoes. I was pretty proud of myself. My ultimate plan was to finally tell her I love her and want no one else in my life. I just hoped she still felt the same. We had not spoken those words since that night we got back from camping. I hope it wasn't just the heat of the moment to her. If it was, then oh well, I'll just look like a fool, lick my wounds and move on.I got back by 10:30 or so. She wasn't home, so I put away the food and then hid everything else I bought, sans the razor. That was next on my list of things to do. That took a while, and quite honestly, looked kind of weird seeing it bald down there, but also felt good actually. After showering, I changed into a pair of Dockers I brought. Not even sure why I had them with me. I had on a nice button down shirt too. I then settled in and started reading some hunting magazine my uncle had lying about.About 12:30, Carrie came through the door. I stood up and looked at her. My jaw must have hit the floor. There stood a completely different woman, that left earlier. She had cut her hair. It was much shorted now, off of her shoulder and sculpted, with blond highlights throughout it. She look amazing.“Pick your jaw up Jarhead. I just got my hair done is all.” she said, then chuckled.“Oh My Carrie. You look absolutely amazing like this. I didn't think you could be more beautiful than what you are, but you topped it now.”“Oh stop” she said. “I just thought it was time for a change. I have a new man in my life, and he deserves something better than that old hairdo I had, since I left in the Navy. You really like huh?”I smiled at her, crossed the distance between us, and wrapped her into my arms and kissed her tenderly. “Yes. You look fantastic, and honestly, quite sexy” She then kissed me back, and very passionately. My manhood began to rise and she took notice.“Umm. I think something else likes it too. Why don't we go to bed and let me take care of that for you.” she whispered in my ear then.I put my hand under her chin and then kissed her lips lightly and said, “In due time Sexy. No offense, but I don't want a quickie from you. I want you all night tonight. Let's grab our things and head to the winery.”She had this twinkle in her eye, but then made a pouty face and said, “Oh alright. But be forewarned now, I will be waiting for this tonight, ALL Night long”, then kissed me and broke away, giggling as she moved. My mind was running rampant now. I knew from this point on, she would accept what I was going to say tonight. Unless, unless I am missing signals here.Chapter 14.We spent a very relaxing afternoon at the winery. We got to tour how it is made, plus sampled a few different types, until we found two that we really liked. Neither of us are wine snobs, like so many that were here. We just knew what we liked.They had brochures of all the wineries in New York state too. There was one that caught our eye, that was down by the Finger Lakes section, which is south of Rochester. Besides the winery itself, it had a bed and breakfast that looked quite cozy.“Now that would be a great weekend sometime. Relax and forget all of your troubles.” she said.“It does look nice. Have anyone in mind who you would like to accompany you?” I asked, with a sheepish grin.“Oh. I may have a person in mind, that I think I could share that with.” she said, then giggled and kissed me on the cheek.I don't know where the time went, but it was already after five, and I was getting antsy, to start heading back to the cabin. We decided to buy these two types of wine we really liked. One was a red, and the other white. Neither too dry or too sweet. She laughed when I bought six of each type. I said we each can have three bottles of each for our houses. She liked that idea, and then said if need be, can be a quick gift for someone at Christmas.Of course my mind is thinking, “Wow. She is thinking of Christmas with me. God I hope I don't blow this with her.”Once we got back to the cabin, it was already close to 7pm. I went out and fired up the grill, then went in and prepared the salad. She wanted to help, but I said, no, this is my night for you. So she just sat down and pulled out her book and red while I prepared it all.When I set the table, she smiled when she saw the candles in the candle holders. “Wow Jarhead, you are just full of surprises aren't you.”We then sat down and had a fabulous dinner. She loved the cooked shrimp for the appetizer, and then cooed about the filet mignon. “You know Sweetie. If I didn't know any better, I'd say you are trying to seduce me tonight. But Marines aren't like that.” then giggled. I let the comment go.After we finished, I started cleaning up. She was gung ho on helping me, but I told her wait, and then left the room. I went into the bedroom, retrieved the bath oils and bubble bath, and also the candles. I figured twelve would do. I had to save some for the living room. I started the bath water. Poured in the recommended amount of oil and soap. While the bath filled, I lit the candles. Next I went and got her robe and then came into the kitchen area.She had already started do the dishes when I tapped her on the shoulder. She turned around and said, “Christ, where did you go? I thought you got lost, or something.”“Nope. Just preparing something special for you. Here, take this and retire to the Bath, where the water is warm and inviting, just for you.”She took the robe and headed off. But was back like ten seconds later. She came up and kissed me hard and had a tear in her eye. “You amaze me Mark. I love all of this. No man has ever done this for me.” she said as she composed herself. Then she held out a white, silk pair of boxers. “While I bathe, please put these on for me. Oh, and I see you have a matching robe. I'll meet you out here soon.” then kissed me and left.I lit the candles and turned on the radio. Luckily, there was a soft rock station playing some really good slow stuff. About 20 minutes later, she arrived into the living room. I got up and met her in the middle and took her into my arms. I breathed in her aroma. God she smell delightful. She kissed me tenderly, then asked, “How?” I asked “How what?” “How did you know that was my favorite oils and such?”“I noticed your body lotion and figured you must like that. I do notice stuff you know. Even though I'm a Marine.”“Well. Just for that, you are no longer a Jarhead. You did good Mr. Roberts.”We then started swaying to the music. Now I'm no dancer, but just us holding each other moving about like I knew what I was doing, was great with me. She must have thought so too, for she moved with me. Her head on my shoulder,. Her hand around my back, while mine went around her tiny waist. She then backed away from me and grabbed the sash holding my robe together, and lightly pulled it and revealed my almost naked body, except for the white silky boxers. Her hands moved to my shoulders and gently pushed the robe off of me. Her hands then slid down my chest and rubbed gently all over.“God baby. You look so sexy right now.” she whispered to me.I now did the same to her, opening her robe and pushing it off of her. For her, she was in this silk White gown, that reached her feet. You talk about what an angel looks like, this was it. It hugged every curve too. Her tit, though small, pushed out like she was a D cup. It had a somewhat plunging neckline, that showed the top of her perky tits.“My Lord Carrie, you look stunning. I mean no woman looks as beautiful as you do.”My cock was sticking out, and I didn't care. I wanted this woman in the worst way now. I pulled her into my arms and kissed her. It started softly, but grew into a passionate. Our hands explored everywhere it could reach on our backsides. I love the feeling of the material as I gently grabbed both ass cheeks. She was moaning the whole time as I did this.“Mark?” she cooed out. “Take me to bed and make slow, passionate love to me.”I turned slightly and scooped her up. She giggled when I did this, but wrapped her arms around my neck and showered me with kisses all over my face. Once in the bedroom, I set her down. She then sat on the edge of the bed. I noticed she had candles lit all over the place. God, she looked so sexy.She reached out to the waistband of my boxers and pulled me close. Then slowly started pushing them down, until my hardened member sprung free of its confinement. They fell to the floor and the stepped out of them.She gasped when she saw me now, naked. “Oh My God Honey. You are full of surprises. God you look sexy like this.” she said softly. Then leaned in and licked the head of my cock. It was already saturated with pre-cum. Her tongue danced all over the head, then down the shaft. She licked back up to the head and looked up at me, staring into my eyes, when her mouth slowly took my hardness in. “Oh God” I moaned out.She lifted her head and said, “I have been dying to do that to you Baby. I love doing this, so you know.” She then went back to giving me a slice of heaven. Her mouth was like velvet, as she took most of me in. She was slow and deliberate with her actions. She would speed up some, then slow down. She was driving me crazy. She continued until I told her she really needed to stop or I was going to explode.She lifted her head again, “Awe Baby. I really want that. I need to taste your love. Promise me you'll let me finish you later.” “I promise” I said.She then stood up, and I kissed her, then with my hands on her shoulders, I pushed the thin straps holding her gown up, off of her shoulders. She pulled her arms out from the straps and the gown slid to the floor, revealing her nakedness to me. As I took her in, I saw now that she had shaved her landing strip too.“I'd say we are both full of surprises tonight. God you look incredible and very sexy”“I don't why I even did it, except I wanted to give you a look you haven't seen. No man has seen this look. I'm glad you like it.” she said.. “Like it? No Sweetheart, I love it.”She then got on the bed and lay back, crooking her finger for me to join her. I couldn't help but stare though. No woman I know, ever looked this beautiful to me.I gently lifted her injured ankle again and kissed it. “I love this ankle more than you'll ever know.”Then kissed her other one, telling her I love this ankle as well. I kissed both calves, then both knees, telling her I loved these as well. Then I kissed her thighs, and moved to the inner thighs, again telling her I loved them. Then I found heaven. Her musk scent, and her body oil, from her bath, was intoxicating. I kissed her cunt, which sent a tremor through her body.I took my time here. I wanted this to be the best she ever experienced. I've always enjoyed tasting a woman. Making her orgasm with my tongue. Almost every woman I have been with enjoy my ministrations, except for one. A friend of my sisters, that I actually went out with. She did not enjoy having this done, yet performed oral on me. Kind of weird, I know.Carrie's labia was glistening with her secretions and I found it very delightful to taste. I kissed all around her swollen lips, then licked down some to her perineum. This whole time she was moaning and mewing. Her hands were on my head a few times, or she was grabbing the pillow.I came back up and licked her lips lightly. Stopping just before her engorged clit. I was surprised how big it was. I wanted to suck it right into my hungry mouth, but I needed her to enjoy this a great deal, before she had an orgasm. My tongue started splitting her lips now, as I went back down towards the perineum.“Oh Mark. Oh God, you feel so good.” she moaned out.Now I parted her lips and let my tongue explore her inner wall. She was secreting quite a bit of tasty juice to my tongue now. Her hips started rocking, helping my tongue go deeper inside her. I knew she wanted to cum, but I wanted this to be the best she ever had. From the sounds of how her ex was, he never paid all that much attention to her in this department. When I thought she was getting close, I backed away and just lightly kissed her vaginal lips. This caused her to tell me,“Oh Please. Don't stop Baby, Don't stop. I'm so close”As she would come back down a little, I would then resume my licking, all the while, avoiding the prize she was offering me, her clit. Then she surprised me by bringing her legs and knees up. Her hands grabbing behind her knees, showing me her cunt and her ass.I stuck my tongue as deep as it would go in her. Her moans got louder. Her body moved more. I snaked my tongue down through her open lips and down over the perineum, to her waiting ass hole. I did not know if she would enjoy this, but only one way to find out.I started kissing it, then licking it. As I did this, she started thrashing around. “Yes. Lick it” she said. So I continued to lick her puckered hole. I know the anus is very sensitive, but many women do not like playing there, but apparently, my lady does enjoy it.Her one hand then pushed my head harder into what I was doing. I could feel my tongue open her hole some. So I stiffened my tongue and tried screwing her hol

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The Good Works Podcast: Episode 82 - The Katie Strickler Origin Story

The Good Works Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Jul 25, 2025 15:26

This month, Randi is joined by Katie Strickler to talk about her route to the Community Foundation by way of AmeriCorps. In her time so far, Katie has built a more robust scholarship program in addition to many other projects and accomplishments!

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Small but Mighty Keuka Lake

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Play Episode Listen Later Jul 24, 2025 51:06

We continue our summer tour of the Finger Lakes with a trip to a place that's a little less traveled, a little less hyped... but that's part of what people say makes it magical. Keuka Lake is known as the "Crooked Lake" for its unusual Y shape, and its the only lake in the country that flows both north and south. It's ringed by small, proud communities -- Penn Yan, Hammondsport, and Branchport -- each with their own stories. We get into them with our guests: Sam Crastner, metalwork artist at Ironvine Studios LLC Angela Mattoon, office manager for Weis Vineyards Tricia Noel, executive director/curator of the Yates County History Center Kyle Anne Pallischeck, director of programs for the New York State Wine and Grape Foundation

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Exclusive Interview with

The Motivation Show

Play Episode Listen Later Jul 22, 2025 41:50

Retired Beacon Police Officer Charged in Killing

HC Audio Stories

Play Episode Listen Later Jul 22, 2025 2:03

Investigation turned over to state police A retired Beacon police officer is being held without bail on a murder charge after a shooting late Monday (July 21) at 86 Rombout Ave. According to the New York State Police, Edison Irizarry, 52, of Beacon, was arrested at 11:26 p.m. and charged with murder in the second degree, criminal possession of a weapon in the second degree and criminal possession of a firearm, all felonies. He pleaded not guilty during a Beacon City Court appearance on July 22 and is scheduled to return to court Aug. 6 for a preliminary hearing. The police identified the victim as Casey Cuddy, 58, of Beacon, who they said was found dead at the scene. Cuddy was a psychiatric mental health nurse and actor who performed for the County Players in Wappingers Falls. According to a program biography, the Finger Lakes native moved to the Hudson Valley in September 2022 after living in Los Angeles and Oregon. In November 2022, Cuddy placed a classified ad in The Current seeking a roommate to share his first-floor Beacon apartment. A July 2021 Facebook post by the Beacon police officers' union congratulated Irizarry on his recent retirement from the Police Department. Irizarry, a Marine veteran, served as an officer at Beacon for 17 years, according to the post, including as a field training officer and detective. Beacon Police Chief Tom Figlia said in a news release on Tuesday that officers received a call Monday night from an individual who said he had shot his roommate. Upon arrival, "it was determined that one of the individuals involved was a retired Beacon police officer," the release said. It said that, "to maintain the highest integrity, the entire investigation was turned over to the New York State Police." The Beacon department will cooperate "fully and completely" with the investigation, Figlia said.

5 Soulful Communication Ingredients Every Spiritual Entrepreneur Needs to Connect with Clarity

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Play Episode Listen Later Jul 18, 2025 15:35

Communication isn't just about what you say—it's the energy behind your words, the clarity of your intentions, and how aligned your message is with your soul. In this episode, we explore the 5 essential ingredients for soulful communication that help spiritual entrepreneurs create deeper, more authentic connections in life, leadership, and business. If you've ever felt misunderstood, frustrated by vague feedback, or unsure how to express your needs without feeling “too much,” this one's for you. In This Episode, You'll Learn: ✨ Why being impeccable with your word is more than a nice idea—and how to embody it in your daily life ✨ The neuroscience behind why your message may land differently than you intended ✨ How to communicate needs clearly (without guilt or fear of being “too direct”) ✨ Why soulful communication is an energetic exchange—and how to honor that sacred dynamic Resources & Mentions:

The Triple Identity of Canandaigua

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Play Episode Listen Later Jul 17, 2025 51:17

This summer, we're traveling around the Finger Lakes – and today, we're taking a closer look at a place that means many things to many people: Canandaigua. It's known for its beautiful lake and outdoor recreation. It's home to festivals, wineries, and a busy summer tourism season. And it also has a rich and complicated history. Some locals say the city has a “triple identity”: lake life, historical legacy, and a growing cultural and business scene. Our guests tell us the local histories and help us explore the hidden gems: Denise Chaapel, downtown manager of Historic Downtown Canandaigua Ben Falter, director of education at the Ontario County Historical Society Leif HerrGesell, historian for Town of Canandaigua

Finger Lakes' New York Derby | DRF ROTD Listening Edition for July 14, 2025

Daily Racing Form

Play Episode Listen Later Jul 10, 2025 9:02

On Monday, we present the New York Derby at Finger Lakes as the Race of the Day. Catch the analysis from Gino Buccola and Mike Beer here.

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107. What Do I Need to Know About Fly Fishing Lines?

Southeastern Fly

Play Episode Listen Later Jul 7, 2025 63:46

In this episode, we dive deep into fly line technology with Richard Nicoletti, sales director for Cortland Line Company. Richard gives us a behind-the-scenes look at how fly lines are made, breaking down the key components and explaining what makes each line perform the way it does. He clarifies the differences between weight forward and double taper lines, and shares practical advice for matching your line to the fishing conditions, whether you're casting dries across wide southern tailwaters or swinging streamers from a drift boat.We also cover fly line color (it matters more to you than the fish), and get some straightforward tips on line maintenance, from avoiding twist and memory to simple routines that keep your gear in top shape. Richard highlights some of the most common mistakes anglers make when spooling up a new line, and shares how to keep your setup casting smoothly all season.The conversation moves into leaders and tippets—decoding X sizes, choosing between fluorocarbon and mono, and offering guidance for building leaders that balance finesse, abrasion resistance, and strength for your target species. Richard clears up common myths and gives advice that can help you catch more (and bigger) fish than your buddies.We round things out with a look at fishing opportunities in upstate New York—from the legendary Delaware River system to the Finger Lakes—and Richard's recommendations for the best local eats and breweries after a day on the water. As always, we wrap up with a memorable “one that got away” story. If you want to get the most out of your gear and your time on the water, this episode is packed with insights you won't want to miss.Resources:Visit southeasternfly.comSign up for our newsletterProduced by NOVA

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CITY Magazine's July issue: "The Finger Lakes"

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Play Episode Listen Later Jul 7, 2025 51:24

"What if we didn't have to leave home to have a world class experience?" Those are the words of CITY Magazine editor Leah Stacy, writing about the Finger Lakes. The July issue of the magazine is all about the vacation destination right in our own backyard. This hour, we explore some of those world class experiences with the CITY team and with the people creating them. Our guests: Leah Stacy, editor of CITY Magazine Jacob Walsh, art director for CITY Magazine Roberto Lagares, multimedia reporter for CITY Magazine Patrick Hosken, arts reporter for CITY Magazine Rachel Snyder, president of the Wells Legacy Society and Wells College alumna (Class of 2011) Matt Cassavaugh, owner of Hemlock Canoe Jazmine Saunders, soprano performing with Finger Lakes Opera, Metropolitan Opera Lindemann Young Artist, alumna of the Eastman School of Music (Class of 2022) and the Julliard School (Class of 2024), and William Warfield Scholarship recipient Lora Downie, director of food and beverage education programs at New York Kitchen Take our audience survey to help us learn more about you, and make a better show for you.

Lake Tahoe on Points as a Family of 5 + a Full Review of the Hyatt Regency Lake Tahoe!

Travel Party of 5

Play Episode Listen Later Jun 30, 2025 39:46 Transcription Available

Thanks for finding our podcast! We are a family of 5 who does most of our travel using credit card points and miles and we share how we leverage credit card offers to earn a ton of points/miles so we can afford travel as a larger family.Follow us on Instagram @TravelPartyof5Lake Tahoe is easily the most beautiful lake I've ever seen, and I grew up in the Finger Lakes of NY state so I feel like that's a bold statement. The snow capped mountains provided a stunning backdrop for our family adventure using Hyatt points for a completely free stay. In this episode we navigate hotel renovations, secure a suite upgrade, and discover the magic of North Lake Tahoe's beaches and activities.• Using 92,000 Hyatt points for a four-night stay at the Hyatt Regency Lake Tahoe• Enjoying complimentary shuttle service to nearby beaches despite hotel renovations• Securing a spacious suite upgrade after addressing disappointing service• Experiencing the hotel's impressive amenities including heated pool, hot tubs, and complimentary ice cream• Renting e-bikes to explore the shoreline and discover Hidden Beach• Dining at local favorites like Bowl Incline, Koi Sushi, and Big Water Grill• Visiting Incline Beach and Burnt Cedar Beach with crystal-clear waters• Learning about the geographical split with North Lake Tahoe in Nevada and South Lake Tahoe in California• Battling unexpected sunburns due to the 6,000-foot elevationIf you ever get any value out of our podcast at all, please do us a favor and leave us a rating or review. That is super helpful and helps more people find the podcast.

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Episode 156 - The Art of Wine Communication with Chicago-Based Marketer, Award-Winning Writer, and Wine Culture Expert, Chasity Cooper

A Cork in the Road

Play Episode Listen Later Jun 27, 2025 64:28

This episode features my conversation with Chicago-based marketer, award-winning writer, and wine culture expert, Chasity Cooper. She recently attended Riesling Camp in the Finger Lakes region of New York with some good friends from the Atlanta wine industry, and I was excited to learn more about how she has nurtured her voice for communicating about wine. As a wine professional, she says she strives to make wine more accessible and relatable through storytelling, education, and unique tasting experiences. In 2024, Chasity was named a 2024 Wine Enthusiast Future 40 Tastemaker and currently serves on the board of directors for Batonnage Forum and The Veraison Project. We talk about how she navigates her wine-related experiences in a way that allows her to welcome more people into conversations about wine. We also talk about the book that she published last year that is dedicated to sparking wine conversations and encouraging communication about wine. Given her unique skillset and variety of wine travels, we also dive into why the culture of wine is so important to her and how her own life continuously intersects with wine. You can follow @bychasitycooper on Instagram visit www.chasitycooper.com to learn more about her work.Recorded June 23, 2025

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Listener Encounters with Bigfoot | True Audience Stories

Odd & Untold

Play Episode Listen Later Jun 27, 2025 38:43

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Back to Square 1: Your Time for a Brilliant Business Reset

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Play Episode Listen Later Jun 26, 2025 13:11

Are you stuck in rinse-and-repeat mode? When the spark dims and results plateau, it might be time to return—not to the drawing board in defeat, but to your original brilliance. In this episode, we explore how revisiting square one with intention can reignite clarity, creativity, and aligned momentum. If you've ever found yourself coasting, running on autopilot, or disconnected from the joy of your work, this is your invitation to reset from the inside out. Together, we'll explore: ✨ Why square one is a sacred portal—not a punishment ✨ How to discern what's truly working (and what's just noise) ✨ A 5-step soulful strategy audit to recalibrate your business “Begin again, with fierce gentleness.” — Toko-pa Turner

The Good Works Podcast - Episode 81: The Randi and Sara Origin Story

The Good Works Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Jun 25, 2025 22:39

This month, Randi and Sara share their "origin story" - details about how they met and how their lives have come full circle together. And with the recent heat wave, they're looking forward to some cool summer events!

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Reignite Your Radiance: Summer Solstice Wisdom for Soul-Led Achievers

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Play Episode Listen Later Jun 21, 2025 15:20

Are you feeling the nudge to release old patterns and step into your fullest expression? In this special solstice-inspired episode of Heart Glow CEO®, we're tapping into the fiery energy of the sun to help you shed what no longer serves you and courageously choose your light. Now is the time to ignite your inner brilliance and align with your soul's highest path. In this episode, you'll discover: ✨ A nature-based practice to ground your energy and anchor calm confidence ✨ Reflective prompts to clarify where you are—and where your soul is calling you next ✨ The power of intentional choice in activating your paradigm shift ✨ Why embracing visibility and expansion is key to your next chapter Let this be your invitation to embrace your glow and lead with radiance.

Five Questions With Chasity Cooper Wine Writer + Culture Expert

Play Episode Listen Later Jun 20, 2025 7:32

In this episode of Five Questions, we're joined by Chasity Cooper, a journalist, storyteller, and passionate voice in the wine industry. Chasity shares how she blends her love of writing with a deep appreciation for wine, bringing underrepresented voices and regions to the forefront of wine conversation.From the Finger Lakes to Traverse City, crisp white blends to dry Riesling, Chasity walks us through what she's drinking, what regions are worth your attention, and why jalapeños in Sauvignon Blanc may be helping new drinkers learn more about wine. She also opens up about travels to Bulgaria and a powerful story she wrote in the wake of the George Floyd tragedy, spotlighting the experiences and contributions of Black wine professionals.Topics covered:– How Chasity found her voice in wine media– What she's drinking this summer (hint: it's bright and zippy)– Two U.S. wine regions she says are flying under the radar– Jalapeño wine trends– Her most powerful wine writing experience—covering race and representation in the industry during the summer of 2020Chapters:00:00 Introduction to the Vent Wine Podcast00:19 Five Questions with Chastity Cooper00:27 Chastity's Relationship with Wine01:12 Current Wine Preferences01:55 Underrated Wine Regions03:07 Wine Trends Chastity Dislikes04:14 Memorable Wine Experiences05:31 Impactful Wine Stories07:20 Conclusion and ThanksThe Vint Wine Podcast is a production of the Vint Marketplace, your source for the highest quality stock of fine wines and rare whiskies. Visit www.vintmarketplace.com. To learn more about Vint and the Vint Marketplace, visit us at Vintmarketplace.com or email Billy Galanko at Billy@vintmarketplace.com. Cheers!

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Campground Review: Finger Lakes RV Resort & Things to Do Near Seneca Lake, NY

RV Family Travel Atlas

Play Episode Listen Later Jun 18, 2025 54:48

The Finger Lakes region has long been a favorite destination for New Yorkers seeking picturesque vineyards, stunning lakes, and charming small towns. And while the area offers many beautiful state […] The post Campground Review: Finger Lakes RV Resort & Things to Do Near Seneca Lake, NY appeared first on The RV Atlas.

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Why Did the Entrepreneur Cross the Road? To Find Balance and Purpose!

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Play Episode Listen Later Jun 12, 2025 11:33

Ever felt like you're doing all the things but still wondering if it's leading you anywhere meaningful? This episode is a soul-soothing reset for the modern entrepreneur who's ready to embrace purpose over pressure. Tune in to reclaim your wholeness and rediscover what success really looks and feels like.

Navigating Change: An Industry Conversation

Craft Beer Professionals

Play Episode Listen Later Jun 11, 2025 63:56

Join us for a conversation with Andrew Burman of Other Half Brewing Company as we explore the evolving craft beer landscape and how breweries can adapt to shifting consumer habits. With weekend taproom traffic declining, Other Half is leaning into events, diverse beverage options, and family-friendly experiences to stay ahead. Burman will discuss the brewery's strategic focus on private events, cocktails, and accessible distribution—ensuring customers can enjoy Other Half's beer wherever and however they choose. He'll also share his perspective on industry-wide challenges, from slow-moving competition and pricing pressures to the importance of quality control in distribution. Don't miss this intimate conversation with an industry leader.Andrew Burman, co-founded Other Half Brewing Company in Brooklyn, New York, in 2014. Serving as the Chief Operating Officer, Burman oversees the brewery's daily operations. His journey into the culinary and brewing world began after earning a degree in Government and Politics from the University of Maryland, where he also played lacrosse. Pursuing his passion for food, he went to L'Academie de Cuisine in Gaithersburg, MD. To deepen his understanding of food systems, Burman obtained a Master's degree in Food Culture and Food Systems from New York University. Since Other Half's establishment, the brewery has expanded beyond Brooklyn, opening locations in New York City, Washington D.C., Philadelphia, the Finger Lakes, and Buffalo. Burman's commitment to quality and innovation has been instrumental in Other Half's growth and its reputation for pushing the boundaries of beer and brewing culture.Stay up to date with CBP: http://update.craftbeerprofessionals.org

Showing off the region’s culinary bounty for a cause at Taste of the Finger Lakes

Ithaca Dining from 14850 Magazine

Play Episode Listen Later Jun 10, 2025 1:38

Here’s the 14850 Dining Report, and tonight’s the night! Over 50 restaurants, caterers, wineries, cideries, breweries, distilleries and more are coming together to offer tastes of their local fare to benefit food equity at Taste of the Finger Lakes. It's tonight at the Ithaca Farmers Market pavilion at Steamboat Landing. 14850 is proud to be a sponsor of Taste of the Finger Lakes. Showing off the region’s culinary bounty for a cause at Taste of the Finger Lakes Listen to the 14850 Dining Podcast in Apple Podcasts or Google Podcasts, YouTube, Spotify, Audible, or RSS Feed, listen on WVBR, or follow 14850 Dining on Facebook, Instagram, Bluesky, and Twitter or sign up for our newsletter.

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The Good Works Podcast - Episode 80: Grant Fund Management

The Good Works Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Jun 4, 2025 21:28

It's the grant-giving season, and Randi and Sara are talking all about how those grant funds are managed and allocated at the Community Foundation. Plus, stay tuned til the end to find out what they're looking forward to in June!

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Episode 476 - Wagner Vineyards Meritage

The Wine Vault

Play Episode Listen Later Jun 1, 2025 52:59

Wagner Vineyards Meritage In this episode, Rob and Scott review an excellent red wine from the Finger Lakes known as Wagner Vineyards Meritage. So come join us, on The Wine Vault.

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Five Questions with Charles Curtis MW: Burgundy, Champagne, and Vintages to Know

The Bee Morning Coffee Club

Play Episode Listen Later May 30, 2025 6:39

In this episode of Five Questions, presented by the Vint Marketplace, we welcome Charles Curtis MW—renowned wine consultant, author, and authority on Burgundy and Champagne.Charles shares his expertise on how maps help decode complex wine regions, how vintages like 2012 in Champagneand 2019 in Burgundy are shaping collector trends, and why lesser-known regions like New York's Finger Lakes and Germany's Mosel deserve your attention.Highlights include:His top current-release and historic vintages in both Burgundy and ChampagneWhy 2017 Burgundy is a sleeper vintage for wine lists todayThe importance of geographic context in understanding terroirInsights from his upcoming books, including one focused entirely on ChampagneDomestic favorites: Willamette Valley Pinot Noir and Finger Lakes RieslingWhether you're a collector, a Burgundy obsessive, or just looking for your next great bottle, this fast-paced interview offers expert perspective in just a few minutes.About the Guest:Charles Curtis MW is a Master of Wine, former Head of Wine at Christie's Americas and Asia, and author of Vintage Champagne: 1899–2019 and The Original Grand Crus of Burgundy. He contributes regularly to Decanter and other top wine publications.Chapters:00:00 Introduction to Vent Wine Podcast00:19 Welcome to Five Questions00:43 Interview with Charles Curtis MW00:48 Focus on Burgundy and Champagne01:34 Importance of Maps in Wine Regions02:46 Favorite Vintages in Burgundy and Champagne05:31 Exploring Other Wine Regions06:27 Conclusion

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BMCC - TALKS TO DUSTIN LYNCH about his upcoming show at the Fingerlakes Country Music Festival June 14th

Play Episode Listen Later May 30, 2025 5:24

BMCC - TALKS TO DUSTIN LYNCH about his upcoming show at the Fingerlakes Country Music Festival June 14th full 324 Fri, 30 May 2025 12:30:38 +0000 yddppCyVzNn68ovqTPFjcBhjC29rYd8l society & culture The Bee Morning Coffee Club society & culture BMCC - TALKS TO DUSTIN LYNCH about his upcoming show at the Fingerlakes Country Music Festival June 14th Wake up with The Bee Morning Coffee Club weekday mornings from 5:30a - 10a! 2024 © 2021 Audacy, Inc. Society & Culture False

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NYC Sommeliers are SLEEPING on Finger Lakes Wines

Understanding Wine: Austin Beeman's Interviews with Winemakers

Play Episode Listen Later May 28, 2025 0:43

New York City's shameful neglect of the wines of the Finger Lakes. I was on Season 5 - Episode 6 of The Real Wine Show Watch the whole episode here. https://youtu.be/48ZhIJCwXwE?si=0wtsE6xLztwYmP4Y https://www.therealwineshow.com *** FOLLOW AUSTIN BEEMAN'S WINE ADVENTURE Website: http://www.austinbeeman.com Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/austinbeeman/ TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@austincbeeman

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Deodora Wine

California Wine Country

Play Episode Listen Later May 23, 2025 44:42

Erica, Judy & Doug. Doug Mryglod, Judy Phillips and Erica Stancliff from Deodora Wine are our guests with Steve Jaxon and Dan Berger on California Wine Country. Daedalus Howell is also in the studio today. This is the first time that Doug and Judy have been on the show for Deodora Estate Vineyards. Erica Stancliff has been on CWC before on this episode of June 24, 2020. Dan Berger introduces Deodora for winning a gold medal for a dry Riesling at the latest wine competition. The 2019 that won was up against some very stiff competition. The 2024 is maybe better, says Dan. Judy says they bottled it back in February and this is the first bottle they are opening. The grapes come from “an amazing site in the Petaluma Gap.” This is precisely what the American consumer wants, and doesn't know it. It is dry but not too much, with just enough personality in the aftertaste to suggest what kind of food it would go with. It should be served chilled but not ice cold. Dan describes plumeria, wild tropical fruit, and citrus flavors. The lime flavors will come out in about two years. Judy says Dan's commentary makes the perfect tasting notes for this wine. It is not gripping and so lemony. California Wine Country is brought to you by Rodney Strong Vineyards and Davis Bynum Wines. Daedalus Howell is also here today. He notices the minerality in this wine, “a quiet little whisper” of slate, underneath the fruit flavors. It was barreled in concrete, there was no malolactic fermentation, and there was one neutral French oak barrel, and stainless steel. Doug tells the Deodora story that starts with Judy. In 2012 they got a property that was an old goat farm. It took them months to clean it up and decide what to plant. There is a story behind the Riesling. He worked with Ford family in the Finger Lakes region, Heron Hill wine. Doug fell in love with Riesling after tasting theirs. Doug's Riesling made for himself Doug didn't want his Riesling to be too dry or too sweet, just in the middle, and for himself only. Dan says, “I did the same thing… just for me.” Dan says that Riesling makes itself if you have the right grapes. Judy says it was hard for them to believe they won that award for the Riesling. Erica Stancliff tells how she was born and raised in Forestville with parents who were home winemakers. They started Trombetta Winery where Erica is the winemaker. Her mentor was Paul Hobbs and she is now a winemaker for various local labels. She loves Petaluma Gap for the wind, climate, Sonoma coast influence and the fog. That makes it perfect, absolutely perfect for Pinot Noir, Chardonnay and also Riesling. Daedalus asks Erica if their friend Chris Sawyer, the “sommelier to the stars” is really the originator of the term Petaluma Gap. He claimed it, says Daedalus. Erica has a precise technical description of the climate that makes for slow development of brix levels. In Petaluma Gap you only get a few hours of the peak heat, before the wind comes in every day. The name Deodora comes from an old tree that is on a property he owns on a golf course. The tree is beautiful and comes from the Himalayas.

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Episode 194 - Building Stronger Communities with United Way CEO, Jamie Saunders

Open House with Mark Siwiec and Corey James Moran

Play Episode Listen Later May 19, 2025 55:40

Jaime Saunders, President and CEO of United Way of Greater Rochester and the Finger Lakes, joins Rochester Living to share how she and her team mobilize thousands of volunteers, donors, and community partners to create meaningful change in Rochester. Jaime discusses her inspiring journey from working with survivors of domestic violence to leading one of the region's largest nonprofit organizations, and she offers insights into tackling poverty, promoting economic mobility, and building healthier communities. This conversation highlights how collaborative leadership and compassionate action can transform lives right here in Rochester.

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Ep 125 - Terrifyingly Terrific in the 585 with Kendrick Foxx

That Sounds Terrific

Play Episode Listen Later May 15, 2025 63:41

Hosts Nick Koziol, Christine Smith, and Jess DeCotis team up for a special crossover episode of That Sounds Terrific in the 585 and That Sounds Terrifying, joined by creative writer/producer Kendrick Foxx. Born in small-town Alabama and forged in the high-stakes world of L.A. film production, Kendrick shares his fascinating journey from engineering student to streaming-feature filmmaker. The episode takes a turn as Kendrick dives into his passion for the paranormal sharing intense research and a personal encounter with a legendary cryptid known as the “dogman.” So whether it's building a film studio in Henrietta or chasing werewolf legends in the Finger Lakes, Kendrick is blending art, industry, and mystery in ways that both inspire and terrify. This crossover is packed with creativity, curiosity, and the kind of goosebump-inducing stories that will make you want to keep the lights on.About Kendrick Foxx, Producer/WriterEmail: foxxkendrick8@gmail.comKendrick Foxx is a creative force in film, blending small-town roots with big-screen dreams. Raised in Jackson, Alabama, his love for cinema began at the local theater, where popcorn and ICEEs fueled his imagination. After studying Architectural Engineering Technology at Holmes College and the University of Southern Mississippi, Kendrick made his way to L.A., diving into the world of film production. From commercials to feature films, he's done it all, including producing a full-length movie in just five days during the pandemic, a feat spotlighted by Variety. His feature, RIFT (2022), now streams on Paramount Plus, Showtime, Apple, Amazon, and more. Whether it's behind the camera or mapping out a production plan, Kendrick brings stories to life with heart, hustle, and a whole lot of creativity.More About That Sounds Terrific in the 585 – Hosts Nick Koziol & Christine GreenFor more information on That Sounds Terrific in the 585, visit our website at That Sounds Terrific and be sure to follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. If you or someone you know is doing something terrific in the 585 area and should be featured on our show, email us at thatsoundsterrific@gmail.com.Special Thanks To Our Key Supporters585 Magazine and their team for their support with the That Sounds Terrific in the 585 podcast. Be sure to become a subscriber of this terrific magazine - learn more at https://585mag.comThank you to Morgan Brown and Meadow Viscuso, our terrific intern duo from SUNY Fredonia for all their hard work and for lending their voices and music to the Intro and Outro of the That Sounds Terrific in the 585!

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Red Tail Ridge & Reinventing Finger Lakes Sparkling: A Conversation with Nancy Irelan

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Play Episode Listen Later May 14, 2025 68:19

In this episode of the Vint Wine Podcast, hosts Billy Galanko and Brady Weller sit down with Nancy Irelan, the powerhouse behind Red Tail Ridge Winery in New York's Finger Lakes. From her early days as a PhD student at UC Davis to leading R&D at E. & J. Gallo, Nancy brings unmatched technical depth to her boutique, cool-climate winery.She shares:

Assemblymember Sarah Clark on the 2025-2026 NYS budget

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Play Episode Listen Later May 13, 2025 49:54

After a weeks-long delay, lawmakers passed the New York State budget on Thursday. Despite its approval, the $254 budget could require major changes if cuts are made at the federal level. This hour, we begin our series of conversations with local state lawmakers about the budget and how it will affect Rochester and the Finger Lakes. Our guest is Assemblymember Sarah Clark, who explains her takeaways — from housing, to children and families, to public safety, and more. Our guest:Assemblymember Sarah Clark, District 136

5 Questions with a Winemaker: Nancy Irelan, Red Tail Ridge - Finger Lakes, NY

Play Episode Listen Later May 9, 2025 9:11

In this episode of Five Questions with a Winemaker, hosts Billy Galanko and Brady Weller sit down with Nancy Irelan, Winemaker and Owner of Red Tail Ridge Winery in New York's Finger Lakes. Renowned for her cool-climate varietals and sparkling wines, Nancy has made Red Tail Ridge a Finger Lakes standout.Nancy shares:

Is Staying in Your Comfort Zone Keeping You Stuck and Broken-hearted?

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Play Episode Listen Later May 6, 2025 10:15

In this heart-centered solo episode, Kc Rossi gets real about the fine line between honoring your bandwidth and hiding behind it. With soulful storytelling and a powerful personal reflection from her recent Resilient Hearts workshop, Kc challenges modern female leaders to explore whether comfort is actually cloaking complacency. This is your call to check in: Are you playing small under the guise of self-care? Is your comfort zone secretly keeping you invisible? And what does legacy leadership really mean to you? Walk away with two potent journaling prompts and a renewed sense of purpose as Kc reminds you that your presence, your choices, and your courage are shaping your legacy right now—not someday in the distant future.

ATR Twin Spires Wknd Prvw from Churchill Downs-Part 1: Fonner’s Chris Kotulak, Nick Tammaro, Finger Lakes’ Anthony Stabile, DRFB Derby Watch w/ David Aragon

Thoroughbred Racing Radio Network

Play Episode Listen Later Apr 25, 2025 93:36

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Unleash Your Wild Heart: How Creativity Fuels Soulful Success

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Play Episode Listen Later Apr 22, 2025 16:13

We all want to feel alive, but in a noisy world, it's easy to forget what that even feels like. This Heart Glow CEO® episode is for solopreneurs and soulful women leaders who are juggling it all, but crave deeper connection, vibrant energy, and authentic expression in their work. Tune in to learn: The myth of “not being creative” — and how to reclaim your birthright Why white space is your greatest business strategy (yes, really) How creativity becomes a tool for leadership, clarity, and nervous system balance If you've been craving freedom, fun, and flow — this is your invitation to reconnect with your wild heart and lead from a place that truly lights you up. Episode Mention: Butterflies and Boundaries: How to Redesign Your Schedule for Joy Your Next Step: Feeling called to learn how to effectively change your habits so you can optimize your personal and professional life? I offer personalized one-on-one coaching for true transformation. Connect with me to see if we're a good fit.

A historic local winery gets ready to close

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Play Episode Listen Later Apr 17, 2025 51:18

Hunt Country Vineyards is one of the pioneering wineries of the Finger Lakes, and come 2026, it will cease to exist as a wine producer. The new generation of owners have made the painful decision to end the winery. Dozens of other Finger Lakes wineries will soon face similar decisions, as owners age out of the grinding work demands. Hunt Country will transition into other sustainable farming and business endeavors, and we discuss it with our guests: Suzanne Hunt, co-owner of Hunt County Vineyards Matt Kelly, co-owner of Hunt County Vineyards

From Me to MWe: The Power of Shifting from Independence to Interdependence