RIP RTP. Sophomore summer is over, and, to the delight of our readers, so is our brief stint on the back page of The Dartmouth. What began as a desperate and pitiful attempt by editor-in-chief Lindsay Ellis ’15 to fill the sports section with something “a little more sophomore summer” ended in something not so chill: a weekly opportunity for your boys Hank and Fish to inundate the public with the delusional byproducts of minds warped by insomnia, chewing tobacco and “ship.” Example 1A: the previous sentence. Example 1B: the quote at the end of this column.
We never imagined we’d be writing this column for 10 weeks. Not even in our worst nightmares did we think we’d make it through two months of 14X without getting Yoko Ono’d.
In a cruel twist of fate, we end 14X the exact same way we began it: sitting in a bed together desperately trying to ignore the impromptu and insufferable karaoke performance of “Dream On” by Aerosmith taking place next door.
Plenty of people thought Riding the Pine could never work. How could a warmongering man like Hank ever coexist with a hippie like Fish, a libertine who refuses to be constrained by the hidebound conventions of our college, our era, our society? When two celestial bodies collide, they create a supernova that shines on for a billion years. (Note: This information may be inaccurate. Fish is doing really poorly in Astro 1.)
Admittedly, a couple things went our way this term. Only one of us got kicked out of formal (not the one you’d think). Hank’s fall housing cancellation fee got waived. Our DBA will roll over. Programming Board gave away free pinnies on the Green.
Unfortunately, many other things didn’t. Hank became the laughingstock of Zeta Psi fraternity, getting constantly chirped by them for his mediocre Masters performance and his even more mediocre “sports” column. We battled our way to the IM soccer semifinals, only to have our hopes and dreams of a modicum of sports legitimacy ripped from our fingertips by the titans of Tuck. We naively tried to start a fantasy football league with the readers of our column, but only received three responses, including the expected and unsatisfying reply from Old Man McNulty.
You may have noticed that we’re 400 words deep in this column, and there hasn’t been the slightest hint of any sports topic. Don’t hold your breath. After nine weeks of wandering through a sports news desert, forced to ask ourselves questions like, “How much do our readers care about women’s MMA?” we have decided to rise above the petty concerns of “The Dartmouth sports section.”
Now, in our swan song, we have finally mustered up the courage to drop the facade and write about what we actually want to write about: our feelings.
We are not excited for junior year. We’re no longer the fresh-faced, widely adored infants of campus. We are now forced by the Registrar to take an off-term despite our expressed desire to remain in Hanover for the rest of our lives. Hank is slated to be off in the fall, but he keeps running into Craigslist trolls and can’t find an apartment.
With Hank off in the fall, Fish will seek refuge in Robo alone desperately attempting to beat back the crazed hallucinations his mind will produce without Hank’s moderating influence. Fish has already made arrangements to live at home in the winter, knowing he will need the full term and the unconditional love of his three brothers to recover.
Sophomore summer lived up to all the hype. We, noted skeptics, were completely intoxicated by the spirit of 14X. We lived the cliché. We went to the copper mines, we swung on the rope swing and we canoed to Gilman. We hiked the Fifty and walked the Prouty. Along the way, we learned why so many have said these sophomore summer experiences are so meaningful. It’s only because we were fortunate enough to share these moments with the people we love. In the final moments of our final column, we’d like to show our gratitude for our readers and some of the people who have made our sophomore summer and Riding the Pine so meaningful to us.
We would be completely remiss if we didn’t acknowledge Lindsay Ellis, who plucked us from obscurity and put up with all of our juvenile antics along the way. We’d like to thank Hank’s dad, who continues to read the column despite candidly admitting that all it does is “give him a headache.” To everyone who reads our column and to the few who have complimented it/us, thank you. It means a lot to us, even if we don’t always do a great job of expressing it.
Riding the Pine will now be on hiatus for the foreseeable future. It’s been a hell of a ride. To close Riding the Pine, we’d like to leave our readers with a quote from Edvard Munch, the Norwegian famous for painting The Scream.
“From my rotting body, flowers shall grow. And I am in them. And that is eternity.”
Thanks for reading. RIP RTP.
