After our last Ill-Advised Camping Trip, after which it took me a whole year to make it back home (yeah, I’m still judging you guys for that), I thought I’d left the PPC for good, never to return.

Well, it looks like I was wrong, since I’m here and I’m writing this thing up.

So, let’s do this.

PPC Camping Trip: Take 3

As it turned out, you had all decided to start the party without me. So, instead of inviting all of you to my house (which is good, Mum’s still not over the mess that you all caused last time), I stumbled across half a continent and a few oceans in order to make it to Huinesoron and Kaitlyn’s house on time for the planning to commence. Which was good, because there were pancakes and bacon waiting for me when I arrived, and a few towels too (swimming across the Pacific isn’t fun, trust me).

It was kind of pretty, when I wasn’t busy drowning.

I’d like to say that you were all immensely pleased to see me. Unfortunately, that wasn’t the case, since half of you had forgotten about my existence and the other half weren’t exactly pleased that I had got sucked into Homestuck, of all things. So yes. I’m now an exile, isn’t that fun?

No, not that sort of Exile.

Our standard decision of ‘oh gosh, where should we pitch our unnaturally large tent this year?’ was sorted with Google Maps and a Randomizer, and honestly, I think somebody must have messed with the internet (yes, I’m looking at you, Irrelevant) because for some reason or another, the Randomizer landed us directly on top of the Eiffel Tower.

Our destination.

Now, anybody else would have tried to pick another destination, but hey! We’re the PPC! We don’t give up just like that! And besides, camping on the Eiffel Tower? Sounds fun, right?

And that’s the story of how we ended up flying across the country in Desdendelle’s stolen Chitty Chitty Bang Bang clone, singing along to Bohemian Rhapsody loudly and obnoxiously, and screaming at passing jetplanes. (That’s a sentence I never thought I’d find myself typing.) It was… um, certainly an experience. I’m still unclear to exactly what happened halfway to Paris, but I’d just like to state here publicly that it really wasn’t Frostleaf1615’s fault that we ended up driving through a hailstorm. No, I personally blame Scapegrace for that little escapade. Kudos to Bram for improvising a mass umbrella with several raincoats and an unwilling seagull!

...those seagulls really weren’t happy.

We swung by a nice little coffeeshop in Italy a couple of minutes after the hailstorm incident (we took a massive detour) and picked up hot chocolate and mochas for everyone who wanted some. The orders got a bit muddled, unfortunately, and some of us ended up with slightly more caffeine than we had bargained for. For some of us, that was fine, but in the case of Alleb, who happened to be driving at that point- well, ahahaha, let’s just say that she didn’t actually mean to wreck that forest, and she’s very very sorry about those poor trees that perished in her coffee-induced rampage. Probably.

The remains. We’re all judging you, Alleb.

So, after several hours of chaos and confusion (and several moving renditions of Tom Jones’s What’s New Pussycat) we arrived at Paris! It was nighttime at that point, so it was as if the Tower was lit up especially to guide us!

There it is!

We flew the car up to dock at that cute little platform on the top of the Tower, and pushed the visitors off (not literally off, just… down the stairs), and proceeded to set up several tents and a minibar. Why a minibar? I don’t know. Why not?

After a couple of minutes of barricading the entrances so nobody could kick us off our camping spot, we all gathered together to look out over the city that never sleeps (wait, no, that’s New York, forget that) and eat some suspicious-tasting hot dogs provided by Silenthunder. For some reason, there were feathers in mine.

There was definitely something off about them.

And then we went to bed. Well, most of us, anyway. Rumor has it that there was a mass game of Extreme Truth Or Dare at midnight, which would certainly explain the scorch marks and the fact that Storme Hawk’s hair seemed to be slightly blue. And radioactive.

In the morning, this was the only thing left on my camera.

Breakfast on the Eiffel Tower was nice, although it was disturbed a bit by the fact that the French police had surrounded our camping site with a ‘POLICE LINE: DO NOT CROSS’ and looked like they were prepared to start firing on us the moment we walked down. They were yelling something at us in French. I’m not quite sure what it was, since I happen to be failing French at the moment.

Surprisingly, most of us weren’t bothered by this.

So we put together some makeshift hang gliders using the contents of most of Lily Winterwood’s extensive suitcase (probably meant for the drama troupe she dragged along) and a few poles that probably weren’t being used for anything.

(My friend has just pointed out that using hang gliders probably would have got us shot quicker than if we had just surrendered, but I would like to counter with the fact that we didn’t actually get shot using them and anyway it was actually pretty fun and only one person died. But they got better, so that’s all right.)

I think this one used to be some sort of clown costume.

Casually dodging the police, we made our way down the streets of Paris, trying not to think about how we’d get back to our camping site. We scoped out the best places to re-enact scenes from Miraculous Ladybug, stole a few costumes from some unwitting shopkeepers, and laughed at Matt Cipher as he completely failed to do a decent backflip.

...don’t tell me, I got the type of ladybug wrong. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry I’m just the weird person who puts captions on these photos and I’m not even very good at my job I’m trapped in a Google Docs page please send help

And then, armed with several baguettes and a sign reading ‘omlette du fromage’, we broke through the police barrier. I’m not sure quite how we managed this feat. As far as I can recall, more seagulls were involved. (We’re really getting fond of those seagulls, aren’t we?)

From left to right: Bill, Bob, Betty, and Mary-Anne

DCCCV and doctorlit put on a lovely show for us, using some fireworks that they apparently bought illicitly from a little old man with an excess of flammable materials. I’m sure the people of Paris appreciated that little display; the technicolor images of Sues getting messily dismembered were extremely creative. (Hieronymus Graubart provided popcorn!)

On the second day of our camping trip, a portal to another dimension opened up above the Tower, and Fred (from the last trip? Remember Fred?) fell out. That would have been fine, if it wasn’t for the fact that Fred has aged from being cute and adorable to being a fully-grown elephant. (He’s still cute, though.) Iximaz, of course, was completely thrilled by this turn of events, but it was getting to the point where there wasn’t much room for tents, much less anybody else, in our little camping ground. So we headed back down, taking Fred with us, and passed the police, who were staring at us with some decidedly weird expressions. But they didn’t shoot us, so everything was good.

Someone deleted all of the footage of the trip, so all I have is this photo of Fred from last time, please don’t hate me (I’m so alone on this page)

And then we took a lovely ride around Paris on the back of the elephant! (Well, I say ‘we’. Most people declined, and I’m sure Fred appreciated that.) I think a lot of people thought it was some sort of circus troupe, which… isn’t entirely inaccurate, to be perfectly honestly. The illusion was helped along by TheShyIon’s impressive juggling skills. Not so shy after all, eh?

The remains. I still don’t know who threw the confetti

We brought back dinner! And since we’re in Frence (c’est la vie, et cetera, et cetera) we did the obvious thing and brought back some of the local delicacies! Chocolate croissants, escargot, and… frogs.

(In retrospect, maybe the brochure meant cooked frogs, as opposed to live ones.)

LITERAL FROG ARMY

Anyway, those little green/brown/purple (I don’t know what happened there) menaces got everywhere; into our tents, our shoes, our suitcases- we were still finding them throughout the entire five-day trip, and I very much suspect that people were finding them even after that. And although some people embraced them as team mascots-slash-pets, I know for a fact that other twisted people were skewering them on spare tent posts and roasting them over a spontaneous fire made out of the crumbling remains of our copies of The Original Series. Really, guys? Really?

I think we can all agree that the next two days were chaotic. I’m sure everyone remembers what happened, and I don’t need to recap. Right? Right?

Okay, fine, quick recap.

I AM TRAPPED ON THIS PAGE AND CAN ONLY COMMUNICATE THROUGH CAPTIONS SO HERE HAVE AN IMAGE OF MARY-ANNE SCREAMING AND MAYBE SEND HELP PLEASE

Lots of activities were held, mainly fandom-related, and we made our peace with the French Police (well, we bribed them with Jammie Dodgers and that’s the same thing, right?). Eventually it got to the point where we had begun to paint the Eiffel Tower Tumblr-blue, and that’s about when we decided that it was probably time to finish up the trip.

But, first, we had to hold our yearly Sues versus Agents! And since we were in Paris, there was obviously only one place to hold it.

i’m so scared don’t make me go

So, we roped the French police force into letting us into the infamous Paris Catacombs, which is possibly the Best Place Ever. It’s just so... atmospheric, you know? (Granted, most of the atmosphere comes from the fact that there’s skulls of the damned everywhere you turn, but... if you just pretend that they’re dead Sues, it makes everything feel a lot better. Ahaha.)

And this year’s leaders were Sergio Turbo and Scapegrace! Which would have been great if we knew who was leading which team. And whose team everyone else was on.

...

Yeah, it was basically a massive free-for-all in the creepiest place in France. Complete with Weapons of Medium Destructruction and lots of paint left over from our failed attempt at a team art project.

Alas, poor Yorik. I knew him well

We were summarily banned from France.

The view from the border.

So, here I am, typing up our report busily and trying to ignore the fact that I think one of the frogs accidentally got trapped in the report. I roped it into helping with the captions, though, so I think we should be fine. Everybody else is currently helping load up the Chitty Chitty  Bang Bang clone, and we’re set to return home in a couple of minutes.

...

They’re gone, Kitty. They’ve left you again and they’re never coming back.

Hey, where did everyone go?

No, seriously. Again?