12:39 pm
MOOD: i'm home! :)
MUSIC: Magic Carpet Ride (remix)

"Time is a valuable resource that attracts many robbers."
- Framed Picture on Pastor Charles' Wall

I'm home! I got home sunday morning at 4am, just before sunrise. unloaded my stuff, haunted the house for a morning.. boy it's great to be home! as i write this, the kids are at school, i'm in my spot in the basement, cause Candice's got my room right now.. i don't feel right lounging around on 'her' bed, in 'her' room :-P

Later this afternoon, J-Dub, the Admiral, Stephen and possibly Sam (if he isn't married already :-P) are gonna get down to a little league game .. wait now.. um, minor league game? dang i forget. oh well, it's not important which. It's down in Washington, PA, south of Pittsburgh, and it doesn't look like we're gonna be rained out! Andrew at least, was worrying about that.

MUSIC: Soul of a Titan (Remember The Titans OST)
When She Loved Me (Toy Story II OST)

Well, the past few weeks I was on La Vida! It was our school's freshman Outdoor Ed. class, but much more, it was ten days spent in the Adirondaks with ten random freshmen, roughing it together, traversing dense jungle and broad plain together, eating gorp, and the ends of the carrots, when we needed energy, together, fording ice-cold rivers, ascending sharp and precariously impossible trails together.. this is an account of those ten adventurers:

Shuffles, Jang, Matt, Jenn, Carolyn, Erin, Sarah, Lindsey, Christine, and Laura.

Sunday, 18th of May, 2003

6799

This day, the four freshmen teams: the kayak patrol, the canoe patrol, and the 2 hiking patrols, met outside of physical plant for briefing and for accululating gear. We weeded out the last of the 'unnecessary equipment' that you shouldn't take on La Vida, such as LP records and weapons, and generally too much clothing. You really only need like 2 pair for 2 weeks, really. We stuffed our gear into our packs, and by nightfall each of us went our own way, each patrol to its own campsite.

Waiting for us were three tents, and a large tarp under which we were to store our bags, and whatever else we wanted to keep dry. We didn't know it yet, but that week we'd come to love tarps, cause of all the rain we'd get. Jang, Matt, our sherpa Matt, and I slept pretty well that night.. oh actually if i recall, Jang didn't sleep well at all. But oh well :-P That brings us to:

Monday, 19th

6800

We woke up today at the Campus site, and we all had oatmeal.. hehe, we tried to have hot chocolate but y'know, sometimes they pack hot chocolate in similar looking bags to pudding? Yeah, that nabbed i think Christine and Sarah :-P Hot Pudding is so nasty! Don't make pudding mix into a drink, really, it's nasty. I shiver. Wolfe and I had to switch off, we offered to drink it up, but um, we couldnt handle a whole glass of hot pudding, so we switched it up halfway thru the glass: He gave me the hot 'butterscotch' that he'd dimmed down using powerdered milk, and i gave him my hot 'chocolate'. Oh boy, that was fun &)

MUSIC: Columbine, Friend of Mine (Jonathan & Stephen Cohen)

So what else did we do today? We played the typical 'trust' games and 'name' games, and this weird looking at people's eyes game, hehe.. which i forgot about until now. i'm gonna have to think about it some.

Then they put us in harnesses, and we did some high ropes-ness, and i think we all pushed our boundaries on that one (although not me, i do stuff like that all the time. Not on ropes though.) And my favorite was when Jang and I went up the Duo, and man that was harder than it looks! See Jenn and was it Wolfe? went up before us, and i was like 'oh thats simple' and i think Jang was the same way, but then we got up onto this rickety log dangling between 2 trees, and the object was to get to the enormous tire swinging 5 feet above us, and then to these weird ropes and some other dangling structures, and man, that sure took both of us to get either of us up! It was great!

I think the real significance of today was when we got to the ropes course; we saw that they had installed a port-a-john for us campers a bit further down the road toward campus. That was sure awesome, though i don't know how much i appreciated it :P

Tuesday, 20th

6801

Today, wow, we went a long distance. Well, first important i guess we packed up camp for the first time, and divvied up the load, for the first time, and then we took the short road out to physical plant, and sat in the lot sorting food.. it was like a half-full large bin of food, and we divvied up the lunches and breakfasts and dinners, and just hung around while the trip van charged up or something.

At this point it should be pointed out, that no work on Sheppard had as yet been tried. There were noises of machinery eminating from the anti-quad side, that is Sheppard's front door to the mini-quad, but nothing was going on really. So in the spirit of La Vida i went in and broke a twenty on MnM's in Jenks. Yum!

MUSIC: Ebay ("Wierd Al" Yankovich)

a used pink bathrobe / a rare mink snow-globe
a Smurf t.v. tray / i bought on e-bay

my house is filled with / this crap, shows up in
bubble wrap most everyday / what i bought on ebay

tell me why! (i need another pet rock)
tell me why! (i got that Alf alarm clock)
tell me why (i bid on Shatner's old toupee)
they had it on E-Bay.

i'll buy your knick-nack / just check my feedback
a-plus-plus, they all say / they love me on E-Bay

gonna buy! (a slightly damaged golf bag)
oh, gonna buy! (some beanie babies new with tags)
from some guy, i never met in Norway,
found him on E-Bay!

BRIDGE:
i am the type who / is liable to snipe you
with two seconds left to go (who-a)
got paypal or visa / whatever'll please ya
as long as i've got the do-ough!

i'll buy your chachkis / sell me your watch, please
i'll buy.. (i'll buy) (i'll buy..) (i'll buy!)
i'm highest bidder!

junkheaps arriving in the mail
from that worldwide garage sale
hey, a Dukes of Hazzard ashtray!
i bought it on E-Bay

gonna buy! (a Pac-Man fever lunch box)
oh, gonna buy! (a case of vintage tube socks)
wanna buy, a kleenex used by Dr. Dre
found it on E-Bay!

wanna buy! (that Fara Fawcett poster)
PEZ dispensers and a toaster
don't know why, the kinda stuff you'd throw away,
i'll buy on E-Bay!

... what i bought, on E-Ba-a-ay

IF YOU HAVEN'T GUESSED: parody of I Want It That Way (Backstreet Boys or N*Sync or someone)

The van ride was pretty long, like 12 hours or something, maybe, so finally we got to the Adirondaks and our spot there, and we luffed on our packs, and high tailed it on up, just over the one hill and around the rock, and into this swampy thing, where we set up first camp. It was called a 'pristine site' cause it was just somewhere where there was no established campsite. It was pretty miserable for a first-day-in-the-woods experience, which i'm glad i went through, actually, for other reasons. Why was it so bad in my opinion? This place is where i got all those bug bites; they were vicious that night! But yeah. Nice woods. the Adirondaks are all birch, y'know.

Wednesday, 21st

6802

Well today we found out the importance of drinking water, and how rare it is out in the wilderness, but fortunately we had this nice spring down near the road where we filled our Nalgenes before..

Rock and River, this tour group, came and wanted their share of the cliff, so we pulled up some ropes. It was hilarious listening to the guy just explain all this crap about rock climbing and technical terms and what to do if such and such happened, and what the history was of this thing, and a bunch of crap that we didn't have to go thru luckily :) Cause we are La Vida! Viva la Vida! Ok that was dumb :-P

Well our support staff (i should mention that they are like the little angels on our shoulders that help you out without you knowing about them. y'know? course you don't.) they gave us our spice kit which had apparantly been left somewhere last year, so we wouldn'ta had spices except for them delivering our kit to us! And i tell you what, those spices saved a lotta meals. We ate like KINGS i tell ya. and QUEENS cause i'm having a random p.c. moment. I think Gordon made me more p.c. than i care to be. I noticed that, i came home and all my friends are so racist, i love it! I've been brainwashed, gosh darnit. More on that at a later time.

So i dunno, we just galumphed back to our van, and passed the 2nd hiking patrol on our way out, they noticed our bug bites and everything and we were like "hehe, suckers".. hehe.. so at the van we had our usual lunch .. oh i didnt' mention i don't think, what that was.. each day we'd have a portion of wheat crackers, with all this stuff you can put on it, like peanut butter, or jelly, even Parkay if you go for that :D, or pepperoni, or cheese, or freako-butter (explanation later when i feel like it), or honey, .. i think that's it, and we had one orange each day and one thing of fig cookies, and a few carrots to pass around. As well as the occasional dried fruit, such as pineapple or raisins. Yum! We ate meager, but we ate REALLY WELL. Just to confuse you more :P

We drove to this spot and hiked a bit to these lakes, these beautiful awesome beaver-built lakes snugly nestled in this awesome birch forest, where there was a REAL CAMPSITE there waiting for us, with plenty of room to stretch, and not really ANY bugs! Y'know, going from the last site to this one was like going from hell to heaven. I don't know this, but i just make irrational judgement calls sporadically so bear with me. Are you with me? good. i write 'em as i see 'em.

and that was the last time we were to see the van, really, until the end, from today on out we were really out there in the woods. Only a couple miles, but in the forest that's a long way. I'm so amazed we got the spot we did, it really ruled.

This is where "life stories" come into play. Sherpa Matt had already told his, and this night was when Laura told hers. You basically just say your life, and plans, and sorta make a story out of it somehow (i wasnt too great at that, i couln't make heads or tails of my life, enough to get together a coherent plot :P so mine was the traditional narrative.) So we all got to know Laura a bit more through this, and we got to know things to pray for, for her, so it was all good. Then um, we broke and went to bed.