9:33 am
MOOD: pretty amused :D
MUSIC: A Complicated Song (Wierd Al)
parody of Complicated (Avril Lavigne)

"Lower thine guard and thou'rt allowing the enemy in."
- Frog (Chrono Trigger)

I was / feelin' pretty down / till my / girlfriend came around
We're just / so alike in every way, I gotta say!

In fact / I just thought I might / pop the / question there that night
I was / kissin' her so tenderly, but woe is me!

Who woulda guessed / her family crest / i suddenly spy / tattooed on her thigh
And son of a gun / it's just like the one on me!
tell me..

CHORUS:
How was i supposed know that we were both related!?
Believe me, if i knew she was my cousin, we never would've dated
What to do, now?
Should I go ahead and propose
    and get hitched and have kids with eleven toes and
Move to Alabama where that kind of thing is tolerated?
No, no, no..

Hehe, i love that song..

Well! It's Thursday, i get to pick up my li'l sis Pam today from the airport, or at least someone is, and i'll see her later today :D Wow it's been a while! But only for a few days :( i have to leave 'er tomorrow. blah.

Andrew, Stephen, JW and I ended going to the Washington Wild Things game, it was awesome, the fans beside us were really getting into it, I got a coffee mug (typical :P) and Stephen caught a foul ball! We were talking over by the outfield at these tables, and there was this ball coming our way, and they were all piling over tables trying to get to it, but Stephen was close enough he could walk right over and pick it up :-D So we didn't get it signed or anything; you could see it was sandpapered and everything. I dunno what he did with it..

Tuesday i just hung out, visited Stephen after work at the Zelie BK, went for ice cream, thats about it. Wednesday i went to Portersville youth group, (this is yesterday mind you), and beforehand we needed somewhere to eat (Stephen JW and I) cause they got caught up at Stephen's house playing ping pong, didn't get to pick me up till late. So we went to Arby's instead of Texas Roadhouse, oh well :P Arbys at least has some good sandwiches. And i explained what i mean by 'i work the grill at Lane'. It doesn't mean i only make burgers, it also means i work fryalator and flatgrill and taking orders as well. Sometimes they make me run the second half of the shift alone, which i can handle pretty well actually!

But yesterday.. after YG we just went to the Millers' and did the traditional firecrackers in the yard, and caught up with each other, and played even more ping pong, and Stephen broke the computer .. oh what!? no no ignore that hehe. Dumb cable internet. Oh well. We were there till LATE and JW had the new Bond movie and his PS2 so we just skimmed thru the chapters, and let Stephen sleep. He works today, had to get up at 5, so we let him go, JW dropped me off at home where i finished ripping my bro's CDs and organizing my atrociously scattered music.

Let's talk about La Vida. ...imagine some wavy dream-sequence effect going across your field of vision...

Thursday, 22th

6803

Today the Sherpas initiated the 'Leader of the Day' system, where they'd just select a pair of us to lead the group, and the pair would have access to the watch and whatever information they needed to know to lead well. Jenn and Jang were the first LOD's.

Today, we packed completely up, remember we're at the really cool bugless site, so we hike around the lake a bit, and get on this nice trail, and we hiked up to Noonmark, this nice mountain with a real flat top where you can see forever across the Adirondaks! We lunched up there, and got a ton of pictures of us, in groups and cliff-hanging and stuff :D

MUSIC: apt°core - rhythms of remembrance

Here's when we broke out the Gorp! For those of you who somehow don't know this? (like my bro. Tom) it's trail mix. Ours was peanuts, cheerios, raisins, and mnm's, and even the half cup portions were so totally great to get. Well, using our renewed strength from climbing that thing and passing the day-pack around (yes we didn't climb it full-pack, we took 3 day-packs.), we just sorta took the trail over hill and dale and over stump and stream, and we came to the best campsite in the world: The Lean-To!

There was a Lean-To, a river, a privy, and plenty of space, surrounded by PLENTY of woods. Very scenic. There was a guestbook there, just a notebook where travellers could journal their experiences. Some were pretty interesting, others more typical, all worth reading. Well mostly :D We sorta had a disagreement over whether we should just pitch our 3 tents as usual, or take advantage of our Lean-to. Well, we decided to try it for a night. ok, imagine in the front of this lean-to, we line up eight sleeping bags side to side, and in the back, two and two lying crossways. It was so packed! I loved it. I traded Erin for her space cause she didn't like the fact that she was underneath a log. oh, bah humbug :P I'm glad Erin and Carolyn were good sports about it! We all had pretty good attitudes for the overwhelming majority of the trip. It was so great.

Erin shared her life story on this night, after a dinner of Ramen noodles, and a Sherpa treat of cheesecake, courtesy Jenn! Jenn looks out for us, oh yea. But my spoon broke today! And i was kinda disappointed. Sad. Oh well :P

Friday, 23th

6804

We got up nice and early, actually no, we got up at a regular time.. and we had something for breakfast, then THIS was a great day: We took 6 packs up Mt. Dix! The going started out slow, and steady, and nice, and we quickly took to trail walking again after such a comfortable night in the lean-to! We traded off the packs whenever we got to significant spots in the hike, such as the base of the mountain or something.

Laura and i think Matt were LOD's today. On the way up, Sarah got out the waterproof paper containing Colossians 3:1-17, and we repeated and recited until we had like up till verse ten memorized. Only the RA's next year had to have it memorized, but everyone almost in the line ended up memorizing along with them, and besides it passed the time really well. There was some great birchbark on the trail which Christine and some others took as souveniers, for letters and stuff, i thought that was so neat.

On the way up we just all sang songs, a lot of them praise songs that Jang is so cleverly capable of coming up with, a lot of them country or classic rock, or something cheesy like contemporary pop or rock :P

Laura had like fallen on her face or something by this point, and the result was, she had this black mark under her eye on her cheek? And it looked like she's put on this warrior stripe, hehe, and a few of the girls painted their faces too, i thought that was cool and funny.

There were slides on the side of the mountain, where rock and earth and tree had been peeled away in massive landslides. Oh they were so HIGH UP there. Our trail actually took us over this one, with water trickling down it. That was when the trail started to get really steep, and we helped each other climb that crag, though it took us hours, those without packs helped out those who were burdened with them, and the going was steep but we really kept a good pace, steadily upward through the rocky rooty trail.

Eventually we got to the Alpine Zone, and we got some pictures from there, and boy that was really cool, except you couldn't go off-trail due to ecological concerns. Oh well, darn. Not like you'd want to get lost way up at this altitude. There was a raincloud brewing as well, obscuring our view of the surroundings, greying everything out. We got to the top and well, the Sherpas didn't want to take chances; it's not a good thing to be caught in the rain while trying to descend that crag. So we rushed lunch, and i really hurt my jaw eating all that stuff THAT fast ;)

We made it down well, and that night we had spanish beans and rice, happily with spices that time :) And before bed Sarah had her story to share with us, and we sang Sherpa Jenn's song: Jesus King of Angels, which in the future i'll have for download on the site. We'd been singing it since day one, and it became our traditional song to sing every night.

Saturday, 24th

6805

It had rained the night before. Undergrowth: wet. My long pants: jeans. Our destination: a campsite 2 and a half miles away The means of getting there: not a trail. We Orienteered there. Straight line.

We got used to the compasses, and gave them to Sarah and Christine, who were the LOD's today. Each of us carried his own pack, fully ready for moving out to our new location. The going was much like the day before, starting out well, but we hit so many very steep hills, and climbed up, and down, going always in the direction of our bearing, never over trails, going through dense pine growth, and we got pretty wet. I did too.

We kept track of each other by counting off; the two LODs (Sarah and Christine) were one and two, and the Sherpas were eleven and twelve, so we each had a number (i was five) and we sounded off every hour or so, whenever we needed to regroup. Oh except Jang,

Jenn: Eight!
Carolyn: Nine!
Jang: Jang!

I would say this was about the hardest journey. Halfway thru when we stopped for lunch, half of us couldnt operate a knife, our hands were so frozen and drenched. We made it though! Despite it all.. no, i can't say that.. we all really loved it. If someone is reading this who disagrees, aw come on, you know you loved it!

So we got to our campsite and set up camp. Then with much heaviness of heart we were obligated to move from our camp to another upriver more that we had passed. You see there were some widowmakers at the approved site. So we went to this other spot, which was much better i think, it was by the river, and it was so much more spacious besides. We hightailed it over there and were just able to set up camp before night fell, in the rain the whole time. It let up though, and we had one of the nicest fires i'd say, courtesy Erin and with help from Matt. We had spaghetti that night, and had no life story.

Sunday, 25th

6806

We slept in today until i'm guessing 8 or 830, and just kinda lounged around and had quiet time to write in our journals, like every day, in case i never mentioned it? Except today there was so much more time, cause well, there wasn't anything to do really, so we took Sunday as our well-needed day of rest.

We had 'church' today, as it turned out, and we all took part; we met finally in a nice clearing down the trail, after we each in groups sorta put together our own little presentations about 'shelter', and finding shelter in God. Sarah, Linds and I put together this imaginative story about this little boy Ralphie whose dad beat him up and took his lunch money every day before school :P The kid had a rough life, but we turned the story up and allowed him to find rest in God. There was scripture reading, and a nice shelter vis. aid made of our firewood, and some singing, beautifully led by Jang for us.

MUSIC: Original Species (Audio Adrenaline - Some Kind of Zombie)

A lot of today was restful. For dinner we had Mac and Cheese with Green Beans (of course it was all cooked together cause we can pull that off camping :-D ) and Laura i think probably cooked.. She did cook a lot, she did so many of our dinners and breakfasts, i think she likes to do it. :P

Tonight was a late night. First I gave my life story, then by the time it was dark, we gathered around the campfire under the threat of rain (thankfully it only sprinkled) and Jenn told hers, and after stoking the fire a bit, Matt gave his. It was really great. More later i guess.