Camping

A couple of my friends from the trip I just returned from were driving through town this week.  That was added to a large group of people from a few summers ago who were in town for a few days.  It was a lot of people to hang out with!  We were eating the first night at a large table at a local restaurant and I was sitting next to one of the guys I live with.  He was on the phone with people from NY who were in town and saying we should all get together on Thursday night for dinner.  I could plainly hear him say, “That sounds like a great idea, I’ll have the guy sitting next to me plan it.”  He was talking about me.  I was volunteered to organize a dinner for 18 at a local restaurant one day before it was supposed to happen.  It’s not easy to get reservations on the water when you don’t have a least two days lead time.

We managed to make it happen.  Dinner was great and we went down to a pub a couple doors over after we were done to have some drinks and talk for a while.  I’m glad it all worked out and everyone seemed to enjoy themselves!

A while before I got back into town from my trip West, the group I hang out with decided they wanted to go camping when I got back.  We put it together and this past weekend we headed out to the beach with nine people.  We found out a couple interesting things while we were out there:

1.  Mosquitoes love our Asian friends.  They both got chewed to pieces while the rest of us were sitting there with no issues whatsoever.  It was kind of bizarre.

2.  Salt water and sand do not mix with glasses really well.  All the visually impaired just wore our contacts the entire time because otherwise you were trying to clean your glasses every ten minutes which gets real old real fast.

3.  Enormous amount of shore breeze and lighting fires do not mix.  We had a couple incidents with the paper we were using to light the fire flying away in the breeze (we were using paper because matches and lighters would immediately be extinguished once they were lit).  Copious amounts of lighter fluid were our friend in this endeavor.

4.  People who didn’t like camping with us last time still don’t really enjoy camping no matter how good a time the rest of us are having.  It seems camping really isn’t for everyone.

5.  Camping can be a relative term.  The place we stayed was basically a large parking lot where a lot of people parked and plugged in their RVs or campers.  We were the only group out there with tents.

Gun Show

I got back on Saturday night and was greeted with hugs and silly string by my friends here.  Then we went out to dinner at TGIFriday’s, Friday’s seems to be where we go when someone gets home from a trip.  We decided we’d make plans for today and sat down to see what we wanted to do.

This morning started with a gun show.  There was one in town and one of my roommates and I wanted a handgun, so we walked in first thing in the morning and walked out 30 minutes lates the proud new owners of two .45s.  We had to wear nice clothes to the gun show though because we headed right from there to church.

All five of us went to a new church to try it out.  It was really nice and really large and the children’s choir did their presentation for the service.  We were kind of bummed that the service was so early though (being honest, it was at 1100 but we’ve become accustomed to the 1300 service) because one of our other friends told us there wasn’t a later service.  We found out that is NOT true, so we may try out the latest service next week.

After church, we headed out to the shooting range to test out the new guns.  It turns out there are some people who aren’t as good at aiming and firing weapons as the rest of us were.  Not a lot to be done about that but practice!

After the firing range, we headed out to volunteer at the soup kitchen.  It was a day of vast shifts between violence and compassion.

I’m glad to be home and back with all my friends.  It was too long to be away from here.

Final Stretch

We finally are in the home stretch of our time here.  It’s been a lot of fun, but I think we’re all getting to the point where we are ready to be headed home.  The weather has been getting even nicer here which is kind of disappointing.  It seems this state has conspired against us to only have nice weather and habitable land when we are ready to leave.  You know what, state?!  I’m going to a state that is much nicer and more fun, so take that!

We have had one of our final briefings so far and that went really well.  We have our FINAL final briefing this coming week which is a long drive away.  We would be flying but we have had funding issues beyond our control which means we will be taking a truck.  It’s going to be a good time.  At least this time we have the money for a hotel so we won’t have to drive there and back in one day.  We did that at midterm and it was not fun.  We had four drivers but each driver still had to drive a large number of hours.

We have been really busy lately which explains my blogging absence. Not that I would need to explain my absence, but I am a second born child which means I continually feel like I’ve failed someone around me at any given time. It’s called the living-in-a-shadow gene. Have you heard of it? It’s loads of fun.

Recovery

This week has been all about recovery for me. After my injury on the ski slope, I’ve had to take it easy for a while. Pictures can be found on my Flickr page or on my Facebook page. Take a look and let me know what you think.

Because we’re winding down our time here, I decided my team deserved a weekend away from all this and so we packed up the cars and went camping about an hour from where we live. We had an absolute blast attempting to fjord a freezing cold raging river (note the word attempting). We were all soaked and darn near hypothermic but we found a tree that had fallen across the river and was only buried under approximately eight to ten inches of water. We took full advantage of that tree and safely made it across with only minor injuries to our exploration team.

Each night we sat around a fire pit cooking dinner and laughing it up.

Some people had a hard time sleeping because they had set their tent up in a location that drains water about as well as a clogged sink. Had they had air mattresses, they would have floated away the first night due to unseasonable rain. It hasn’t rained for five weekends in a row here but wouldn’t you know the instant we planned a camping trip the forecast changed for the worst. Saturday, Saturday evening and Sunday all provided us with some spectacular weather though, so we just laughed that first night off as a fluke.

I’ll be sad to leave this place, but I’m really excited about being home again.  It’s going to be a good time and I’m looking forward to getting back to work and the people at home.  Now, if only I can think of a way to move all the people here back home with me I will have solved all my problems.