City Kids on the Ropes Course

Tuesday afternoon we had a pretty cool activity planned.  We took everyone to the ropes course, and had three staff members there straight thru until the end of cabin option time, for a four hour ropes course activity period.  We got many of the kids through every event beside MVP, while others spent hours just trying to master the Catwalk.  Rocky did a great job, showing a lot of patience with those guys, while I was dealing with the other end of the spectrum on the Leap of Faith.  In particular, once I got Chris, my camper who didn’t want to be there, halfway up the Leap, he turned around and yelled, “BullsEye, guess what!”  “What?”  “I don’t want to go home any more!”  “Good!  Keep climbing!”  And he ended up returning in my cabin for Whitewater Camp a month later.

Many campers have complained that I have forced them to do this or that.  There is only one camper that can accurately make that claim to a degree.  My youngest kid D’Marco had done the other events and still had a harness on, but had declined to try the Leap.  Once I had finished everyone else, I just walked up to him on the bridge, and clipped him in before he even knew what was happening.  I picked him up by the belay rope and carried him over to the tree.  I had a helmet on him and everything before I let him go.  He had a good sense of humor about it, but didn’t give in that easy.  It had the desired effect though, and he did make it all the way to the top when he finally attempted it two days later.

Overall the ropes course event went very well, and we helped kids overcome more fear in those few hours than the rest of the summer combined, if you ask me.  There was still a good bit of fear left though, as they were all apprehensive about our planned campout that night.  I had been getting everything from questions about it, to threats of outright refusal to participate from my campers, who couldn’t even fathom the idea of sleeping…outside?  When the time came, they all cooperated, and I rolled my traditional night hike into our journey to the campsite.  We had a large campfire, and Hercules gave a very good talk that got everyone’s mind off of the fact that they were outside in the dark.  Surprisingly enough, that was actually the easiest time I had getting them to go to sleep all week.  It was a classic situation where, no matter how much they complained about it ahead of time, once we had done it, I heard a “Can we campout again?” every night afterwards.

For cabin option time, my cabin became my only group all summer to get out of doing low ropes, and we went to the pool, since it was like 105 degrees out. For counselor time off, a group of us set out to eat at Mongolian BBQ, and it took three tries to find one that was open on the 4^th of July.  We were pushing it a bit, but made it back on time, to discover that the evening schedule had been changed due to a conflict between some Junior Adventure and Wild Oak kids.  We then proceeded to make a very large campfire instead, and had ice cream sundaes.  There is nothing like giving kids a bunch of sugar before sending them to bed.  That night we had to split my kids up to get them to settle down, with a few of them supervised in another cabin.

By Thursday we had the meal process down, and things went smoothly until we headed off to our second ropes activity for the week.  I did get D’Marco to complete the Leap, but not without some reluctance.  He had no problem getting to the top, but refused to jump.  I was exerting a bit of pressure with the belay rope, but not enough to pull him off.  He didn’t like that tension too much, and was threatening to unclip the belay rope if I didn’t give him some more slack.  FX shouted up the no-holds-barred description of what the result of that would be to him, which convinced him it would be a bad idea, and we did eventually get him safely to the ground.

After watching my city kids’ interest in the horses, the wranglers had agreed to stage a little activity for them to come “visit” the horses, at the beginning of canteen time.  We had paintball that afternoon, which went fine, but we had been doing a lot of walking.  My plan was to go to low ropes for cabin option, since we had skipped it the day before, but I was getting a good bit of resistance.  With us staying at Buckhorn, and having long distances to travel between events, with only one staff member supervising, the campers had a tendency to spread out, and were constantly difficult to control and keep track of.  I told them that if they could figure out how to walk in a straight line all the way back, we could go swimming instead.  Wow was that the magic phrase!  My older campers grew up in a hurry, and the two of them finally showed a little leadership, and had both cabins walking in straight single file lines in no time.  We stopped at Buckhorn along the way to change for swimming, but that took forever, and I was the only staff person around to supervise/herd them, since FX was nowhere to be found, presumably waiting for us at the Saddle Inn, where we were supposed to be “visiting” the horses.  We eventually got everyone together and headed back out, but they were too late to do anything with the horses besides watch them get released to pasture.  I eventually caught sight of FX up at the canteen, and he was definitely surprised to see our unruly cabins headed up towards him in a cohesive group for the first time all week.

I took my kids to the pool for the second time that week, and we proceeded with the regular Thursday evening activities.  I had a bit of trouble with my younger kids during Kevin’s talk, but I eventually got everything back under control, and we headed back to Buckhorn for Illuminaria.  I probably learned more about myself (or at least about the way others perceive me) during this event than at any other time that year.  My campers where all quick to point out my interesting habits, which were probably exaggerated even more that week due to the amount of stress I was under.  It was clear that they had all grown a lot over the course of the week as well, but they still had a long ways to go.  We had to split them up again that night to get them to settle down and go to sleep.

Friday was a short day, with everything crammed together for an early exit.  We played paintball for our last activity of the week, and the kids did much better.  Two of my kids suddenly became very sick, and both of them threw up on the way back down the hill.  My kids didn’t recover before they left, and they weren’t the only ones.  Half of the campers and staff, including myself, experienced the same illness within the next day or two.  It cost me trip to Bowman, and one of my only two days off all summer, but I recovered within 24 hours, and was ready for the next week.

City Kids at Buckhorn

Week three was scheduled to be an all girls week at Wild Oak, so FX and I were looking forward to getting what looked like it was going to be one of our only DA weeks.  But, with the low signups that week, a lot of free campership coupons had been given out.  Since High Adventure hadn’t started yet, and Wild Oak was scheduled to be all girls, there were no available programs that week for male children over age eleven.  So Sunday afternoon, we ended up creating a male sportsman camp for that week, running out of the Buckhorn camp site.  Instead of a light week of work as DAs, we ended up with two cabins of nine kids again, and no standard program to follow.  It took a while to get things organized that afternoon, but eventually they started sending campers our way.  I only had three campers by the time we had to leave for dinner, while Jason had all nine of his.  These few hours were one of the rare occasions that I didn’t have the largest cabin to supervise.  I agreed with Jason that I would take some of his campers if the rest of mine didn’t show up, as much as a cabin of three campers would have been great.  That didn’t last long, as the rest of my cabin arrived as a group halfway through dinner.  They were all inner city kids from the Bay Area, and had been selected by a church in that area to experience what it was like to be outside an urban area.

It was obvious within a couple of minutes that this was going to be a challenging week for me, since I had very little in common with most of my campers.  They had never done any of the regular camp activities, and spent the time prior to our group photo playing basketball.  I had two guys who were much bigger than me, aged 16 or 17, and a couple of much younger 11 and 12 year olds.  As a whole, they were the least disciplined group I have ever dealt with at camp, and nothing we could do would convince them to stand quietly in line and listen to instructions, or to walk somewhere without some of them randomly starting to hit each other.  They were pretty much running around like crazy and causing trouble, all the time.  FX’s cabin had a lot of younger kids, who whined about everything, but my campers were down right rebellious when they weren’t doing their own share of whining.

Getting everyone to go to sleep turned out to be quite a struggle as well.  Once everyone had gotten ready for bed, I reflexively turned off the light as I lay down.  The resulting scream was deafening, and startled me enough that I couldn’t find the switch for a few seconds to flip the lights back on.  When I did, I saw six city kids with eyes as wide as saucers, and a couple of local kids laughing at them so hard they were crying.  The lack of sympathy didn’t win anybody any points, and the profanity level rose to new record levels.  It was a good hour before I could get everyone calmed down after the energy level got that high, with a lot of adrenaline in their veins.  Well not really a “good” hour, but an hour none the less.  Eventually, somehow, I got them to go to sleep.

We did a pretty good job of taking advantage of the freedom of making up the plan as we went, and didn’t limit ourselves to the usual routine.  We planned a night activity at the zip-line for Monday, an overnight campout to Tin Cup for Tuesday, and a 4^th of July event for Wednesday.  Paintball that first afternoon was quite the experience.  I was moments away from canceling that activity for the whole week after we had so many mask violations within the first minute of play.  And the markers don’t work properly when held sideways, like a gangster.  I have never seen so many people at Sportsman camp who didn’t want to play paintball.

I had one local kid, Chris, who didn’t want to be there at all that week, and was deliberately trying to get sent home.  I explained to him that since I knew that sending him I home would be more of a reward than a punishment, I was very capable of finding other ways of correcting inappropriate behavior.  That evening the kids played Capture-the-Flag at Buckhorn while FX and I got to go to Staff worship to hear all of the girls’ horror stories from the first day up of All-Girl week up at Wild Oak.  Upon returning, we caught the end of a highly contested game of capture the flag, and then once it got dark, we set off for the Zip-line.  Saying that it was difficult to maintain order in the dark would be a mild understatement.  Observant as I like to think that I am, I never did find out who was throwing rocks, which continued occasionally throughout the week.  We did eventually convince every kid but one to go down the zip-line in the dark, screaming if necessary, but each one was a struggle.  I learned new depths to the levels of manipulation kids are capable of.  I found out later that there was a legitimate concern about a mountain lion being nearby as we were leaving, but I never saw any sign of it.  My kids were scared of the dark enough as it was, a mountain lion would have given them a heart attack before it could even touch them.  That night I repeated the long struggle to get everyone to go to sleep, with my city kids really on edge from the hike back from the ropes course in the dark.

By Tuesday we began to notice a disturbing pattern in the meals.  We would eat after Junior Adventure, but there would be slim pickings, and we would be just sitting down, if there was a table for us, by the time they called seconds.  My kids were making comparisons to wrestling camp, where their coaches had been trying to starve them, to get their weight down.  Our response was to begin showing up to meals early, and going in first instead of last.  It worked a little better that way, but it didn’t win us any points with the kitchen staff, nor with Junior Adventure.

Tag Teaming the Little Rebels

There were a few of us who had the afternoon activity period off, so Brooklyn and I were explaining to other staff members what had happened that morning.  All of us were disappointed we hadn’t been able to push the issue a little more with Dylan and Sergio.  They had had a bit of a bad attitude all week, and we had been hoping that they would learn something from attempting the Leap.  I had been unable to really relate to them all week, and felt like I had not helped them grow much through their experiences that week.  Someone brought up that, due to his previous experiences, Ricky would have been better at relating to them and connecting with them.  It was already Friday afternoon, and Ricky was a counselor with a cabin of younger campers at Buckhorn that week, but that didn’t deter Rocky from trying to set them up together.

So we piled into Rocky’s truck and headed down to Frontier.  After clearing it with MC-5, Ricky was all for letting Rocky take his cabin while he spent some time with my rebellious campers.  It would also give me some quality time with the rest of my cabin members, since those two had negatively affected most of the week.  We decided to be fairly passive in bringing about that situation, instead of being openly confrontational about it.  Things went smoothly and Ricky hung out with my cabin while they ate their Canteen candy, and then eventually pulled Dylan and Sergio away to have a talk with them and take things from there.  I spent the next hour talking with the rest of my cabin while we played cards outside the pool area.  It was good to have a talk that stayed on the positive side for the first time all week.

But dinner time was rapidly approaching, and there was no sign of Ricky or my campers, so I sent the rest of my cabin back to Wild Oak with FX, and went to investigate.  Rocky hadn’t heard anything either, so I hiked down to the ropes course.  As I approached it, I saw a number of cars along the edge of the road, a few people walking around, and I could see more than one person up on the side of the tree.  As I got closer, I could tell that Dylan was up in the tree, and Mouth had lobster clawed up to chat with him.  Ricky was belaying from across the bridge, and was talking with Sergio who was sitting on the ground nearby.  Rodeo had just arrived to replace Mouth in the tree, and Kodak had just driven up as well.  From the things Dylan was muttering, it was obvious that his attitude had not improved.

I was worried about the mess I had gotten Ricky into, but he looked down as I crossed the bridge, big smile on his face.  “Is everything going okay?” I asked.

“Oh yeah, it going great” he replied.  “This guy did it in like five minutes” he nodded towards Sergio, who was grinning.  Dylan on the other hand, was taking a lot longer than five minutes, and wasn’t being very cooperative with the people who were trying to help him.  As I was leaving, Rodeo had just finished suiting up to climb, and came over to ask us a few questions:

 “So, did we force him to do this?”

“I am not sure, I wasn’t here.  You have to ask him about that” I replied, pointing to Ricky.

We looked over at Ricky, who gave a big smile and nods, “Pretty much.”

And with that, I headed out to relieve Rocky, and successfully herded Ricky’s campers down the hill to Frontier.  After that, I took a hike back to Wild Oak, to catch the tail end of another meal.  We didn’t hear from the guys at the ropes course for another hour, and we had started the Friday night paintball game by the time Sergio was driven up to Wild Oak.  At that point we were informed that Rodeo was walking back with Dylan, who had been very uncooperative and hostile, refusing to come down for two hours.  Sergio’s attitude had improved dramatically from the experience, and it was obvious he had learned a lot, both from completing the event himself, and from seeing Dylan’s response to the same situation, and its outcome. I was expecting Dylan to be all bent out of shape when he arrived, but the recent events seem to have left no visible effect on him.  He seemed to have a level of respect for Ricky, but the rest of us weren’t too high up on his favorites list.  While Dylan didn’t seem any worse off from the ordeal by the time I saw him, unfortunately he didn’t seem to have learned as much as Sergio had.  I would like to think that Ricky had some affect on him, with the help of many other staff members who made it all possible.

Pushing Limits on the Ropes Course

The ropes course is an important part of the camp experience, and provides many memorable defining moments, for both campers and staff.  Although not my favorite element to complete, the Leap of Faith is definitely my preferred element to facilitate.  With a relatively straight forward 65’ vertical climb, followed by a 10’ leap for a trapeze, it is the epitome of what a ropes course element should be: achievable, and more of a mental obstacle than a physical one.  Facilitating ropes course events requires a combination of psychological motivation, encouragement, physical bearing and trust.  The whole objective is to help people expand their comfort zone, both physically and mentally, which requires that we push limits pretty far, and it is sometimes difficult to find the line since it changes on an individual basis.  The first week of sportsman camp at Wild Oak, a few counselors had not found the correct combination of motivating factors, and very few campers were willing to even attempt the higher elements.  Only three of my nine cabin members even attempted the Leap, and I usually consider 100% to be a reasonable goal.  Week Two I was determined to improve things.  I was assigned to run the Leap for my cabin on Friday morning, and had a good talk with them ahead of time about the importance of trying new things, pushing one self farther, etc. and I was feeling pretty good about everything this time around.

Of my seven campers, I expected a little bit of resistance from two of them who had been exhibiting a rebellious streak.  The first four went up with no problems, and we were looking good, and on time.  As number five, Chris was getting clipped in, I started to encourage my two rebellious campers, Dylan and Sergio, to begin to prepare.  I sent them over to the harness box as Chris began to climb, while I belayed him.  At about 6 foot and 120lbs, any obstacle Chris faced was not likely to be physical.  Within the first few steps he began to complain about being scared.  Brooklyn was my partner in running the ropes course that day, and she had been very supportive in strongly encouraging kids to push themselves on this element, and began to talk him through it.  While this was going on, I became aware that both Dylan and Sergio had refused to cooperate, thrown their harnesses on the ground, and were ignoring their cabin mate’s encouragement to give it a shot.  After about ten minutes, Chris had only made it a couple more steps.  While he had not stopped entirely, it had become clear to me that he was unlikely to make it to the top, and that we were not going to have time to send Dylan and Sergio up, even if they had agreed to give it a shot.  Lunch time was rapidly approaching, and it was usually a 20 minute walk back to camp.

Fortunately for us, the director Rocky had decided to come pick up the group with a Magic Carpet, to save us the walk. By the time he arrived, Chris had made it a few steps farther, and was about halfway up.  After a quick discussion, it was agreed that he would take the group back while Brooklyn and I would stay with Chris, to give him time to attempt to finish the element.  The rest of the group off drove off while we continued to talk Chris through every step of the way.  He was almost to the top by the time Rocky returned, and we continued to talk him all the way up to the platform.  Once he had reached it, he took a few minutes to catch his breath, and then scooted out to the edge and jumped off without too much trouble.  Once he was down on solid ground he was fine, and we hurried of to catch the tail end of lunch.

Getting Back into the Swing of Things

My first week, I had a cabin of nine kids, which was pretty crowded in our tiny sleeping quarters.  Of the two male cabins, I had the older group, which was definitely my preference.  It wasn’t until the end of the week that we recognized that one of my campers had been in my cabin when I worked there years before.  We had both changed a lot over the intervening years, so it took a while to figure that out.  A couple days into the week, I started wearing the hat that had been the trademark piece of my identity before, and it clicked for him.  Once he pointed that out, I remembered him as well.  He was in my first cabin both years, when I was still getting adjusted to things.

My approach to leading my cabin was based on what I had learned years before, and I stuck with it even though camp had changed a lot since then.  So by comparison to everyone else, I appeared quite strict, expecting my campers to be on time, and well behaved.  That first week, my guys were quite mature, things went relatively flawlessly, and we all had a really good time together.  The other male counselor had his hands full, and ended up having to deal with some significant violations of major rules.

My approach to the spiritual leadership aspect had changed quite a bit, and I think I did a much better job in that regard.  I had learned a lot in the intervening years, and had gotten better at teaching people.  Having older campers helped as well, since we could go into deeper discussions on certain topics.  I extended the camp’s daily lessons to include a broad overview of the Bible, and how all those Sunday school stories they had grown up with, all fit together into the big picture.  I was very consciously not trying to jam a particular viewpoint down their throat, but encouraging them to evaluate things for themselves.  Frequently Biblical concepts are presented as “the way things are,” when all any person is really qualified to say is “this is what I believe and why.”  The significance of acknowledging that not everyone believes or accepts these truths is something I learned back when I transferred away from Catholic School.  Believing something is not the same as knowing something.  I tried to make sure I taught them the difference.  Before, scheduled discussions about those things had been something I had struggled to fill, but I learned how to make them interesting for both me and my campers, to the point that we would sometimes run long.

I developed a pretty good routine that kept my cabin busy throughout the week, and was much more at home in my role than most of the other counselors.  I helped out where ever I could, to keep things going smoothly for everyone.  I liked the people I was working with, but I ended up connecting more with the staff members in other parts of the camp, as far as spending off time went.  It was quite a contrast from being in LA, but I am used to long days, dirt, and the outdoors, so none of those factors were sources of stress for me.  It was hard work, but it was still like vacation for me, in a way.  It felt great to be out running ropes course elements and playing paintball with campers again, after so long without having that opportunity.  I was having a great time, and things couldn’t have been going better.

BullsEye Rises Again

As I was on my way up to camp, I had a feeling I was opening a new chapter in life at that moment, even more so than the first summer I worked there.  More than just the obvious beginning of a new summer adventure, it was the first step in a new direction, the first of many steps.  I didn’t know it yet, but the people I would meet that day, would form the basis of my social circle for many years to come.

Camp had changed quite a bit in the four years I had been gone.  Most of the permanent staff members I knew from before, but after four years, most everyone else there was new to me.  There were about three other people left who I had worked with before, and a couple of former campers who I recognized working there by then.  But the other forty or fifty people were new to me.  The staff (and the camp program) was not as big as it had been before.  And things were not run with the same level of organization and control as they had been before, which took some adjustment for me to get used to.

I was a bit older than most of the other staff members, but not all of them, which was good.  This has led to my social circle since then being composed primarily of people a few years younger than I am.  That is a bit ironic considering I grew up with the reverse, always being in classes with, and identifying with, people older than me.

I made a deliberate effort to keep my camp name from before, which wasn’t a foregone conclusion.  I had been tempted to introduce myself to everyone that way from the beginning, but decided that I wanted people to know me, and not just the slice of who I was, which had come to be known as BullsEye.  Regardless of that, most people at camp identified me in that way, and many didn’t even remember my real name by the end of the summer.

We had two weeks of staff training, which was usually my favorite part of the summer.  It is basically summer camp for the staff, where we get to do most of the activities ourselves, and get to know one another with teambuilding exercises and such.  We also had a lot of study and discussion of Biblical topics and concepts, which was an interesting contrast to the debates I had been having every night for the previous few weeks in LA.  The new director openly described himself as a “close-minded fundamentalist,” which was the aspect of faith that my friend in LA had been most opposed to.  I saw myself somewhere closer to the middle.  But being in a real Christian environment allows one to see things from a different perspective.  It was quite a contrast from my last year spent in Hollywood, and a step in the right direction.  I arrived that summer with more doubts in my mind than I had ever had, and many of those were directly addressed over the course of the summer.

There were a lot of new people for me to get to know, and a lot of changes to familiarize myself with.  I was in the exact same staff position that I had been in before.  That part of the team was a lot smaller than it had been before, so we kept pretty busy.  Our team leader had not previously worked at camp, which also made for some amusing mistaken assumptions on occasion.  By the time we finished training, I knew everyone, and was ready to go.  I was pretty much always stoked to be there, away from LA.  Even though we kept pretty busy, it was a relaxing break compared to my usual schedule and work environment.

Headed Back to Camp

With my friend constantly bringing it up, camp was on my mind a lot at that point.  I had been going for a year by that point, besides skiing in Utah that January.  I really needed a break from LA, which was starting to get to me, much more so than it had in college when I had been more isolated from SoCal culture.  But it didn’t seem likely, considering how deeply I had entrenched myself, both at the office, and with other clients I had developed relationships with while waiting for Bandito to get off the ground.  I managed a couple of websites, and supported the infrastructure of a couple other small companies when I had time, which was getting harder to find as Bandito grew.  I had basically phased out working for the guys at our old office by then, and had no shortage of thing to keep busy with.

Then late one night that spring, while I was sitting in bed trying to fall asleep, the Lord showed me how to make that happen.  One of the friends I had been visiting back at school every weekend was about to graduate, and had no immediate plans.  He was a multimedia major, and we had worked together a lot.  We had worked on the same projects, he had replaced me as the supervisor in the IT Dept, and he was one of the guys from my programming team and who had explored NAB with me.  We had even hired him for a few days when Bandito moved into their office, to help me wire it.  So I could let him stay in my apartment, and fill in for me at work, while I took a much needed break.  It would give him some experience in the industry, and allow him to meet people and network, to find a more permanent job once I returned.

Most people would probably recommend against something like that, since I was trusting him with my “life” while I was gone.  Besides him potentially screwing it up while I was away, there was nothing to say that I would get it all back when I returned.  I definitely didn’t have any formal agreement with my company about any of that either, but we had few formal agreements anyway.  The only thing I had in my favor was that I am pretty good at what I do, to a degree that no one else is.  That is the basis for my current position as well.

I had received an email two years before, from the new program director, inviting me to come back to work at camp.  So I dug around to find it, hit “Reply,” and sent off a response saying I was interested, without ever acknowledging that the invitation was from years ago.  If anyone ever even noticed that, they never said anything.  I interviewed with them while I was home for Easter, and the arrangements were soon taken care of on that end.

I was also in the process of moving closer to work, to cut my commute time.  I ended up finding a place just down the street from my office, so I could walk to work.  This was especially nice considering the parking situation we had, sharing about eight spots for everyone in the office, including visitors and deliveries.  So shortly after I moved into Hollywood, my friend graduated and came to stay with me.  There was a two week overlap before I left for camp, so I could get him oriented, and introduced to everyone he would be working with.  He had recently shifted from being a conservative Christian, who made student films that were so preachy that they made me uncomfortable, to a dedicated atheist skeptic.  So we argued philosophical issues every night until about 2am for those two weeks.  He is the only guy I know who I can’t win those kinds of debates against, since he doesn’t hold those views out of ignorance.  Those conversations left me headed to camp for the summer with a lot of philosophical and theological questions and objections that I didn’t have answers for.

Learning How to Relax

I spent a lot of time back at my old university that year.  I still had friends there, so I went to see them nearly every weekend.  No longer having any responsibilities there totally changed the experience.  I spent all of my time hanging out with people, and didn’t have to worry about doing anything.  That is many other people’s entire college experience, but I didn’t really get a taste of that until after I graduated.

Shortly after graduation, I also came to realize that I had become lactose intolerant.  I had always disliked most dairy products, but only after being extremely ill during my last week of college did it seem to have a negative effect on me.  I suspect that eating nothing but ice cream that week may have played a role in the development of that issue.  It took a few tries to confirm the seriousness of that problem, but I steer far clear of all dairy products to this day.

That winter my Dad and I went on another of our biannual ski trips.  This time we went to Utah, and my brother came with us, since he was in college by then.  I also brought Ben, my college roommate, and we met my uncle there.  We all drove, my Dad and brother from home, Ben and I from LA, and my uncle from Colorado.  We did a while week in Park City that January, right before Sundance.  It was a long week, and I was the only guy that made it out onto the slopes for all five days.  The first day, we went to a resort called Canyons, which was a great place.  We had dinner at a five star restaurant at the top of the mountain.  Now I normally don’t like “nice restaurants” because you are supposed to get all dressed up and such.  So it was pretty funny to be in this one where all of the customers are wearing ski gear.  But they had really good food, their Kobe beef chili was the best I had ever had.  (Although I am not sure if that is just a function of how hungry I was by that point.)

I am pretty sure I got a concussion on the morning of the fourth day, which was interesting.  Someone fell in front of me, and when I stopped to help them, I slipped on the same patch of ice, and landed on my back.  My ski helmet is super thick, but it still really rang my bell.  I got up and kept going after a minute, and figured I was fine.  Once we got back to the top, we were looking for a specific run, and I knew what direction it was, but when I got to the sign and stopped to wait for my Dad to catch up, that isn’t what it said.  My brain didn’t process what the sign did say, just that it didn’t say “Ox Bow,” so I kept looking around for it.  After another minute or two of waiting, I looked up at it again, and low and behold, it said “Ox Bow” now.  That woke me up pretty good, maybe I hit my head a little harder than I thought.  After that moment I could read fine, but thinking back, I realized I hadn’t been able to read anything on the signs or lift since I fell.  So we took a little break in the lodge for an early lunch, and after an hour or two I felt fine, and we proceeded to ski the rest of the day.  Our last day there, it was four below zero, which is the coldest I have ever been, and hopefully I will never need to break that record.

I also participated in a Bible study one night a week that year, with a couple other friends who had just graduated.  One of them was from NorCal, and had attended the camp I had worked at my freshman year.  As we went through our first year out in the real world, he would pray every week that I would get a chance to go back to work at Wolf Mountain, since we had previously established that it had been important in the development of my faith.  I tried to explain to him that between my job, apartment, and independent consulting clients, there was no way I was going to be able to just disappear to camp for a couple of months.  It was obviously impossible.