Celebrating Fourth of July

Near the end of that week off, I got a call from Bounce, informing me that there was a group going boating the next day, and inviting me to go with them.  I agreed, and she told me that the plan was to stay at Gatos’ house to get an early start in the morning, since his parents were the ones taking us out.  I was a bit surprised when she came to pick me up, to discover that we were the “group,” and even more so when I found out that Gatos wasn’t going to be home that night.  But his parents were nice people, and it was an enjoyable evening.  We left way too early the next morning, and got to wakeboard on the “good” water at dawn.  I am very good at most athletic activities, but water skiing and wakeboarding are not ones that I excel at.  Luckily I was able to redeem myself while tubing later in the afternoon.  It was a good day, and led into the Fourth of July weekend, so we went directly from there to a cabin in Tahoe.  Morgan was my PPAIN group leader that year, and was hosting a large get together at his family’s cabin at Donner Summit.  There were about twenty of us, who had all sorts of adventures for a day and a half.  I finally agreed to try the card game “Mou” when they reset the rules, which I otherwise detested.  I still say it is totally a girl game, no one can explain the rules to you, and the rules are always changing.

 

At one point the girls decided to prank a guy who probably had it coming.  As we were getting ready for bed, they pretended to see a bear in the yard.  Predictably, this was the guy who lost no time running outside in his boxers to get a closer look.  He quickly found himself locked out of the cabin. The guys made them unlocked the doors after about ten minutes, but he was no where to be found at that point.  He didn’t come back in until the next morning, having slept under the lounge cushions on the deck.  Once he heard that the guys had been the ones to unlock the doors for him, he disappeared back outside for a few minutes.  He returned a few minutes later with the tailgate from my truck, which he had hidden who-knows-where.  He then needed help to retrieve Nate’s dirt bike, from where he had left it, on the roof of one of the neighboring cabins.  It was quite an accomplishment to have gotten it up there by himself, and a very misdirected retaliation.  He must have tweaked something, because my tailgate has never fit quite right since then.

 

We left the morning of the Fourth, to return to Auburn, where I was hosting a large BBQ for most of the camp staff.  We spent the afternoon swimming and eating, and there was an epic game of croquet out back.  Summer camp staff tends to attract the type of people who should never be handed mallets in an unsupervised environment.  Then we all watched the fireworks from the nearby hillside overlooking the fairgrounds.  Once the weekend was over, I headed back to camp.  Work projects or not, I had spent enough time sitting around doing nothing at home.  But I didn’t have work projects awaiting me when I got there.