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.

Getting Bandito Started

I started doing more work for the newly formed company, and kept track of my time, but wasn’t getting paid, because there was no mechanism in place to do that.  They still hadn’t set up business accounts, or a payroll service and such, since I was the only regular employee.  One day I was told that one of the “owners” didn’t like that I wore shorts to work, so I was supposed to wear pants from then on.  I pointed out that I didn’t really work for them until they started actually paying me.  I got my first paycheck the next week, and it has been jeans and a T-Shirt every day since then.  Kind of like my version of Zuckerberg’s hoodie.

I got an interesting project opportunity that November, to work with Rob Legato at his company the Basement.  I spent four long days working on a real feature film, The Good Shepherd.  They were in a serious time bind to get a lot of shots processed, and I was able to borrow a workstation we had on loan from Intel at our office, which was twice as fast as anything else on the market.  So I was able to do an incredible amount of image processing for them in such a short period of time, and I got paid well for the experience.  I just missed meeting Robert DeNiro because I was on a delivery run when he came by to review what we were working on.  But I met quite a few other people who were working on the project, got a lot of work done, and did a few legitimate visual effects shots for the movie.

I also worked for Adobe as a demo artist at the LA Film festival.  It was my first time trying to advertise or sell something, and definitely had its ups and downs.  I worked every night of the festival, and sometimes it was awkward conversations with random people walking up to our display, and other times I had a whole crowd watching as I demonstrated some intriguing new technique using the software most of them were familiar with.

Shortly after that, Bandito finally rented their first office building, and I set to work preparing it to be an edit facility.  I ordered desks and cabinets, ran all of the network wiring myself, and setup a wireless phone system that ran over the internet.  I setup a rudimentary server room as well as a screening room to show our work.  I had always wanted to build the infrastructure for a technology company from the ground up, and this was my chance to do so.  I had originally anticipated doing that for a game development company, but looking back, that wouldn’t have been nearly as interesting or challenging as building a video production facility.  By the time I returned from Christmas, the company was in full swing, preparing for our first big project, a series of tire commercials for BFGoodrich.  That project went well, and got us off to a good start.

I bounced between our new office and the work I was doing for the guys at our old office, since things at Bandito were still pretty light.  The guys at the old office gave me a nice raise to try to keep me around, but the work there was not nearly as interesting or exciting.  I was creating websites at Bandito, to allow our clients to review progress on their projects as we worked, and setup an expensive color correction system for film finishing.  We did a variety of car commercials and other smaller projects over the first few months there.