Family Camp Basketball

It was time for the annual Parents/Staff basketball game on Thursday. This game provides bragging rights for a whole year. For the last six or seven years, the staff has been able to keep the title. This year things were looking not as promising. We usually had at least two or three college basketball players on the staff team. This year only one. The parents had a sheer mass on their side. They had several players who were able to just push their way through our defense.

I was able to put up a three pointer and a couple of two pointers during game. I was also given the privilege of guarding the largest parent to try to keep him from pushing his way through our defense. I am not sure how incredibly successful I was. We ended up losing the game rather thoroughly. It was too bad that we lost.

However, things got worse in the follow up game. We were all playing and just having a good time when I came around a player and a player from the other team came around at the same time. His face collided with my elbow. As soon as we hit I knew it was bad. He lost a tooth and I felt horrible. He ended up going to the dentist the next morning to have it taken care of. The collision made my elbow bleed pretty badly. I went to the nurse's station and got it cleaned up by the practitioner and put a band aid on it. That whole night it did not hurt at all. That changed in the middle of the night. My elbow started hurting. I had to work all day at camp and any pressure on my elbow would cause the pain to be worse. I was able to complete the majority of my tasks one handed, but had a few times that I had no choice but to push through.

To end this post, a church sign I saw on the way to dinner tonight:
Exposure to the son might prevent burning.

Float Trip

Trip day. This means fish trip during main camp and Big Surf at family camp. Except this year. I went on the float trip for the first time in 5 years. It started out that I was going to be with a father and son in a three seater canoe. However, I ended up canoeing with another counselor. She had not been canoeing in 12 years. She insisted that she be in the back. It was not too pretty. We started out be being the first canoe so we could stop and take pictures of all the canoes as they passed us. I stole the underwater camera from Charlie so I could use it on the float trip. Then I had to paddle consistently to try to keep up with the last canoe. We were the tail canoe and my partner in back thought that dragging the paddle in the water made a pretty swirl. So she dragged her paddle almost the whole way. Even when we needed no turning. We stopped at lunch and did the jumping rocks and the regular routine. When we got back in the canoe. I started to move towards the back when my partner asks to be the back again followed by the comment I am getting better. I was not too excited about spending the rest of the trip dragging her paddle and having issues. So I pushed the canoe out backwards making the front the back. I stood up and started paddling. We started talking about how I looked like a gondolier. So I started singing, camp songs, Disney, and Smashmouth. The last half of the canoe trip was much smoother than the first leg. I was able to successfully navigate the river pretty much by myself and my partner enjoyed the ride and entertainment.

Lebanon Dive Shop

If only one of those existed. The only place to fill up a tank in Lebanon is at the local fire station. Tom and I went into eat dinner with a group of people and then stopped at the fire station. The local fire chief visited Cedars a while ago and got the grand tour. His question was, "How old do you have to be to be a camper here?" So, Bill called him and asked if there was any place that Tom could fill his tank in Lebanon and he responded by saying the only place was the fire station and then very quickly volunteered to fill the tank. That is why we ended up at a fire station instead of a dive shop.

We pulled up to the fire station and went to the front door and rang the door bell. No one answered. We rang it again. No one answered. We walked around into the garage and called out. No one answered. We decided to make one last attempt at the front door. This time Tom made me ring the door bell. And guess what, someone finally answered. We went to the air compressor and got it set up. Now all we needed to do was put the adapter on the tank. It did not fit. The adapter was about 20 years old and the tank was new. Apparently the new tanks are wider at top than an old tank. So the only place within an hour of camp to fill up air tanks does not have an adapter to fit the one tank we have. So we leave and go back to camp.

Once back to camp, we collected all of Tom's gear and the pool light bulbs, the reason for our diving excursion. We set up the gear and found out that he only had 500 psi of air left. You usually start with around 3000 psi. So we decided that we would only use the air when we needed to return the light to the bottom of the pool once we changed the light bulb. We attempt to fix 4 different light bulbs and only succeed in fixing 2 of them. One fixed itself just by taking it out of the wall. So it was not too successful in fixing the pool lights, but we did make the pool dirty just in time for the parents.

5th Session

This session started out hot. So hot that even the pools were not refreshing anymore. So on Monday, I tried to convince my campers that it would be more fun and more refreshing to have a water fight in the basement of our cabin than go swimming in the hot pools. They all wanted to go swimming, so as they were getting ready, I started the water fight. I filled a trash can with cold water and 4 splash bombs. As they were getting ready, I started tossing water bombs. It did not take long for the water fight to kick into full gear. It lasted for about 10 minutes before they remembered that they wanted to go to free swim. The water fight was far more refreshing then the pool. Oh well.

The next day was trip day. I led the fish trip as usual when I am at camp. Not enough staff wanted to go crawdad hunting so I got to go. This is pretty unusual. So Mark and I went crawdad hunting with the campers. On the way down, Mark and I witnessed something that neither of us had ever seen before, we watched a spider poop. It was big news for us. Once we got to the creek, the kids started hunting with nets. I found a stick with a 'y' in it and broke it down to a crawdad hunting stick. I caught four crawdads this way and taught Mark how to use a stick to catch crawdads. I also did biology theater for the kids. I took two crawdads, one in each hand, and had them talk to each other. They like to talk about what they ate, how they got caught, what eats them, and one even got a postcard from his cousin, Lolly the lobster. It was exciting times. The rest of the day was spent resting, swimming, and sliding. Then it was time for dinner and me to become PD for the night. I worked on evening notes, copied schedules, and kicked little boys out of the bathroom. It was an eventful night. Then I got to spend an hour in the office to answer any phone calls. When I made it back to the PDs office to finish up the work, a storm rolls in and kills the power. So I ended up leaving the PDs office without turning off any of the lights because I did not know where they were. Oh well. I walked back in the rain and lightning. All the way back I could not help but think about how perfect of a setting it would have been for a horror movie. The lightning was so bright that it seemed like day and then it would be pitch black again. About half way home, the electricity came back on. I did not go back to the office to turn off the lights.

Wednesday was a swim-line day. I had swimming all day long. This summer we created a new course called the CedarS Safety Course. It involves life jacket skills and throwing assists. The whole course was supposed to take two days so that specialty camps would have something to pass during swim lessons. Oops. It only takes about 20 minutes. Darn what should I do with the rest of that time, hmm, free swim. So I played lots of sharks and minnows and hunt for red october.

Vote

I have added a poll to determine what happens when I win the bet over whose blog is better. If Brittany wins, however unlikely that may be, I will enroll in swing dance lessons with her, as of yet I do not have a wager. The two options are shark feed dive or overcoming her fear of snakes. Make sure you vote to determine what happens when I win. If you have a better idea feel free to write it as a comment.

On a more positive note

My last post was just slightly less than positive so on this post, I am going to focus on the things that I am grateful for this session. I realized that I had a lot to be grateful for on Sunday night when I started talking to one of my campers and ended up talking about sharks and Discovery Channel for about 45 minutes during shower time. It always amazes me how smart my campers can be. Flash back to 1st session. A Trailblazer at the age of 6 was an incredible artist. He drew all sorts of animals from memory. I started to talk to him about the animals that he was drawing and he proceeded to inform all about each of them. In the past, he was even able to tell some zookeepers information that they did not know. He has visited many zoos and ranks the St. Louis Zoo as one of his favorites with the San Diego Zoo. But the St. Louis Zoo is free. Anyway that talk made me realize that I should start being grateful. So here it goes.

My whole cabin gets along with each other.
I got to talk with a camper about sharks.
I got to play sharks and minnows with 7 staff and 4 cabins in the lap pool.
I swam a 50 underwater in my first attempt (my goal is a 75 by the end of the session).
I have a fan that points at my bed and makes me actually feel cool by about 4 in the morning.
I swam my first lifeguard swim in 5 years.
I don't have to run lifeguard swims anymore.
Ashley came and sat at my table so that I could get another pb and j while my hostess was in the office.

I am sure that there are a lot more but that is just a start. So everything is going well at camp. Tomorrow is trip day, the second full day of camp and we are already on trips. Then one more day of scheduled activities, one and a half days of choice, Green and White Swim Meet, and a play, then on to Family Camp.

The top 3

Here is a top three list. This is the top three comments I did not want to hear when I got to camp.

1. I wish you were in ski camp
2. You are not in Trailblazers
3. You are the new PD

Only one of these was not said. I am not the new PD of boy's camp. Steve Henn is coming in on Monday to take over the position. Instead I am in the Pioneer cabin. For those of you who do not know, the Pioneer cabin is 4th grade age and is a two story cabin with a fire pole. This sounds like a lot of fun at first until you realize that you get to walk those stairs in between every activity. Besides, the second floor is always about 5 degrees hotter then the basement. This is not a plus when you are talking about days that are 90 degrees plus. Looking on the bright side, this is only a one week session.

My first night at camp I stayed back with the campers staying over between sessions. I received a piece of good news when I found out that JL was in charge of entertaining the campers after dinner. They had filled water balloons for about 45 minutes that afternoon. After dinner, we went to get set up in our cabins for the night then came back. The campers had the option of finishing the movie they started earlier or playing with water balloons. Most of the staff very quickly volunteered to watch the movie in the air conditioned lodge. I went outside to play with water balloons. It was a lot of fun -- for about five minutes, then the water balloons ran out. We played in the hose for a while and then went in and ate ice cream. We went to check on the movie watchers to find out that they did not find the movie they had started earlier so they started a new movie. So they saw the first five minutes of the movie and then joined us for ice cream. At about 7:30 we went back to the cabins to shower and get ready for bed. To kill time we played Go Fish, Blackjack, and Crazy Eights. I played one game of Crazy Eights and won keeping my streak alive. Once Mark told a story about three friends, killer robots, Pringles, and world domination, the kids went to bed. At that point I was able to head to the lodge and watch The Bourne Ultimatum with Stephanie, Mel, Megan, Charlie, and Eric. I think that is all for now.