So, on Thursday we went do our mt bike training. I havent really biked very much at all, except for random riding around city streets on a wal-mart ten speed! Out of all the activities well be doing its probably the one I have the most apprehensions about..i just feel like it would be really easy to get hurt.. Well, so we went off camp to a place called Flying J which was like a 3 mile ride. We have real mt bikes, which have shocks and we I learned how to to do a five minute check, the seats are really easy to adjust as well as taking off the front wheels, etc. Its really nice to have a real bike to go mt biking with, but.. it was still new for me, so getting used to exactly what all the bike can do and how much the shocks absorb was an adjustment. well, flying J was a fun bike, nothing too hard. the uphills were a little tough, but then the downhills were really sweet. so fun. after that bike trail we loaded up the bikes again and went to another place ( i dont remember the name). the weather was looking a little iffy, but we decided to try to get in some biking anyway. it was raining, and then started hailing for a little bit. thankfully that didnt last too long. there was a good bit of uphill which was pretty tough, but then when it came to the downhill it was pretty amazing! and i kept being surprised by what my bike could handle. i could just bike right over a big rock in the trail and be fine. well, we got through like 3/4 of the trail and then the weather got worse. it was a full on thunderstorm with lightning, there’s pretty bad lighting here too, and thunder close by. so.. we were trying to get out of the wide open space that we were in the middle of and finish the last stretch to get back to the van and load up, well, i was a little too eager i guess and before i knew it, i was flying over my handle bars, basically diving over them and landing on my stomach, knees, little on my chin and my elbow. my fellow staff members quickly ran to my side, and secured my head and put into action the wilderness first aid training we had all receieved a few weeks ago. i was a little freaked out because it happened really quickly and i couldnt breathe, the way i had landed had knocked the wind out of me.. so they in turn were a little freaked out. but once i caught my breath we decided we should get out of the wide open space that we were all laying in with our metal bikes surrounding us before we got struck by a giant bolt of lightning. so… we all got back on our bikes and started riding again, only for about 2 min, then our director, Pete, had us all stop and spread out in the lighting position throughout the woods because the lightning was too bad to keep going. we squatted there for about 20 min, while all the staffers randomly called out to make sure i was ok and we got rained on some more. we sang a few songs too. it was pretty crazy. we finally got back on the bikes and made it back to the van. thank the lord no one was seriously injured and it was a really good experience actually, to prepare us for situations that could arise with campers. the guys kept saying i looked cool and hardcore with my skinned chin. once i got back to camp and cleaned up, it was actually not as bas as it had looked. half of it was just dirt. but my knees were skinned and bruised and i still kinda felt like someone had punched me in the stomach.
so that was wednesday. then thursday we were supposed to go sea kayaking, but… it was snowing/raining and like 40 degrees, so we postponed that until next sat and just cleaned and played initiative games instead. but thursday night pete, our director, told all the staff that we didnt have anything in the evening, but that we were all looking tired and beat and we needed to make sure we got out rest. we had been having something EVERY night since i got here like 3 weeks ago, so that was a little fishy. and on our schedule it had TBA for the morning plansf after breakfast. i was kinda thinking something was up. a few of the returning staff girls told us that is pete said we needed our rest, we really did need it. i kinda was thinking he might like wake us up really early and make us climb a fourteener (peak climb) or something of that nature. well..at 4am our director Pete came banging on our cabin door yelling that we had 5 min to get down to our climbing tower for the last/final part of staff training, our adventure challenge/final test. so, we ran out of our cabin after quickly throwing on some layers, as it was pretty chilly out and didnt know exactly what we were getting ourselves into. we also grabbed our possibles bag, (which means the bag has everything you could possibly need it in, like rain gear, water bottles, snacks, climbing harness, our manual explaining everything for the summer, etc.) so we rushed down to the tower, while it was still dark. from there pete proceeded to tell us that we would be presented with a serious of challenges. we had to complete them all as quickly as possible and as safely as possible. he and his wife annie, would be there but would only speak up if we were doing something that wasnt safe. we had to complete all our challeneges together as a group the whole times as well. so our first challenge was to hike up to our high rappel sight and set it up and send everyone down the mt. so, we hiked the 1/2 mi that is quite steep with our packs in the dark, then had to set up the whole repelling system and every staff member had to tie at least one night, then we all had to belay each other and repel down. so that all took a good 2-3 hrs, we got to watch the sun rise, but since this repel sight is on a cliff basically, pretty high up, it was FREEZING. the wind was whipping at crazy speeds and was very cold. we finally all got through that and tore down the set up then all hiked back down to the climbing tower. we were then given our next challenge which was to set up at least 10 of our climbs on our climbing wall and everyone had to climb a climb and everyone had to belay someone on a climb.( fyi-belay is a french word for safety, so to belay someone you have to have their climbing rope clipped into a locking device on your harness and the other end of their rope tied into their harness). however, once i pulled my harness out of my bag, i realized i had left two carabiners (pieces of equipment) on my harness that belonged to the high rappel set up. for a moment i thought about to hiding it and faking like i didnt have it and i would have put it up later. but then i quickly realized i had to be honest and so i told pete i had it. sadly this meant that the whole group had to hike all the way up to high rappel again! after just coming down, with our packs on. i felt SO bad. but everyone was super supportive and we all knew it could have happened to anyone, but i still felt bad. we hiked up and down again, with a little less fervency than the first time. we finally got the tower all set up once we got back to it and everyone climbed. that went pretty well, probably took us about an hour or so. our next challenge was tie a series of knots we had learned and need to know to tie kids into different pieces of equipment for various activities. BUT… we had to all tie them blind folded! so we all sat around tieing knots for like an hour and a half. we would tie one then pass them around to each other to see if they felt like they were correct. then we would hold them out for pete to check, then he would either tell us the next knot to tie or that only some of us had it right. then we would have to try to figure out who’s was wrong. he wouldnt tell us specifically who’s was wrong, we had to figure it out. we finally finished that challenge, then went on to the mt biking test. we had to check out bikes to each other and do a 5 min check that we have to do with our campers when we check bikes out to them. then we had to bike around our camp road, which didnt seem like it would be all that hard because its not that long, but it was very tiring and UPHILL! so we finally made it back to our spot where we were supposed to then go onto another trail and bike lots more… but before we got to the trail, we spotted a “rescue victim” stranded in our high ropes course. so.. we had to go into emergency rescue mode and rescue the girl who was playing as a victim. we did that successfully. pete then told us that we could quickly return the bikes, we didnt have to do the trail. so we quickly did that and then had to move onto our next challenge, the team wall. there’s a big wooden wall that we all had to help each other climb up and belay each other up. after we facilitated it all and tore it down we then all went back down to the tower and had our final challenge…. a 9 week challenge… the whole summer that will be harder at times than the adventure challenge. so… like 11 1/2 years… i mean hrs we were finally done with our challenge. it was tough but a very bonding experience thati will never forget. and im pretty sure i will never forget equipment on my harness again.
e… but before we got to the trail, we spotted a “rescue victim” stranded in our high ropes course. so.. we had to go into emergency rescue mode and rescue the girl who was playing as a victim. we did that successfully. pete then told us that we could quickly return the bikes, we didnt have to do the trail. so we quickly did that and then had to move onto our next challenge, the team wall. there’s a big wooden wall that we all had to help each other climb up and belay each other up. after we facilitated it all and tore it down we then all went back down to the tower and had our final challenge…. a 9 week challenge… the whole summer that will be harder at times than the adventure challenge. so… like 11 1/2 years… i mean hrs we were finally done with our challenge. it was tough but a very bonding experience thati will never forget. and im pretty sure i will never forget equipment on my harness again.
so after that it wasnt so intense. we got off the next day and went to boulder and enjoyed the cool hippy town. we just walked around all day and went to some cool outdoor stores like patagonia and prana. it was really cool. nice relaxing day. this week, sunday our first campers for the summer came. its a pretty small camp, not a whole lots of kids, but its been really fun and good practice. we’ve had a few kids on each activity we’ve set up, like monday i had to set up and facilitate the low rappel, today i did the high ropes course and our climbing tower. we had these adorable little middle school boys, 2 of them came to the tower yesterday, donovan and trenton. they were good little climbers and so cute. donovan talked with a little speech impediment and they were both encouraging each other and precious. they came back today and brought a friend. so yesterday trenton tried a climb that has a move called a dino, which you have to kinda sit back and then count to 3 and jump up to the next hand hold. so i explained it to him and he tried the move but didnt get it. well, he tried it again today. the first two times he couldnt get it, then he tried it one more time and got it! it was so cool to be able to encourage and coach him through it. he got a little blood blister doing it on his finger so he couldnt finish the climb, but he still got the move.
we have the morning off because most of the camp goes swimming at the local high school because we dont have a pool here at camp. im excited because were going to go visit my old camp that i worked at, quaker ridge. we’re going to go swimming there and ill get to visit the people i still know who work there. should be a nice relaxing day off. so… until next time. peace! 
check out more pics on facebook.
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2046109&l=fd859&id=68602654
