the cost of freedom

It's been a weekend here in Gold River. With Trevor graduating this weekend, I took a van ride up Island from camp. I got the sense it cost the bus line more to move me than I paid. But yeeees, I went to grad, saw Trevor do some walking to his song, which was "for reasons unkown" by the killers, and I enjoyed seeing the whole grad class in their night as the center of attention. After grad there was a live band of local 50 year old men, who tore the place right up. They played all covers, and I knew about half of them, some old rock and some newer stuff including a song by Weezer, and the ever popular "Joker and the Thief" by Wolfmother. Me, Trev and CJ rocked it. It was great that it was a concert rather than a dance, everybody was just having fun and jumping around and there was none of that weird stuff that dances are known for. It was good times, Trev and CJ both had dates, so I was the only free man, CJ asked his date out again, confirming our suspicions of him.















Saturday afternoon Trev came over and picked me up in his jeep, with the hardtop and doors taken off, so we drove out to muchalate lake in style to go make an appearance among the boozers. It was alright, we picked up a few more boys and went 4x4ing up a logging road that my dad says he's hauled many logs down in his logging truck. Dad and I agree that the switchbacks would be sketchy to descend in a truck loaded down with 130 tons of logs. Then after we'd stayed around until we felt awkward, Trev and I headed back to town. Trev let me drive his jeep because he's such a good buddy, and I scared him by trying to accelerate out of corners, which apparently doesn't work in a rear wheel drive vehicle on a gravel road. The front wheels felt more like rudders- not what I'm used to.














Saturday night I found an extremely crumpled 20 dollar bill near one of the local bars, so me and trev and CJ went to the deli and got ourselves a couple chicken burgers and some carbonated beverages. It was by far the easiest money I've ever made. Trevor had walked right by it, I might point out. It looked almost surreal on the ground- in my mind I thought "that peice of garbage paper looks just like a 20 dollar bill" - very surreal.

Today I return to Q, I'm driving to Nanaimo and leaving the car for my parents, who are on their way from Vancouver, where they've been all weekend, then I'll catch a bus and stuff and bam- welcome to camp Q.

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Today I used an angle grinder for a little while to grind some steel railing in the skate park, it was pretty manly of me, really. Then it started to rain so I did some other stuff. I talked to Julie Bailey, who is the wife of the the executive director of Qwanoes, and has some kind of position which means I answer to her- I think she's the activities director. Anyway, she told me some stuff nobody had ever bothered to explain to me, yesterday I was mad because nobody seemed to care about what I need, but she explained everything to me. It looks like I get some say in what kind of bike helmets we buy, and how many we need, and that kind of stuff, and she wants me to update the inventory list by removing items from the list that we don't need and adding items I think we need. I was just happy that somebody actually has a sheet of paper that says what I'm supposed to have, because I quite clearly do not have it all, and I felt like nobody cared. I still have a bit of a problem though, because it's hard to decide what's really necessary when I haven't started the job yet. I'm supposed to start the year with 10 spare tubes and 2 patch kits, instead for the moment I have 7 tubes that all snake bites, and one that's been patched. Do I ask for a ton of patch kits so that I can patch all the tubes or do I just replace them? I basically couldn't decide what to do when I was dealing with it this afternoon and so I decided to tinker in the shop for the rest of the afternoon. I straightened a wheel that must have been previously replaced, which involved considerable violence as well as technique and care. All in all, I feel fulfilled.

After dinner I played my guitar and played soccer for a while, then worked up the energy to blog about my day.

This is why we can't have nice things.

Today I woke up late, but made it to breakfast only a few minutes late, then left to go to the Rec Office with Tyler, wince I will now be working on "Program" I.E., Things pertaining directly to my department, which is Land Activities. As such, today it was Tyler's job to get the treehouses ready for a guest group who "might" have used them tonight, and now "might" use them tomorrow, since it started raining this afternoon and it would seem to have dampened their enthusiasm for slepping outside. Anyway, tyler and I spent the morning spraying and rubbing a bunch of dirty, pitch-covered foam mattresses with dirty, pitch-covered cloths. Then, once we had cleaned both sides of all 30 or so of them, (they were about 1 cm thick, blue, easily rolled- we have them at home) we had lunch (chili and baked potatoes, yum) and then went back out. The rest of the afternoon we spent scraping sap out of the treehouses, removing spiderwebs, sweeping pine needles, but first searching for ladders and risking Tyler's life to get into the stupid things. Yes, we were the first people to enter the dreaded treehouses since last summer, it would seem, and so we had to figure out the scary ladder arrangements that were necesary. Ladders hung as if by magic as Tyler climbed above the safety net to insert the two pins that we would be hanging from as we climbed. Add to this the compounded uncertainty of a swinging suspension bridge and you may or may not get the idea. Here, I will draw you a picture:



















As You can see, it was just a little bit silly, leading me to conclude that Qwanoes operates through the use of magical power. Nothing goes wrong here, despite the fact that ladders are hung from cotter pins and douglas fir trees support the grandest of architectural marvels. Unfortunately there is nothing magical about sap, which I saw a lot of today. Oh well.

Tim's gone. I played guitar tonight. I started writing a rock opera, but honestly I don't have much to show for it. I didn't go to floor hockey but I talked to both Sarah and Trevor online. Trevor is doing his best to break my expectations of him, or so it would seem.

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Today was my day off, so I slept through breakfast and missed my chance to go to church, so I started my day with lunch, after which I began to read "The Christian Camp Counselor" which is a book written by the director of the Counselor training program here at Qwanoes. The first chapter said that as tools that God is going to use to Christ, we need to be sanctified, because God won't use dirty tools. As such, it challenged me to raise my standards for my own righteousness. It also Challenged me to spend 45 minutes in prayer, which is something I don't do, but it was good.

After that I headed out with a group of people to watch the new Indiana Jones movie in Nanaimo. I rode in a truck with a couple and another girl, who are the maintenance assistant, staffing director and some kind of administrator. It was fun to get to know a few of the older people around here- about 28 years old they were. The movie was good, and afterward we met up with the rest of the entire Qwanoes staff, because SUNDAY NIGHT IS DAIRY QUEEN NIGHT! Qwanoes payed for my blizzard. Which reminds me, Tim F, my sister's x is here. He came for the staff leadership orientation weekend that just ended. I'm not sure if he's staying from now until the end of the summer or he might have even left straight from dairy queen to go back home- that's kindof what I'm hoping. I talked to him when he first got here but I had been avoiding him until dairy queen, when he instigated some small talk and did a few nice, friendly things for me. I'm feeling better about it now, I had been feeling guilty for not talking to him.

Well now that I've told you about that...

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Blogging is a self-centered thing to do--- self-centered and out-dated. I'm pretty sure nobody gets cooler when they start a blog, they probably get less cool, actually.

I don't want to justify starting a blog, so I'm not going to. I don't want to explain what you should expect to read here, because I don't have a clue either. Perhaps though, it would suffice to say that I am far from my friends and family, and that perhaps when I wish to tell one person something, but can't because of communicative limitations, I will simply tell everyone who would read this blog... harmless.

I am staying at a summer camp. The actual camps do not start until the end of june, but in the mean time there are many guest groups here, such as churches and elementary schools. We are operating in a very scaled down state, while simultaneously trying to prepare the camp area to have 2000 kids (or something ridiculous like that) come through here this summer. My job, once the summer begins, will be to take kids out on mountain bike rides during two different scheduled activity blocks during the day. In the mean time though, I have my life schedule written on a piece of paper- one day I might work in the kitchen, another I might be on maintenance, raking the forest or washing a dirty cabin, some days a little of both, and some days something completely different.

I'm coming up on completing my first week here at camp. Today was my 5 day of work and tomorrow is my first day off. As of the day after tomorrow (monday) my schedule changes to put me on "Program" instead of the other random stuff, which (by definition) should have more to do with my position as Mountain Bike Leader. With the change in occupation comes new unknowns and new challenges, my primary concern is whether or not the staffing dept. is planning to put me back on maintenance after next week or to keep me on "Program" for the rest of the summer.

But that's all background information. It's only background information for the things I'm likely to say, which I would have said in this post except for that now I'm feeling restless, and I don't much feel like forcing myself to go on just to keep you from thinking that I lack determination or the capacity for abstract thought.

I'm going to have fun telling you about my daily life, I promise.