I hope this finds everyone happy and in good health. At the moment I am laying on my couch, listening to the new Death Cab CD, and surfing the WWW. Doesn't get much more exciting. But before I send your little hearts into overdrive with my day-to-day, I'd like to tell you where I've been.
I spent last week in glorious Colorado at Frontier Ranch, a Younglife camp. I went up there with our Bible study and the other Bible studies as well, the '11, '09, '08 and some old guys. All in all there were about 45 of us that went. After many hours on the bus, we finally got there and had about an hour to kill before we had to go to dinner. So naturally, we went for a climb. (All you Garner State Park folks understand the need for a good climb.) This climb was not like anything I had done. It was eXtreme! Bobby Stipp, Frank, and I went out behind the cabins and just started going straight up. It was rather silly but still quite a rush. After a laborious 30-45 minutes we made it as high as we thought would be wise. Well, a little higher. Of course we hadn't thought about getting down until we were done getting up. We decided it would be best to go down the back side because the front side was far too steep for any such tomfoolery. Being the back side, it was indeed covered with snow. And by covered I mean about to my knee. So we were hiking, down, down, down. At one point I stepped on a patch of snow that had already iced over on the top, and I started sliding. It was very much fun, although a bit frightening. I slid for about 40-50 yards before realizing that I was sliding directly towards a creek, so I dug in my heels and brought my cold, wet snowslide to and an end. But what a ride it was! And this was only day, no, hour one.
We did a lot of hard work, but you can't complain when you are working in such a beautiful place with a lot of your good buddies. We all had our jobs, some washed windows, some made beds, some dug trenches. My noble job was to aerate. Aerating, for those of you who don't know, means poking a thousand holes in the ground so the grass can get.. air? Either way, the machine is a monster. It's basically about 70 pounds of weights in the front and a rolling wheel of spikes in the back. You just pull up the handle and hold on for dear life, while the spikes dig into the earth a propel you forward a remarkably quick pace if you aren't ready for it. At one point, I was aerating near a wall when I felt the machine start to roll. I tried to roll it back the other way, but what with gravity and torque and everything, I didn't stand much of a chance: I was falling as well. In all my brilliance, and in a very short amount of time, I came up with this idea: scream like a girl and jump off the wall. So I did. I screamed and jumped off the wall, the aerator had the same idea. I landed and turned around to see a 100+ pound machine with rolling spikes of death starting to fall. So I moved. The aerator fell and made a loud noise and flipped upside down, flooded with gas, and turned off. I turned it over and aerated the part where we had both landed. That lawn had to be done too.
It was a fun time and a very pretty camp. It snowed about 7 inches total while we were there. Four-five on one day and about 2-3 two days after. It's good to be home again, for a bit. I got to see Alex, Paige, and Kelly B. a few nights ago! How I missed them, and you all. I'm glad we are bringing forth the lurkers, although I know a few are still out there. Katelyn, Sol, Kelly C, Master Wayne! Where are you guys? I hope you are all still living.Until the next time I hear from you: peace, love, and safe travels.
aaron
PS: the first to identify where the title of this post came from will get ten (10) Dubya-Dubya-Dollars, good at all WWW internet stores. (If you believe me, I'll give you 1000 of them)
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