We met at New Castle at 5:00 on the 9th. I was excited to see Mama, until I saw that she was taking a hastily wrapped package which happened to be TICKING to Lara, who was already at camp and would remain there for 2 weeks after we left.
Jarrod...a finer humanitarian there is not...except for myself. Jarrod spends his free time pimping. But when he's not doing that...they're pimping him.
We took a charter bus to get to camp. The ride was long and sleeping was...how should we put it...awkward. Around 3 AM of the first night on the bus, Bryan wedged himself into the luggage rack. After hearing his pleas for companionship, I followed him up there. Jarrod and all-around "shwite" girl Stacey Armstrong soon followed. We kept everyone awake with movie quotes and Bob&Tom songs.
After finally falling asleep, we woke up, crawled out of the rack, looked at a watch and realized we'd slept for...Ahhhh!...20 minutes! Anyways we did breakfast at a rest stop. There was a restaurant there named Mamma Ilardos. The silly pankases spelled Mama wrong.
Boy...those little kids sure were sleepy. And boy...mocking them sure was easy
This is Ben. The guy has a real ability to impress the ladies by donning their attire. Actually all of us guys did but I'll get to that later
Right before we got to camp, we stopped at Lake Placid, home of the man-eating crocks. Although Mama wasn't with us, we took a moment to point out a correct spelling of her name.
Lake Placid was home to the winter olympics several years ago
Well it wasn't too much longer before we got to camp and were greeted by all the Work Crew kids, which my girlfriend was a member of. And that was around the time I saw Bryan hugging her as I stood several yards away like a good YL leader trying not to show that I'd been datinf a high schooler for the past year. It was ok though cause I took out my aggression on Jarrod and Reno that night during a game of Polish Ping Pong. (For more polish pong violence check out the Leadership weekend page)
We guys relaxed that nite with some quiet religious talk and some violent Mafia. Here, Dave defends himself with "The Dave Etling Classic"
Well I'm proud to say that over the course of about 25 games of Mafia played at Saranac this year, Dave received the Mafia card several times and then followed up with some of the worst and obvious Mafia playing I've ever seen
The next day we had a volleyball tournament where each cabin dressed themselves in some similar attire to show team unity. Dave was responsible for giving us our attire...showercaps. A uniform which we found out he has given every group of guys he's ever taken to camp...ever
After that, we went parasailing. This shot was taken while Bryan and I were in the air. In a shocking turn of events I actually dropped the camera mere seconds after taking this picture. But Bryan, displaying his athetic prowess, jettisoned himself from the harness and grabbed the camera as I leaned backward, giving the parachute enough forward torque to drop 80 meters and lift both Bryan, myself, and the camera back into the sky
The boat driver was kind enough to take our picture from atop the skinny shaft in the center of the boat
In our free time we chilled in the gameroom by playing pool and getting pep talks
Eventually I was able to fraternize with Lara a little bit
This was during one of our dessert races at one of the first meals of the week. It wasn't long before this behavior was officially "frowned upon" by the leaders of the camp. What you can't tell from this picture was that my teeth were actually being slammed into the glass plate by Holcomb, the one pushing my head down
This was during "Entertainment Night" Here's Jarrod on stage doing his infamous "Light and Fluffy" slit with one of the program directors. It was only moments later when he unintentionally flung the bucket that's sitting behind him into the crowd
The next morning, we had an activity called the Braveheart Games, where you tried to dress Scottish and talk like Mel Gibson. For this particular game you had to have a member of your team toss the uhhh...well...I'll be a pankas if I can remember what it's called...toss the big log a certain distance. I was set to go third and was asking the Summer Staff girl if she'd let me toss the girl's log instead when Bryan easily got his first toss across
Ahh...the cooling refreshment of ketchup and mustard after a particularly hot atomic pepper puts a smile on my face every time
That night we had a good old fashioned square dance where some of me boys rather disappointingly tried to dunk me in a dunk tank. I got up there, sunglasses and all, and heckled them in a display that I would have to think they could only remember as being amazingly embarassing for theirselves seeing as how they came nowhere near the target
Meet Erin, my square dance partner for the night.
The next day was our alloted ski time. The only problem was it was like...50 degrees outside. So Bryan and I got in a boat with Tim and 3 girls, Andrea, Stacey, and Laura. Tim was the first in the water as Bryan and I shivered in the front of the boat. After about 40 minutes, it was time for one of us so I bravely volunteered. I popped right up on the ski then after a few minutes, quit so Bryan would have the chance to experience the same extreme cold that I was. Well, I got in the boat and the pankas chickened out and forced one of the other kids to go for the 2nd time.
It was nice. We were almost like the Brady Bunch. Or wait...that was some other trip I went on.