Swimmingly

Graham Lake at the beach our Youth Group usually spends a lot of time on in the summer.

Another of Graham Lake.  I've always enjoyed tubing here, or just sitting in the sun on the dock.

It's a busy couple weeks around camp.  We have cleaning assignments during the week, and then we still try to finish up as many projects as we can.  I also sneak off to water the plants periodically.

People think I'm crazy, but I love watering the plants.  Especially with the rainbow spread out on the spray.

Zipline training was last week and I enjoyed working on the tower again.  I'm really comfortable working with the campers and strapping them onto the cables.  It seems like the enthusiasm for the zipline has settled down, so we're not crazy busy the whole time.  We still keep a steady pace going though.

The normal view from the tower.

 So one more week of maintenance before my second summer as a programer on the West Side.  We have plans to work on some more parking lots, cleaning, and cutting down some more trees.  Really seem to be changing the landscape all over.

New dirt is here to terraform this parking lot into a path.

We're almost to summer.  Just one more retreat and the summer staff will arrive in full force.  We'll see if blogging continues as well.

A Walk Through the Creek

I was home for the week and enjoyed a walk down memory lane in Battle Creek.  I'll comment on the pictures as they go by.  Almost all of them were taken from basically the same vantage point, only changing which direction I take the pictures.



 This WAS Cereal City USA.  I never entered the building, but I did pass by it about a thousand times in the bus, on foot, biking, and driving.   You can see they are gutting it out in this picture.  Soon it will be the Battle Creek Mathematics and Sciences Center.  So when I visit my old teachers I'll have to get used to this new location.

 This is a picture looking West-ish.  I've always thought he weeping willows look really cool at this distance. 

 This is a view that is almost 180 degrees from the other one.  Another weeping willow draped over the river.  Both pictures were taken from a bridge.  On either side of the bridge it looks like city, but along this stretch of river it's really pretty.

 This is just to the right of the other picture (the same pine trees on the left).  It's Kellogg's HQ and it's a very interesting building in downtown.  I've been through the place a couple times back when Rob worked there.  One time we stopped there on a road rally to grab a laptop with a card that could grab internet from satellites.  Now most people have access to it on their phone.  Just one more thing that changes.

 The river.  I think they like to put rocks alongside of it because they're prettier than this scraggly stuff.  I kind of like this though.  I remember riding my bike as fast as I could down the path on the left (just above the rocks) and under the bridge.  Then it would turn out that the river was high and there could be as much as 3 inches of river passing by.  I used caution after that.

 The Cereal City building is just to the left of this picture.  You can see a construction barricade in the picture.  I like the stone work they did on that pipe.  Made it stand out in a good way.  Like someone might have made it centuries ago. 

 This is a bus stop.  Not the pillar in the middle, but at the first light post in the background.  Now the road just loops off of Michigan Avenue (the main drag) and then around back onto it.  When I took the bus it had access to the other main road in town.  It's kind of odd to have the road just stop in the middle of town.

Another angle of the bus stop.  I remember waiting here many times.  It felt safer than some of the other bus stops I could choose from.  It was also a good place to work on my skateboarding tricks.  Which consisted of riding my skateboard.  I could go down curbs well, but I could not ollie to save my life.

 This is the building across from the bus stop.  It used to be Rapid Eye Art Studio or something like that.  Now it has no markings on it and it looks generally abandoned.  I know my dad brought me here a couple times to get my brother some nice art supplies. 

 And this is Pizza Sam's.  My youth pastor works here on the weekends and I spent some time chatting with him while he swept and mopped.  Funny how much it's like camp.  Late night chatting while sweeping and mopping. 

Other highlights from the trip include a road rally, installing a hose hanger on the side of the house, cleaning up the gutters a little bit, and the Water Festival.  I should explain the Water Festival a bit.  It's sponsored by local businesses and several levels of government as a way to teach kids about water.  All kinds of lessons about water from where it goes when you flush, how we affect it with our construction projects and landscaping, and how to conserve/preserve it.  I went to the first one in 2002 as a high school junior, and now I help coordinate the high shoolers.  It's just a bit of running around Kellogg Community College along with some slight problem solving.

Blogging may hit a snag as summer catches on.  Two more weekends of retreats.  Pray that we finish preparing camp for the summer months.

This and That

Here is the opening for the new parking lot on East side.  You can see into the softball field.

Several of the new trees near Heritage.

I think I'm caught up on pictures from other weeks now.  Last week at camp included a variety of jobs.  We finished up the new walls on the new equipment shed.  We like to call it the cow pen sometimes because that's about what it looks like.  In fact, whenever people visit us, they generally greet us with a moo.

A new project that popped up worked out really well in the deluge of rain we experienced this week.  Heritage lodge is getting some work done for the sake of its name.  It's beginning to look a bit like the museum in the West Side Chapel, or the Blockhouse.

Ready for Winter?

Me and Mike spent our time working on installing the door of the old Girl's Dorm furnace in the corner of the Great Room.  It was interesting because it's very heavy and comes in several parts.  We think it'll be a fun addition to the lodge.

Pictures are terrible in the Great Rooms.  At least they are with my camera.   You can see the doors are operable.

I don't know which is better.  The flash, or no flash. This one shows the letters better.

With all of our projects we've turned to the outdoors a lot more lately.  And with that has come the need for holes.  Post holes that is.  Split rail fencing, 4x4's for the cow pen, and now some 6x6's for a new porch on Cedar Cabin.  Digging holes is a chore because every couple digs I have to dig out a couple big rocks.  It seems like whenever I get fed up with it, Mike will switch holes with me and then I'll find all the rocks in his hole.  On the 6x6's the holes were easy to dig.  Some rocks, but it went really easily, especially for Mike.

The new porch will be fun to work on.

Now I'm back to Battle Creek for the week.  Looking forward to the usual church events, and then making my way back up to the CoLabor Challenge at camp this weekend.