A Messy Project

The West side bath house is one of the original buildings on camp.  It's been worked on many times over the last 60 years, but the writing is on the wall for the building.  But not yet.  With Crosscut Lodge on the precipice of completions, this summer could be the first summer that campers don't use the bath house.  It's still the most accessible restroom facility on the West side, located very close to the West Side Dining Hall.  So now we've been working to replace the most dilapidated aspect, the ceiling.

You can see what the inside of the bath house looks like, and the state of the ceiling in these pictures.  Mike Baker spent last week tearing down the ceilings, mostly by himself.  After we used the tube to take care of the insulation nicely, Mike just started ripping the ceiling down and cleaning it up from there.  It sounded absolutely miserable.  So it made quite a mess, but left us with a better idea of what we had to work with.  As you can see in the pictures below, the ceiling joists were about four feet apart, so Mike decided to put new joists in with two foot spacing.  You can also see the swimming goggles Mike tried to use at some points to keep the dust out of his face.

Now we have new ceiling joists, and supports that will help bear snow weight over the Winter.  After the joists were complete in that section, Mike Alchin put in some rolled insulation and we started in with the glassboard that will sharpen up this ceiling.  After getting one piece in, we were out of time for the weekend.  Then Mike Baker went in on Saturday and just plugged away at it with the help of whoever happened to stop by.  So now the room is almost finished.

So we'll be working on this for the next couple weeks.  In the meantime Dan Haines is still plowing through tile down in Crosscut.  Since September Dan Haines has spent his whole time at Barakel mixing mortar for hanging stone and laying tiles.  We try to visit him periodically, and he's progressing very steadily.  We're all very glad to have someone who can do such a fantastic job.

You can even see Randy trying to encourage Dan for his good work.  So we're really hustling on projects to improve camp over this Spring season.  Soon we'll see campers and workers returning, just the way it should be.

Spring Break in Minivans

This week was Spring Break for a lot of the Michigan Public schools.  Since camp workers tend to use this time to go on vacation, I decided to take the time off to spend some time at home.  Like usual time at home turned into time on the road.  18 hours in fact, and most of it in a couple different minivans.  Here's a breakdown of my time at home:

Monday/Tuesday- Catching up with some friends.  Catching up on some tv (the Office mostly) and On Demand movies.

Wednesday- Spent the morning driving with Tim Wygant, our Youth Pastor, to visit Rob for lunch in Chicago.  He gave us a quick tour around campus and showed us "Go Roma", a nice pizza shop with a crazy drink center that makes whatever drink you want using a touchscreen.  After lunch we met up with the Ford family from Camp Barakel and brought Samuel and Isaiah on the El Train and then the Subway.  They said the Subway smelled bad.

After the public transportation adventures we headed over to the University of Chicago Oriental Institute.  It's a neat museum that holds many special treasures from the Persian Empire and beyond.  Rob, Tim, and I enjoyed looking at these artifacts that Daniel used to walk by everyday on the way into the King's Throne Room.  There was a lot of information to take in, then we pretty much headed right out of town after that.

Thursday- Trip to South Haven with the Youth Group.  It was still cold outside but we still enjoyed a meal at Captain Nemo's and some cards on the beach.  The highlight of the trip was honestly some crazy kids who were doing donuts in the parking lot.  There were four cars that were driving me nuts with their shenanigans.  One of them was trying to power slide out of the drive way and slammed into a sand dune.  He hit it so hard he bounced up onto two wheels for a moment.  The crew gathered up, picked up the pieces, and then hustled out of there before the cops showed up.  In the end we couldn't even watch the sunset because the clouds were too thick.

Friday- Normal day with some time at Pizza Sam's.

Saturday/Sunday- Trip with Dad to Chagrin Falls (Cleveland Area), Ohio.  We visited some of his old motorcycle friends (the Stoners) on Saturday, then visited Parkside Church on Sunday morning.  I've been a long time fan of Alistair Begg, so it was a lot of fun to visit and see him speak in person.  I also met Matt McAlvey who is both Barakel and Battle Creek Central Alumni.

After returning from Ohio Sunday evening I was able to get in a couple hours of Tennis with my friend Grant Penrod, and then a bunch of Monopoly Deal at Tim's house.  The weather was plain shocking to me on Sunday.  Every time I walked outdoors I expected to feel a cold blast, but was greeted with warm winds.

It was a great week of catching up.  I always like seeing Battle Creek.  I'm sad to see it deteriorating slowly, but it's the way of the world.  We're all sort of falling apart in this worldly state we're in.  Amongst the troubles of the world it's fun to slow down and walk through history with some friends.

Projects

After finishing up the cleaning on the East Side this week, we've been able to attack the staff room of the East Side Dining Hall.  The carpet is all out and we've placed cement board under the main walkway in preparation for tile that will cover that section.  We've also tied up some loose ends around camp including the Hillbilly Porch.  It's a fun little porch that we used to greet the campers on the West Side this Winter.  It's kind of rickety, so picking it up can be quite a challenge.  Like usual, Mike used his Skytrak wizardry to move it back into the maintenance yard fairly quickly.

Another project was justed started on Friday too.  The Bath House on the West Side needs a lot of improvements, and we are working on the ceilings.  Our first step in replacing them is to get all the insulation out.  Well Mike Baker went up there to cut a hole in the ceiling and start dumping it through.  Since there are no lights up in the attic, Mike had to take a headlamp and a dust mask to try to deal with the enclosed space.  Once there, he found three layers of insulations.  It's not a joke, we've been dealing with styrofoam, rolled, and blown insulation.  To help get it all out of the attic with a minimal mess, Mike brought a caterpillar play tube from his house.  So while he slaved in the attic I just swapped out trash cans at the bottom of the tube and carried them out to the truck.

Now I'm home for Spring Break.  I spent Saturday playing in an Ultimate Frisbee tournament with my good friend from college, Evan Winer.  Our team was a mash up of experienced players and we didn't play really well together, but I think everyone had a lot of fun.  Usually after spending time in Grand Rapids I enjoy an early morning ride through the country.  I don't know if it brings me back to my childhood in East Leroy or if it reminds me of my Grandpa's house near Duck Lake, but I've always enjoyed the rising sun as I cruise towards Battle Creek.

Return of Winter

Just when the snow was retreating, we've had a wintry setback.  12 inches of a setback.  I had been taking pictures to show how close we were to being able to play some of the outdoor sports, but then all of camp was transformed overnight.  It's a bit of a setback after thinking Spring was going to get a running start this year.

Snow or no snow we went on with some Spring cleaning.  Cleaning week at Camp Barakel is a week where the whole staff splits up and spends most of three days cleaning an assigned area.  My area was Heritage and we were able to fly through it in two days.  We start on the ceilings and work our way down through the lights, bunks, bathrooms, and carpets.  I enjoy cleaning the high stuff cause I get to use a ladder, and most other people don't seem to enjoy it so much.  Here are some pictures from that view.

When we weren't cleaning (Monday, Friday, then 3-5pm Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday) I was painting the staff room of the East Side Dining Hall.  Last week I mentioned scraping the ceiling with the guys.  Well this week I primed and painted the whole ceiling with help from Titus.  Then Mike Baker and Mike Alchin joined us to rip up the carpet and take out some of the tiles.  It's nice to make a whole lot of progress with the help of the other guys.

Later!

Work and Run

Things are still settling in for the off season.  This has been a lot different than last year.  Mike Baker had surgery and is supposed to take it easy for the next couple weeks and Dan Haines just welcomed another son.  That left us short of guys right when we're trying to ramp up projects.  So I spent some time with Dan starting the tile for the Great Room in Crosscut.  Each piece of tile is about a 20 inch square.  It's been really hard to get the tiles level, but Dan does most of that while I keep the mortar ready and help him out along the way.

We are also doing some remodeling work in the East Side Dining Hall Staff Room.  Over the summer we had a rainstorm that worked it's way through the ceiling, causing a fair amount of damage.  Now we are putting in some new tile, moving some cabinets around, and refinishing the drywall.  In order to prepare the room for the drywall guys, Mike Alchin has been tearing down wallpaper and replacing damaged drywall.  While doing that he realized we needed to smooth out the textured ceiling, and he recruited a couple of us to scrape at the ceiling.  It was a fairly grueling bit of work, but the three of us made light work of it.

That was the gist of the work for the week.  I ended up making a run home again.  I stopped in Rochester and spent some time with Barakel friends from that area.  Then I hustled home on Saturday afternoon, just in time for the Taco Uno party at my church.  I took one quick picture, then realized that it doesn't have tacos or Uno cards in it.  That's all right though.  I think.  You can still see that we were gathered at tables talking at least.

Now I'm posting this while sitting in the narthex of the church.  I'm about to drive back up to camp, picking Sam Doyle up on the way.  I hope your March Madness brackets are doing better than mine is.  Oh, and if you don't have one, then you are blessed beyond the rest of us.

Thanks for reading!

A Different Week

After ten weeks of camp we now transfer back into the off season routine.  Out of the five guys in the maintenance crew, two were gone for the week, leaving us with a little bit of a different week.  The bathroom partitions in Crosscut are all finished up now and we have started updating the staff room in the East Side Dining Hall.  We also took out the bathroom counters from Snowshoe lodge.  They have had some kind of white splash stains on them for quite a while, we finally have some time to take them out and get them refinished before campers return in May.

This being the first open weekend of the year, I rushed home on Friday afternoon.  It was a good chance to catch up with people at home.  I ate at Pizza Sam's a couple of times and even attended follies at the Calhoun Christian School on Friday night.  I also used the opportunity to buy some supplies.  It's funny what a little orange juice, some cereal, parmesan cheese, and a box of candy bars will do for me.  Most of it will last through this Spring season at camp.

The three boxes of Poptarts from Big Lots are not pictured above.  Garrison Hills is always central to my trips home.  I try to catch up with a lot of people, especially the Youth Pastor from my church.  I end up seeing him at Pizza Sam's a couple times, but I almost always get to go to church on Sunday mornings.  I don't get to catch up with everyone as much as I'd like, but it's just nice to see faces again after two and half months.

There's good old Garrison Hills.  Rob was also home on Spring Break, and I was happy to see him for a little bit.  Hopefully I'll get to come and go in Battle Creek a couple more times over the next months.

Wrapping Up Winter

For our last weekend of Winter camping I don't think anyone knew how the tubing hill or cross country skiing would go.  We didn't have much snow left to move around camp, so we just waited it out.  Friday afternoon we had rain which led to great tubing runs Friday night.  They were fast, and you could go to the end of the run and all the way back down.  Then overnight we accumulated about 4 inches that stuck to all the icy trees and roads.  It was enough to even open the cross country ski trails for the first time in 3 weekends. 

We only used the West side of camp, but it was pretty full with two different retreats at once.  Meals were staggered on Saturday, which made them fairly long for doing dishes, but it was at a leisurely pace that's nice at this time of year.  I was able to play broomball with a team from Kalamazoo.  I don't know why they let me join them, cause they were already really good.  It was a blast to play some extra broomball, and a nice way to top off the season. 

On Sunday afternoon I went out cross country skiing for the first time this year.  I don't know why I didn't get to it earlier, but I couldn't resist all the pine trees heavily laden with snow.  It just made me think of the song "Indescribable" by Chris Tomlin.  Here are the pictures, guest starring Titus Brown.

It's also worth noting that we finished up the last bathroom of tiling, and after the partitions the bathrooms will be all set except fixtures.  So we're still moving along on Crosscut and we're looking forward to seeing some major progress now that the retreat season is over.

Thanks for following and God bless.