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.

Camera Found

Good pictures/video from last week that I'd forgotten about.

Mike managed to carry it over to the maintenance yard intact.  That made it easier....

.... to burn it all at once.  We checked for the burn permit and were cleared, but I figured I'd keep an eye on it because of the harsh winds.  A very hot... stinky fire.

But that was a couple weeks ago.  In fact I'm kind of blurring what we've done which week.  I think it was this week we cut down a bunch of trees between the East Side soccer field and ballfield.  All that cutting gave me a good opportunity to use my new safety glasses and earplugs.  This clearing should make room for a nice parking lot that is not on the side of a hill behind the dining hall.  I'll try to snag some pictures of the area once it gets leveled off and cleared out more.

We also pulled most of the scaffolding out of the East Side Dining Hall and abandoned Dan Haines to work on painting and wall papering in there.  Mike and I spent some time adding in a fence in front of the ESDH and even planting some trees in there.

Mike is watering some of our trees.  The fencing really fits in well.

While we had the tree planting bug we headed over to add some trees behind Heritage.  The new parking lot back there left a lot of sandy area that is bare of trees.  Hopefully several of our transplants will make it.

Most of our time was spent putting up some poplar planks on the new woodshed.  The new woodshed is the old equipment shed.  The equipment is going in the new equipment shed that hasn't been built yet.  Did that sound confusing?  Cause it kind of is.  Once the building is up, it'll all become clear.

This was my office for a couple days.  Some of the wood was so wet it sprayed.

This is the cow pen.  These planks will make it easier to stack wood across the whole width of the building.

So that's it for now.  I feel I should have snagged some more pictures from this week, but maybe I'll add them next week.  Keep working out of a deficit until I catch up.  The important thing is that we're very busy up here, and time is running short before summer staff arrive.  I'm excited!

Lost Camera

I think I know where my camera is... but I'm unsure.  We had a fire meeting on Wednesday, and I know I had it there, but as we tried out different trucks I lost track of it.  I just had a promising conversation with Jeremy Linsley concerning possible locations.  You see, the fire meeting involved taking a team of three people (mine was Kieth Boeve, Jeremy, and myself) and performing a task with each fire truck.

Riding on top of the water tank.

So the fire meeting was a lot of fun, and we all had to start and operate each water pump, generator, and truck.  This is what happens when Lee Brown is in charge of these things.  Anyways, I left my camera in one of the trucks.  I checked them, but now Jeremy is saying that maybe I didn't check one of the trucks that stays outside.  I think he's right.

All that was basically to explain that I don't have the pictures I planned to have for this post.  Instead I went through and took some pictures of the project work in the East Side Dining Hall.  We're really hoping to finish up most of the main dining hall this coming week, but for now we've finished with the sound panels on the ceiling. 

This is what the ceiling looks like now.  So now you won't be shocked if you come visit us.

We still need to wallpaper and tidy up before campers begin to use the room.  But it really is starting to look like a dining hall once more.  We're just excited to get things moved back into the dining room and the backpack room.  We started this at the beginning of March, and so it's been about 6 or 7 weeks now.

No carpet in the backpack room.  We have a special carpet guy coming from South Carolina to work on it.

The weather is getting better again.  In fact... it seems like it's been May for about a month now.  This opens us up for more outdoor work.  Mike Baker and I have been trying to clean up the trees when we get moments between the major projects, and the new wood shed (old equipment shed) still needs work on the walls.

We're all busy right about now.  Programers are thinking of Spring camps and Summer programs.  Maintenance guys are trying to get everything wrapped up before guests come up this Spring.  The office folks are keeping all the details and the volunteer staff in order.  Through all that we say goodbye to our last "normal" weekend before summer.  From here on out we'll have guests every week through mid August.

Thanks for following!

Picture Caption Post

So since I'm running behind I'm going to just caption some pictures and call it good. 

The Johnson's back porch.  Hopefully it will get painted this summer sometime.

The new wood shed.  About 3 times bigger than the old one.

New walls to help us stack the wood.

The new sound panels on the ESDH ceiling.  The motto of the company, "Just Listen".

Fixed my broken drum pedal from Rockband.  Terry Shaw cut it out of some old sign material.  It's basically perfect.

ESDH entry way.  We've taken out the tile, and now it will be carpeted.

Adding in shims to help raise the floor.  It had been cupping.

Hudson Baker trying to catch some fish.  The famous CAT truck in the back ground.



EMMA BAKER!




Dan Haines tried to take a picture of me working.  He's not so good with my camera.  But he tried.  I do actually work!







Back to Business

Camp is in full Spring mode right now.  I spent the whole week helping Dan Haines paint the ceiling of the East Side Dining Hall.  Camp bought a new paint sprayer to help out with all of our painting needs.  For now it's in the experimental stages where we are trying to figure out how it works, and what kind of quirks the machine has.  So far we have sprayed down a couple layers and we're not very consistent yet, but we're working on it.

Dan with his painters mask on.

The full setup.

Otherwise we have Mike Alchin locked up in a dungeon trying to update the wiring in the lights and Mike Baker working on a couple different construction projects.  Since the weather has improved we're starting to look outside at all the trees that have fallen from one end of camp to the other.

Soccer just started up for the Under-19 team in Fairview.  I'll be helping out when I can, including running a practice next week.  It's really nice to get out and about here while at camp.  Today I played 18 holes of golf with Luke Harris.  Not my favorite sport, but it's fun to get out and enjoy the sun.  It topped off a nice Easter after going to church at Praxis in Fairview and then eating lunch with the Gardner's.

Luke lining up a tee shot.

Oh, and I also snagged some pictures of the Easter Egg Hunt at camp.

The whole crew.

Baby Emma isn't so much a baby now.  She has been real peachy lately though.

Back

Vacation is over.  Well... now it is.  After about 2 weeks at home I'm ready to get back to working on Camp Barakel maintenance projects.  This last week included some more disc golf.  One day I went out with an old friend from High School and he totally schooled me.  Then I went out with some folks that were new to the sport and we just tried to keep track of all the discs.  

I spent the last weekend bouncing around the north end of Detroit.  I enjoyed my first try at Cosmic Bowling.  I think the lights helped me play better because I broke 100 both games.

Cosmic Bowling.  Aaron's hat was excellent.

 After cosmic bowling we made a fantastic fort at Tim Houston's house.  I've never made anything like it.  The 2x4's were a fantastic addition.  Also, the air mattress fit in really well with the couch.  Leaving plenty of room for 3 of us under there.

The fort before all the blankets were added in.

So now I'm back at camp.  Hopefully the Spring fights it's way back in control of the weather and we don't have to deal with anymore snow/slush/ice.  Even now the camp roads are dry and enjoyable to drive on for a bit.

The Spring I'm hoping will continue.