Abroad at Home?

My time at home is going well.  I arrived on Saturday and enjoyed the drums once again at Garrison Hills.  Most of my days are spent catching up on reading, tv, movies, and disc golf.  Then in the evening I've been able to help out with our church's "Clubhouse" program for 3-6th graders.  I also played some volleyball and  joined in on a little bowling with the Youth Group.

For the weekend my friend Evan invited me to an Ultimate Frisbee tournament down in Richmond, Indiana.  We didn't know very many of the folks going into it, but it turned out really well.  Our team pretty much rocked all the competition.  Eventually we made it to the championship game against a team I think we beat 15 to 1 on Saturday.  On Sunday they had a slight roster change.  And by slight I mean that out of their 9 or 10 people they only kept their top 3.  

Classy white shirts on white shorts.

Even with all the changes, our team probably should have beaten them.  The wind was picking up, and we followed up with some poor decisions periodically.  We needed patience against the wind, but it's really tempting to try some of the longer throws against the wind.  Either way, we made a good run near the end of the game, then lost by 3 or 4.  I'm not entirely sure now.  

The sky shows how fantastic the weather was.

The team.

I really enjoyed meeting the new folks on our team.  I also feel like it was one of my best tournaments both offensively and defensively.  It was the first time in a long time that I didn't get cramped up towards the end of either day.  The reason for this is that the team was all around good.  It made it possible to take a break, knowing that the team would be taking care of business with or without me.

Sorry for the late blogging.  I just forgot I guess.  Things are flying by here.  I'm looking forward to getting back to the work at camp.  In the meantime I've been trying to work on reading several books and enjoying the easy internet access at home.

Thanks for following!

Shifting Gears Again

The ceiling looks big now in the East Side Dining Hall.

The ceiling in the ESDH is almost all the way ready for the guys that come in and add texture.  It just needs a light layer of mud over the whole thing to help level it out for us.  So now we've moved on to the next project.

With the sudden change in weather it was pleasant to go outside for a while.  The deck on the back side of the Johnson's house has been in an ever failing state of disrepair.  It's finally time to rip it up.  Here's the progression throughout the week:

It's fun to whack at these boards with our sledgehammers.

Half done.  Some of the boards were so wet that when I hit them they'd splash.

You should notice both of the satellite dishes are gone now.

We even took the paneling on the 3 seasons room.

This is one of the 4 or 5 loads of dead porch we brought to the burn pile.

This is one of the satellite dishes.  It was easy to track it to the maintenance yard.

The satellites are an interesting story.  There were two of them attached to the porch.  Back in the day they were used to track down signals that were then fed to all of camp.  This was the only way to watch most channels for years.  Now these giant dishes have been replaced by tiny dishes on almost every staff home.

Thursday and Friday were the staff retreat down in Frankenmuth.  Then Saturday Mike Alchin hosted several guys that came to cut down dead trees in the north woods.  I spent most of the day with them before spending a little bit of time at the lake.  The warm weather thinned the ice down to an inch or less except at the edges where it was straight water.

You can see the path that Kevin blazed over to the East Side Waterfront.

Titus Brown, Kevin Pierpont, and Jen Boeve all took the opportunity to jump in the water.  I chose to roll out, trying to get back to Battle Creek at a reasonable hour.  Then I spent Sunday at Garrison Hills, including an afternoon showing of Courageous.  I'm looking forward to a couple weeks of catching up with Battle Creek.

Spring Projects

It's kind of a crazy time of year.  If I were to retrace my steps from my snowshoeing trip last week I'd be walking on dirt, and some of that dirt would actually be dry.  Today is a beautiful day, but it's kind of hard to go out and play because there is still snow on the ground on sections of the ball fields.  It's still pretty messy in most places.

Last week the maintenance crew started scraping the ceiling of the East Side Dining Hall (ESDH).  There were several vents in the ceiling that had become irrelevant over the years, so we pulled them all out and then installed some insulation, followed by drywall patches.  Dan Haines has been dutifully mudding and remudding the patches, making a seamless surface.

Everything was removed except the cougar.  It still stands guard over the main dining  room.

The ceiling was very busy before the patches.

We've also been screwing in the drywall that is sagging badly.  Some sections are 4 inches lower than they should be, but it's kind of hard to see how bad it is with pictures.  During the original installation they used two layers of drywall, and only glue held the outer layer up.  Well that glue failed after 20 years, and now we're following up by screwing it all back together.

On my first weekend off I planned to spend most my time getting over a fever/cold that had been beating me up all week.  Titus distracted me on Saturday when he called me down to the lake.  He had put together an old rail sled, a Christmas tree stand, some pipes, and a tarp to make a "sail sled".  I tried it once, and it was great fun.  Only pictures and video can really do it justice:

Getting ready to take off.

The wind came and went, but when it gusted, that sled was moving fast.

Now I have my last Bible study with the young men from Fairview.  It's been fun getting to know them a little better.  If they are willing and able I'm hoping to do another study this Spring, before the Summer comes around.  We'll see if it works out again.

Thanks for following!

So We Got Some Snow

The weather.  We have all kinds of methods for checking it and preparing for it.  But no one can ever decide how much or when.  Well Friday night we all knew something was coming.  To prepare we shoveled off several of the sketchy roofs around camp (West Side Dining Hall, and Old Headquarters).  The snow didn't even wait for us to fully deliberate, it started early in the afternoon.  It was on and off until the evening when it started dumping on us.  That night at chapel I joined the other Seasonal Staff as we tried to take a lap around the East side cabin circle with shovels.

While Shoveling I noticed the power drop off and on a couple times.  Power going out is usually not a big deal around here.  The programers pride themselves on weathering any type of weather, whether it's good or bad.  So I didn't worry too much about it.  Well sure enough, we had no power all day.  In a surprise twist camp was cancelled.  Because of the cold weather and the lack of power the campers were sent home after dinner on Saturday night.

So we had an adventure on Saturday and Sunday night.  Several families head south for the warmth and comfort of family or friends, but many of us stayed around camp.  The Ford's and the seasonal staff basically take over the East Side Dining Hall.  Because of the generator we're able to play the Wii and watch movies while maintaining the comforts of heat and hot water.  I feel it's the church in Acts.  We have a lot more modern comforts, but we're still sharing electronics, food, shelter, and company.

Power returned in my trailer on Sunday night so I enjoyed my own bed.  Today I went out to enjoy the snow while I still can.  With the weather calling for warmer temperatures, the snow might not last long.  So I busted out the snowshoes.  I went into the National Forest, got lost a little bit, then found my way to the Northstar Bowl, and Eagle's Point.  These sites are familiar to summer staff, but in the Winter they are almost completely different.  Here are some pics:

The West boundary, near Thunder Express.

The Northstar Bowl

Endless trees.

I think of Job 38:22.  Or Chris Tomlin's song referencing that verse.

So the camping season is over.  Now it's time for big projects!  I've been getting lax on my pictures, but I think with a project going on I'll get the bug for taking pictures back.  So look for some pictures of the East Side Dining Hall over the next weeks.

Trees!

More trees falling around here.  With the Winter retreat season wrapping up, Mike Baker and I are going after all the trees that are marked around camp.  Some of them are in prominent places around camp like the West Side Ballfield and the East Side Chapel.  This means there are signs and fences and tetherball poles that we need to avoid.  So we used the Skytrak to give some of the trees a push in the right direction.  Most of the time Mike just puts a notch in the tree and cuts it so that it drops right where he wants it.

This one is on the way down.

All this cutting creates a mess, but with the help of Dan Haines and Mike Alchin we make quick work of it.  The trick becomes getting it to burn in the wet/snowy weather we've been having.  We discovered a couple of good tricks.  The first one is right out of Tim Houston's Thursday night camp out book:  Start small, then work your way up slowly.  The second is to run into the woods, tip over a dead pine tree, and use that to sustain the fire until the wet stuff is cooked dry.  Then it just needs someone to shuffle it around every once and a while.

This is the big mess.  We get most of it pretty quickly, but the smallest of the brush is hard to gather.

The burn pit takes some work, but I think it's sort of therapeutic.

There was still a lot of small brush laying around on the East Side Chapel driveway, but about 6 inches of snow fell on top of it, effectively saving us the trouble of cleanup for some time.  With that snow came the assurance that our last two weekends would really be Winter camp.  Barring an abnormal amount of sun and warm temperatures, we should be ready for the last weekend now with a little bit of touching up on the tubing runs.

If we aren't moving snow onto the tubing hill, it seems like we're moving it off of everything else.  So instead of loading up trucks with snow, most of the staff spent Friday plowing or removing snow from their areas of responsibility.  For me that's the West Side of camp.  I share about half of that with Mike Baker, while Reuben, Kevin and Jon Ford clean up the other part of West Side.  Since we were a little scattered this weekend I just ran the snowblower all over the West Side.  Thankfully somebody (Danny VanOrman?) used the tractor snowblower on the main paths, leaving me to take pass around camp with the smaller snow blower.  In the meantime Mike cleaned up the buildings in our area, and we were able to make it much easier to traverse the West Side.

My view for about 3 hours on Friday afternoon.  Thanks for the Ice Armor mittens mom!

So I'm thankful for snow this weekend, and hoping for a little bit more now.  I finally can get my snowshoes out for at least a little bit.  One last cleaning this season, one more retreat, and then it's on to Spring at Camp Barakel.

As the Winter Passes

I spent the first part of the week in and returning from Chicago.  It was kind of crazy, but I think the trip was worth it.  I watched the Red Wings win their 20th consecutive home win with some friends and then I had lunch with Tim (Youth Pastor at Garrison Hills) on Wednesday.  Made it back just in time to join in on a staff potluck and then join in with Luke and Randy Harris at a Kirtland Community College basketball game over in Mio.

The rest of the week was a flurry of cleaning mixed with some tree cutting.  We also cleaned up the brush pile that's been piled up for a while.  A couple of the trees we dropped were right over the fence near the West Side basketball court.  With some help from the Skytrak and some crafty cutting by Mike Baker we made it work without much trouble.  Then we spent a solid hour tending the burn pile to get the wet wood going and eventually we burned it down to just about nothing.  Here's some low quality video:

This weekend was the first combined combined teen retreat.  That means that both sides of camp come together on the East side for a combined chapel.  The weather gave us just enough snow to keep the tubing hill going, and that meant a fast couple runs this weekend.  Don Jackson was the speaker this weekend and he's always a favorite of the campers.  I was excited this weekend when a package showed up from my Dad's house.  Inside of it was my first electric razor!  Dad put in some pre shave and post shave stuff along with some "English Leather" cologne.  I don't know about that part, but we'll see what happens.

English Leather.....

Two more winter weekends.  I'm looking forward to them, but i'll be happy to get some normal weekends in the Spring.  Plus some trips to the southern half of the state.  The Spring will also bring the end of the high school basketball season.  I've been running clock for most of the girl's home games this year.  Tonight was a crazy overtime game between Fairview's JV and Alpena's Freshman team.  It's pretty impressive that a Class D school would push a game into overtime against a good Class A school.

So we carry on here.  Pray with me for the campers, speakers and the part time staff that are coming up for the next couple weekends.

An Impromptu Trip

This is one of those weeks.  So much has happened I can hardly remember it all really.  What did I do on Tuesday, Wednesday, or Thursday?  Well we spent time cutting trees near the highway, and trimming up an enormous pine tree that fell down near the West Side Waterfront.  I cleaned Pine and Tamarack cabins as well.  Mike Baker and I also replaced a 4x4 that had been whacked by about three different people.

We found a note on the pole reading, "Timothy G Houston- At your service"

On Friday the maintenance crew joined together with the programers to move snow from various snow drifts over to the tubing hill.  With three trucks we were able to thoroughly cover both of the tubing runs and the tow rope with something like 10-14 loads over 2 hours (someone could estimate better perhaps...).  It's one of the most grueling tasks that we have at camp, but if the weather pans out it can save the hill for the weekend.  This particular Friday it dropped about 3 inches of snow right on top of our work.  Just what we needed!

So the snow came just in time for the couples weekend.  The rest of the state also received snow on Friday, but it wasn't as welcome on I-75 where a large pile up of cars hindered many of the campers.  The chapel on the West Side (Teen Retreat) was actually delayed for the arrival of several groups.  The vast majority of campers weathered the weather and enjoyed the benefits of the fresh snowfall at camp.

Now for the reason I can hardly remember the early part of the week!  Some of my coworkers encouraged me to take a trip to Chicago.  Lately Chicago has been a good place for me visit because Rob and Elizabeth live just north of the city.  Makes it easy to stay here.  Between them and a couple friends at Moody I always know I have a lot of exciting things to do here.  Any other friends that happen to show up are also a bonus.

I left camp Saturday evening, joined in the worship service at Garrison Hills, then burst forth towards Chicago on Sunday afternoon.  Now I'm here and I'm having a great time.  Here are the pictures from so far:

The city from the 96th floor of the Hancock Building.

General Logan.  From memory I think he was a competent General from the army of the West.

My new favorite president.  He barely beats out John Adams.

Nothing!