Daniel's Summer Blog

Two of my apprentices doing a buddy (tethered) climb.
First things first, I received a beautiful wedding invitation in the mail last night. Postmarked June 16th, and delivered to one of my two mailboxes here (I discovered that too, last night) June 27th. Really it might have been delivered a week ago, and if AdAm had not shown me that we share a mailbox, I may have never received it.

My Yitziyah with Sollelim came off mostly without a hitch yesterday. The river was shallow and cool, no one flipped their tube and died (ok, nobody died) and no one was lost up or down stream. The ice cream guy was half an hour late, but everyone still got ridiculous amounts of ice cream, apparently two scoops equals a pint in Helen.

In my first game at Yonah Bowl, (who/what is Yonah, and is it jayohoh related? There is also a roller-skating rink attached to the bowling alley, and in the same city, a Yonah Burger restaurant) I got into a fierce duel with our bus driver Everett, which I won, because of my turkey in frames two through four, total score 148. Second game fatigue set in and I bowled a miserable 85, Everett won with a 114.

We watched Nanny McPhee on the bus, a falsely British comedy which was funny, but moved too quickly for the characters to develop properly. We also watched the first half-hour of Holes, which was mostly a well-done prologue, but I hear the movie goes downhill from there, though I loved the book.

I was on Toran (making sure there are people in every bunk at night) with Sarah last night, which is always an interesting experience. She would prefer if I drove the golf cart less quickly. I'll work on it. Part of Toran is calling each bunk before we visit it, to see if anyone can pick up the phone and say "I'm here." There are 34 bunks in 15 buildings, (two buildings have four bunks, the rest have two) which makes for 17 phone calls that have to be made prior to physical rounds on the golf cart. Of the 17 phones, three were busy, two were not picked up, one was out of order, another somehow put me on hold, listening to elevator music without picking up and five others had not yet finished their evening activities yet, so neither counselors. So, six cabins were successfully reached and confirmed as having people in them, watching the kids. That meant that we had to visit the other 11 and see where they were. Then at 12:30 we have to do second rounds to every bunk in camp to make sure there is at least one person in each bunk instead of in each building. Party Times.

Today at lunch I am sitting with Nitzanim boys, just like my first summer at camp. I can't wait.

On the infrequent occasion that I remember my dreams, they are wild, Kafkaesque and bordering on the worst of science fiction novels.

Yesterday morning, I remembered a dream, unusual in its mundaneness.

I was sitting in a diner, surrounded by allies, and I believe we had just finished eating, because we were preparing to leave. During the preparations, I looked up and saw two of my biggest failures sitting next to each other facing me, with another group. As we got up to leave, we walked the route to the door which was past the other group's table. One noticed me and got up quickly, beating us to the door. I chased after it, only to say that I had not planned on saying anything. As we burst out the door, I appeared to be on Derech BeitleHem, with Baka on our right, Talpiyot above and to the left. I gave chase for a block or two and then turned back for a moment to see who had followed out the door. When I looked back down the street for my quarry, it had disappeared to the right, downhill into one of the streets of Baka, impossible to find in the many shaded gardens and back alleyways that comprise my old stomping grounds.

Pick it apart as you will.

Airport Day dawns bright and early. That is only in theory of course. I am up far before dawn, preparing to go down to breakfast which will be served at roughly 5:30 AM. They say it’s darkest before dawn. I know this to be true. When I exit my room, I find a small wet hand-written note saying that the members of luggage staff going down in the UHaul will not be departing until 7:00 AM. I look at the note, grimace and head down to breakfast, knowing that if I try to capitalize on this and go back to sleep I will probably not wake up until the next day. Breakfast consists of the usual biscuits and fake sausage coins which no one can stomach more than one of at this early hour. I take roll, discover everyone is present, then roll is taken again just to be sure and everyone but me gets on the bus.

The airport goes about as smoothly as usual, there is one flight from Ft. Lauderdale with 64 campers on it, each with 2 bags, which make for quite a hassle when you are trying to get them to ID their bags and then leave for the atrium. As usual, the cops did not even blink at the UHaul loitering by the airport (we got it cleared ahead of time) but the people working in the area of the baggage claim gave me grief about not having two perfect lines of bags on the floor, threatening me with fire marshals and then disappearing magically when I tell them I am working on it.

The bus ride home (two dozen counselors, no campers to get stuck in the bathroom this year) is interesting for about 10 minutes when we drive through a massive hailstorm which makes it sound like someone is pumping the bus full of lead. Penny-sized hail falls over much of the county, making for small white piles of ice that quickly melt when the sun comes out.

The first week of camp goes as planned, without any major disasters. Emphasis on major. We had our first night climb on Never-Never Land, on a Saturday night no less. Fun, but I found a frog in my helmet once I had gotten up on the first platform. After I ripped my helmet off (I thought it was a huge insect of the cockroach order) it jumped right out, and glad to be off my smelly head, then base-jumped 15 feet off the platform. You just can't make this stuff up.

I took a picture of the Odyssey, but of course forgot to put it on the computer, so use Google/your imagination until next time.

The Lost Boys are back in Never-Never Land. Our new high ropes course has been christened Hurwitz-Ivers Never-Never Land and is also known and the Odyssey III (official name) and the Unicorn Playground/Ranch (my Gesher chug). It consists of eight separate events on two levels, not counting the two entrance cargo nets or the zip line which serves as an alternate means of egress. We, the climbing staff have been dubbed the Lost Boys, though we have two ladies on staff as well. As NNL is our new stomping grounds, we have had several tzevet aidot (staff of certain age groups) go on it, with varying levels of success but consistently high levels of fun. The downsides of NNL are threefold: We spent two whole days of staff week learning and exploring it, it takes one group of 8 about 1.5 hours to finish a level (each timeslot is only 45 minutes long) and it takes a lot of time to clean up. Otherwise it is immensely popular with us and with everyone else in camp. There was a drought in the state of Georgia when I began to write this entry (6/11) now when I am posting it, there has not been a day without rain at camp and we have had at least three fabulously loud and violent thunderstorms including the one detailed in the next entry.