Daniel's Summer Blog

The final wind sprint is here, opening in the form of Yom Sport. The civilization themed breakout was Saturday night, and the closing ceremonies involved a Wii Video. I made myself useful by refereeing four perakim of soccer and then running two "Crazy Israeli Civilizations Race" stations. I was also in charge of waving the spotlight around like a crazy man during the opening shenannagins.

For my day off this past week, I had a 24, but opted to sleep in camp to avoid excessive driving. I went out Tuesday night and had a nice and quiet dinner, a rarity during these summers (and in local restaurants). Once dinner was over, we killed a bit of time and then saw the new Batman movie, which lived up to all the hype that everyone had been yammering about. The next day Jason, V and I chauffered a number of mishlachat into town, ate twice and went to Wal-Mart, while watching two huge storm cells pass through Clayton and not touch camp in the slightest.

The Wall is where a good number of counselors are at the moment, trying to break through to that reserve of energy for the final week of camp. Fuses are short, but at long last, the end is in sight, and that turns people's perpespective a bit towards the positive. I myself am worried about the end of camp, as it will be something of the end of an era in my life. I will be back, of course, but most likely never as a full summer staff member.

The end of Session Aleph brings with it a mixture of elation and dread. The feeling that the summer is half over (no matter how much we try to downplay that fact) is something of a salve for the mental and physical wounds sustained over the past four weeks. On the other hand, we have another equally taxing machzor ahead, with the looming prospect of burnout (beginning today, 7/13). I myself managed to sustain some bruises in the course of duty. At some point while load or unloading the U-haul onto the buses I hit one of my less-pronounced knuckles (ring finger, right hand) and inexplicably, the bone that is in the center of the back of my head. The latter is confusing, because while I remember hitting my hands repeatedly on the bags’ corners and the holds under the bus, I have no recollection of ever hitting my head. Despite my injuries, we still had the buses loaded and ready to go an hour ahead of time.

After luggage-moving, Monday was a fairly quiet day for me. A hurried call to make sure my brother could go water skiing, then a long nap and taking the family around camp a bit. We visited the new tree house, and then on the way back got the royal tour of Omanut from the Yad-Maker. After that, I did my best to entertain until Tal returned so that they could take him out for the night. The following day, I took Nadav out to the family (he had been on airport duty) and we had a great breakfast and read the Times while waiting for Abba to show up. Once he did, the whole family went to Black Rock Mountain State Park, where we took in the view, some postcards, T-shirts and pictures. From there, we went to La Cabaña where out of the five vegetarian options that they have, the eight of us managed to try two. From lunch, Nadav and I had to head back to camp, while the rest took and boat out on the lake.

Because I had opted AdAm to go to the airport Monday, Wednesday was my turn. I was once again tabbed to go on the early van, for reasons that would only crystallize later. The airport ran, if possible, even more smoothly than first session. The weather remained beautiful, all the children arrived close to on-time, as did all the bags. The only ongoing problem was traffic. There was some traffic on the way in to the airport, both for us and for the full-size bus. On the way out the traffic was even worse, slowing our trip to Sandy Springs and then on our secret mission to Dunwoody. Once our task was completed (aided by Fred and Fred), we piled back into the van for the ride back to camp. Once we reached the highway, the phone rang to inform us that we had indeed left someone at the airport, a rabbi arriving on a late flight. The original plan was to drive all the way back through Atlanta until it was pointed out that because it was precisely 4:59PM, the drive would take us two hours, minimum because of traffic and construction. Thanks to Jason, Human Global Positioning System, we decided not to take that path, but rather to meet Rabbi Dan in Midtown, he taking the MARTA northwards, while we battled traffic southwards. Despite our innovative technique, we still were stuck in an unreasonable amount of traffic going back towards camp so that we finally arrived shortly after dinner.

Second session brought with it a wealth of new staff members. Jason and Allison arrived, as did the Killips, two rappers, and two former roshei eidah (just to visit). Now that the staff is as maxed out, I have too many people to whom I would like to pay attention. Not that I am complaining. Shabbat consisted of three Settlers games that I lost, and one hockey game that I won. Early this morning, Gesher departed for their two week trip, making room for Garinim who will move in to their cabins tomorrow, staying until Sunday.

UPDATE: A Series of most unfortunate events

Monday I was helping out Garinim by dropping off two of their staffers at the pickup point (also known as Wal*Mart) when a succession of events spiraled from silly to unfortunate. As I was departing the rapidly growing Garinim contingent, my last step before I sat in my car was directly into freshly chewed gum, resulting in spreading all over the bottom of my shoe, laces, and even parts of the car door. Once I was done fuming over that, I filled up my car at the local 'Trac. For reasons unknown to me, the pump did not snap off when my tank was full. I was wondering idly about if I should wash my windshield, when I turn and suddenly see fuel spewing out of my tank. I frantically ripped the nozzle out and wiped down the effected areas on my car. I asked if I should clean up the minor puddle that had formed around my tire, but the gas station man did not seem to think it was important. I rolled out of the puddle in neutral, then turned on the car for fear that I might ignite some stray gasoline vapors. The drive up the mountain passed without incident.

My day off was this: Berry-Picking, Ingles shopping, lunch at Black Rock Mountain State Park Lake, Wall-E and then BBQ dinner back at camp. Not bad at all. The Dark Knight is on the slate for our 24 this week, possibly at the Drive-in.

Shabbat approaches rapidly as ever.

As my years at camp increase, I have found that my attention level at all-staff meetings has waned, particularly when the meetings are long and late at night. This became particularly clear to me on Thursday night, after the first day of Yom Sport. Counter to the usual Lail Mukdam, that happens on YS, this meeting was called for 11:00 pm (an omen if there ever was one) and did not let out until 12:30 am. It was the standard end-of-session meeting, with some free t-shirts thrown in, but while my mind wandered, I remembered the rapt attention which I had given these same meetings my first years on staff.
Yom Sport (Thursday) itself went fairly smoothly, if unexcitingly. I played my role in helping start the Apache Relay, and while we did our best to make it last as long as possible, the whole thing was over in under 75 minutes.
The previous day (Wednesday) I saw Hancock, which was everything I expected from a Will Smith summer flick, plus one absolutely insane plot twist. At Habersham Hills, the movie theater does not start selling tickets until 1:30 pm, which makes for a bit of a line for the 2:10 movies in the unshaded, heat-radiating parking lot.
For Yom Pack (Sunday) we ran the tower inspection, a process that takes all of our human resources. We have to go over the tower, wall, swing and Odyssey individually, making sure that every nut and bolt is tight and that there are no irregularities in any piece of equipment. Ropes, biners, trangos, harnesses helmets and shoes are also checked, with the last two receiving healthy sprays of Lysol. Rope washing attracts a lot of attention, but is not all that fun unless it is very sunny.
All-camp Peulat Erev went as usual, with singing alternating with video, slide show, five year t-shirts, the time-change and more singing. I went to bed immediately afterwards, slept for a solid six hours, then proceeded to move bags from the U-haul (where I had placed them Sunday) onto buses one through four. Having finished that an hour ahead of schedule, I treated myself to a shower and a 90-minute nap.
Now, intersession has officially begun, I am in the Mercaz waiting for my family to arrive, so that they can take up the rest of my day. In theory, Jason is coming too, but we have yet to install a third bed in our room, so he might just sleep in the bathtub.
Finally, we have gotten rain more than once a week. We actually had three separate thunderstorms on three different days this past week, which is much more similar to what camp is, as opposed to the last two summers of drought. Everyone is hoping that the rains will keep up to raise the lake and to provide excellent picture-taking opportunities (and because droughts are bad and cause fires).
No great pictures this time, they are mostly of the blurry night Odyssey variety.