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Monday, June 07, 2004
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Oaklahoma Trip Blog Continued
Days 7,8 & 9 From the Oaklahoma trip - I've finally finished the video for the oaklahoma trip so now I have lots more time around the house. I was able to finally finish the last couple days of the oaklahmoa trip for you. Plus I had to make an amendment to one of the days from my last post.. I forgot some information. Anyway the last thing I have left to do is post my pictures on the website from the trip. That will come very soon. But anyway as I said the video is now done so if you would like a copy you can e-mail me and I might be able to send you one. If you have high speed internet you could even download it in mpeg format if you would like. Just e-mail me and I'll give you the address to download from. Anyway.. enjoy the last couple days of the trip
Wednesday May 12th (Amended from last entry)
One thing I forgot to mention about wednesday from my last entry was that during the day we all took a break and went go-carting. The camp has 5 different carts available to the campers. While the army group and us were there Brian took out two of them and we got a chance to drive them. It was a lot of fun. At first I shared a cart (these were seat carts) with Tori. She drove the first two laps. I think my "eyes flashed before my life" multiple times while she was going around that track. I'd hate to be next to her on the highway in a car... that girl is crazy!! I ended up driving the next two laps after that. They were a lot of fun. I would say they go about 20-25mph or so. I think they could have stood a little more power though.. a person has to floor it most of the time around the track. After we went Brittany and Allie ended up going. Brittany just drove the whole time though. Allie didn't want to drive (I think she was scared.. but don't tell her I said that). After waiting for awhile we got to go again. This time I paired up with Allie and Brittany Paired up with Tori. Brittany pointed out that this was the first time I got to drive in a "car"-t alone with Allie. That was cool. She didn't want to drive again though so I took her around four laps. So anyway, I just wanted to make sure I put that in my blog I can't beleve I forgot about it.
Friday May 14th
Friday was going to be our "play" day. We were planning on going out to the lake that day to hang out. Unfortunatly it was a little cold and rainy on Friday so that didn't end up working out. I'm not sure if it would have worked out anyway considering how busy Brian was that morning. Mike had decided he was going to be staying all summer there at the camp so He and Brian had to drive out to the big city and get Mike a Train ticket. They ended up being gone for about two to two and a half hours. During that time there was still a lot of work to be done around the camp. So we all continued working through our play day. I didn't really mind though. I think it was better to get work done then just play anyway. Allie and Brittany worked on washing windows in the gift shop and doing a little more organizing there, while Tori and I went and tried to clean out the chapel. The chapel was a covered roof but open air facility so there was all kinds of dust and leaves and stuff like that all over the place. It ended up being a pretty big job. We were only able to finish the seating area. We never even got around to the stage by the time we had to finish for the day. After Brian got back he wanted us all to be the guinea pigs for the confidence course that they have there at the camp. Before going there though he ended up blind folding all of us and we had to interlock hands and he led us as a group completely blind to the course. That was kind of interesting. Once we got there, there were obstacles such as getting your whole team over a 2x4 nailed between two trees about 8 feet up without touching the 2x4 or the trees around it. Then to make it more difficult he gave a couple of us handicaps. Brittany was a mute and unable to talk. Then one of the other boys there at the camp was lame and couldn't use his legs... then of all people he choose me and I was to be blind and they blind folded me for the course. Some of the other obstacles we had to do was get at least 6 people to successfully make it across this obsticle course thing that was all balence beam kind of stuff. Then we had to do one where there was two cables coming out in a V from one tree and going to two trees. Then two people had to stand on them and balence on each other as they walked further away from each other while following thier rope. It was pretty difficult. Of course doing it blind folded is a lot more difficult. There was also a huge rope swing thing that we all had to swing across and then my favorite obsticle was a giant 14 foot wall we all had to find a way up. We tried sending Allie up first but that ended up not working and unfortunatly we left here there too long trying to get her over that she ended up hurting her arms and stomach from hanging too long =(. She did a good job of sucking it up though and continuing. They ended up sending me up first and I was able to pull myself up and onto the ledge once I grabbed a hold of the top. Once I was up they then sent Allie up and I was able to pull her up the rest of the way from the top. Next was Brittany and we didn't have too much trouble getting her up either. After her we tried and tried to get mike up.. he was the only one we weren't able to make over the wall. Unfortunatly I think it was just because he had been digging and working all week using his arms and he had hardly any upper body strenghth left to help himself over the wall. I think if it would have been any other time we could have had him. We managed to get everybody else over though. At the end since we couldn't get mike over we thought he would at least be able to help the last person over. But once we got to the last person Brian informed us that Mike wasn't allowed to help. He wanted to see how the wall would work with the Last person.. Because normally there would end up being a last person. Unfortunatly our last person was one of the shorter boys and there was no way we could get him up by just reaching our arms over. The final solution was to have somebody dangle over the wall by thier legs and have him just and grab the person's arms. We tried to have Allie do it first, she was really reluctant to try it because it was a scary thing to do. She had to have complete faith in the people holding on to her legs to let them dangle her over the edge. She finally built up the courage to let us do it. I was proud of her. Unfortunatly she was a little too short and all the boy could reach was her fingertips. Then she didn't have enough strenght to pull him up with her fingers. We had to pull Allie back up after a few attempts because her legs were starting to hurt from the weight on them. So our next attempt was to have everybody hold on to my legs and dangle me over and he would jump and grab on to my arms and then I would pull him up from there. It ended up working like a charm. It was a little rough on my legs but we succeded. I was a little longer and he was able to grab up farther on my arms.. plus I had the strenght to pull him up from there. It was fun how it all worked out. That night we all started to get things cleaned up and last minute things done around the camp because we were going to be heading out the next morning. I think we ended up staying up until around 1:00 again that night though down in the office just hanging out. It was a pretty productive "fun day" though and we ended up still getting quite a bit done. It was pretty cool. I was really tired by the time we all went to sleep.
Saturday May 15th
Saturday morning the gang had to drive Mike down to the city to catch his train so he could run home for his brothers graduation before catching a train back to the camp the following week. I stayed back though because some of my reletives were planning on stopping by the camp that morning to meet me. They ended up showing up just as the rest of the group was leaving with mike. I had a good time getting to talk to them all. There were three aunts and two of my uncles that came down. We just sat in one of the lounge rooms at the camp and had coffee and we just talked for a little over an hour or so. By the time they left the rest of the group wasn't back yet so I decided to help around the camp some more. I ended up needing to take care of a couple computer problems over at the school house and then one back over at Dale's house. I also had to replace a CD-rom on one of the other computers as well. It was good that I was still there when it went bad. Anyway the rest of the crew came back minus mike and we packed up the van and got ready to head out. We had lunch with the staff one last time and then we headed out. Brittany also stayed behind and so it was really sad to have to leave her. Chuck ended up giving her a little stuffed animal to remember us by. As we left we looped around the camp three times and passing by britt each time. So we kept saying good bye. It was a little funny and I think it was Chucks way of making the departure a way to leave with a smile. I think it did work a little bit. But it was still hard to leave brittany behind knowing she would be there for three months. After getting on the road we headed right to Oaklahoma City. We wanted to stop by the oaklahoma city memorial on our way out of town. It was actually a nice memorial. They had a big reflection pool and two giant marble walls on two sides that displayed the time of bomb one and bomb two during that day. WE also made a stroll through the gift shop and Tori and Allie bought some postcards there. We also went to a spot where a bunch of children had colored tiles in memory of the people that died in the bombing and they had a tile wall that displayed them all. Then also outside of the memorial was a chain link fence where people could attach things in memory of the people as well. There was also right in the middle of the memorial a huge tree that was called the survior tree because it was the only thing around that survived the blast on the property. It was all done very well. Right across the street from the memorial was a church and there in front of the property was a statue of Jesus crying and on it was an inscription that said "And Jesus wept" it was a very well done sculpture. That was pretty much our last extended stop for the trip back home. Chuck ended up driving the whole way back without sleepign that night.. During the drive back we watched a couple movies, but the three of us in the back slept most of the time.
Sunday May 16th
At around 2:00 in the morning on sunday while we were still driving I remember waking up and having a conversation with Allie for awhlie. Then we both fell asleep again for a couple hours before Chuck decided it was time to make a stop for breakfast. I wasn't hungry for some reason though so I just ordered a small biscuts and gravy dish. It was good none the less. After breakfast we were on the road again for the continuation of the trip. We were expected to arrive back in lynchburg around 10:00 that night but because of Chuck and his awsome staying awake while driving ability we ended up arriving in lynchburg around 1:00 sunday afternoon. It was sure good to be back though I helped unload the van and I hung out over at the Donnebergs for awhile on that sunday. I can't really remember much of what I did there so I think I fell asleep. All I remember is it being dark again by the time I went home. It was the first night I stayed in my apartment that night. I wasn't able to go right to sleep though, since I hadn't really moved in yet I had to organize a bunch of things in order to clear out my room so I could actually have a place to sleep. I was able to finally go to sleep around 1:00 that night.
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posted by Jeremy Dillinger @ 8:47 PM
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