With the wind

I will be travelling for the next few days, so probably no new posts.  But, just like the flower of Scotland, you shall see my likes again.

Silver Hatchback on a Misty Lake

Pranks were quite legendary at camp.  There were a few unwritten rules which everybody followed: 1) You could not interfere with a camp program. For example, burning down the dining hall would not be allowed. 2) You could not mess with people's personal property. Don't steal a personal car. 3) I think actually those were the only two rules. As we've stated before there are many vehicles on camp. These either were kept at the shop to be used on an as needed basis and with Ranger Bob's permission or they were assigned to people in various positions of power because driving your own vehicle on camp roads could do considerable damage. Most of the time people left the keys in the camp vehicles in case somebody else needed to borrow them. It was an easy way to not loose the keys. The reservation director (in charge of all 3 camps) was the incomparable Timmy Haag. In 1997 or 1998 he drove a silver two door hatchback a Dodge or Toyota or some other make, a few decades old. It was small but got him where he needed to be. Based around this car we came up with what I still consider to be one of the best pranks I have ever seen. It was so involved that it required planning, coordination, timing, equipment and we were so unsure about it that we actually double checked with Ranger Bob on its feasibility/allowability. When he gave us the green light we were ecstatic. The plan was basically to float Tim's car on the lake. Lake Waubeeka that is. There are three bodies of water larger enough to piss in at camp. Waubeeka Lake, Buckskin Lake, and Leister Pond. Leister Pond was at Summit Base and was small and created by damming the river that flowed off of Mt. Stevens and out towards Brant Lake outside of camp. Buckskin Lake was also formed by this river but I believe it was natural. And Waubeeka Lake was a really large lake formed by a serious sized dam on the same river. Large enough that you could do the mile swim or 1/2 mile required for Voyageurs without turning around on the lake. Being the largest lake, Waubeeka also had the largest waterfront. At the end of each Summer the docks would have to be removed and stacked up so that they wouldn't freeze and crack during the harsh Adirondack winters. However you couldn't back vehicles onto the waterfront to transport the docks to storage as it was quite sloped, so the docks were untethered from their anchors and rowed across the lake to the opposite side where they could be accessed by vehicle quite readily. The Quackers and I volunteered to row the docks across the lake at the end of camp, so they were left alone for us to take care of. The steps were to steal Tim's car, drive it to the place where the docks were taken out of the water, row a dock over, drive the car on the dock, and row them back to the middle of the lake. We had people set to help us with every step along the way, including Ranger Bob, and we had planned it out to a tee. Bob had even had us find out the car weight and the load bearing of each section of dock to make sure they would still float. Being as we did not want to get caught we had a 2 am start time planned. So of course we went out to the bar that night. I would not say that I stayed totally sober, but I definitely paced myself that evening. I think we all went to the bar just to calm some nervous energy. The Voyageur and I drove back in my boat ('82 Buick Regal or '86 Plymouth K Car). I was a little buzzed and I'm sure he was too. We were all set to get the plan in motion but there was a snag. Tim's car wasn't where it was supposed to be. Where it was parked every night. Someone had taken it and it was not part of the plan. We (not just the Voyageur and myself but the 1/2 dozen or so who were in on the plan) set out to find it. I don't know why I thought to drive out to the horse barn/new farmhouse to search. Nor do I recall why I went off the main dirt road onto secondary dirt roads with the boat, but I did. Perhaps the Voyageur recalls better, but I think we actually had a camp radio and called for help once we were good and stuck in the middle of a hay field. And of course Ranger Bob came to haul us out. Tim's car was eventually found. In what I irrationally recall as the most annoying thing anyone has ever done, two younger staff, one of whom may be related to an author on this blog, decided to "prank" us by stealing the car we were going to take to do a prank with. They hid it in an open air structure but parked so tightly as to make it a real pain to retrieve. But eventually we did. So here we go. Drive the car to the pull out on Waubeeka Lake. The Quackers and I got in a rowboat - you have to be a Boy Scout to understand that even though I had been drinking and we were about to move docks and float a car on the middle of a lake, we still wore life jackets. We rowed across the lake, unhitched three sections of dock perhaps 10' by 4' each and rowed them back across the lake. We tied the docks together, put ramps up to them and someone (was it me or someone else? really not sure) tried to drive the car up the ramps onto the docks. That didn't work, whomever it was backed out. So Bob got the Asst. Ranger, Chris, to do it. He got right up first try. With the car secure, we rowed pulling all three docks now with a car on top to the middle of the lake where we tied off and dropped many, many anchors. And that was that. The Adirondacks can get very cold at night, even in the Summer. In the morning there is often a good deal of dew and sometimes fog as the sun comes up and heats up the cold grass and air. On Lake Waubeeka this often leads to a great deal of mist. This morning was no exception. About 6:30 we drove down to the lake and it was extremely misty, but as the mist parted you could clearly see a small silver car sitting out on the middle of the lake. It was simply the best prank I had ever pulled or seen pulled in my life. I really hope somebody can send a scan of a picture so we can post it with this entry. This happened in the late 90s before cellphones were prevalent and everybody documented everything digitally.

This is not how Donald Trump would have done it

One of my less auspicious moments started out innocently enough. It involved a fellow that we called Stonewall. Stonewall earned his moniker because he was particularly fond of indulging in a certain mind altering plant. He was another one of those one-hit wonders. He only showed up for one summer, and like many others he had been somewhat duped into thinking that our camp was something it was not.

Our camp filled a number of positions with people like me that had come to the camp as a camper, and then returned in subsequent summers to work there. We knew what we were getting into. I was never a camp director, but my understanding was that it was largely up to the directors to fill out the remaining staff needs. The directors needed to sell the camp to the prospective employees and they may have been a bit creative with how much was disclosed. Stonewall showed up to camp and was somewhat surprised to learn that: 1)It was a boy scout camp; 2) He would be living in a tent the entire summer; and 3) Camp didn't actually start for a few weeks after he had arrived. The official camp season was 8 weeks. 6 weeks of campers and a week on either end to set up and disassemble the camp. This worked well for high school age staff, but for those of us in college, we had a longer break. Fortunately, you could negotiate to come up early and work what was called "Ranger Staff", named because you worked for the "Ranger". It was mainly just manual labor, but it was fun. One summer I was tasked with building a lean to, which went remarkably well considering I had no carpentry experience and there was no design. There was one that was already standing and I copied it. You would also have people who showed up early but had not negotiated before hand. There was an informal understanding that they wouldn't get paid, but they would get free room and board provided that they did some work. This particular summer I had negotiated to work Ranger Staff and Stonewall rolled in early because he had been told the wrong start date. We got along well. As you would expect, he was very mellow. After camp started, I didn't see him nearly as much because we were working at different camps.

Towards the end of the summer, Stonewall approached me with an interesting proposition. It turns out a couple of the Counselors in Training (CITs) had gotten lucky with some ladies over the course of the summer. The life of a CIT is not a glorious one. All of them are too young to drive, so they are dependent on others to leave camp. Every week, in the evenings, there would be a couple of vans that would take them out, the destination was almost always Lake George. It was a good destination because it was pretty close to camp and there were arcades, tourist shops and other avenues to entertain the CITs. My understanding was that two of the CITs had met some young ladies in the beginning of the summer and then arranged to meet up with them during subsequent weeks. Apparently the culmination of this series of meetings involved an overnight stay.

This overnight stay was forbidden, so they needed someone to help them out who understood discretion. Stonewall fit the bill. Stonewall had agreed to pick them up the following morning, provided that they would agree to pay for a gentlemen's brunch. I was fortunate enough to be invited along by Stonewall. So we ended up dining at a very nice restaurant in Lake George. It was sufficiently late in the morning that miomosas and bloody marys were on order. Stonewall was driving and his intoxicant of choice was not alcohol, so I made sure that he got his money's worth out of this free breakfast. There are only so many pancakes you can eat, but the liquid refreshment goes down far more easily. Eventually we headed back to camp. Since it was an hour drive or so, I picked up some refreshments to sustain me for the rest of the day.

When we arrived back at camp, I did my best to keep up with the manual labor that accompanies the end of camp. For awhile, it went well. After some time though, I needed a nap. I was woken from this peaceful slumber by the camp director who was none too pleased with my antics. He had placed my final paychecks on my chest and told me that today was my last day. Then he left. But the load was there. In past summers, when someone had been terminated, load and I had been tasked to act as security. Our job was to make sure the person didn't lash out and hurt someone or camp property. Initially, that is what I thought the load was there for, but he was just there because he was a friend.

If I had been smarter, I would have realized that I was getting my full pay and didn't have to stay until the end of camp. Instead, I fought to stay so I could finish out the following days. I began to realize that perhaps I hadn't really been fired. For instance, when I talked to the reservation director, the overall boss of the camp, he had no idea and told me that as far as he was concerned I could stay. This made sense considering who the our director was that summer. Ranger Bob said it best when he stated "That boy could fuck up a free lunch" Our director was basically a shaved chimp. He loved starting projects, making a big mess and then moving on to the next one. For instance, he decided to add a shower to one of our buildings. Rather than do it right, or up to code, he simply framed out an area outside the building and ran water to it. There was no drain in place so the water just spilled out the bottom. There was no tile, so after a few uses the plywood began to rot. It was pretty par for the course. His other favorite thing to do was chop down trees. He would have been happiest if our entire camp had been turned into a giant meadow. Fortunately, he was kept on a pretty short leash.

So I stayed. I went to the end of the year dinner and left when everyone else did. I saw our director a few times and initially his response was "What are you still doing here", but eventually he changed his tune and stated that he was only joking when he fired me. It really summed up the whole camp experience. First, it is incredibly difficult to get fired. Even if you do get fired, it is kind of up to you whether you took it seriously or not. If I had it all to do again, I wouldn't change a thing.

A Short Bob

The Voyageur and I have both commented previously that it is impossible to capture all that was Ranger Robert "Bob" Newton in a post, no matter how long or well thought out.  So I won't try.  Here's a short story:

About 2003 or 4, a few years past my camp staff tenure I went on a trip to the Adirondacks with the Weebs.  I can't recall if this is the one where we hiked in and around Pharoah or where we went canoeing up every thin blue line on the canoe map that read, "not navigable."  Either way our trips to the 'Daks in the Summer usually ended up with a stay at camp on either end.

Driving around Brant Lake, we had just passed the colorful waterfall and the general store (Darby's) when we saw a familiar figure walking down the road.  Now Bob was getting on in age and while most of us thought of him as invincible he had recently had a heart attack and retired from camp.  So the figure we saw was unmistakably Bob, but a bit stooped over, and wearing only sneakers and gym shorts - the short cotton variety with the one white stripe that my Mom made me wear in 6th grade.  And he was ambling down the middle of the road.

I pulled over next to him and said, "Boy, they'll let anybody on these roads, won't they?"  I thought I was being pretty clever.  He came slowly over to the car, leaned in to look at us through the window, I think he took a second to recall who we were, got a twinkle in his eye, stared straight at me, smiled and said, "They sure will, won't they?"  And ambled off down the road.  Ba-Zinga! 

We go to School for this?

The first few summers I worked at camp, there was no official training. The staff typically arrived at camp a week before the campers. During that week, you were responsible for getting the camp set up. The bulk of the work involved setting up the tents and putting cots and mattresses in the tents. Setting up the cots sucked. At the end of each summer, the cots were piled in the center of the campground and covered with a tarp. This was not exactly weatherproof. At the beginning of the summer, you would remove the tarp which had a thick film of grime on it and notice that the cots had rusted just a bit more. Since they were all piled on top of each other, somewhat haphazardly, it was easy to get your fingers pinched. The next opportunity for finger pinching involved unfolding the legs, it was not a smooth action. At the end of the day, it typically worked out OK though. The second part of the week involved working in your area and coming up with a plan of attack as to how you would accomplish your duties throughout the summer. Most of it done on the fly.

Certain positions involved going to Camp School. I think the closest analogy to the rigor of this school would be clown college. I only went to Camp School once, but it is an experience I won't forget. Prior to my first official summer as a guide, I was told to report to a different camp for some training. I thought it would be some sort of military style survival course to make sure we could handle things if everything went wrong. I could not have been more mistaken.

Our camp, like any other, had a series of rituals that only take place at camp. For instance, the "duck sketch". The duck sketch involves someone standing up in the middle of a crowded dining hall and asking someone if they "want to buy a duck". Instead of telling the person to fuck off because you are in the middle of your meal, you are supposed to reply "A what?" followed by "a Duck" followed by "Does it quack" answered by "Of course it quacks", the idea is to then ask a third person all the same questions, except this time the third person asks the second person the pertinent questions which are then relayed to the person who initially asked the question. And it goes on and on with a series of middle men. It is mildly amusing the first time. However, we are there for the scouts, so you go along with it. There are other similar events, songs about being a Beaver, going on wild cheese moose hunts, elaborate birthday celebrations etc. So the typical staff member accepts that this is part of the territory and goes along with it. Then you meet someone who works at Camp School. This is the type of person who takes something like the duck sketch incredibly seriously. Someone who has devoted significant time thinking about how to precisely capture the range of human emotions that one goes through when contemplating the purchase of a duck. These type of people live for a duck sketch and cannot understand why you do not. This set the tone for me. It only went downhill from there.

To start with, I arrived kind of late to camp school. I got there on the right day, it was just a lot further than I had thought it was. Our camp was located at the southern end of the Adirondacks. This school was way up in the northern end. I show up, and immediately get a polaroid taken as if this is America's next Top Model or something. I then learn that the class is in the middle of journal writing where they are supposed to reflect on the lessons learned the previous day. It seems that you cannot simply appreciate a beautifully done duck sketch at the time. You need to think back and peel back the onion to discover the many layers of beauty. I did not write much in my journal. The instructors were not happy. We were then supposed to get together in small groups and design the ultimate sketch. What we came up with was pretty good, I thought. However, it was definitely geared towards an irreverent 20 something audience. Complete with foul language, inappropriate inuendo etc. It was at this point that we were threatened that we may not graduate camp school. I didn't think it was a possibility. Apparently it was. If I had more time, I may have looked into what other options were available. Could you graduate with honors? Was it possible to be the valedictorian? The only thing I did learn was why the instructors all seemed cut from the same cloth. It turns out that if you did well at camp school, whatever that meant, you might get invited to return the next year. This ensured that they had a consistent flow of instructors who also saw deep meaning in silly sketches and were proud of this achievement. Interestingly, in addition to displaying this same rabid devotion to the absurd, most of these instructors took great pride in wearing the scout uniform. They did not take nearly as much pride in ensuring it fit properly. Most of the instructors resembled someone you may see at a dungeons and dragons convention. Their uniforms may have fit many years ago. Time had turned baggy shorts into daisy dukes.

It improved markedly during the second half of the week because we were supposed to go on a mini-trek. Once again, I thought it would be a marathon session where we attempted to cover 80+ miles in two days or so. As was par for the course, I was wrong. We did have some great instructors, true wilderness experts, and I learned a lot. I enjoyed this second part quite a bit and used what I had learned in future treks. We didn't cover much distance most days, but looking back that made sense. The canoeing and the backpacking is relatively straightforward. It is the teaching of fundamental wilderness skills that takes finesse. We did a number of lessons on navigating with a map and compass. I fear that this is a bit of a lost art, because of the wide spread use of GPS.

On the final morning, the instructors woke us up early. I had slept in my car that night, like many others because of the heavy rain and the poor quality of the tents. The morning was chilly and though the rain had relented a bit, it was still decidely damp. We canoed across the lake to a place I didn't even know existed. The paddle itself was great because it was one of those mornings where the water is completely calm, like glass. Tendrils of mist wafted up from the lake and the only sound was the paddles gently splashing into the water. We arrived at a medium sized log cabin and inside there was a nice fire going with coffee. This was exactly the place you wanted to be in during a morning like this. The fire gave off just enough heat to take off the chill, and provided a dancing light. There was a small ceremony where we graduated, and it was very well done. What had started off as such a negative experience was definitely a positive one at the end.

So perhaps we didn't need to go to school for this, but I am glad we did. I am also so glad that I didn't have to spend the entire week with the rest of the staff. If I am ever in the market for a duck, perhaps I will rely on the training though.

Passing Time

Perhaps what drew some of us so close together was the fact that we had no choice but to talk to each other.  When we worked at camp, it was really quite isolated from the outside world and perhaps that is what added to the magic of it all.

Cell phone service is still quite bad in many parts of the Adirondacks, in the 90s and early 2000s, cell phones were all but non-existent.  Similarly, there were only a handful of phones that could call outside camp.  Really, just a handful. There was a payphone at each of the main camps, but none at Summit Base.  I think there was one computer with internet access.  Good luck getting on that.  So, you passed the summer quite content in having little to no contact with the outside world except for a weekly phone call.

So we would chat.  About anything. It is amazing how many stories you can tell if you simply go into enough detail.  Some of the stories we told over and over again (and again on this blog!).  It didn't matter if the story was not particularly good, the alternative was to stare off into the woods!

Most people who worked at camp lived in tents.  They looked kind of like what you would expect an army tent to look like.  Not set up for portability.  They were pretty good sized, made of canvas.  You could easily put two cots in there and there was enough room to stand up.  Most importantly, you had a wooden floor that was raised off the ground so your stuff was pretty dry.  It would get damp, but usually not soaked.  Kind of like living on a sailboat (which one staff member did for a number of summers!).

There were a few permanent structures located around camp.  There was a nice farmhouse by the horse stables that I stayed in on a number of occasions when I went to camp in the winter for ski camp.  The barn itself was a solid structure, and just like you would expect if you listen to country music, a fair bit of mischief happened there.  For whatever reason, the equestrian staff tended to be female.  While none were named Catherine, it appeared that a few may have shared some of the same tendencies.

There was an area named the Old Farmhouse, because it was old, and may have been a farmhouse at some point.  To me, it looked like the farmhouse out of the X-files episode "Home".

I never liked spending much time here, but there were a few old barns where lumber and other materials were stored.  Interestingly, a number of the more senior leaders stayed in this area.  In addition to the main building and the barns, a few trailers were scattered around.  Now that I think of it, perhaps they realized that it offered a good bit of peace and quiet.  

Both Waubeeka and Buckskin had a permanent building that served as the camp office.  Waubeeka's was  a bit bigger, they had a lounge and an area where the staff ate breakfast.  Even though Summit was the smallest of the camps and often times had no scouts who actually stayed there, we had some interesting structures.  I wrote about the old dining hall that we used to have.  This building should likely have been shut down a number of years before it actually collapsed, but I spent a great deal of my time here.  That first year I got hired to work at camp for the end of the summer, I was put up in this building.  It scared the shit out of me.  

At the time I was 14, and I was sleeping in this enormous building all by myself.  Picture a building large enough to seat several hundred people for a meal.  Remove every single piece of furniture.  Stack a large number of mattresses at either end of the building.  Right in the very middle of this building was a single cot.  I had no less than 40 feet of room on any side of me.  There was no false ceiling, you could see all the way up to the roof, probably 40 feet up.  At night, I was to learn, there was an active bat population.  This old building creaked a lot at night.  At 14, hell at any age, you are not sure whether a creak is just a normal part of a building or a sign of impending collapse.  I chose to interpret each one as the latter.  Still, I had plenty of room.  I was sort of like a much younger, much much poorer version of Howard Hughes.  Living alone in this enormous structure.  Over subsequent summers we would use the building as a staging area for treks, and an indoor climbing wall was built.  One end had one of those glorious stone fireplaces, so big you could stand in there.  It would have been great to sit around a big roaring fire in overstuffed leather armchairs smoking a pipe and talking about the great issues in the world.  It was hardly ever used.  Because there was nowhere to sit and the chimney may or may not have been functioning.  So we built fires outside.  There was a large basement underneath.  I didn't spend much time in there because it was musty and dark.  We stored our canoes in there over the winter.  One summer there was a sort of underground bar going on there.  When you are young you are willing to drink alcohol anywhere.  Nobody did anything to make it more appealing.  No one needed to.  Getting a large group of people together and some beer made it more appealing.

One summer, I decided that I would live in a building that no-one had considered living in before.  No one had lived in it, even though it had been up there for probably 30+ years.   For good reason.  First, it had no electricity.  One of the perks of the staff accommodations was you had access to electricity even if you lived in a tent.  I figured I wasn't going to be there except on the weekends, so I was cool with that.  The windows were both missing glass and the door did not close all the way, so there were lots of mosquitoes, but you learn to live with them.  The building had a concrete floor.  Over time, perhaps due to freezing and unfreezing or another construction defect, the floor developed some enormous cracks and the floor was anything but level.  Some sections had been pushed up close to a foot higher than others.  But, there was enough flattish space to put your rack and you learned to navigate the hills even in the dark. Plus, how many buildings can boast both a concrete floor and portions of a lawn! It was pretty good sized, and for a while I had it to myself.  Then another guide joined me and it made it far more fun.  I think we even managed to jury rig a long extension cord to get some electricity.  By far the most redeeming feature was the metal roof.  There is nothing like sleeping under a metal roof in a down pour.  It is simultaneously deafening and soothing.  I longed for rain.  I guess looking back on it, perhaps what I did next was a mistake.  But I am not so sure.

There were at least two soda machines on camp property and scouts went through a lot of soda.  Each one of those cans had a 5 cent deposit.  I volunteered to return all the cans at the end of the summer, and amazingly enough camp agreed.  I don't think I even needed to split the profits with them, but I may have.  It was not until a couple of weeks in that I realized what I had signed on to.  Each week I would come back from guiding a trip and realize that my building was shrinking.  I guess inherent to the deal of me agreeing to return the cans was that I would be responsible for storing them.  Towards the end of the summer, it was like something out of the show "Hoarders".  It was just bags and bags of empty soda cans everywhere.  It is hard to describe, but the odor of fermenting soda can be quite overwhelming when surrounded by it.  

Summer came to an end, and I was sitting on a pile of aluminum gold!  We filled an entire dump truck with these bags of cans and set off for a place to return them.  This was not easy.  We couldn't take them to a grocery store, they were not set up to receive this many at one time.  We drove all over upstate NY, in an aging 4 speed dump truck that should not have been on the highways.  Amazingly, we ultimately found a place.  Nowadays it would be simple, you would just punch it in your phone and google it.  We didn't have Google though.  We did have a lot of time, and a need to get rid of these cans.  So we did what we had practiced, we talked.  We talked to anyone who would listen and if you talk to enough people someone will help you.  I wish I could remember it better, but we offloaded the enormous pile of cans and were left with a substantially smaller pile of money.  Still, it seemed like free money.  And there is nothing better than free money. We reinvested it all in beer.  

I don't remember what we did with all of those empties.  

Pre-Load

I had another nickname, a far more colorful one that I appreciated, but it only lasted a few short months. It had neither the pithy quality that "The Load" carries, nor its strong descriptive nature. But, for a while, I was the "Well-Dressed Waterboy."

May, 1998.  The weather in NY was warming up and as it was the weekend I did what I did every nice weekend in those years before serious romantic partners, family and other obligations - I climbed.  I had arranged to meet KW and the Voyageur at the Gunks.  This was a fairly regular event for KW and I and it was nice that Voyageur was meeting up with us.  They both lived much closer to New Paltz than I did, so after work (teaching in suburban LI) on Friday  I took off.  I had suede shoes and a button down shirt and khaki pants on.  I had my climbing gear and tent packed in the car and probably not much else.

We crashed at the campground (the old DEC dump, now an off -limits to camping dump) and went out to get beer or drank beer or did something with beer until we woke early in the morn.  I began to look around my tent and then car for stuff to wear but could only come up with a pair of rather preppy looking shorts, only slightly more casual than the pants I had.  Otherwise I still had suede shoes and a button down shirt.  I packed my gear and off we drove.  You could still park on 44/55 then, so there was an impetus for getting to the climbs early.  This particular day we headed down to High E.  High E was short for High Exposure and was (and is) a Gunks Classic for many reasons: it was first climbed by two area pioneers Hans Kraus and Fritz Weisner, they climbed it sight unseen and of course with no guidebook, they used a hemp rope and a few pitons, it's a 5.6 but one that can scare the fuck out of any beginning leader who thinks he or she is ready for 5.6 because that last pitch is slightly overhanging all the way up, it has great horizontal holds and wonderful protection, but overhangs between 5 and 15 degrees.

 Being that we were up early there was only one group on the climb before us which was quite remarkable because sometimes parties in waiting were 3 deep.  So we dropped our stuff and prepared to wait.  And the sun came out and warmed up and we realized we were low on water.  If you know the Gunks, you know there is this pipe of technically unsafe and unregulated drinking water that everyone has filled water bottles from for decades.  This pipe is located near the Uberfall - the sorta hub around which a lot of the social activity at the Gunks takes place.  So I grabbed an empty water bottle, and started running back to the Uberfall from High E (quite a ways) in my suede shoes, khaki shorts, and button down shirts. 

I'm not sure if the Adam Sandler movie had just come out then or not, but while I was running KW and V apparently decided I was the Well-Dressed Waterboy.  Quite an appellation.  They chuckled about it and called me it all weekend.  I could live with that one though.  I mean a nickname does not usually compliment a positive quality and is never chosen by its owner; those are the rules.  So if I was going to have one, I could deal with WDWb.  I kinda liked it.  Gentle ribbing at its best. 

Two months later camp started and I took Weebs, V, and Austin to Roger's Rock.  Later that day and for the next 10-15 years I was the Load.  Read the Voyageur's story on that below.

The real deal

The journey back from Afghanistan was quite an ordeal. We flew in a military aircraft from Kabul to a base in Kyrgyzstan and then flew in a regular (charter) aircraft back to the states. Since it was a charter aircraft, it was a bit different than a regular flight. First, we had our weapons and we were free to board the aircraft with these weapons (at this point we didn't have any ammunition though). The only rule was that you couldn't put the M-16 in the overhead compartment. Second, this was not the right aircraft for this trip. I think it was a Boeing 757, it certainly did not have the range to fly directly from Kyrgyzstan. So we made stops in Ireland, and Maine before ultimately landing in Norfolk, VA, late at night.

They tried to make it as painless as possible, and for the most part we succeeded. After departing the plane, we went to a hangar and turned in our weapons and any other high value items. Then we were free to go. The walk from the hangar to the parking lot where there were vehicles waiting for us was about 200 yards. There were people all along this walk who clapped and welcomed you home. It was incredibly touching. But, really, I didn't deserve it. The one who deserved it most never got his walk.

Everyone called him Rambo. He was a local Afghan who worked at the gate of our base. His journey was both extraordinary and heartbreaking. The Taliban often strikes by firing rockets. Typically the aim is not particularly good. However, they compensate by firing at large targets. It is the same theory of throwing a rock into the ocean, it is difficult to miss. Rambo lived in a large apartment building in Kabul and the Taliban fired a rocket at it. His wife and daughter were killed. At this point, instead of letting his grief overwhelm him, he vowed that he would help the Americans.

The base that I worked on used to be a big warehouse and trucking depot. Prior to the war, Rambo had worked there. When the US built the base, he stayed. He lived in a small shack. Each and every day he would work at the gate directing traffic and serving as an informal translator. All of the troops who worked at the gate wore body armor and were heavily armed. Rambo wore no armor and only carried a large baton. Still, he was respected. Part of my duties involved moving large shipping containers and for that we needed a crane. On the mornings we needed a crane I would tell Rambo how many we needed and he would arrange for the crane to come on base. I always enjoyed talking to him, and was impressed with how hard he worked and how much he loved America and what we were doing. What I didn't know was how brave he was.

One day, a vehicle approached the gate and Rambo did what he always did. He held up his baton and ordered the driver to stop. The driver did not stop. Rambo ran up to the vehicle, flung open the door and noticed that there were two wires on the gear shift and the driver was trying desperately to push the switch. Rambo wasn't going to let that happen. He wrestled the driver into submission and shortly thereafter the rest of the gate guards responded.

Our explosives team attempted to defuse the bomb, but were unsuccessful and detonated it in place with everyone kept back. Typically the gate was extremely busy. There were always a few dozen troops, contractors and Afghans around. The explosion was incredible, all the buildings shook and everything at the gate was flattened. We had to shut down the main gate and use an alternate gate until it could be rebuilt. Rambo saved countless lives. There is not enough time or people to give his the applause he deserves. More on Rambo below: More on Rambo

Bob, Issac and the Fig

There is only one year round employee of camp. While his job would be best characterized as a caretaker, for some reason he is referred to as the "Ranger". There have been a few over the years, but the most colorful, by far, is Bob Newton. But you never called him simply Bob. You called him "Ranger Bob".

Bob was from the adirondacks and had what was called an adirondack accent. I have met a lot of people from the adirondacks, no-one else spoke like Bob. It is hard to describe the accent, like so many things about Bob, it was totally unique to him. It took some time to fully understand him, but it grew on you. I think part of what added to the accent was the wonderful turns of phrase that he had. He would call people "lappers" for "lap dogs". Not sure whether that was a turn of endearment or a turn of disrespect. Another favorite of his was "whoremaster". Again, not that there really is a traditional definition, but I was equally puzzled about the meaning of that phrase. On one occasion I was walking up the camp road and he pulled up beside me in his pick-up truck. He leaned over with a wry smile and asked "Boy, you want to see some Beaver?" and gestured with his thumb to the bed of the pick-up truck. Sure enough, underneath the tarp was a beaver that he had trapped. I hardly had time to laugh before he tore off to his next job.

I knew him when he was in his late 60s I believe. It was hard to tell, he was incredibly fit and strong, but he did have a few wrinkles and some graying hairs. He walked with a bit of a limp and always had his head cocked to one side. Just part of his charm. He could fix anything. One summer I was up early and there was a problem with the sewage pipe leading from the dining hall. So he grabbed the loader (not "The Load") and started tearing up the ground so we could get at the pipe. He had me jump in there with a shovel once we got close and he continued to dig around me. He had total control of that machine, he could have picked a dime off the top of my head without harming me. He was willing to teach everyone. He was the one who taught me with old vehicles it was necessary to check the oil every time before you started it. He had this kind of power that if you forgot to check it, it would inevitably run out of oil on you. However, there was a limit. Things that he kind of viewed as not particularly useful he never bothered to learn how to use. For instance a microwave, I remember him fiddling around with it and getting frustrated and just decided to drink his coffee cold - because that was how he rolled! He also had a unique approach to diet and health. His breakfast of choice was sausage. Nothing else. And, as the Load has mentioned, he enjoyed chewing cigars.

No-one was more respected than he was. His house was at the end of the camp road and you needed to pass it to enter and leave camp. If it was after dark, you would turn the headlights and the engine off so that you would coast by his house without waking him, or even coming close. Interestingly, if you happened to sleep in you could count on Ranger Bob giving you his classic wake up. By classic I mean firing off a shotgun a couple feet from your tent.

Finally, he was extremely cunning. One of the biggest jobs to do at the end of the summer is to take down all the tents so that they can be packed away for the winter. On the day planned for it, Bob told us that we better get her done quickly because it was going to rain later. It was a bright day without a cloud, but if Bob said it would rain, it would. So we worked extra hard to get it all done. I approached Bob after we had finished and told him it turned out he was wrong about the rain. He replied "tents are all down, aren't they", as he walked away. He took a few more steps before I realized what he had done.

The Entrepreneur

Matches can be subdivided into two broad categories. So called "safety matches" require that the match head be drawn along a special coating of red phosphorus. The coating of red phosphorus is found either on the edge of the matchbox or matchbook. These matches are referred to as safety matches because you need the reactive ingredients found on both the match head and the special coating in order to get ignition. "Strike anywhere" matches can be lit on any surface rough enough to provide the needed friction. Here, the match head contains white phosphorus on the match head. These matches are more dangerous because they could conceivably light accidentally, simply by rubbing the head of one match against the head of another. However, they are very convenient for camping because all you need is the match.

Our camp ran a small trading post. Really it was just a small store. The only trading that went on was trading dollars for goods worth substantially less than those dollars. Most of the business revolved around selling candy, soda and ice cream. However, the store stocked other items. One of these items was matches, both safety and strike anywhere. It quickly became apparent to the business manager that the strike anywhere matches were a run-away hit. Understandably, creating fire is awesome. It is even more awesome when you are a teenage boy. Strike Anywhere matches only added to the entire alchemy aspect of it all. No longer did you need a special striking plate. The world was your striking plate. Scouts absolutely loved striking matches off of rocks, off of other matches, off of other scouts etc. The problem was that a box of strike anywhere matches contained 250 matches and only cost a couple of bucks. 250 matches could last at least a couple of days, perhaps the week. Nevertheless, the business manager quickly saw that he would sell out of these matches as soon as he got another order in. So he came up with a devious plan.

Unlike most of us at camp, the business manager, Ed, was actually very qualified to do the job he was assigned. I believe he was a full time employee of the boy scouts so he had a vested interest in turning as big of a profit as possible from the trading post. He quickly realized that at couple of bucks per box of matches he was selling each match for about a penny. Now, one idea would be to increase the price of the box from $2 to $20. But very few scouts would be willing to pay $20 for a box of matches, at least knowingly. So, the business manager started selling the matches individually, for ten cents a piece. Amazingly, he still couldn't keep up with demand. I think at one point, he was selling them for a quarter a piece. This was equivalent to selling the 2$ box of 250 matches for more than $60! These matches quickly became known as Ed's gold tipped matches. He had the market cornered, the nearest place that sold these strike anywhere matches was all the way around the lake, at least 10 miles.

For whatever reason, it only lasted one summer though. Perhaps the leadership thought it wasn't right to make so much money off of the scouts. Perhaps they realized the absurdity of equipping hundreds of teenage boys with firestarters in a wooded area.

Thunderbolt Mountain is there, No there

At the end of camp one year, KW, BK, BC and I decided to go hike out to Pharoah Mountain and do some of the 5.10 rock climbs out there. Pharoah Mountain was a nice mountain in the Pharoah Lake Wilderness behind camp. There was an old fire road out of camp that eventually turned into a trail and then into a bushwhack that would bring you to Spring Hill ponds. From there an actual trail led to Pharoah Lake which you could then circumnavigate to get to the base of the mountain. A hike up the mountain would take you to the top and then with the help of the guide book we could hopefully locate the 5.10 climbs off the top. There were easier ways to get there, but we wanted to go this one. Okay, let's back up a bit. Nobody in recent memory had hiked out the trail to Spring Hill Ponds. Toph and the Voyageur and Ken Smith had made the hike once but had turned back as far as I recall. And though we had been rock climbing, none of us had ever climbed on Pharoah before, and though we were all in good shape, only KW was what you would call a 5.10 climber. The rest of us could fall up 5.10s on top rope pretty well. In preparation for our hike we first sought out Ranger Bob to get some info on the best route to take to Spring Hill Ponds. We figured a bee line from the end of the fire road would be good but wanted to take advantage of his local knowledge. He kept pointing to the map and mentioned Thunderbolt mountain and how we wanted to keep it on our right. That was strange because Thunderbolt was out by Grizzle Ocean way past Pharoah and nowhere near the trail between Springhill Ponds and Pharoah or the bushwhack from camp to Springhill ponds. Except it was. After about 15 min. of confusion and argument with Bob and spinning the map around and upside down it became clear that Bob was referencing a nameless (according to the USGS) hill to the Northeast of camp. "Thunderbolt" was a local name applied to this hill and not one listed on any map. So there was that. It was late August and about 95 degrees with NY humidity. This humidity did not often reach all the way to the Adirondacks, but this week it had. One of our last stops on the way out was the dining hall. The cook staff was still at camp cleaning things up and we were looking to scrounge whatever we could. We were pretty lucky in that we were given some nice steaks that were leftover from the end of Summer banquet as well as a bunch of fresh veggies and other food. So we loaded up our packs, added climbing ropes and harnesses and top rope gear and shoes and anything else we felt we needed and headed out on a Monday afternoon. It was hot and muggy. And the mosquitoes were everywhere. And we weren't sure where we were going, though we were all in good shape and I (at least) could read a map and use a compass to orient through trail less land. After about 3 hours during which we felt like we were getting more and more lost and during which we passed a lot of bear scat and prints, KW yelled that he had found the trail. We had shot for Springhill Ponds, but actually ended up quite a bit West of there, either way we had found the trail we were looking for. So we hiked about another hour and reached Pharoah Lake and found an empty lean-to. We set up our sleeping bags and refilled our water bottles using a filter and the lake water and settled down to get dinner. At which point I realized we had forgotten the food. We was probably I. Yes, I think it was I who left the food back at camp. Sorry guys. We were hungry and it was very hot out still and we were tired having just hiked for four hours with our regular packs plus climbing gear. KW was pissed. I mean everyone was pissed, but he was the hungriest, so also the most pissed. He took a hot dog (the only food we had) and broke it into pieces and put it on a hook and line he found (the lean-tos were littered with junk like that). He dropped it in the water next to a little rock shelf where we noticed a bunch of small fish gathering. These fish were at least as hungry as us and they bit on everything. So much so that we started dropping the hook without hot dog and just hooked the fish with a yank. We got about a half dozen of these fish, but they were all about 3-4 inches long. There was not much meat on them at all. But we cooked them and ate them and went to sleep. The next day was as hot as the previous and we set off around the lake and up the mountain with our climbing gear. We got to the top after a 3 hour or so hike and were sweating profusely and still hungry but at least we were there. We took out the guidebook (Don Mellor's last edition before Jeremy Haas and his partner wrote the newer one) and tried to follow the directions. The climbs were supposedly a certain number of feet off the top in a specific direction. But they weren't. We walked all over the top and looked all around and could not find any climbs we could rap down to and lead or set up a top-rope on. We looked for hours but could not find anything. I think our bellies admitted defeat before we were ready to and we headed down. On this hike we all got spread out and some of us were really hurting. Tired, hungry, hot, dis-spirited, it was not a fun time. It is the only time I can remember stopping someone on a trail and asking if they had any food. Luckily the couple I stopped had some fruit to spare. And when we got back to one of the lean-tos on the lake we found some cans of chicken and some packs of ramen. This was not uncommon in the Summer to find some food left over in the lean-tos after a busy weekend. We put together the canned chicken and ramen and heated it all up and shared the fruit on the side. It was one of the best meals I had ever eaten. The next morning we hiked out towards Pharoah Lake road and then Beaver Pond road and then back to camp. We immediately hopped in our vehicles, drove to Stewarts and ate ice cream sundaes.

Sometimes a Cigar is Just a Vomit Inducing Item

I have racked my brains trying to figure out how to explain/introduce/do justice to Ranger Robert Newton (aka Newt, Ranger Bob, Bobby Newt, Fidel Castro). I can't. So I won't. I will just start writing stories about the man and hopefully his character will come through. Just know that I am not deifying the man, but believe me when I tell you he was a unique individual who meant a lot to a lot of people. KW and I were up at camp for ranger staff my second summer ('94). Ranger staff had not yet become a big thing the way it was a few years later so it was just the two of us and Ranger Bob getting camp ready for staff week and the rest of the Summer. There were a few other people around (the kitchen staff, old Bill, Big Bird) but camp was mainly empty. After two weeks of physical labor fixing up the camp KW and I were pretty tired and getting ready for camp to start. Bob and Old Bill took us out for dinner to a place in Chestertown. We took Old Bill's cadillac which was not as old as him (WWII vet) but was old enough that it was a two door and the back windows did not roll down. Ranger Bob did not smoke. He chewed cigars. At the time I chewed some chewing tobacco. Most of our staff did something stupid like that. No excuses, we just did. But we also looked up to Bob. Before we got in the car for the trip back to camp from Brant Lake, I asked Bob for a chew of his cigar. He gladly obliged by pulling out one of the ever present cigars from his shirt pocket and ripping off a chunk, which I took and placed in the back of my mouth between my cheek and teeth. I was used to working in the woods and fields of camp with the freedom to spit chew juice and eventually chew out at any time. For this car ride, of course, I had no spit cup. Did I mention the windows didn't roll down? With chewing tobacco, I would chew for a while and then spit out big wads of juice. With a dry cigar sitting in your mouth I didn't chew but your mouth produces saliva anyway. And this saliva mixes with tobacco and starts to build in your mouth. And you have nowhere to spit it. And you start to feel woozy. And then a bit sick. And the windows don't roll down. Chestertown is not far from Brant Lake, about a ten minute ride, but our camp was at the end of Brant Lake, a 7 mile drive around a twisty windy road. About halfway around the lake I was in panic mode. The saliva was building to over-sized proportions and whatever part was being absorbed into my blood stream was making me really sick. I had no exit strategy here. I couldn't open my mouth to ask Old Bill to pull over and no window to wind down. Even if I could speak, I would have been to ashamed to mention to Ranger Bob that I needed to stop to spit. So I did the only thing I could think of and dug around in my cheek to remove the soggy wet cigar piece. This disgusting smelly blob I held gingerly in my hand as I tried not to swallow the tobacco laden spittle sloshing around inside my mouth as the car slowly served around the turns of Brant Lake. As I was about to puke or pass out or both we pulled into camp and I jumped out of the car as soon as the door opened and the seat was pulled forward. Hitting the ground I threw the cigar piece down and spit and spit and spit as much as I could to clear my mouth. A minute or so later Bob came up to me and said, "You might want to spit the cigar out now, it's probably getting a little strong."

The thing about a Stationery Store is that even if you misspell it as Stationary Store, you will usually still be correct

Ken Smith was the reason both the load and I started working at camp.  I'll let the load tell his story. In my case, I went with my troop on a trek when I was 14.  Back then, camp used to hire a lot of international staff.  Our guide was an Englishman named Robin.  What I remember most about him is that he really enjoyed singing the hymn that was sung prior to each meal.  In the dining hall, there were large signs that listed the morning, noon and evening hymn.  Prior to the start of each meal, everyone was required to sing.  It sounded about as good as you would think a random group of mostly male individuals with little musical talent would sound.  If you came in late, after the hymn had been sung, everyone would shout out "GRACE" and you would have to sing it.  I really wish that my name had been Grace.  Then I would have come in late to every meal and when everyone shouted "GRACE" I would shout back "Hello" and pretend I was a celebrity.  But my name wasn't and isn't Grace.

Generally, those who came in late would sing the little hymn, although some would just blow it off.  Robin, loved to sing though.  So, he would deliberately come in late just so he could put on his little performance.  More power to him.  Singing was something Robin loved.  I would come to learn that incessantly correcting people's paddling skills was another thing he loved, perhaps even more than singing.

Why not

The Summer of 1997 was one of my favorite summers.  I had a number of great treks, I think the German was during the summer of 1997.  At some point, M.L. and I decided that we would ride our bikes from camp to our respective houses at the end of the summer.   According to Google Maps, it was just about 200 miles.

That was really the extent of the planning, just that we would ride our bikes home at the end of the summer.  While we had the bikes, that was it.  Neither one of us had come up to camp that summer with the plan that we would do this.  I believe M.L. had panniers on his bike.  I certainly did not.  I had my internal frame backpack though.  It was a great pack, I spent most of my earnings from the previous summer on it.  That was the best part of living at home with a parent who would support you, all of your income was discretionary!  While the pack was excellent for hiking, it was not built for riding.  I would learn this later, when I was fully committed. Eventually we did figure out that we needed to plan a route.  We knew that we couldn't ride on the thruway (amazingly, a fellow staff member had received a ticket for riding his bike on the thruway that summer - the fear of getting a ticket was the only thing that stopped us, not the idea that riding on 4 lane highway with every vehicle doing 70+ mph was insanely stupid).

Apologies

Network traffic was never super high for this site, sometimes we would get about 30 visitors a day, but it has dropped way down since I stopped posting. Understandably. It is not like there are a ton of layers to these stories that merit re-reading. I had a couple of cases go to trial this week, so I was pretty busy preparing for them. But, the blog is still alive.

I hope I don't screw up the history too much, but my understanding is that prior to the Boy Scouts owning the camp it was an expensive summer getaway property for someone pretty rich. There is an old horse racing track on the property. It is generally overgrown and perpetually very muddy. There is never a valid reason to drive a camp vehicle on the race track. It is forbidden. If you did drive on it, you were likely to get stuck in the mud at some point. Prior to getting stuck, you would have a great time spraying up mud and slipping around. Naturally, we often drove on the race track and we often got stuck.

Camp does not have a fleet of high quality vehicles. There are a couple of nice vehicles, but those are reserved for people far more responsible than me. I was allowed to drive the less beautiful vehicles. For awhile, we got a number of our vehicles from an AFB near Plattsburg NY. They were generally pickup trucks, painted blue (Aim High!) and had reached the end of their useful life for the AF. The end of the useful life for the AF was the beginning of the useful life for us though! Since the AF didn't drive them off road, these vehicles were not equipped with 4wd.

Then there was the "Jimmy". The Jimmy, was a pretty good sized truck. About the same size as a UPS delivery truck, perhaps a bit bigger. It was big enough to have a dualie axel and was a proper truck. Camp had apparently owned this truck since it was new. That was in the 70s. At the point we used it, it was relegated to driving on camp only. There was no way it was street legal. The engine still ran like a top, but everything else was falling apart. Doors would eventually no longer latch, so they were welded shut. The bench seat was replaced with plywood. There was an enormous crack in the windshield that was never going to get fixed. But, it was a blast to drive because it way big, heavy and a stick shift. Plus, you really couldn't break it any more than it already was.

Most of the time when you got a vehicle stuck, the solution was to get another vehicle of similar size to pull it out. This worked fine with the pickup trucks. However, one time while illegally off roading on the racetrack I was in the Jimmy. Eventually, I pushed it too far and got it stuck. The issue was that there was no vehicle that  was big enough to get it unstuck, at least none that I was authorized to drive.  I couldn't tell anyone that was authorized to drive the bigger vehicles because they would frown upon this behavior.  Indeed it was probably why they were authorized to drive the vehicle and I was not.

We did have an extremely well stocked "shop".  This was really just a very large garage with all sorts of tools.  I went down to the shop in one of the little pick up trucks and found a "come along" and a large amount of chain.  A come along is a manual winch.  I thought I would be all set, but even when the Jimmy was in neutral I could not get it to budge with the come along.  So, I came up with what I thought was a brilliant plan.  On large vehicles, 1st gear is usually geared incredibly low, like top speed in that gear was 5 mph or so.  I put the truck in first, the wheels predictably spun.  But, I could leave it idling and the wheels would still spin and it would not stall out.  So, I hooked up the come along to the truck and then another end to a stout tree (Rudolph would have been able to tell me exactly what kind of tree it was) and began to crank on the come-along.  Amazingly, it worked like a charm, eventually the truck got free and started to roll towards me.  I had to quickly dump the come along and run towards an unoccupied 5 ton truck that was heading straight for me.  It was easy enough to jump in, stop, pick up the tools and return them with no-one being the wiser.  I don't think I ever drove the Jimmy on the race track again.

Regular Nose - Not a Reindeer

During the summer of 1994, I worked in the Ecology Department. As briefly mentioned in a prior post, it was essentially a small building with a pit that we stocked with local amphibians and reptiles. Frogs were the mainstay of the pit, but we also had some turtles, garter snakes and even the occasional snapping turtle and water snake. The water snakes were nasty fellows. Because I lacked the skills of Steve Irwin, I often got bitten trying to snag these guys. There bite was not venomous, but it did contain an anticoagulant - meaning that the wound would bleed a bit longer than normal. I learned this fact from Mike Rudolph.

Mike was my boss and the sole other employee there. This dude loved Nature. He was the type of guy that listened to bird songs and frog calls on tape and could identify most species both by the common name and the latin name. He was not a nerd, far from it. He just really had a passion for nature. He taught me little tricks of the trade that I still use to this day. He taught me the easiest way to tell the difference between a white pine (pinus strobus) and a red pine (pinus resinosus). A white pine has five needles per bunch, just like the number of letters in "white". Additionally, there is a thin white line that runs along the underside of the white pine needle. Similarly, he taught me the difference between red maple and sugar maple. That was the best part. His enthusiasm was infectious. He would lead the entire staff on a nature walk. No-one had done this before. Even if you didn't actually see any animals, we would all stop and listen and he would identify three or four different bird calls. While the birds were almost certainly singing before he instructed us to listen, we didn't hear them. It wasn't until he made us listen and told us what to listen for, that we actually heard. He would pick up road kill and bring it back to the lodge so we could learn to dissect it.

In addition to being a great teacher, he was also a great friend. He took me under his wing when he didn't have to. He let me drive his car, even though I didn't have a license, and always made me feel included. When his parents came to visit at camp, they brought me a sandwich from the local store as well. I don't think it was a concious decision on his part, it was just his inherent nature. Unfortunately, he only worked at camp that one summer. It was likely for the best, he was too talented and too smart. The scouts that we saw generally came through camp for just one week and were interested in getting a merit badge. Very few actually wanted to learn. It is a shame, because Mike had so much to teach.

Crash! - (with minor profanity)

I had originally held off posting this one hoping to crowdsource the names of the two jerks whom I have indicated by blank lines in the narrative. But the Voyageur said the story was funny enough as is and he couldn't recall their names either. So here it is. One Sat. morning we woke up early and took off for Lake Placid. It was me and C and B. For the record, the crash was not due to fellatio or tetrahydracannabinol. That makes a good story, and the rumors dogged me for a while from those who wished there were crazier reasons going on, but neither were taking place that day. We were in my '86 maroon Plymouth Reliant. The muffler was held on with bailing wire, duct tape and melted on soda cans. But it worked fine and got us where we needed to go. I don't know why camp was so empty that weekend, but it was just three of us and we made the usual rounds: EMS, With Pipe and Book, the Alpine Gear Shop, the other bookstore, and some place to eat. On our way back it was rainy, I was sleepy, and my tires were thin. I think we were all asleep/nodding off, but at some point I heard B say, "What are you doi....?" That's when it happened. If you know route 73 between Lake Placid and Keene Valley, you know how it winds as it passes Cascade Lakes going downhill. This wet, windy, downhill road on an early Sat. morning with the sun shining was just begging for me to close my eyes and drift off. So I obliged. I don't recall the impact, but I do recall the massive g-force as the car swerved off the guard rail into the road and then back again as I grabbed the steering wheel and turned back towards the guard rail which I scraped along for a while before spinning around 100 degrees or so and coming to a rest facing uphill a little bit. Thankfully everybody was okay though obviously shook up. When we checked out the damage, the car was totaled. The right side looked like it had met a can opener, the front axle was cracked and lots of other little things were smashed. The guard rail ended a few feet after the site of the crash, if I had fallen a sleep a few seconds later, we would have been down a ravine. The state trooper was really cool. My car got towed to a junk shop at the bottom of the hill. (I later sold it for scrap for $50.) She took us to the Stewarts (I actually wrote 7-11 originally, memories do fade!) where we called camp. Here's where the dickish part happened. We called the main reservation office, Summit Base (not sure they had a phone yet) and Buckskin and got no answer. So we called Waubeeka and got ________________. He was reluctant to come and get us, but through a combo of anger and despair I finally convinced him that it was his duty. He arrived with, ________________ in tow in a tiny hatchback. With the two of them in the front seats, C, B and myself had to squeeze into the backseat, where there clearly was not enough room for us. And then he drove like a total asshole. The three of us had just been in an accident where we really were lucky to have not been seriously injured or killed and now we were being driven like sardines towards Armageddon. He sped, he swerved, he rushed to make lights, he overtook. I remember feeling sick and queasy and I think it was C who yelled at him to slow down already. Which he did for a bit. And then returned to his hellfire ways. The staff at camp, and especially at Summit could treat each other very cruelly. A mixture of testosterone, age, freedom from parents (and anyone over 25), ego, and macho insecurity, plus general hijinks could often lead to people being assholes. But it was always in good fun and never intended to hurt anyone (and always aimed at other members of the group who were "in on it") but we always, always knew when to stop. There were certain things you didn't do and places you didn't go. I felt extremely violated in the backseat of that car (no jokes) as it was zipping about; it felt like we were intentionally being put through some sort of hell by two staff members I barely knew for some odd reason. The next week I hitched a ride home with some troop from Long Island, and came back with an '82 Buick Regal and my dog (also named Summit), so it wasn't all bad.

The Flying Disconnect

Any group that is comprised largely of males in their late teens and early twenties will tend to be reckless and not overly concerned with safety.  If you give this group access to power tools, large trucks and construction equipment, all bets are off.

K.W., M.L. and I were clearing out some brush in one of the campsites.  We were using one of the newer toys at camp, the wood chipper.  The wood chipper was a hell of a machine.  It took branches up to 12" in diameter and turned them into wood chips.  It was self feeding.  There are two wheels that grab the branch and pull it through.  Once the machine had the branch, it was going to eat it.  Fortunately, even if you were somehow unable to let go of the branch there were a number of safety levers.  Once the lever was hit, the machine would stop.  Still, it was scary. M.L. and I would never be able to operate it on our own, but K.W. was more experienced than us and made sure we didn't get into too much trouble.  

We finished up in the campsite and were preparing to move the chipper to another site.  We pulled the chipper with an all wheel drive dump truck.  It was the most powerful truck at camp and only K.W. was allowed to drive it.  K.W. was always a bit more responsible than the rest of us.  Also, he drove big trucks and operated heavy equipment semi-regularly, so he knew what he was doing.  For the rest of us, the only vehicle we had experience operating were our cars.  

Unfortunately, K.W. got the truck stuck.  It wasn't his fault, the road was extremely muddy, we were travelling uphill and the chipper weighs a few thousand pounds.  After trying to rock it back and forth, we had only succeeded in getting it stuck a bit more.  That's when K.W. pulled an ace out of his sleeve.  

Camp happened to own a large tractor with a back hoe attachment.  This was also off limits to most of us.  We drove down to the maintenance shop, picked up a length of chain and the Tractor.  Now, we had two vehicles that only K.W. was authorized to drive, but only one K.W.  So, per the usual, we bent the rules.  K.W. got back in the dump truck and I got on the tractor.  I was in no way qualified to drive the tractor, but I was eager to learn.  M.L. was about to get the most dangerous assignment.

At first, we couldn't get the truck unstuck even with the tractor in low gear.  Once we rigged the chain to the backhoe bucket, we were able to pull the truck out of the ruts.  The truck still needed the tractor's assistance, but we could pull it with the tractor now.  There was no reason to do what we did next, I don't think any of us appreciated the risk.  

At some point, it was clear that the truck was completely free and could move under its own power.  The chain began to slack and the truck and the tractor were both moving at probably 6 mph or so.  Faster than walking speed, but not faster than M.L. could run.  I told M.L. to disconnect the chain while we were still moving.  My thought process was that if we took the time to stop the truck may get stuck again.  Disconnecting the chain, is not difficult, under normal circumstances.  There is a large metal hook that goes over one of the links.  While, not difficult, it is not a trivial either.  It requires both hands, and some concentration.  M.L. had to run alongside two very heavy pieces of machinery while holding the chain in his hands.  He then had to manipulate the hook to free the chain.   At any point, if the speed of either vehicle had varied or if M.L. had tripped, it would have likely ended in disaster.  Amazingly, he was able to get it done without incident.

It wasn't until later that we realized how dangerous and dumb we had been.  There was absolutely nothing malicious behind the "plan" it was just a result of being young and reckless.  M.L. is one of my best friends, and if he had been injured or killed, it would have been my fault.  We were talking about it the other day, and we couldn't believe that I had suggested it and he had agreed to it. Incidentally, once we got the chain disconnected we stopped the vehicles to pick up the chain.  The truck didn't get stuck.  Not even close. 

A World of Different Fire Extinguishers

I am very smart. About some things. I am very ignorant. About some things. Some things I used to be ignorant about I am no longer ignorant about. Fire extinguishers are one of those things. So apparently there are different types of fire extinguishers. Some squirt foam to smother a fire and some squirt a chemical substance that quells the fire. This second type is not fun to take in the face. Anyway at some point Voyageur and I were riding around camp in a vehicle. There was some sort of water pistol fight going on amongst the staff. I believe it was a weekend so no Scouts in camp. We liked a friendly bit of rivalry at camp. Between troops or between staff from the different camps. It was all good. So some people had water pistols and were trying to sneak up on others and squirt them. Cool. But as Voyageur and I were coming up the road towards Buckskin we were set upon by a group of Buckskin staff. They were driving one of the ubiquitous blue ford pick-up trucks. Only they were driving dangerously fast, had staff members sitting on the edges of the truck bed and they had one of those massive metal can/water pumps used to put out campfires that get too unruly. They soaked us and several others as they passed by. Now this could just have been my ego and it's certainly not a rational reaction but Voyageur and I were enraged. At camp you're supposed to drive ridiculously slow (<5 mph), always wear a seat belt, and have your headlights on at all times. We by no means did this because we felt it was overkill. But we adhered to a personal code of safety that was clearly violated by this racing truck with the staff members on the side squirting water from this massive pump. So we went to get revenge. We followed the truck and as they got out at the dining hall I grabbed the closest thing I could find that I felt rivaled the big red water pump they were firing: a fire extinguisher. In my mind I pictured streams of foam covering the staff and joyful frivolity ensuing. However I had one of those chemical fire extinguishers I told you I was ignorant about. Ooops. No joyful frivolity, just stinging eyes and yelling. Things wound down quickly. I was verbally assaulted by the head of Buckskin, a retired cop trying to stick up for his staff. When he yelled, "Why did you do that?!" I yelled back about that they attacked us and I thought it was foam. He was not amused, I did not care, his staff was breaking all sorts of rules so he had no leg to stand on. I was given an order to keep a distance of 100 ft. from the young man whom I had targeted, we'll call him M. I found this order amusing, but since we spent no time together it didn't bother me much. Apparently M was upset though and had vowed to kill me. Cookie told me this. She shared a cabin with another kitchen staff member who was dating someone from M's group. After lunch they would all gather and discuss the event for a few weeks. M would actually say he wanted to kill me. At one point Cookie reported he was carrying around a butter knife. I'm not making this up. M's dad spent too much time hanging out with teenage staff members. Just thought I'd add that last part.

A not so Brady Sequel

Most of the trips that I took out were boy scout troops. Occasionally, there would be a girl scout troop that came through though. One of our guides took this group out and had a great time. He managed to pass the long nights with the adult leader, Brady, a young lady in her early twenties.

I took the group out the following year and it was a disaster from the beginning. From the outset, there was a power struggle. Brady had only been on one trip before and at this point I had been guiding for a couple summers. Brady was very much like I was on my first trip, but taken up a notch. She was even more controlling than I was. Also, at the end of the day, the guide is in charge. Usually this wasn't an issue because most of the adult leaders just go with the flow.

The first issue was with pack inspection. We were canoeing, so weight wasn't much of an issue. At this point I had also realized that not too much could go wrong. Probably the worst case scenario that had any real likelihood of happening is that a black bear may get into your food stash. We camped in popular areas and the bears learned to associate humans with food. The rememdy was to tie a line between two trees 25-30 feet above the ground. You would then hoist your bag midway between the two trees with a second line. If it is just a couple of people, this is pretty easy. However, with a group of 15, particularly on the first night, the bag is close to 100 pounds. It is a pain to properly hang the bag and people take a number of shortcuts. One solution was to float the bag in the river on a canoe. Bears can swim. Also, unless anchored, the canoe has a tendency to drift towards the shore. Another solution is to climb a tree, throw the rope over a sturdy branch and pull the bag up. However, the bag is close to the tree and bears can climb trees. Some have even learned to hack at the rope and let the bag fall to the ground. A number of guides had their food raided by a bear. Most of the time, they either made do with the remaining food or were resupplied. The bears posed no threat of attack, they simply ate the food and left. Other than that, it was generally smooth sailing.

During pack inspection, we try to ensure that everyone has some sort of waterproof jacket. A 60 degree day, combined with rain, can make you quite cold if you don't stay dry. Some go as far as to parrot the saying "cotton kills". The rational is that cotton is a wonderful summer fabric, it is light and durable. However, when cotton gets wet, it loses all insulating properties. Many synthetic fabrics and most famously wool, still insulate when wet. It would be foolish to climb a mountain, in the middle of winter, wearing only cotton. Very foolish. I have done this. (There is at least a post's worth of material there. Suffice to say, it involved KW breaking trail through 2+ feet of snow the entire trip and still hiking faster than the Load and I. It also involved near suffocation by putting too many people in a tent that did not ventilate well.) It is not foolish to take a trip in the summer and wear cotton, particularly if you have some halfway decent rain gear. So during my inspection, I noticed that a number of the participants clothes were primarily cotton. I remarked that in general, cotton was not the best material, but it was no problem on this trip. Brady did not like this. Apparently she had been lecturing the group for months leading up to the trip on the dangers of cotton. She was adamanant that she had lectured every single participant. She was further angered when I asked her why no-one, including her, had followed the advice. Regardless, the trip would go on. So we finished the inspection and called it a night.

The route was Long Lake to the end of the Raquette River. Total distance was just a tad over 30 miles and we had 4.5 days. There was no mountain to climb in the middle of this trek, it was all canoeing. Throughout the trip, there were just lots of little things that bothered me. Second guessing campsites and how to properly set up a tent or cook a meal. This was not gourmet cooking. You boiled water and added it to the food. Regardless, Brady treated it like we were on Top Chef or something.

The only challenge was a 1.5 mile carry around some rapids in the Raquette River. A 70 pound canoe is not too difficult to carry for an adult male. It takes some practice to get it from the ground level up to your shoulders, but once you master that it is pretty easy. For smaller people, the canoe is typically carried by two people. There is less weight, but there are a series of drawbacks. First, you really can't see anything. Your head is inside the canoe and you can see only a few feet ahead of you. When carrying solo, you can tilt the bow of the canoe up and get a good line of sight. With two people though, the canoe is horizontal. The second issue is that if you and your partner are not in step with each other, and invariably at some point, you will not be in step - the canoe will start to bounce. Sometimes, you can experience a phenomenon similar to what happened to the Tacoma-Narrows Bridge in a windstorm. In that case, the bridge was designed in such a way, that the wind interacted with the deflection of the bridge in such a way that a positive feedback loop was created. Each subsequent gust of wind amplified the deflection of the one before and the bridge quickly experienced enormous deflections and collapsed. It is somewhat similar to pumping your legs on a swing; the pumping of your legs, if done correctly, can cause the swing to go higher and higher. Most of the time, if the bridge is designed correctly, the loop is not positive and deflections due to the wind quickly die out; It is somewhat similar to sitting on a swing and just pumping your legs randomly, the swing will move a bit, but not very much. In the context of carrying the canoe, you can experience a slice of this phenomenon where the canoe just starts bouncing a lot. It is not comfortable. It is even less fun when you are constantly tripping over roots and rocks because you can't see well. As you can imagine, things can get pretty heated. Many a good argument happened under a canoe. My general approach is to carry my canoe and gear to the end and then make trips to help those who are struggling. This way I spend the least time with those who are frustrated.

Everyone was struggling on this trip. The trail was littered with girls fighting, sometimes crying and canoes and gear strewn across the trail. Wherever the canoe happened to be when it was flung down in a fit of despair, is where it looked like it would remain. Some canoes had not made it more than a hundred yards. At this point, I had mellowed, so I did not order anyone to pick up the canoe and carry on. Rather, it was easier to simply carry the canoes myself. Everyone appreciated it. Except Brady. She was determined to carry her own canoe. She probably weighed 125 pounds. She also wanted to carry her pack while she carried the canoe. The nice part of carrying both the pack and the canoe is you only need to make one trip. Plus, you can rest the canoe on your pack and carry most of the weight on the hip-belt. Unless you are the German. I imagine he would have either paddled through the rapids, or carry one canoe in each hand like a pair of suitcases. I didn't have the German, I had Brady. Over the next hour or so, I would pass her either as I was carrying a canoe to the other end, or returning to pick up the next one. I offered help on a number of occasions, she always refused. Never politely. After the second time, I stopped caring. I would cheerfully pass her and give the canoe a friendly tap. An aluminum canoe is not unlike a bong in this respect. She was inside the bong and I am sure the friendly taps gave her the movtivation to carry on. Finally, we got all the gear and the scouts to the other end. The other end is very pretty, it is right at the end of the rapids and it is a fun place to eat lunch and swim. We did this for over an hour. Finally Brady showed up. She had done it, but she was at the point of exhaustion. This did not improve things. We were supposed to paddle a bit further, make camp and get picked up early the next morning.

Instead, I decided that every empty campsite was either full or not suitable. In reality, there were plenty of perfectly good campsites. So we ended up at the takeout. The night before we were scheduled to. Not even Sarge arrived that early. I decided that I would hike to whatever was nearby and see if I could make a call to camp. Brady insisted on coming with me. I have no idea why. We were not going to have a pleasant stroll. I didn't even know where we were going. Instead, we just walked in silence. We located a phone, made the call, and waited. Finally, it was over and the van arrived. As a bonus, it was not the usual drivers, but some younger guys who liked to have some fun. On the ride back we had to stop for some gas and I picked up some beer. Up to this point, I had never drank while still returning from the trip. But this was different. I needed a drink. There is one upside. After that trip with Brady, a beer never tasted so good.

Everyone remembers their first time

A lot of things happened in 1995. The criminal trial of O.J. Simpson, Thunder Gulch wins the Kentucky Derby and Jerry Garcia died. Perhaps not as well known, 1995 is the year I started guiding trips at Camp.

In 1993 and 1994, I worked in the Ecology department. This was a lofty name for what was really a small wooden building and a pit where we kept frogs, snakes and turtles. We offered classes in Environmental Science, reptile study, forestry, insect study etc. The idea is that over the week we could get scouts to a certain level of proficiency and the scout would earn a merit badge. Merit badges were necessary to advance to the next rank.

For the first half of 1995, I was the assistant Scout Master for what was called the “provisional troop” or “provos”. The provos were a group of scouts that came up to camp without their troops. You would have 10-20 scouts from all different locations and there were two “adult” supervisors. I was one of them. The big perk to the job was that you really had nothing to do while the scouts were at different areas of the camp during the day. The downside was that you never really got a night off, because you had to be in the camp.

½ way through the summer, one of the regular guides got sick. They asked me if I was willing to fill in for the rest of the summer. Typically, a new guide goes to a week long course to get some training. I didn’t have a week. I had one day. Fortunately, the load was an experienced voyageur and gave me compressed voyageur training. This training consisted of climbing the aforementioned Mt Stevens, setting up a tent, and learning to use the backpacking stoves. We made dehydrated eggs for breakfast. They were every bit as delicious as you would expect dehydrated eggs to be. We did not eat much. That was it. I was trained.

Unfortunately, I did not fully grasp that I was there to be a friendly guide. Rather, I viewed my role as someone who had to prove himself. So, I got my first group and immediately upon meeting them advised them of all the rules I had. This did not go over well. I made things more difficult than needed. For instance, we were leaving at 6 am on Monday, but I made everyone report at some ridiculous hour like 4:30. Not surprisingly, the dining hall was not ready for us because they expected us to arrive at 6 am. Unfortunately the poor decisions continued from there.

Instead of letting the scouts choose who they would partner up with in a canoe, I decided. A canoe is not particularly big. Learning to canoe is not particularly easy. You can always identify new paddlers by the S-shapes that they weave as they make their way up the lake. Even if you have no idea what you are doing, it is always safe to blame the other paddler. This experience is made even more unpleasant if you are forced to paddle with someone rather than picking your partner. The cherry on top was my view that instead of adopting the reasonable pace that these trips were designed for, we would simply go full out until we reached the campsite. This meant that we typically reached the campsite around 11 am or noon (sometimes earlier since I insisted that we wake up very early each morning). Once at the campsite, there was not much to do. Understandably, I had the beginnings of a mutiny on my hands. Being the hardheaded stubborn guy I was, my solution was to push even harder.

The middle of most of our canoe trips involves a short canoe paddle to a nearby mountain. The bulk of the day is spent climbing the mountain and then returning to camp. It is supposed to be a welcome break because there is no need to break camp that morning or set up a new camp that evening. The paddling is a little bit easier because you are not carrying any gear.

The paddle to the mountain was approximately 60-90 minutes. A group of scouts asked if they could put 4 scouts in one canoe. There was nothing wrong with doing this, they were light and without the gear the canoe could handle it. They would also be faster with 4 people paddling and it would be more fun. Not surprisingly, I said no. They had the last word though. On the way back from the mountain, I noticed that one canoe was sitting very low in the water and that it was attached to a canoe with 4 people in it. These scouts had intentionally swamped one of the canoes, i.e. filled it with water. Even full of water, the Grumman canoe will not sink, another great design feature. It is, however, less of a canoe at this point and more of an anchor. Even with 4 scouts in one canoe, they were hopelessly slower because they were trying to tow the swamped canoe. We emptied the swamped canoe and I let them tow it back empty. That was the happiest I had seen them.

Fortunately, I mellowed after that trip. I realized that I was there mostly as a teacher and as a safety net. All these scouts needed was someone to answer questions from time to time and point them in the right direction. I wish I could have realized this before I took out my first trek though. Still, I wish I could have heard the scouts’ discussion immediately prior to intentionally swamping the canoe.

Accidents on Purpose

America was not known for producing exceptional mid-sized automobiles in the 80s and 90s. Nevertheless, the load did his part in supporting the industry. At one point, he drove a mid sized maroon colored buick. It was quite the vehicle. The muffler was attached with baling wire. A ski pole was used to hold the trunk open and when filling it up with gas, you usually had to add a quart of oil as well. Though it was rear wheel drive and low to the ground, he would take it off roading on occasion.

Then there was Annie. Annie was not a hardworker and was not that bright. Consequently, it was easy to see through her excuses that involved her avoiding work. As you would expect, most of the staff members at a boy scout camp were male. The few females that worked there often felt they had to prove themselves. Some chose to prove themselves by working very hard. A select few chose to dedicate themselves to raising morale one staff member at a time! Annie did neither

There is a fair amount of pranking that goes on at camp. For some reason, there was an enormous stash of badminton birdies in the basesment of one of the buildings. Truly enormous, thousands and thousands of them. There was no net or rackets, but countless birdies nonetheless. One favorite prank was to fill up someone's car with these birdies. Another was to hide someone's car.

The load had what I consider one of the best pranks. It was dedicated exclusively for Annie. Annie drove a brand of vehicle I had never heard of before. It was not a fancy car, the few of us that did have vehicles rarely had new cars. On a number of occasions, if we saw Annie's parked car, we would pretend that the load's vehicle had lost its brakes. It was more that just a gentle nudge, but not hard enough to cause any real damage. It was extra fun if Annie happened to witness it. There would be lots of yelling immediately prior to the impact and then her little car would jump forward.  Then there was always the story that this had never happened before, and was a one time fluke.  Kind of like the whole run-away Prius issue a few years back.

Mission Accomplished

Initially, I planned to limit this blog to camp stories.  I still intend to keep the focus there, but I may stray from time to time.  This is one of those times.  Also, there is a bit of profanity in this post.  I think it is necessary for the story.

From May 2006 to May 2007 I was deployed to Kabul, Afghanistan as part of Operation Enduring Freedom.  Yes, the Navy was in Afghanistan.  In many ways, it was a lot like camp.  You ate all your meals at a dining hall (DFAC), wore uniforms and saw the same people day after day.  We even went on trips, but we called them missions.  If I ever take a trek group out again, I am going to refer to the trip as a mission.

I wasn't in direct combat.  I was over there as an engineer and spent most of my time designing Forward Operating Bases (FOBS).  These FOBS were designed to support a few hundred US and Coalition forces.  They were not luxurious, but did have electricity, limited plumbing and heat.  Additionally we needed to ensure that there was plenty of force protection measures in place.

Just as at camp, there were a number of characters that I encountered.

LCDR Frankenstein: So named, because he really did look a lot like Frankenstein.  He had an enormous head.   Really enormous.  They had to order a special helmet for him.  He wasn't a really big dude, but he had a head that wouldn't fit through most windows!  He was also incredibly forgetful and absent minded. Some highlights:

1.  In the middle of the night he left the tent we were temporarily bunked in, presumably to use the head.  There were probably 25 of us in the tent.  After being gone for about 8 minutes, he came back in and I assumed he was going to get back in his rack.  What followed was some rustling, and then a very loud voice: "What the FUCK are you doing?"  Turns out in the space of 8 minutes, Frankenstein had forgotten which rack was his and climbed into a rack occupied by one of our saltier electricians!;

2.  He was forever leaving our office only to return a short time later because he had forgotten something.  This would range from relatively important things like his rifle to smaller items like a notebook.  One time, he left and one of my office mates started counting down.  He came in exactly as my office mate finished saying "1";

3.  On a number of occasions, he would go through the chow line and somehow lose his tray in the 25 feet or so it took to get to our table.  It may have been at the salad bar, it may have been somewhere else.  He never went to look for it.  He simply went through the line again.  I don't think he ever misplaced two trays in one meal, but perhaps he did.

4. There were a number of occasions where we had to fly around by helicopter to various bases.  There was a set flight that visited a number of different bases.  It was sort of like a bus, it had a set schedule and route.  Frankenstein managed to pull off two feats.  First, he fell asleep.  These helicopters are loud and the seats are not comfortable.  Plus, you are wearing your body armor.  Also, the doors are open for the gunners.  Finally, they test fire the weapons from time to time.  (Incidentally, the first time this happened to me, it scared the hell out of me.  We were flying fast and low and all of a sudden both machine guns go off.  I grabbed for my handgun, as if that would help.  I saw the pilots laughing.) Nevertheless Frankenstein fell asleep for a little bit.  The second thing he did was fail to get off at the proper stop.  You know what number your stop is going to be ahead of time, and count down.  Somehow, Frankenstein, an engineer, couldn't quite count to 4.  He ended up doing the whole circuit and arrived back at our camp later that day.  He had to take the flight the following day.  They sent someone with him, just to make sure he didn't get lost.

BUC-O: In the Navy, our senior enlisted personnel are called "Chiefs".  One of our senior enlisted was classified as a "Builder" and the abbreviation for a Builder Chief is BUC.  Fortunately his last name began with an O, so it was only fair to call him BUC-O.  BUC-O was a reservist and when he wasn't in the Navy he worked at a prison.  He had a very colorful way of talking and introduced me to a few lovely phrases.  If we had a big job to do, his suggestion was always to "gang fuck" it.  Meaning, let's put a lot of people on it and get it done.  His other trademark phrase was "Don't exaggerate the big fucking point."  I never quite understood this phrase because he applied it across a broad spectrum.  When they served a very good Thanksgiving meal he admonished us not to exaggerate the big fucking point.  When we were preparing for a mission and deciding who should go in which vehicle, again the same refrain.  I really liked this phrase, because I had never heard it before and it appeared that you could plug it in anywhere.  It was quickly adopted by all of us.  BUC-O never told us if we were using it correctly or not.  That was for him alone to know.

Captain America:  This was an Army guy who worked with us.  In the Army, you can be classified as an engineer even if you don't have formal engineering experience.  Captain America fit this bill.  What I remember most about him is that he had a mail order bride.  He would be the first to bring it up and tell you all about the process, just in case you were considering it!  He seemed particularly proud of it, perhaps he thought he had figured out the way marriage was supposed to be.

The Angry Asian: The thing about reservists is, that some of them are pretty old.  Older than most of the active duty guys.  Consequently, we had a couple of senior officers that were Vietnam War vets.  During a training exercise, one of the vets accidentally shot (with blanks, not real bullets) one of our junior officers. That junior officer was Vietnamese. We joked that the senior officer had a flashback.  The junior officer was not amused.  He was very rarely amused.  I think he was just wound too tight.  He seemed to love misery though.  All through our deployment, he was desperately trying to get another deployment.  Finally, he was successful, and after a lot of begging and pulling strings he was able to secure a deployment to Iraq.  He then would constantly complain about how he was being sent on another deployment. He just loved being angry. He also had a bit of a fling with an Air Force officer.  I won't say she was unattractive, but she certainly was not attractive. The Air Force did 4 month deployments, so she traveled back to the states while we were still there.  On one occasion, she sent him a package.  The entire unit got all its mail at once, and it may sit in the office for a bit if someone is out on a mission.  So we found ourselves in constructive possession of a small package for the Angry Asian.  We did not open the package, but we did alter the customs slip to indicate that the package contained various sultry items like underwear.  When the Angry Asian saw the slip, he was actually happy.  When he opened the package, he was angry, but not nearly as angry as we thought he would be.  If anything he was slightly less angry than his baseline level.  He actually thought it was a pretty good joke.

Our Not Very Fearless Leader: The overall officer in charge of our 100+ sailors was not a bad guy.  He was a terrible leader though.  He was a reservist.  In his day job he owned a successful law practice. He was not cut out to be our leader.  For one thing, he was known to break into tears, in public. Sort of like John Boehner.  The thing is, we never experienced anything bad.  Yes, it sucked that we were away from our families, but no-one died.  No-one got seriously injured. Our whole group was in a support role.

 (The most serious injury I got was while jogging around the fence line at remote base.  A group of afghan kids kind of joined in from the other side of the fence.  I thought I was doing my part of nation building.  Evidently not, one of them lobbed a rock over the fence and hit me right in the noggin.  Nothing serious, just a small cut and a nice little bump.  The medic who saw me was a special forces medic and had served in Vietnam.  He very seriously told me that I should have shot the kid. I am glad I did not.  In fact, the thought never crossed my mind.  I probably would have missed anyway.  Also, this kid had damn good aim, he threw a rock at a moving target, over a 15 foot fence over a distance of about 50 feet!)

Regardless, our leader would break into tears just discussing the logistics of certain operations.  He also cried when he was briefing the team that would replace us.  I think he was discussing something incredibly emotional, like what kind of long underwear to bring.

He also pulled a move that left him despised by everyone.  One bright spot in the year long deployment was that you were given two weeks of leave (vacation).  It was a great perk, the military would fly you anywhere you wanted to go.  Some people went to Australia, others to just back to the states.  Everyone was in a set rotation.  A rotation set by our leader.  His leave, not surprisingly took him home for Christmas and New Years.  His rationale "I have never missed a Christmas with my family, I am not going to start now."  It didn't matter that for some people they had missed the last 5 Christmases, or were expecting a child at that time. People may have forgiven the crying, this was not forgivable.
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I am sure there are other characters.  Overall, the deployment was more good than bad.  It would be tougher now with kids, but it is the families that stay behind that have it worst.   They have to do all the same things they used to do as a family.  For us, it was a big adventure.