Happy Clean Living: Fun and Games at Cross Country Training Camp

By Brady

After High Adventure, I went to Cross Country Camp. The workouts ranged from 1-2 a day, and in between the workouts we had smaller events with which our teams were to accomplish faster, or better then the other teams. Our teams were Raven Claw, Huffle Puff, and Slytherin. Whoever got first place in the events got 3 points, then 2 for second and 1 for last.

This is me and a bunch of others playing a game separate from the events called Fruit Salad. Its difficult to explain and the rounds change like Phase 10, only there are 5 of them, and everyone stays on the same round unlike phase 10.

The goal is mainly not to trump, and aces trump, so that would be the round where I probably did really bad.

We each helped out in the kitchen. The teams would alternate between who helped prep and or cook certain meals, and clean up afterwords. Breakfast was usually the same. Pancakes, (with cold syrup, yuck) and a hash brown-veggie-scrambled egg mix, which was actually pretty good. For lunch, we didn't really cook. We had optional peanut butter and jelly sandwiches (on wheat bread, yuck again) and didn't look too appetizing to the majority, so we mainly just had a few servings of fruit, which we had in plenty, like peaches, bananas, grapes, and oranges. Dinner was the only thing that ever seemed to change. Two included pizzas with the base being a hoagie, and we also had a traditional hot dog on the campfire.

The last night before we were going home, Cindy, Rusty's wife (the coach), asked me to make Nachos for everyone. I was willing, but when they told me I would be heating them in the oven, I became hesitant. So they laughed and told me they would partner me up with someone who wouldn't burn the house down. I was then making nachos with a kid named Dillon, who worked at Pizza Hut. Dillon and Matt, a guy helping from NNU, decided to set the oven for 450°. So we loaded the nachos onto a cookie sheet (which by the way had no edges to keep the contents from falling off) and began to load our thrown together cheese and chip creation into the oven. Well, slid the cookie sheet in gently, but I guess stupid physics got in the way, and the chips combined with the smooth metal of the cookie tray (with no edges) created a recipe for disaster. Some, maybe a handful of the chips fell off of the tray and under the hot coils of the oven. We kind of looked at each other and said, "Crap," but what are you supposed to do when you have an oven on and the chips are under read hot coils? So we ignored them, thinking that all would be well.

The oven had a ventilation system that filtered out though the upper left burner, and we, along with others, saw some smoke rising from it. We thought, since it was a gentle, small, and very transparent stream, that it was simply steam, or the contents that were cooking were giving off a small amount of harmless smoke. Then, we opened the oven to check on our nachos. To our amazement, vast quantities of smoke came whirling out of the oven. Dillon and I gave out a distress call, and some of the adults came, and in the excitement, some of the kids. We found what we thought was the source of the problem. One nacho on the bottom of oven was sending up smoke like a small chimney, so with a fork, Rusty maneuvered the chip out from under the coils and out of the oven. (Notice I said one nacho, but we forgot about the other handful of them deeper in the oven.) So, we continued the cooking.

After about 1-2 minutes, we noticed that the smoke was still persisting. Then I saw a flicker of a yellow light and opened up the oven again. The smoke this time came out more violently then the time before. There at the bottom of the oven a handful of nachos were on fire under the hot red coils of the oven. A girl came and said, "Um, I think we need a fire extinguisher over here," Hesitant, Cindy came over along with Rusty to inspect the damage we were inflicting upon their parents cabin. We turned off the oven, and Rusty got a fork and wound up a sheet of tin foil, covering the bottom of the oven, with a fork, taking the black and charred chips with it.

Miraculously, they still trusted us to pursue our mission of making nachos, only this time they told us not to fill up the trays with so many nachos, so that there was some elbow room for the chips to slide. Evidently, after that, we didn't have any more mishaps, but I want to give a big thanks to Matt for telling us to put the oven to 450°. Thank you Matt for a comical experience (because of course I was laughing the whole time), and for making me and Dillon look like idiot monkeys trying to man an oven.

After my massive hike/run through the mountains and almost getting lost and sharing my fate with those who trusted me to navigate them back to safety, we went to a lake in the mountains. It was very cold, most of us jumped in, swam to an island in the middle, and then stayed there for 3 hours until we had to swim back.

(the lake was surrounded by mountains on all sides)

I also found out that one of my assistant coaches has a belly button ring Ø_ø

I won't be a creeper, but I like the girl to the right holding the flowers. (I hope some future wife at mine doesn't find out 0_o)

And there we are with our traditional hot dog roasting. I think I'm shielding my eyes from the smoke or heat, I do both sometimes.

You can see on the mantle of the fireplace the decorative water bottles and various supplies and trinkets. Those were the trophies for the team winning the most events.

There is Matt, in the center, with the grey shirt and black shorts... the one who helped us set the oven on fire.

This is the competition where we were given a frozen shirt (as in frozen with water) and we had to unfreeze it and stick it on one of our team members.

There he is in this one to.

This time, we lost brutally. It was a tug-o-war event, with a chain. My shoes weren't gripping, so I was sliding across the grass, standing up, while the team drastically pulled us across to their side. It was not even a contest for them in that one... -.-

In this game, we had one person from our team blind folded, and we had to direct them around the corner of the cabin to a fork, direct them to the fork, have them pick up the fork, guide them back around the cabin, and have them put a fork in the cup. These events are rigged, because the forks were labeled, H S and R, some idiot in the lead took off with the fork labeled H for Hufflepuff, aka our fork, and we were sitting there, arguing that someone had our fork, while the other team caught up, by the time the other team practically had their fork, they told us it didn't matter. Same thing happened with a team relay. One person from our team went down doing cart wheels, while someone came back doing summer salts, then a barrel roll, then a crab walk, then a bear crawl, and ended with a leap frog. We were ahead, but we didn't know which one to do next, so the other teams all got caught up, and then they yelled we had to do leap frog. Yes, we came in last on that one as well.

Everyone started yelling at Chris where the cup was. Well, sort of. People from opposite teams were telling him to go right, and he did, when the cup was left. Even when he was the last one, they still persisted, I had walked away when the yelling became indecipherable

There we are directing him.

This was that stupid relay I was talking about, where all the teams get caught up and THEN they tell us what to do next. Yea, so we're doing leap frog.

Maybe we didn't get last on this one.

Piggy back rides

Wheel barrows.

Crab walk.

There is me doing the barrel roll, I went downhill to the right and I was dizzy for 2 minutes after I got to the bottom.

This is us playing a cheap game called Civil War. You have 2 water balloons, You take one step forward, decide if you want to throw one of your water balloons at the opposing team, then when you do or don't, the other team takes a step forward and throws theirs, and back and forth until you run out of water balloons or last team left on the field. The rules where you had to be completely stationary while the other team threw. If you moved out of the way, you were automatically out.

There is me throwing a green water balloon at Sean =D I think I hit him to.

I think this competition involved a nut and a string. The string went through the nut, and the goal was to move your nut to the end of the string first. However, the string was weaved through the dense foliage of the nearby wood, and the string switched colors, when it came to a different color, a different person went. Ours of course was rigged, because someone was out to get Hufflepuff, so they decided that our string would go strait, while another string goes around our string 10 times and then continues onward. Ours was the only one like that. Of course the string going across ours and rapping around was also involved, but its easier to spiral around a couple of times, then to maneuver your way through the interfering string. So again, we came in dead last.

So there are our final scores. Look at all those 1's our team got. Five! compared to three and two. So yea, we got creamed by six points from both teams. However, the two teams that tied had to do an ab off to see who won. It came down to whoever could hold a plank stance the longest. They ended up doing it for five whole minutes. Pretty impressive. I don't think our team would have won that either though. Anyways, I can name our two bedazzling 3 pointers (yea, pretty pathetic) The first one was a head banging competition. The second one was an Oreo eating contest. Both were majorly benefited by me. During the headbanging contest, we took turns wearing a hat with a speedometer on the visor, we banged our head, and see how many we got in 60 seconds. I totaled 147, which I don't recall anyone beating. However, my neck was still hurting 3 days after.