Exploring the World

Something happened, the server must have crashed and the host reloaded a backup or something. Several of my posts were lost. I don’t really care though, it is a small thing compared to everything else that has been going on in life. But it is kinda like being hit when you are already down. But a lot of that seems to have been happening lately to Red team in particular.

I don’t know anymore. Maybe I never did.

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I finally did it. I got a toque.

See, a lot of the guys in Explore took up crocheting. It started with Tanton, but spread rapidly. At one point almost all of the guys were doing it, including Levi and Nathan. However, now it is just Jason, Scott, and Tanton. Scott made me a sweet toque. It has ear muffs and everything.

This past week I have been involved in the butchering of 6 deer. I still have 9 fingers. It has been sweet. First I helped Tim Fodor (former director of Explore) and he taught me a lot. Tim likes to have good quality meat, and spends a considerable amount of time cleaning the meat. I got a lot of practice doing this. I also did things like cut steaks, cubed meat, and ground meat. I helped operate the grinder and package some meat.

Today I went over to Pam and Dwayne’s house and helped them with their three deer. This time I concentrated on skinning and cutting the meat off the dear itself. I did one complete deer myself, skinning, breaking the legs and head off, and cutting off the meat. It was really good experience. Hopefully I can put it into practice over Christmas break.

Oh, I also ate lunch at the Koop’s house. There were four students there and we all cut our own steak and grilled it. We also had some soup that Pam had made, and some bread that Shane (explore senior intern) had made. It was the best meal I have had in the past 3 months.

Last night I was a score keeper for the volleyball games. That was a neat experience. All the minor officials there were new and had never done it before, including the announcer. My job was fairly easy, just push a few buttons whenever a score was made. I also had to set the timer for timeouts and time between games. I will be doing this again tonight. Tanton, who is in Explore, plays on the guys team so I have someone to root for.

Did God know mankind was going to sin?

God used the flood to cleanse the earth and start over, right? But it didn’t really work. The state of mankind after the flood was not really any better. So why did God even do it? It seems as if God failed in His attempt. If he knew that the Flood wasn’t going to work, why did He even bother? And why did He wait so long to send Jesus to the earth?

What I am about to tell you never happened. See, it was the 2nd to the last night at Camp Bighorn and some of us guys wanted to do something fun before we headed back to Prairie. Oops, it is time for chapel I will have to continue later.

CONTINUATION:

Across the river from camp is a pair of train tracks. On one set are a stretch of train cars with no caboose or engine. They evidently have been sitting there for 6+ months. I thought it would be so sweet to swim the river and spend the night in one of the cars. Like my life wouldn’t be complete unless I did this. I mentioned it to a couple people, but found not much shared interest. Until I talked to Buckmaster.

Jason is a cool guy. From the start of Prairie he and I hit it off through frisbee. His skills and height make him a key player in any game. We are usually split off, much like Noah and I. In fact, we have only played on the same team once. We won. Jason is 24 and from WA. Old enough to know better.

Jason took care of getting the drybags and I readied the raft. We got to use the “reject” raft of camp. It was missing a tharwt and wouldn’t pump up all the way, but it was RED. I was cool with that. We checked out PFD’s and paddles. Joel had joined out expedition. I knew it was going to be a sweet night.

We loaded everything up and headed off. We were being dropped off above the Rock Garden and Cascade rapids. We would raft down them and then head over to the train. By the time we got there, it was getting dark quickly. Dusk does not last long in the valley. We didn’t bring helmets because camp policy does not require them on class II rapids and we didn’t expect any swimmers.

But in the dark everything changes. Our headlamps didn’t do anything so we just left them off. This is when Jason named our raft, the “Devil’s Advocate”. We sang hymns down the flatwater, and then made it to Rock Garden. Rock Garden is named so for obvious reasons. Plenty of rocks make passage kinda difficult, even in daylight. We made it without hitting a single one. Then we approach Cascade. The roar is loud, but we have all rafted this one before and know to stick to river right.

Man it was awesome in the dark. We almost got flipped on the last of the big waves because we hit it broadside, but we ended up making it just fine. Then we head over to river left and look for a spot to beach the raft for the night. Right as we find a good enough spot and are about to get out of the raft, we hear this loud splash. It is the type of splash that happens when someone throws a large rock (BFR) into the water. We stop and look around, but don’t see anyone. We then hear a couple more similar splashes in different spots. We think it must be people from camp who came over to mess with us.

Jason yells up, “What’s up homies?” After getting no answer, he then yells, “Chupp, we know you are there.” Still no answer, but we are sure we hear voices. and there are no more splashes for a little bit. We get out of the raft, grab our stuff and head up the bank to the tracks. We hear a couple more splashes but we still can’t see anyone nor see any lights. Jason suggests we wait them out on the tracks. So we set our stuff down on the empty tracks and climb to the top of the train cars right next to us. However, I make the suggestion to move the bags off the track just in case. At the top, we still don’t see anyone. Then a train comes by at a fast rate of speed. We lay down on top and try to act invisible but it doesn’t work, as we find out later.

After the train goes by, I look down and only see one dry bag in the dark. The other two are missing. The thought crosses my mind that the people could have come by and taken the two bags while the moving train hid them from our sight. However, we climb down and start to look for the bags. Joel’s is 30 feet up the track. Mine is even further up and actually rolled down a hill. I was incredible relieved to find it as it had my rented sleeping bag inside.

More later.