Camping 2009 “pop up” tents

This is a time lapse video of my friends putting up their tents last year when we went camping. I promised I would put it up and I finally did. Ha ha, losers!

Buddy Walk 2009

This year was our second time at the buddy walk in Cincinnati for the Down Syndrome Association. We went to support our 1 year old son Mason who has down syndrome. Along with our immediate family, lots of other family and friends came with us. We did a little better this year with organization but things were still a little crazy. Hopefully next year things will be pretty solid and there won’t be too many follies. Either way, it was a fun time and it’s a good cause and that’s all that matters in the end. The following is a small journal of how the day went.

We started the morning off moving kind of slow and rushed to get ready at the very end (most people who know us usually assumes this is how we will operate for anything with a deadline). We finally got the kids in the van and on the road and only 45 minutes behind schedule this time!

On the way to the walk, I was starting to get very hungry due to skipping breakfast, so I asked my wife to stop at Mcdonalds. After yelling at each other through four or five stop lights, we both came to the agreement that I would get some Mcdonalds for all of us. 🙂 We were supposed to be at the walk by 9:30 A.M. since it started at 10, but we ended up running to Sawyer Point as the walk had already started! DOH. We had to stop and take a picture though!

We finally met up with everyone and decided to go on the short walk. What we didn’t realize is that the short walk is VERY short. It took a group of about 20 people with kids to walk around the short walk in 5 minutes. That didn’t go very well but at least the kids got to play at the festival once we were done. Next year we will definitely do the “long” walk. Of course we had to take another picture before we were done. This pic shows everyone who came to the buddy walk to show their support for Mason, thanks guys!

We got to do a lot of cool things with the kids after the walk and this was one the best parts of the day. The kids got to pet a snake, my daughter Jayden got to do some simulated rock climbing, there was free food, balloon animals, the works. I ran into my buddy Rob who also has a daughter with down syndrome and got to talk with him for awhile as well. Oh and darth vader was there as well. 🙂

[flashvideo file=”video/vader.flv” /]

Camping… FAIL

I planned a trip to the red river gorge with some friends. Things didn’t go exactly as planned, in fact, almost everything that could go wrong did go wrong. Even more so, even things that you would think couldn’t go wrong did. We did have some fun, but overall the trip was a dud and it needs to be redone right, so I’ll probably plan another trip very soon that I hope should go right this time. Either way, the following is a list of the highlights including all of the FAIL moments.

Step 1: Get a large group of people together to go camping… FAIL

I invited about ten or more people and we ended up with five people, one of which couldn’t even stay longer than one day. Most people had to work, watch kids, or just plain bailed out at the last minute.

Jackass #1: This guy just plain bailed on us

Jackass # 2: This guy had to work, nice bloody excuse…

Jackass # 3: This guy also had to work, pfffft, yeah right!!

Other Jackasses not listed in picutre: Joey and Brian

Step 2: Leave on time!! FAIL

The most important part of camping is leaving on time to set up your campsite, finding the right campsite, and actually DOING something the first night you are there. This all failed miserably. We didn’t actually leave Ohio until 5:00 P.M. because we were lazy, unorganized, and had to run extra errands that were not originally planned (AHEM.. Erick). We didn’t even get to the campsite until 10:00 P.M. This was AFTER parking in a campsite we thought wasn’t taken but was, being stopped by a ranger, and getting stuck in dirt and having to use four wheel drive to get out. Putting up tents in the dark sucks!

Step 3: Properly load up the camping gear on top of the car… FAIL

That’s right. We’re stupid. We loaded coolers, sleeping bags, and supplies on top of my SUV but didn’t use the racks. By not using the racks, we caused a dent in my SUV’s roof. We had to stop along the way in to unload everything on top, pop out the dent and use the racks like we were supposed to in the first place.

Step 4: Find the right campsite (more on this later) FAIL:

Not only was it dark because we got there late, but our campsite was basically a field with nothing but HUGE weeds/flowers which made my allergies kick in full gear. We had to hack down tons of them to even clear the path. There was no fire pit, and the ground was so hard that we couldn’t even get the stakes into the ground for the tents so we had to just weigh them down with coolers and other things.

Step 5: Don’t forget anything…

I forgot a lot of things, as did everyone else. We had to buy a bunch of stuff from the local gas station/convenient store. Not only did I forget stuff at home, I forgot to grab a bag of ice that I bought from the convenient store that night! FAIL

Step 6: Don’t go hiking with someone who is sick

My friend Erick was so sick that he complained the ENTIRE time we went on a trail. Every little hill, bump, step, rock, twig, bug, etc. was a nusance to him for some reason and he had to let everyone know about it at ALL TIMES. I think I might have almost puked once at the amount of complaining he was doing. Erk… it wasn’t THAT bad! Also, you don’t need to wash your hands after getting dirty dude, it’s frakking camping!!

Erick resting for about the 20th time (I stopped counting)

Step 7: Don’t camp on private property!! FAIL

We didn’t know it was private property, but the ranger and sheriff sure made an effort to show up and tell us. This is when the camping trip ended. Apparently we were on private property and they told us that we had to move our camp site somewhere else. Yeah right, we were not about to take down EVERYTHING, load it up, try to find a campsite (all were taken anyways), unload everything again, and set up camp AGAIN in the dark like the night before. Getting the camp site set up at midnight with enough time for a 1 hour fire and roasted hot dogs is not my idea of a blast, especially on the last night we were supposed to be there. Also, the sheriff gave us a hard time. He was trying to find drugs on us which we did NOT have. He found some little white pegs that went to a camp chair and asked if they were pills, smelled my tupperware salt/pepper shaker asking if there was drugs in it, and accused us of drinking (which we were going to do but hadn’t done so yet).

Apparently salt and pepper are abusive drugs now:

Thus ends the camping trip. We had to stop to fix the load on my car, we were late, had to set up our tent in dark, camped in an nightmare area for someone with allergies, camped on private property
and kicked off by the police, had friends bail on us, friends who complained on hikes and were clean freaks during camping, forgot stuff before and during the camping trip, and to top it all off I didn’t get to drink any beer or smoke a cigar!! Though the camping trip sucked there was a few good moments when we hiked in the gorge and scaled a large rock/mountain formation called the indian staircase. All in all, I still got to spend a small amount of time with friends away from society for a day or so and got to do some hiking I wouldn’t normally be able to do with the kids around. Below are a couple of pictures from the highlights of the trip:

Here is a link to the full album: http://www.flickr.com/photos/wolfspirittt/sets/72157622270226242/