Watch for Falling Freaks

Posted by Jarihn on August 23, 2001 at 07:15:07:

Details I’ve missed so far:
- It was Vel who drew the hat. It was also actually me and the two short people, not me and the two Jenn people, who were on a team. Other highlights included... umm... well, if I can think of any others I’ll mention them.

- Mori broke Jennie’s house. On the morning of the fifth he went in to take a shower, and somehow got a towel holder to remove itself from the wall and travel to the ground by (or was it on?) his foot. What the rest of us heard was something along the lines of “CLUNK!” “Yaaaaaaaaaaah!”. He’d like to claim that _it_ attacked _him_ but I’m sure we all know who the victim really was.

- While I was in the tent learning Phase 10 on Tuesday one group of freaks was gone working out our reservations and where the showers were and such. They returned while we were on Phase 3-4 with news that a.) Showers were in a different, private campsite that would charge us a $5 day use fee per person just to walk onto their property and then $1.75 in quarters for 5 minutes of hot water. At $6.75 a shower we decided unanimously that we’d make it to the end, for better or worse, without giving those extortionists any of OUR money. Oh, and b.) we had to move our campsite to the other part of the park. I started raving about this, and just before I got to the logical conclusion (ie. “You MUST be joking!”) Mori waved me to silence when nobody else was looking. I interpreted this wrong though. He was actually being very kind and trying to give away the joke. I looked around and saw Jennie tensed up over by the stove and said to myself “Uhoh, she’s about to explode isn’t she...” Turns out she was just trying not to laugh. Oh well. On with the show!

I woke up... uncomfortable. Why does the ground have to be so hard? Well, partially because somebody told me not to bring camping equipment, such as nifty foam pads, so we were sleeping directly on it. Bleh. And partially because we were in a permanent campsite where everything was packed down, too. Bleh again. I was fine after stretching out though, and then... what was breakfast? I think we just ate the cereal that day. From a big thing with a bunch of different kinds in those tiny little boxes. One morning we had these pastry things, I forget which order they went in though. Pick one you like.

Eventually we got bored of staring at each other, or whatever we’d been up to so far, and decided to go do something. So we went in search of a beach. We failed to find one though, and ended up settling for this freaky gravel plain called Russian Gulch instead. It was _like_ a beach, except instead of sand there were tiny pebbles. At least they’re easier to get out of shoes than sand. Unfortunately they’re many times more uncomfortable. I was dislodging them from my sandals every couple steps. When we finally made it to the end, there were actually people swimming in the ocean there. I still don’t get that thinking. The water was freezing, the beach was made of gravel, the sun was behind the thickest overlay of fog I’ve ever seen (so thick it actually rained around us that night) and here they were acting like the tourists I saw last month that were crowding Waikiki. We didn’t quite do the same, but we did spread out a pair of beach blankets on the cold gravel and pretend we were relaxing in the sun. My neck pretended particularly well, and was peeling by the next day.

Exploring the place as a group led to a couple of highlights, at least. We found a pair of big rocks we were able to climb on, the taller of which eventually housed 6/7 freaks present, with only Vel remaining at the bottom. 5/7 for pictures, because Jennie made a run for cover as soon as the cameras were broken out. We also discovered a cave into which most of us were able to fit. We used Tannen’s camera to find out how deep it went (approximately two feet further than we could see, as it turned out) and then just kind of sat there for 5-10 minutes. Then Eric and I looked longingly at the rocks, and FO2k goofiness became FO2k1 tradition as we went to go put them in big piles. A lot of last year’s strange happenings were repeated this year, in fact... I’ll have to see how many of them I can remember, because some were not so obvious.

Everyone else went back to get the sandwiches that had been brought along, and I finished my tower, watched it fall over as I stood up to walk away, built it again (though not _quite_ as tall it had a better looking top and was still rather impressive) and successfully left to go find them. Nobody got a picture, and it may stand for eternity... or maybe the next person to come across it kicked it down, whatever. I met them coming back (actually, noire had remained by the territory we had claimed, but a large smooth-worn stump) and we ate sandwiches and threw gravel at each other, (or stuffed it in my pockets, or balanced it on my nose, or stuffed it down Eric’s shirt, or...) then broke out the Phase 10 cards. Jana won, because Tannen decided he’d rather she win than I did – I made Phase 10, but had the higher score, so he gave her what she needed before I could go out. Ah well.

At that point I believe we had all had just about enough gravel for one day, and so packed our things and moved back to the campsite. Where we ate dinner and played Phase 10 again. The camping trip really consisted of about equal parts Phase 10 and sleep. And yet it was incredibly fun.

We changed our minds about the sleeping arrangements though. Those strange Californians actually thought it was _cold_ or something, and so the guys were ordered to occupy the corners of their tent and hold the heat in. Nobody seemed to mind. *g*

It was still hard ground though, unfortunately. Waking up on this trip was a chore. My shoes were missing. Both pairs. Now, I suppose I ought to explain about this. When we were driving up my sandals were the closest thing to hand, so I offered their use to Jana (I was wearing my sneakers at the time) and she ended up using them for a while. However, it seems the whole group thought this was SO funny everybody needed to get in on it. So from then on I had to scan the feet of the rest of the group if I actually wanted to go somewhere, pick out who had my shoes on at that particular moment, and request them back. Then eventually the practice extended to other items of mine. Jarihn’s things are communal property, >you see, and over the course of the trip the rest of the group enjoyed my pillow, music (not just what I threw in the player I mean, but my cd player and headyphones), sunglasses and socks. I drew the line at my pajamas, despite having two sets of comfy flannel pants on hand. The bungee ball got passed around again too, but by now it’s so old it’s barely holding together, so eventually everybody left it alone just so it wouldn’t decompose any further. In addition to burn marks from last year the string snapped, part of the surface of the ball is falling off (closest thing I can think of is a patch on the surface of a soccer ball falling off) and the net/bag itself is broken in two places.

Where was I... oh yes, Mikel arrived that day, and I guess that would be the morning we had the pastry things after all since she brought them up with her. Mmm... Anyway, for some reason (I still don’t know if they HAD a reason) we had decided that we needed to wait for Mikel to join up with us before visiting Fort Ross. I guess maybe she likes forts or something. Whatever, once we all got bored again we took off to see this fort. Ithas movable parts, like windows that open and stuff, to Eric’s surprise. Doors, too – he got pinned in the jail cell by Tannen and photographed peeking out through the bars in the door while the rest of us laughed. There was a lot of old stuff to look at, but I can’t really remember anything interesting happening while we did so. Noire signed Tannen into their guestbook to one-up some other family who had visited from Argentina. Ha! We sure showed them, huh?

So, after looking around for a while we made our way down to the beach that was behind the fort. It had rocks. Big rocks. And actual sand, but not much of it at all. We climbed on the rocks. By doing this we managed to make our way around the edge of the beach where the sand ended and we were just hopping from boulder to boulder underneath a nice towering cliff. Mori and I went around and up until we hit a dead end, then I went back for everyone else and took the low path this time, which basically extended as far as could be seen along the shoreline. The tide was coming in though, so when everybody REALLY started getting annoyed with me for going way too far ahead I did go and make my way back. At which point we sat around playing with tiny hermit crabs in the tiny tidepools and getting wet. Oh wait, that was just me.

Jarihn: “Well gee, this rock looks dry, think I’ll just sit down right here and watch the water crash into it waaaay below me for a while. It looks pretty neat...”

Ocean: “BLAM! Sploosh! Gotcha!”

Ahem. Anyway, again we grew bored and retreated to the campsite for some Phase 10, dinner, and marshmallow roasting over a cozy campfire in a big metal barrel conveniently planted right there in the ground. It had a grill attached that you could swing up, but I don’t think it would be at all healthy to eat something that touched that, so it did nothing for us but injure my foot. Anyway, s’mores are always good, and we had those and played cards and fell asleep again. Mikel’s arrival overcrowded the tent, but Tannen volunteered to sleep in the car, where the seats were soft, and the rest of us crashed much like before – immediately after finishing a nice big game of Phase 10.

When I woke up this day the tent was mostly empty. Everyone but me, Jennie and Vel were out hiking. When they returned they had a story to tell, but I think I should leave the explanation of the dreaded .8 mile hike to someone who was actually there. Suffice it to say that they were gone _far_ longer than you might expect. I think what I ended up eating while we waited around for them to return was two bananas. Breakfast materials were starting to wear thin (actually they’d just hidden the rest of the pastry things, it seems. Grrr...).

Guess what we spent this day doing...

Nothing. That’s right, we sat around and did nothing. Well, nothing new at least. We played Phase 10 in the tent, and we played a game I had to dredge up from memories about 5-6 years old, called Oh Heck. It caught on quick. The goal is to guess how many tricks you’re going to win, and when you guess wrong you get points. As you go on the number of cards everyone is dealt goes down from 10 to 1, and the penalty for an incorrect guess goes up from 10 to 100. It’s simple, but fun. It gets more and more dangerous as you go along. We spent all day at it.

I should note that today the sun came back. We spent the cloudy, cold days playing on the beach, and retreated from the direct sunlight back to the shady recesses of the big tent. What freaks we are. On that same note, I honestly intended to keep the scoresheets from our card games and scan them in when I got home. I figured some people might find it strangely amusing to scan through and see how we did. But unfortunately most everything was conveniently lost when I wasn’t looking. Oh well.

When the sunlight was safely gone we emerged and started another fire and more dinner. For the second night in a row I had a nicely grilled hamburger, this time adding leftover noodles (not to the burger, on the side) because we were finishing up a bunch of leftovers. This being our last night of camping we burned all the spare firewood up and roasted more marshmallows. This is the last time I’ll mention Tannen’s pictures, I swear, but everyone must take a look at his extra-long exposure shot of us around the campfire. Simply because it really appears that I am, rather than standing behind the fire, emerging from it. Very freaky and cool.

Retiring to the tent after a while, we... played more cards. In one of all those sessions I introduced the basic concepts of pinochle. I can’t believe the lack of interest those freaks showed, how insulting... you’d think they didn’t like complicated games or something. I mean, who doesn’t, really? Ah well. There really was not that much to do around the campsite, can you tell? We were getting up early the next morning though, so the dance people could get to their dancing lessons on time.

We packed. We drove. Did anything funny happen during this time? I don’t remember, I was only half awake. I stayed in my pajamas, since we were on our way to a place with a shower. The destination was Mikel’s apartment in San Francisco, which would serve as a launchpad for the people going to the dance. After all, it’s generally considered impolite to go to a formal event smelling like you’ve been in the woods for the last four days. So we let Mori, Tannen, Jana and noire go first, with myself, Vel and Dk waiting our turns, as the part of the group who instead favored doing lots more nothing. So while they were out activitying, Vel finally got to see the entirety of Tenkuu no Escaflowne. Noire snagged us a big bag of dinner from a nearby Taco Bell and I was happy enough with that. Food from the Bell has two things going for it - It’s filling, and it’s cheap.

Then... whoa. Okay, hold everything. I just reread this last session’s work, and I apologize. My thoroughness is really slipping, isn’t it... I’m going to have to take a break here and come back quite a bit later, I’m afraid. Or else by the time I reach the end it’ll be “We woke up and did some more stuff, then we all went to sleep.” What a great trip, huh? Since I’m the kind of person who likes to remember all the important moments of our adventures, I really don’t want to let them get lost in all the unimportant activities of our adventures. So I’m going to call that it for now. That and I want my chocolate, which I wasn’t going to dig into until I was finished. By doing this I’ve sort of declared a partial finish, and I WILL come back later. I wonder if I should even bother posting this. I suppose I ought to, just because I’ve actually written it all.

When I’m ready, I’ll retell the important parts of these last two days in full detail. Probably with Tannen’s pictures handy as a reference guide to the order of operations. I know I’m missing so many tiny, wonderful memories that I can’t really consider this part even complete.

I will, however, absolutely not give up. It’s something I just don’t do. Until then...
Jarihn