Outdoor Ed. Camp in Review

Outdoor Ed. Camp in Review

As you may or may not know, I have been at Outdoor Ed. Camp the past week. It was quite the adventure and surprisingly not as terrible as I first thought it would be.

Upon arrival, I was reminded that I knew absolutely no one at this camp. I quickly made friends with my cabin-mates. One is a Bio major, the rest of us are in the Sports, Fitness department and required to take the class. One was a soccer player and the other a non-traditional student with a husband and son awaiting her return home. We were put in a group with four guys that were also sharing a cabin down the way. One of them plays baseball and apparently I went to high school with him but never met him prior to this camp. (Oh, the bio major cabin-mate I mentioned earlier also went to high school with me, and I know her sister.) Another used to play baseball and recently transfered to HSU. Another is recently married and expecting his first child in November. All of the guys are in the Sports, Fitness department and the last guy has changed his major so many times there's no telling if he will remain in the department. Besides that, he's a personal trainer at the local country club. My group was great; we became a family of sorts and worked really well together. Our only blip was that we all got really frustrated at each other on the last day but we pulled together in the end to win the sailing and canoe/kayaking competitions. Hooray us!

Alright, since you've met the cast of characters, here's what we did this past week. We rotated everyday between 5 different activities-- canoe/kayaking, riflery, archery, sailing and rock climbing. I rather enjoyed kayaking and rock climbing. I'd like to think I'm at least some what proficient as a beginner in both. I wasn't half bad at that gun either, especially since that was the first time I had ever fired a gun. (Guns scare me to death, and had hoped to get through life without ever firing one. Oh well.) Sailing and archery were a different story.

In sailing, I didn't really understand the basic concepts and had 2 different partners, neither of which understood either on the particular days I was with them. I was with the baseball player on the first day and we muddled through it alright. The rest of the week I was with the non-traditional student who also happened to be afraid of water. (A well founded fear given how disgusting the lake we were on was.) The non-traditional and I managed to get ourselves stuck in the middle of the lake and in some trees and flip our sail boat over. On the last day, the personal trainer felt bad that I didn't get it, I guess, and took me out on the lake in an effort to teach me. In that excursion I managed to t-bone another sailboat and crash into the shore. I don't think I will be sailing willingly for a while for the safety of myself and all others on the water. At the end of the week I got the "Little Mermaid" award for being the wettest camper. Hooray for me!

My lack of skill as an archer is rather sad. I came into camp probably being the most excited to learn about archery, but upon discovering that I am right handed and left eye dominant, I basically threw my chances of being o.k. at archery out the window. In riflery I just shot left handed and that fixed the aiming problem but in archery I really don't even have the strength in my right side to pull back the bowstring, much less in my left side. As a result of the lack of strength, I couldn't get an extremely predictable shot and so couldn't adjust my aim accordingly very well. I wanted to be good, but I just couldn't. *tear* As a result though, I am definitely hitting the weights again. 

Overall, camp was a lot of fun, a lot of hard, physical work and I made lots of new friends.