Je m'appelle Calamity

My name is Calamity. I don't know what it is about me...a natural tendancy, my left-handedness, or maybe I just don't pay enough attention, but for some reason I'm rather accident prone. I often find myself in random situations such as when I ended up under a boat on the loading ramp holding on for dear life to the tongue of the trailer, or when I ended up hydroplaning into the sliding glass doors at Publix, and I can't forget numerous injuries sustained in my Conditioning class. At Cocoa High I played on the girl's Soccer team and recieved the award for Most Injured Goalie...sustaining a concussion, a busted nose, sprained neck, hyper-extended knee, and several bouts of bursitis. In my softball career I've now been hit by the ball twice...once in the leg and last week in the head. Now I have another incident to add to my long and distinguised list...I fell on the camping trip!

The weekend was a blast overall! It was so nice to spend the time outdoors, and my family really got along great. We still camp in tents, which I really prefer to campers because I feel that a motor home doesn't really give you the same camping experience as does a tent...and actually I sleep better in a tent. We brought along my hound, Socrates, and I really enjoyed spending the time with him as well. He was kinda nervous and over-protective at first, barking at anything or anyone that went near our site, and the first night he paced around the tent alot and made me take him out three times. By the end of the weekend, however, he settled into the laid-back lifestyle as he trudged along trails, napped in the shade, met a fish, slept throught the night, and absolutely refused to eat anything healthy (much like the rest of the family).

We went camping at a Greenville County Park called Pleasant Ridge only 25 minutes from my house. We got there early and set up our two tents and got all the supplies squared away. Over the weekend we did some swimming in the lake. They have a roped off area. Honestly the swimming was probably my least favorite part...the weather here hasn't really warmed up enough for a long enough time to raise the entire lake's frigid temperature...so you swim along and go from shallower areas of nice warm water, to cold pockets that chill you to the bone. It was still refreshing though in the heat of the day when you were approaching the melting point.

We also did some fishing...although it took us until the last evening to figure out the perfect time to fish. The fish start biting at 6 PM, and you have from then until dark when the Rangers close the lake. That last evening we finally caught some fish...I caught 5, J caught about that many, and Mom got one. Dad, unfortunately, didn't catch anything but a few trees. It was funny because for once Mom, J and me were rigging, baiting, casting, and taking the fish off our own lines leaving Dad free to fish. Or as it turns out, free to catch a tree ;-) Everyone has their days... All the fish that we caught were small brim and were released after caught. Socrates did not know what to think of the fish...he kept tilting his head and perking up his ears as he tried to figure out what it was as it flopped around on the line. I have a picture of his first encounter that I'll post later.

We had some very interesting neighbors at the campsite. On one side of us was a Preacher and his family that were taking the weekend off. We really got along with them well. Socrates was tied up between our sites and their son would try to get him to come over to their site to play with him. They also gave him some scraps, so by the time they were packing up to leave I think Socrates was half tempted to load up with them. In the course of our conversations with them, I told them that I was looking for a Microbiology job, and it turned out that the woman works at Cryovac, a local company that often hires Microbiologists. She works for the Credit Union there, but her mother works in a lab, so the last day she gave me a phone number to call to inquire about a job. It was a really neat and random connection that seemed a bit more than coincidental to me, so I'm definitely going to follow the lead! Our other neighbors were a bit more sketchy, but provided a great deal of entertainment. It was a man and I believe his girlfriend. I'd seen him many times working out at the YMCA that I go to, so we talked about that and had a nice introduction and went about our business. Then he came over and talked to us forever. We all thought he was kind of crazy, but seemed nice enough. We ended up learning all sorts of interesting things about him, like that he lives off alimony he gets from his ex wife because he raised their son alone while he went through a brain tumor diagnosis. He also apparently teaches Pilates at the Y. One morning I looked over and saw him doing what looked like either Tai Chi or Pilates while smoking like a chimney. That struck me as particularly interesting and funny and probably best describes the randomness of Donnie. Throughout the weekend we would see him doing all sorts of different activities...like riding a bike, sleeping outside on his air mattress in the middle of the day, playing on one of those kids park merry-go rounds, and even clogging to bluegrass music at another campsite. It was weird and funny.

One of our favorite things to do at the park was to walk a Nature Trail that led from the camp ground up to the lake. Along the way there was this really pretty little waterfall that you could walk in and around. It made little shallow pools of water around it that were fun to walk through and allowed us to cool off without having to swim in the lake. This brings me full-circle in this post, back to the reason my name is Calamity. On Sunday afternoon, we stopped by the waterfall on our way to go fishing. We all, including Socrates, went walking in the shallow pools and walking over the smooth rocks. Socrates, a bassett hound not particularly found of water, liked walking in and drinking some of the water but preferred to hop from rock to rock. I was holding him on the retractable leash and standing on a rock on one side of a pool when Socrates suddenly took off and jumped two rocks over (as it turned out, just a bit farther than the leash would extend). I was jerked off the rock I was standing on...leapt toward the nearest one, but slipped on the slick stone and splashed down in a pool. Unfortunately, my left elbow landed on a rock getting cut and bruised, my right wrist and left knee were also scraped up in the process. The worst thing affected at the time, however, was my ego...as there were a couple other people nearby to watch the whole event. After the fact, I've been most affected by a very stiff and sore back, which I apparently sprained as I twisted and fell. That has made work at the Orchard very difficult and painful, but with some modifications and medication, it is quickly recovering.

As I said earlier in this lenghty post, the weekend was great and I am so very glad we went. We are planning to go on many more camping trips now that we've found a place we like up here. We already have a list of things we want to buy or do next time to make things go even more smoothly. Next time, I am also planning to get my own site, since I already have my own tent so that we will have more room and even more importantly...more level space on which to spend our time (a problem we did not encounter while camping in FL).

A few sites down from ours there was a group of girls camping. They came in and met there from different colleges...one as far away as Virginia, others from here and Georgia. It reminded me of an idea Kathy had a while ago for a group of us to meet in Georgia or somewhere and camp for a weekend. I still think that is a great idea and we should think about doing it sometime in the future...it looked like fun. Their little reunion really made me miss all my friends :-(

Thanks for reading the post...I know it was long. I will post some pics soon.