Tangboy's Blog

This past weekend was a wonderful weekend if I do say so myself.

The weekend started with Amy and I arriving home about the same time Friday afternoon. We lounged around, had a good meal together and just enjoyed each others company while we rested up.

Saturday Amy got up a decent time but stayed quiet to let me get some more rest (bless her… she knows I need that extra bit of sleep). When I awoke I found her in the kitchen quickly tossing food in a cooler. She announced that we would go canoeing, fishing and picnicing after church. Wow, great idea I thought to myself. So we quickly doned out church clothes, tossed the gear in the car and gently slide the canoe on Amys car. We zipped into church, heard a great sermon on something (couldn’t really tell ya… was busy drawing pictures of fishing chasing lures) and then speed off to a lake down the road. We stopped at a nice little park, changed our clothes, tossed the boat in the water and headed off on an adventure. For the first bit I paddled and Amy made lunch. I would paddle one handed while I ate a yummy hotdog sandwhich looking for good fishing spots. Amy saw a nice sized bass jump near the boat so she yelled for the pole and cast before the fish even hit the water. No sooner had the lure slipped into the depths then Amy had something on. So in her excitement she yelled and screamed while she reeled in that nice sized bass. You can see pics of her fish under the fishing album. After switching the pole back and forth I hooked a nice sized whooper which you can see after her pics in the same fishing album. The rest of the day was relaxing and we enjoye being outside. That evening we went and rented some movies and we spied a nice looking car on the side of the road.

Sunday, time to check out that nice car on the side of the road. The night before we swung in to see this beautiful BMW. It was a 2001 BMW 330i including M3 rims, Premium interior, sports packiage, sunroof, leather, cd player, power everything, inline 6 cylinder and all the bells and whistles in between. Amy called and got me a test drive that afternoon. We spent Sunday morning watching some movies, sleeping in, playing with the dogs and of course taking that Beamer for a spin. We liked the price, the car and everything else so we tossed a deposit on it so that we could do the proper loan paper work the next day. That evening found me driving back to Chattanooga for some more school.

Monday found me nervously sitting in class watching my watch. I had told the professor that I needed to slip away ASAP after class to go do paper work in Knoxville, a two hour drive away. So he let the class out about 45 minutes early and i slipped up to start loan work. I had also called the insurance company and had them put my new car on insurance. I met the couple at the bank, got a savings account (had to to get the loan) and was approved for the loan. While paper work was being processed I had to run to my bank and get a cashiers check for the downpayment, then drive back to the other bank to get the loan. By the time I got back the lady had paid the couple who we were buying the car from their money and they paid off the remaining money on their loan for the car. It was a rough time running here and there but I managed with several phone calls to various intellectual individuals who had done this before.

Monday evening found me zipping back to SAU in style of ma new BMW! Check out pics under the new Car album.

Hope everyone else is doing well, I need to get in bed and read!

later!

Long week for me and the second week of my Masters classes. For the Leadership and Adventure Based Counseling class we had an interesting field trip consisting of hiking, camping, swimming, rafting, yaking, camping, hiking, climbing, rappelling, eating, caving, sleeping, caving and cleaning.

Monday we met at the Outdoor Ed building and split up the group gear (consisting of meals, some tents, cook wear and a few other misc items) We tossed those into our packs containig stuff that we needed personally. I grabbed as much heavey food as I could since I had plenty of room in my back and I also wanted a bit more of a hiking challenge. We started hiking up the Hiawasee River past the power house and then forded the river. We set up a rope to help guide people and gear across and made camp on a nice little beach near some waterfalls etc. The overall hike was about 2 miles and the camping spot was very nice with some sandy beaches and beautiful pools to swim in.

Problem was I got tossed down a waterfall when I wasn’t paying attention and got stuck sitting on a boulder and getting wedged under a tree trunk the size of telephone pole across my lap. The water level was about armpit high but the water coming over the fall was of a high volume and was powerful. Our teacher is not only a teacher but also a rescuer on the Chattanoogas Cliff and Cave rescue team. I had another student call for him and he came over to see my problem and I told him how I was stuck and what I thought I needed to get out. After securing a line around a tree to a group of pullers he tossed down the other end which i looped around under my armpits and they would pull a little while I struggled to get my legs out, then they would pull some more until I finally was able to stand up at the side of the little waterfall. During the whole thing I was calm and tried to wave and make funny faces at the people taking my pictures so that no one would start to freak out. If it had been someone else they might have been too short or weak to be able to stay above the water line and it could have been a lot worse. Special thanks to Mike and the crew who got my butt out of that sticky situation.

After having some dinner and a good worship/debrief time I turned in and tried to get as much rest as I could but as some of you campers know, sleeping alongside a noisey river on a rocks is kind of rough.

Tuesday morning came way to early and breakfast was a yummy meal of oatmeal such. We played around a little in the water and packed up our supplies. We had a lot of extra food left over so I grabbed the 30 pound bag of food and tossed it in my pack for a little extra challenge on the hike out. We followed the old railroad out to the power house, tossed our gear in the vans, had some Trail Lunch then hit the water on rafts.

There were four rafts with 5 people in 3 rafts and 4 people in 1 raft. Mike made the people who hadn’t been on the river our river guides to add a special twist on our adventure. We had 4 miles to go to the take out point to switch to funyaks and it was a struggle sometimes trying to get through different shoals and drop offs when the water wasn’t quite high enough to not scrape. My group did an amazing job of manuvering the river and we didn’t get stuck as many times as we could have. At one point we tied the rafts up to a shelf, and for those who wanted to, jumped into a neat flume of water. If you jumped in the right spot it would shoot you underwater down river for 10-15 yards, then you would pop up and swim toward the eddy.

It took about 3 hours to cover the 4 miles and at the takeout point we paired up and launched some funyaks. Now funyaks aren’t that fun, they are two person, non-taking, inflatable kayaks. It takes forever to get them going straight down the river but we covered the last 4 miles in just over an hour. We stopped at GeeCreek Camp and set up our tents, I made the fire (with Mikes help), had some worship, debriefed and then I sat around the fire reading while sipping hot Gatorade.

Wednesday morning started WAY TOO early for me. Since I was part of the leadership team that day, I had to help get the fire going so that we could get a stack of pancakes ready for those who were getting up. Pancakes over a fire is not the most fun thing to do on a campout. You have to regulate the heat and constantly keep an eye on NOT burning the cakes. Things went well with some added veggie meat and warm Gatorade.

I’ll finish more in a little bit…

TO BE CONTINUED…