10:36 PM CT - Trussville, Alabama
Hey everybody, Caleb here. I thought this would be a cool thing to do, so that you guys can follow your favorite teens on their escapades at Student Life Camp. I guess I'll just start at the beginning.
The trip began when we pulled away from the BCM this afternoon with a myriad of waving and blown kisses to parents, siblings, and friends. All of the youth were in Mrs. Pam's van, with Madison in the front, Erin and Jessica in the middle, and Andrea and I in the back (I'm not really sure why seating arrangements are important, but now you know anyway). About fifteen minutes later we had just gotten on the interstate, and out came the ipods. Well, the ipods and a mystery novel . I was just minding my own business with Family Force 5's "Love Addict" in my ears, when Andrea whips out a 500(ish) page Sherlock Holmes book. I suddenly felt very shallow.
The ipod/Sherlock Holmes continued for the next hour and a half or so, when we decided to do something a little more inclusive. Namely, interstate alphabet. The object is to spell the alphabet using letters from signs, license plates, etc. as long as it's outside the car. It was 3:21 then, and we were going to try to get all the letters before 3:30. All was going great until we hit the letter Q, at the same time that we entered a long stretch of nothingness. That carried us through to 3:33, when we decided that 3:35 was our revised goal. We got to Z at 3:37.
Interstate alphabet was so fun however, that it wasn't long before we were spelling the alphabet backwards, and then 0 to 9, and when we got to 7 doing the numbers backwards, it got a little old and we decided to watch Kung Fu Panda on Madison's portable dvd player while Andrea went back to "Holmesing". The only problem was that we couldn't get the audio to run through the van's speakers, so we couldn't hear the movie very well, and I eventually faded into a doze.
I woke up and put my earbuds back in, and we stopped at a Burger King around 5:15 to stretch and maybe get a snack. But I'm pretty sure it was really because Macauley was hungry and cranky. I had some fries and a mix of orange Hi-C and Sprite that came out tasting like flat Coke. Odd.
We hit the road again at 5:50, and continued on until we got here: Trussville, Alabama. We stopped at an unusually spacious golden arches, where hdtv's were actually present. I was quite impressed, except for the trash scattered around the sticky floor. Gotta love McDonalds.
I got in line right in front of five omg-ing preppy girls that all looked the same: 15 to 17 years old, "cute" strapless dresses, high heels, and hair-straightener hair that was twelve shades lighter than their salon-fried skin. What they were doing in a sticky-floored Mickey D's was entirely beyond me.
I got my food and went to the table where everyone else in the group was already sitting, when I discovered that I had gotten my food- and only my food. No drink. I wasn't about to choke down a Chicken Ranch BLT (which was quite tasty I might add, despite the overflowing ranch dressing), so I grabbed my receipt and went to stand for another ten minutes behind the omg-ing preppy girls, as well as some other people. I finally got my cup and went the safe route with Dr. Pepper, and sat down as everyone else was finishing up.
It was about 8:00 PM CT, which would be 9:00 PM ET, which would mean that we wouldn't get to our hotel until about 11:30 PM. Long story short, we're still here in Trussville, Alabama. We're quite comfortable and thankful that we aren't just now getting into the hotel. We'll drive the last 2 1/2 hours in the morning.
Once we got unpacked and settled in, we pulled out the t-shirts Megan had bought for us to decorate. Our group has been assigned to be part of the Red Rumble, which is some sort of SLC "faction" if you will, with several groups in it. I guess we'll figure out what it's for when we get to camp. When I got my turn with the red fabric marker, I was doing fine until I got to "L" in "RUMBLE". I stopped paying attention and looked down to find "RUMBE". L's can be made into E's, but E's can't be made into L's. Or at least, that's what most would think. But I searched my creative mind and came up with a plan that ended up disguising those extra areas of the (now) "L" as these cool orange bars that go across the text. It's hard to explain, but maybe I'll post a photo later. I finished, and me and Mark headed to our room to take showers and go to bed. Or rather, take showers, blog, then go to bed.
So for now, I'm tired and it's late, so I believe I'll switch over to the go to bed part.
- Caleb
