Ocean Odyssey,

Well, before I begin with this post i think a full hearted "welcome back!" is in order. My off time was very healthy for me. I got to focus on the one thing that matters more than writing... basketball. This was very good for me. I think i will do it every once and a while to reconnect with my inner (and outer) basketball player.

Back to camp. This was my 2nd to last camp before all the camps were gone. I didn't know what to expect going into the first day. What kind of crowd would there be? Would it be the beanie and saggin' jeans crowd or a bunch of mental people... or both. AHHH! Well, when I stepped into the "corral," on the first day when my mom dropped me off i knew that i was in for it. There was a group of girls in one corner talking about Icarly and trying to act funny, and than there was a group of guys in the farthest corner away from the girls, all huddled around someone playing a Nintendo DS. And than there was a red head in a corner clutching 2 stuffed animals and talking to himself. I looked around to see if there was anyone else, there was an asian boy in the corner reading and that was it.

I later found out his name was Jonah and he was japanese. Yes, I can read your mind. "Oh, Eliii you can talk japanese to someone thats so cool!" Nooo! I will not speak japanese until i get graded for it or kid napped by the japanese mafia, and none of those are going to happen anytime soon... i think. I found out that he barely spoke it.

The class itself was kind of boring, because we sat in a class room from 9 to 3 and talked about fish, but on and on we would get to go out side and I would pummel the asian kids ass at basketball.

The only interesting thing that happened that week, that wasn't the camp out was when we got to dissect a squid. It was so wrong that if i described it here i would have to put a suggestive content warning at the top of the page. I got to pull out brains out of his ass and i got to cut him in half and i got to be in the new fabreeze commercial cuz' i smelled so bad. That was Wednesday and that meant that tomorrow I got to do an over night in Newport. Thats right. FOUR HOUR ROAD TRIP TO WATCH FISH SLEEP ON THE GROUND AND SWIM! It wasn't to fun, mostly because I got to share a tent with the kid with stuffed animals and Jonah. The stuffed animal kid snored and talked in his sleep and Jonah kept rolling on top of me. They got up at, like 5-am and so that meant i got to sleep peacefully until 8.

After i got up we packed up and got on a bus for 4 more hours to drive home, but now I am chillin' at grandma's house. Ahh...

Part 2 of the Hitchhikers Anonymous Pentology,

Yesterday we were told, before we left, that we had to leave OMSI at 8 in the morning. Yes, that meant that I had to get up at 6. I nearly cried at the thought of getting up at 6 in the summer, to go wind surfing.

I got out of bed and put on my sweatshirt and swimsuit so i was ready to go swimming. I than went downstairs and fixed myself some blueberry pancakes and sat there, listening to sappy pop songs on my ipod. As I was getting to "Can't be Tamed," by Miley Cyrus when I heard the fain footsteps of my mom coming down the stairs. I quickly got off my Ipod and went into the kitchen to greet her with a hug. She enthusiastically hugged me back. I waited for a while, until Thomas took me to the OMSI building. On the way there we listened to ESPN Sports radio 10.80 The Fan.

The parking lot was empty, because it was so freaking early in the morning. We were the first ones there and so we waited for the check in to open and than Thomas checked me in. It was so freaking cold that I actually rolled down my sleeves. I know, right!

Once everyone got there, we went to the bathroom in the turbine hall. While everyone was taking care of there business, I was throwing paper planes down the elevator shaft. I never got caught. [fast forward] We got off the bus and started to eat our snacks. Before we went into the water we had to have our wet-suits fitted. This took like 8 hours because everyone didn't know how to put them on. I took like 2 seconds because mine was a perfect fit. And than they told us that we had to put on booties and a life jacket. Last year we didn't even wear a wet-suit, we roughed it, i only wore a t-shirt and a pair of shorts. I almost drowned....

Once everybody had there wet suit on we went over to the river where we were taught how to wind surf. The thing that made me mad was there was 2 different kinds of 180's. There was an up wind 180 and a down wind 180. What's the difference, they both turn you around.

We, than, had lunch and then it was time to get into the water. I walked down to the shore and put a toe in the water. It was really warm. Slowly I took more step's until I was waist deep. it was freezing once you got to waist deep, and than it was the hard part. I had to put my genital area under the water. That hurt so much, man. I rode around on a board for a while until one of the life guards offered to help me actually wind surf. I said sure, and crawled onto the board. I hoisted up the mast and than
"plop!" I fell in backwards. My entire body was soaked now, and I was freezing.

I tried to do this so many more times, but every time I fell on my ass in the water. I never actually wind surfed. If I could name the field trip I would call it, Ass Wetting Boarding. I was soaked after that, and when we got out of the water, my feet got all sandy. YUK!

Tomorrow is gliding. Yep, falling out of the sky in a plane without a motor. Sigh.

Part 1 of the Hitchhikers Anonymous Pentology,

Here is 3 reason's why people should never wear khaki's ever as long as they live. 1.) They look horrible, the color is kind of the same as barf, and when your pants look like barf... just don't wear em'. 2.) They make your legs really hot and sweaty and uncomfortable, but maybe thats a good thing, because you could ruin your khaki's and not be able to wear them again. 3.) This is directed towards to khaki's with the cut-off shorts. You look horrible, the only person who wants to wear you is people at Eli's hit the road camp.

My camp started at 9, when Thomas dropped me off at the drop off tent, just outside of the OMSI building. I stood there, in my sweatshirt and jeans, and tried to look as cool as possible. I would frown and turn around some times and constantly flip my hair. The only thing that was missing was an Ipod, but they wouldn't let us take them with us. I kept mine with me anyway, so I could say that mine was with me. I also had my phone in a pocket in my back pack, also so I could say that I had it.

I ran into some girls that went to a camp last year, with me, but we didn't really talk until the Alpine Slides. Once everyone got to the drop off place, we went to the bathrooms to take a leak before we could no longer take a leak. We got on the bus and the girl counselor proceeded to tell us the schedule for the day. We were going to drive to Mt. Hood and go on the Alpine Slides for and hour and 30 minutes. Than we would go and eat lunch at the amusement park for 30 minutes, and finally we would play there for an hour before we would go back to ISMO, sorry, OMSI.

[fast forward past the part where I sit on the bus for 2 hours and be bored.] We were supposed to get on these really old, blue ski lifts to get to the top off the hill, before we sled back down again. That made me uncomfortable, because these things were ancient. The guy told me to walk on to the painted circle and wait for the ski lift to come and pick me up. I started out really slowly and than, little by little, we got faster. I tried to touch each pole as I went by it, than I heard someone from the seat behind me yell, "HI!" I said hello, back and than she asked me my name and yadayadayada. Than the people in the cart behind her started to talk to me, and it turned out they were the people from the camp, last year. I said hi and we had a loud conversation, considering we were 1 ski lift apart.

Once we got to the top, we got into 2 lines behind 2 slides. I got on the left one. The guy said I could go and so I started to push myself down and before you know it, i'm going fast as hell. It really hurt my arms because you had to push a lever to go fast and my arms were sore from clutching the sides of the ski lift while I was going up. I did that 3 more times before we drove to the amusement park to eat lunch.

I spent the rest of the afternoon playing on a bungie trampoline (hurt my balls) and sliding down a hill in an inner tube and getting sprayed by a sprinkler. On the bus ride back I talked with my friends from the camp last year. Tomorrow I need to get up and 6 to go to camp because we have to get leave early to go wind surfing. All the details, next.

I call this the hitchhikers blog because hit the road, kind of sounds like a hitchhiking camp.