GREATEST DAY OF THE SUMMER!!!

So it turns out that today was in fact the greatest day of the summer at Camp Wa-Nik-Ska-Ka .... IT WAS SURVIVOR DAY! I love how it's always a surprise until we get there too ... and it was a million times better than last year (and last year was awesome!) ....

Anyway, first, WE WON! Biggest adrenaline rush ever! EAST SIDE PRIDE! We won it all ... I'll get more to that later, but a big hand to our allies (remember Dave, circle of life), the Red team of West!!! WOOT WOOT! Big second place....anyway ....

So we get to camp this morning and their doing morning announcements as usual and then they put the Survivor music on and all the counselors who knew what was going on went absolutely nuts and everyone else just looked confused.

We got split into four groups (north, south, east, west) ... our group was East represented by yellow. And we had an amazing group! THe campers were solid, and the counselor list was like a dream. I dont think I could have  picked out a better group if I tried. It was Shane, Brandon, Carley, Katie, Teresa, Tristan, Aaron and myself ... and it was once again, amazing!

Anyway, I'll go activity by activity as experienced by my tribe.

Totem Pole Trivia: Great idea, but too hard to do with like 50 campers ...especially with not enough time. And you'd think since my Dad helped carve the totem pole (as did Red team's Sherrie Rhode's Dad) their be an advantage there. And yet both Sherrie and i were quite frustrated as we remember our fathers talking about each question listed, but couldnt remember exactly what the answer was.  Nonetheless we must have retained something as the Red team took first and we took second.

Group Banner: #1 rule, counselors couldn't touch the banner at all. This also included a presentation of the banner to the group. We went with a Spongebob thing singing a spongebob tune with new lyrics and a banner that sports East outlined in gold glitter, yellow outline, sand at the bottom, a spongebob in the middle next to an oversized totem pole. It was amazing overall and we ended up placing first for that challenge! We led off the day by winning this (trivia winners werent announced till the end), so it was awesome to start off on a winning foot.

Pool Time: No challenge here. Although, last night I left my suit/towel on the deck to dry and forgot about them ... so they got rained on and I had no suit/towel to bring to the pool today. Nonetheless, it was a productive day as we formed an alliance with the West siders (red team) that proved amazingly fruitful at the end. It was also a rock solid alliance. Oddly enough it was formed at first purely for dodgeball in order to eliminate the team with Mike, Walter and David Lammers ...

Lunch time: This was supposed to be a silent lunch. And it worked-ish ... turned out to be really hard to judge. Especially because some judges were harder than others (i.e. Amy tallying like 8 times when the wind blew a few items that couldnt be stopped and "we could have stopped them" or something ridiculous like that, haha) ... also we arrived five minutes earlier than the next closest tribe (green), which means thats like 5 min more time for tallies ... among other things. All in all even if it had counted the lunch wouldn't have affected first place (we beat red by 7 and the scoring for each event was 8 for first, 6 for 2nd, 4 for 4rd and 2 for 4th) ... but it was good to scrap that event as it turned out to be way too problematic. All in all, it was like communism it looked like an amazing idea on paper but in the end it bombed out in a big way ...

Relay Race: This was a fun event! Although A) We got our butts kicked and B) it needs to be tweaked for next year, i.e. make it longer and incorporate more things with all the campers and counselors involved ....  we got third, but pretty much singlehandedly because Shane was a track star who went so fast if u blinked u missed him and because of Brandon and his amazing canoeing skills.  We started off decent, we left the first station in third and then in the third station our tennis girl couldnt serve it apparently so we got waaaay behind.  The first place team was arriving at the 6th station when ours was just leaving the 3rd. True story. All in all, we did come back, as I said to place third because the campers leap frogged their butts off, Shane beat the wind to the lake and Brandon skillfully made the canoeing portion look like a calm walk in the park.  At this point in the afternoon we hadnt heard about the trivia or lunch, so we went from leading with 8 pts after tha banners to being in second with 12 to Green's 14.

Team Dodgeball: This worked and didnt. It was a lot of fun. The alliance hung firm, except for a few wayward West kids who threw at us (knocking one of our best players out int he process). To which Sherrie, amidst a very apologetic conversational tone said, "We cant help it if our campers are just gnerally unintelligent!!" Green was the first to go (that was huge), followed by Blue. Then red make quick work of us, finishing first. However getting second and having green get last put us in first with 18, and green and red tied for second with 16. It was a tight ball game to say the least.  However, to go back to the dodgeball, I still think it would have been better to play team 1 vs. team 2, team 3 vs. team 4 and then counselors of the winning teams play for first/second and then third/fourth. Not gonna lie, no counselors in team dodgeball was a huge let down and I think an oversight. I understand not playing with the kids, but a cousnelor only game for points should have happened ... anyway ... it was fun nonetheless.

"Suprise Challenge": Our initial choice for this "surprise" was Carley. However, minutes before hand our team observed cool whip in the kitchen and being hte detectives thy were took a gamble on it being a food challenge or something crazy at least and went with cousnelor Aaron. An excellent choice. The Animal (as I shall now refer to him) obliterated his competition in the whip cream pie eating contest (eat as much as u can in 2 minutes) Admittedly it was a close call with Jordan of the green team. However, seeing as how Jordan didnt touch the crust and pushed all of his whip cream out of the pie with his face in th ebeginning, forcing him to spread it around the table he tried to go for it, I think ti was clearly the Animal winning (we did end up getting 1st).

Break Time: Campers watched a Making of Survivors special while the counselors got a half hour off. In this half hour I disclosed to Katie R that I  had Narcolepsy to which she made a comment like, "Jim, do yo uknow how exciting this is?!?" Clearly she meant it was cool for her to know someone with Narcolepsy or something ... I get a similar response a lot ... but we all got a big chuckle from her remark which seemed to imply how exciting it was for me to have a disability. Haha .... anyway, then came the big moment ...

THE TORCH CEREMONY: This was nerve-wracking. Blue got last (no surprise, good try gys). And then surprisingly green got third (by a point!). Scottie wavered between red and yellow forever, before putting out the red flame (meaning they got second). Our group erupted.It was such an adrenaline rush!! And as stated by Trisitn who was so giddy, its weird because were so happy and we all feel like we realy won something, like an international olympics someting or other. Anyway, I tried to stay as low key as possible. I felt like too much hoopla and chanting was bad sportsmanship and like we were rubbing it in everyones face. I felt like we did taht a little bit and then stopped. And then after we were dismissed Shane and I led the group for a victory jog to the totem pole, everyone touched/rubbed it and we chanted something about the East side. It was amazing! I think a victory jog and rub of the totem should happene every year for the winning team! 

Anyway, it was like the greates day of the summer ... for the next year we are the reigning Survivor champions and all I gotta say is ... WHICH SIDE IT THE BEST SIDE?!? ... EAST SIDE!!!