Another Scout Camp...ugggghhh

It has taken the leaders a few months to recover from our last scout camp, but we couldn't put the boys off forever, so Saturday was another adventure. In the spirit of letting the boys be more responsible, we let them plan it. They insisted on mountain biking at Four Peaks. Since none of the leaders had a clue where that was, we let them decide where we were camping. Right HERE! they insisted, a few miles up the dirt road. Where they chose was the intersection where every car, truck, quad, and motorcycle passed by ALL NIGHT LONG! (It didn't matter much, because I've long since given up trying to actually get any sleep on campouts.)

There was a really fun loving group camped next to us who boosted their bass bumping music until 4 am. It was the first time in years that I've actually heard Vanilla Ice...Ice Ice Baby...Nice!

Of course when you take that many scouts biking in Arizona, someone is going to crash into a cactus. Sure enough, one of our scouts couldn't quite seem to keep his bike on the two-lane wide dirt road and ended up in the prickly pears with about a 2 inch cactus thorn in his thumb. It took two leaders to hold him still (my job was to pin his arm against the trailer and keep his thumb still) while a third leader pulled the thorn out with a pair of pliers. The tweezers were no match for that thorn. You would have thought we tore his whole thumb off judging by how bad he screamed, danced, jumped around, etc. (Some of our scouts are such babies.)

Now for my biking experience. First, it's been YEARS since I went mountain biking. My brain still knows how to go as fast as when I was racing in High School. My body knows how to rebel against the wishes of my brain in a big way. It was a bit uncomfortable when my muffin top belly kept getting in the way while I was pedaling. That didn't used to happen. I can still out-ride a 12-year-old but it's not a gimme. I was hammering up one little hill (after about 1/4 mile) and darn near passed out. Luckily, I broke a piece on my bike, so I had an excuse to limp back to camp and sit there before anyone saw me throw up. Gotta love the scouting program!