Intermission: Carl’s Jr.
From that point on, it was all relatively smooth sailing… erm, driving. We arrived in San Diego and stopped at the same Carl’s Jr. we stop at every time; the itinerary of the first day of the Amor trips is always identical, down to the exact location that each stop is made at. Before we unloaded ourselves from the Party Bus, I made sure to grab my mug that I had bought from one of our yard sales, the one that looked like a skull. And not a picture of a skull, but rather the entire thing looked like a skull, with a handle, for obvious drinking purposes, for it was a mug after all. In reverence for William Shakespeare, I had decided to name this mug Yorrick.
I brought Yorick inside the restaurant, and got in line with the rest of my fellow Party-Bus-ers, who had arrived several minutes later than the rest of the group, though not as far behind as one might think, considering how often we got sidetracked. I caught up with some of the kids who got stuck in other, less exciting cars, including Nick Husher, Graham Walker, and Katie, along with some of the adults and their families, like Sharon Brubaker, and her son Donald; the Gutierrez family, with kids Peyton and Brett (who we would soon start referring to as “Brit” as if with a New Zealand accent); and the Frovarp family, with kids Cordell and Collins.
After ordering, and filling Yorrick up with Coke, I went over to the dining room and sat down with some pals, and we sat and discussed things that seemed relevant at the time. After a short time eating, I decided I wasn’t hungry enough to eat my entire meal, let alone the Cap’n Crunch milkshake that I’d neglected to get the last time I visited a Carl’s Jr. (during an outing to Disneyland) and therefore forced myself to order this time around. I got distracted, and remembered the last time I’d been at this particular Carl’s, when some of the legal kids went over to the convenience store across the street and bought scratch cards. Realizing I was now of legal age, I rounded up everyone else that was eighteen and willing (Tanner, Justin, Graham, and Nick) and we walked over to the AMPM across the street.
Collectively, we probably bought about a total of ten scratch cards, only one of which got us anything; one of them was worth three dollars. Unfortunately, we were told by the cashier that they could not convert the card to money at that convenience store, and that we should go to the Circle K to cash it. We complied, but before doing so, spent two of our three hypothetical dollars on two more scratch cards, both of which were failures. So we went looking for a Circle K, but found none.
“The guy said right behind this store, right?” I asked.
“Yeah,” Graham agreed, “but there is nothing else even closely resembling a Circle K around here.”
“Maybe he meant over in that parking lot?” Tanner suggested, pointing over in the direction of the Carl’s Jr.”
“Then why would he say right behind this store?” Graham asked.
“Whatever, you guys,” Nick said. “We’ll just cash it when we get back in a week.”
“Like any of us are going to remember that…” I said.
We pocketed the scratch card and returned to the restaurant, where Justin and I were reprimanded by Nate for leaving our food out on the table for someone else (Nate) to clean up when we left. Ironically, both Justin and I work at a fast food chain, where disrespectful kids who leave their trash out are one of our biggest pet peeves.
After a little more hang out time, we got ready to leave. The Party Bus crew met over by Juno (the Party Bus’ informal name) and had fun with cameras, posing for pictures and what have you, while waiting for Jeff to come back with the keys. Once everyone else in their respective cars was ready for liftoff, Jeff let us inside, and we began the next leg of our journey.
The Ongoing Saga of the Party Bus (Part Two): San Diego – Mexico
Almost immediately after leaving the Carl’s Jr. parking lot, we crossed over the border into Tijuana, Mexico with little to no difficulty. Before we knew it, we were driving along the much more aggressive roads of…
“Um, Jeff?” Matt said, as he watched a freeway on-ramp pass by. “Shouldn’t we have gotten on there?”
“Crap…” Jeff muttered, as he slowed the Party Bus down. And then the world exploded.
It happened so suddenly, I didn’t really realize what was going on at first. I thought we were pulling over to the shoulder so that Jeff could rethink a driving strategy, maybe drive around until he could get back on the highway. And then the next thing I knew, we were in reverse, going at a pretty rapid speed (for reverse, at least) back up the road we had just driven down.
Without a second though, Matt grabbed the video camera, and held it up, pointed at the rear window, as the six of us, also staring out said window, screamed and laughed and debated whether the experience was more awesome or frightening. A car would come barreling down the street, and one of us would shout “CAR!” (as if Jeff wasn’t paying attention and couldn’t see it) and our driver would successfully avert it; even if we missed them by a long shot, every time it happened, we felt as if we had just narrowly escaped a horrible wreck. This elaborate maneuver probably lasted a little less than a minute, but it felt like much longer to the passengers in the Party Bus. Once we got far enough back, Jeff pulled back into drive, and we hopped on the freeway.
“That was awesome!” came several shouts from the back. I hollered and applauded Jeff, Sharon couldn’t stop laughing (either from fear or excitement), and Justin shouted, “Wow! My adrenaline is really pumping now!”
“The first day isn’t even over yet,” I added, “And this is already the most exciting Mexico trip I’ve ever been on. That was definitely one of the craziest experiences of my life!”
“Yeah, about that,” Jeff spoke his first words since he started driving backwards, “We should probably not tell anyone about this little adventure of ours.”
“Are you kidding me?” I asked. “This has got to go in the trip report. It was way too epic to leave out.” My fourth wall just crumbled a little bit.
“Dude, I can make no promises,” Matt said. “I just got footage of this whole thing. This could be the next Cloverfield. You know, with all the crazy action and shaky camera work, and Travis screaming in the background, ‘CAR!’”
We drove out of the city of Tijuana and into its surrounding countryside, passing by a large statue of a ram to which the other members of the car expressed great enthusiasm. At first, I didn’t get it, until Nate pointed out to me, “Travis, just look at those!” And then I saw them. You might want to ask the children to leave the room now, because there’s no sensitive way to say this; the thing had huge balls. There’s no way around this, that’s just how it is.
“It’s a very anatomically-correct statue,” Justin added. It did strike me odd, I must admit, that the sculptor put those on there. They could’ve just as easily been left out and nobody would’ve missed them. It’s not like we would be driving along, notice the ram, and cry, “What the hell? That thing has no balls! Who is responsible for this? That ram needs some balls!” Well, actually, that sounds like exactly the kind of thing we would say, but in terms of regular people, I doubt their conversation would go like that.
Anyway, the point is that giving a statue testicles is an unnecessary gesture, and yet they went ahead and stuck them on there. “Only in Mexico…” Sharon spoke my thoughts.
The car ride from that point on was much less eventful, which was good, because I wasn’t sure how much more excitement I could handle. The distance from the border to the Amor campsite was much shorter than I remember it being, possibly due to the fact that I didn’t want the car ride to be over. First of all, the end of the car ride meant the end of the music, the grooving, and the all-around awesome time we were having (and yes, it is possible to have an awesome time for six hours in a car; if you are doubtful, you’ve never ridden in the Bus). But secondly, and more dreadfully, the end of the car ride meant the beginning of setting up camp. And that meant work. And fabernacles.
Arrival: The Return of (And Subsequent Escape From) the Fabernacles
Apart from the occasional weather-related misery, dealing with the fabernacles is the worst part of Mexico. Fabernacle is not a real word, so don’t go grabbing for your dictionary; allow me to explain. A fabernacle, or fab as we sometimes shorten it to, can probably best be compared to a large, portable, half-oval awning, with the intended purpose of shelter from above-mentioned drastic weather. I’ll admit, they’re nice to have during such occasions, but on arrival and departure days, they’re a pain in the ass.
I realize I may be over-dramatizing this, but if you ask almost anybody else, they’ll tell you the same. They’re just a hassle; they’re big and bulky, it takes eight people to put one up (and we had three), they’re absolutely disgusting (after being locked shut in a wooden box for twelve months, they’d developed dirt/mud stains all over the tarps), and on top of it all, the wooden boxes they come in weight about 200 lbs. and have to be carefully carted from the trailer around the campsite. Bottom line: fabs are no fun. I decided early on that I would have no part in it.
As we pulled off the main road, we stumbled across the Amor Ministries campground. Through the entrance lay a dirt road that led us to our specified campsite and along the way road signs gave us suggestions on how to be a courteous camper. We actually didn’t pay attention to the caption given to each sign, but just to the pictures, which were generally lacking details, and thusly leaving a lot of room for interpretation. “Look!” cried Nate. “That dustpan is sleeping!” The actual picture depicted a man sleeping in a bed, though the bed really did look like a dustpan, and all you could see of the man was his head, which was literally just a round, black ball sticking out. The sign encouraged “quiet hours” between 10 pm and 6 am.
“Yeah, like the Canadians are really going to abide by that…” I muttered. In past years, we’ve shared the campground with groups of Canadians, who generally tend to be pretty rowdy.
The last sign, and the personal favorite of the group, was advising against starting large bonfires for safety reasons. The picture was supposed to look like a group of people on fire running away from a bonfire they’d created, but due to the crudeness of the sign, it actually looked like the people were running out from the bonfire, and for some reason the artist chose only to put little flames on their butts. We took this to mean, “If you make too big of a fire, butt-fire-people will jump out and attack you!” We’re a pretty creative group.
As the Party Bus pulled up to our designated site, Jeff turned to us and said “Watch me evade Pat,” as he steered the Party Bus out of sight behind a large trailer. Pat Frovarp is the Mexico Man, to put it simply. He’s been there every year that I have, and I only assume that he’s gone before I have too. He’s the go-to-guy for pretty much everything that gets done in Mexico, but because Jeff is in charge, Pat always ends up going to him for approval. “He’s going to ask me where he wants everything to be set up, and I’m going to tell him I don’t know. I never know. When is he going to learn that things like this don’t matter to me?”
We could only hide for so long before Pat spotted the Party Bus (it’s a rather large target) and walked up to the driver’s window. “Hey Jeff, where do you want everything to be set up?”
“I don’t know,” replied Jeff. “Wherever we can.”
“All right then,” Pat said, affirmatively. “Let’s get to work, then.” That was my cue to get the hell out of there.
As the cars and trailer were unloaded, I evaded work by walking around with the appearance of an important person going to an important place to accomplish an important task, during which I bumped into Nick.
“Hey, Travis,” he said. “You want to get out of setting up the fabernacles with me?” Did I ever.
“For sure, dude,” I responded. ‘For sure, dude’ is one of those phrases at In-N-Out that you start using without realize you’re using them, in the same vein as ‘Right on’ and ‘Not a problem.’ This particular phrase stemmed from an Associate named Randall, who used it all the time. Randall was far from black, and was often imitated by other co-workers in a high-pitched voice, making the phrase rather humorous.
Pat gathered all of the high school students together, and instructed the men to set up the fabernacles and the women to set up the tents. “Well, that kind of messes up our whole plan, now doesn’t it Nick?” I said.
Nick was about to argue with this, when Melissa spoke up and expressed that she would like to set up fabernacles. Nick and I then came up with a clever plan, which involved Melissa and Katie setting up fabs with the guys, while Nick and I set up the tents. It was a pretty ingenious plan, and I doubt anyone else could’ve thought of it.
Before we could start setting up tents, however, we had to clear the area of all rocks. I let all of the underclassmen deal with this, while I watched over and directed them. Some of the adults, like Debbie Foucar or Stacey Gutierrez, criticized this and instructed me to work, but I shrugged it off, convincing myself that I was a leader and that leaders don’t have to work. I have this thing with power. And not working.
After a short period of standing and observing, I accompanied my dad and Jason carry out the boxes of tents, tarps, poles, and stakes from the trailer. We scouted out some level, rock-less ground, and began to lay the tarps down in three rows of four. Jeff later revealed to us that we had a lot of our group sleeping in family tents (which were in a different area of the campsite that I was not responsible for) so we only needed eight tents. We got rid of the last row, and began setting up the tents.
A couple of years ago, we used the worst tents in the world for these trips; each tent had about eight poles, and it was so difficult to set up they had actually been color coded but even this proved unhelpful as the tents were just too damn complicated. They were like smaller, yet equally annoying, fabernacles. After several years of having to put up with them, we threw them out and got new tents. These tents were much easier to set up; however, some of the underclassmen still had trouble figuring them out. “There are only three poles per tent!” I exclaimed. “How difficult can it possibly be?”
In total, I set up about two tents, before I started going around and acting as a “tent doctor” to all of the other ones that had been messed up. One of the tents, which was of particular horror to me, had been set up facing the wrong direction. “This tent is backwards! Turn it around!” I yelled to Miles Harvey.
“Relax,” said Nick, who was helping Miles stake it in. “It’s already staked, we’re not taking it out now. Besides, you can barely tell; there are doors on both sides anyway.”
“It matters to me…” I mumbled, and then ran off to help Steve Dempster, who was complaining about her tent missing a pole.
When all of the tents had been (more or less) erected, I walked over to see how the fabs were coming along. Not well was the consensus; one of the legs was missing a foot, one of the fabs was missing a leg, and the tarps had creepy stains that (apparently, for they were too high up by the time I arrived to confirm this) emitted some foul odor, making the tying of the tarp to the skeleton a very uncomfortable ordeal.
“How are setting up the tents?” Katie asked, after relating to me the horror of the fabs.
“Well, there was this whole ‘pole-problem,’ but past that, I can’t complain.”
“Lucky,” muttered Justin.
“Now I gotta go to the bathroom,” I said. “You guys want to tag along?”
So a small group of us walked over to the row of porta-potties that had been built over a twenty-foot trench filled with… human waste. It’s a beautiful sight, really. And it’s a pretty accurate representation of what the next six days are going to be like for someone who hasn’t gone down to Mexico before.
I was surprised to find, in the porta-john that I had selected (the second one to the right; Justin had the immediate right one), that there were rolls of toilet paper hanging on a bar to my right, your left. I had always brought my own rolls to Mexico, because I wasn’t aware that they actually supplied you. I asked Matt about this when we walked back over to the campsite. “Yeah,” he said. “They’ve always had the goods in there.”
“They’re never in the ones I’ve used…” I said.
“That’s why the first thing I do,” he said “Is scout out a good toilet when I get here, and it’s the only one I use for the whole trip. Speaking of, I should probably go do that.” And with that, Matt walked off to the bathrooms.
There was still some work to be done, so Graham, Nate, and I were recruited to go grab some rocks to build a campfire with. We took along a wheelbarrow, and after a little bit of searching, gave up and stole rocks from a previously-made fire pit at a currently-abandoned campsite. We only took about three rocks at a time, because they were big rocks, and it was a small wheelbarrow.
Once we had the majority of rocks from the other campsite, we formed a fire pit, and the little kids got to work by gathering pieces of wood for the fire. For some reason, the children are absolutely enthralled by the fires, and we had one going in no time at all, to the dismay of Jeff, who explained that there was no reason to have a fire when the sun hadn’t even started to go down. It’s a rule in Mexico that time does not exist, because nothing is on a schedule and therefore it does not matter what time we do things at; but had we been keeping track of time, we probably had a fire going before six o’ clock.
Tales from the Campfire: How to Count to Six on One Hand
It was announced that we were making a store run. “We have a store?” was my reaction, too.
“Yeah, it’s right over there,” Jeff pointed out to me.
“I’d never noticed that before…” I said.
Everyone laughed at me. “Yeah… it’s been there the whole time…” I had a hard time believing that. Especially because all of the people who were telling me this had only been to Mexico once or twice before. My first time had been five years ago. You’d think that if anyone knew anything about a store, it’d be me. Well, obviously Jeff and Pat and other adults… but if any of the students knew anything about a store, it’d be me, right?
So we walked over to the store, which was conveniently located right next to our campsite. They had for sale several T-Shirts from past Mexico trips, blankets, hats, candy, drinks, and other possibly-valuable items, such as sunscreen. It was a wonderful store, but unfortunately, the woman working there said that this was the only day it’d be open. It closed for the weekend (and Thursday, apparently) and reopened on Monday afternoon, at which point we’d all be gone.
“Well, then,” I said, as I surveyed the room. “Looks like I’ve got some stocking up to do...” I ended up buying $20 worth of supplies from that store, about 10 of which was pure junk food. During my incredibly long check-out, I chatted with the woman working, and asked when this store had opened. “Sometime in 2006,” she said.
Dammit. I was here in 2006. I was an idiot for not noticing the store. Unless…
“Like early in 2006? Like springtime?” I inquired.
“No, later in the year,” she said.
“HA!” I laughed in Graham’s face. “So this is the first time I’ve been here when there was a store!”
“Okay, whatever. You’re making this a bigger deal than it really is.”
I tend to do that.
Sharon was in charge of the food for the trip, in an ironic twist, seeing as her last name is “Cook.” For this reason, over the campfire that night, Jeff awarded her with an apron that read “Sharon ‘The Cook’ Cook” as a token of all of our appreciation. He also gave Pat an award for being the Go-To Guy for just about everything remotely Mexico-related. I don’t remember what Pat’s award was.
Speaking of Mexico, it’s a semi-tradition for our group to dish out random awards at the end of each work day. The awards include best injury, most encouraging, hardest working, smelliest, cleanest, etc. There were only three this year; the Barnabus Award (most encouraging), the Hammer Award (hardest-working), and the That’s Gotta Hurt Award (self-explanatory). Unfortunately, it’s also a semi-tradition for our group to stop giving out these awards somewhere along Day Three. This year we didn’t even make it that far; no awards were given out in 2008.
The list of awards was handed out by Jeff in a blue booklet that mostly consisted of our devotionals to be done each morning with our devo group (also listed in the book). Also included was a very rough itinerary of what the week might look like, a list of what worksite each person was one, and who had kitchen duty (heh) each night. I was placed on Worksite #2.
For the Wednesday night people, they set to work cooking up some tri-tip dinner with Sharon the Cook. I think it might be a tradition to have tri-tip on the first night of Mexico, because of all of the times I can think of, that’s how it’s been, though it may be a coincidence… or I might be just straight up wrong.
As we ate our delicious dinner, we gathered around the fire, and did what we did best; talked amongst ourselves and acted foolishly, all the while creating lasting memories and running gags. The ‘Gag of the Night’ started, somehow, by Christian, a little five-year-old, counting to five on his fingers. I noticed he started with his thumb, and ended with his pinky. That always confused me when people did that; when I count, I start with my index finger, extend out to my pinky, and end with my thumb. ‘When I start a count with my thumb,” I told my friends, “I always end up counting it twice, because I’m so used to ending a count with my thumb. I’ll be all like 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6.”
At first, everyone else thought I was retarded. But I demonstrated to them how my thumb would gradually slide back down into my palm, so that by the time I hit my pinky (five), it was just an impulse to count the thumb after. And then they still all thought I was retarded, but at least I had reasoning. My stupidity was mimicked, and we even convinced little Christian that it was the proper way to count.
“We’re really going to screw up his education,” Elizabeth said. “I can just imagine him on his first day at school; ‘Look, teacher! Look what I can do!’”
I’d also been egged on, by several of my fellow campers, to get my hair braided like the girls and Jeff had done.
“I don’t think your hair is long enough to braid…” Melissa said, uncertainly.
“Hear that?” I said. “My hair’s too short. Guess we can’t braid it then.”
“No, we couldn’t.” She said. “But we could definitely put it in a bunch of ponytails. Wanna try it?”
I complied. It was one of the stupider mistakes I’d ever made.
Melissa grabbed about thirty rubber bands, and began sliding them into my hair. I grimaced for each and every one of them, and occasionally yelped. I found something to bite on (it was probably a stick from the wood pile) which helped me from shouting obscenities. Those little rubber bands really hurt.
Occasionally, I’d get catty remarks from the adults. “Nice look, Travis. I like it.” The students mostly just laughed at my misery and ridiculous look. When it was finished, I didn’t look like Jeff. Because it was too short, the ends were all poofy. It looked pretty stupid. “There’s no way I’m keeping these in for the whole trip,” I said. “Maybe a night or two. But I can’t put up with this for much longer.”
Little did I know what a hassle these little ‘tails’ would soon become.
Bedtime
Sleeping arrangements were a little confusing. Remember that one tent I mentioned? The one that had been put up backwards? Well, due to the fact that we’d all been helping set up during the time that everyone else took to put their stuff in their tents, Justin, Graham, Nate, and I were stuck with the only remaining tent…
To my horror, not only had our tent been facing the wrong way, but the interior was covered with dirt. “We’re going to remedy this right here and now,” I had told Justin earlier in the day, when the sun was still up. So together, we spun the rain fly around; un-staked the tent, tilted it, and swept all of the dirt outside. Once all of that had been taken care of, we loaded all of our bags and sleep gear inside. We were just about to settle down and set up sleeping arrangements, when a sudden change was made, and we were moved to the tent in between Nick, Tanner, and Myles’ tent and the “changing tent” for Melissa, Elizabeth, Sharon, and Katie. Yes, we had set up so many tents, that there was an extra one that the girls claimed so they could have “one tent for sleeping, and another one for all of the stuff.”
We laid our stuff down in a row, starting with Justin’s cot on the far left side (if you were looking into the tent from the front), Graham sleeping next to him on the floor, followed by Nate, and finally me in the corner. We absolutely prohibited anyone from straying too far from their corner, as to not repeat the events of the last Mexico trip I had slept on, where Deeje had rolled and squished himself and me against Justin, while there was about thirty feet of empty space between Deeje and Josh.
We started to settle down as the night went on, and eventually Jeff told us all to start to get ready for bed. We grabbed our toothbrushes and went out along the wired fence to cleanse our teeth before hitting the hay. It had been a long first day (as evidenced by the sixteen pages it took to write all about it), and we were in dire need of some rest. We all passed out within minutes. And woke up to the sound of roosters, and the crack of Alba.
That joke will never, ever get old.
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