So, I actually finished writing this a couple of days ago and just now realized I had never posted it. This is my sequel to last year's "Prom Story" featuring John Mayer. Except this time it's not fictionalized. Sorry. I also apologize for the way things get sloppy by the end; I was very tired and just wanted to finish with it so I could get back to Mexico, which, by the way, is moving along about as fast the line at the DMV. I just haven't had a lot of time to write. Hopefully, that will change soon, for summer will be upon us and I will have nothing but time. Except on the days when I have to work. Or party. Or volunteer at the Week. Or go to the beach. Or go on the Amazing Race. Or hang with the Tar Seven's. Or go to Peru. But other than that, nothing but time!

Okay, here we go:

I’ve been looking forward to Prom for a long time. Since before I had a date. Since before I even knew I was going. Throughout my entire high school career, I heard everyone talk about how wonderful it was, how I would never forget it, how it was the end-all be-all high school event. And while that might not all be true 100%, it certainly was the most fun I’ve had in a very long time, and it makes me very depressed knowing that it was my last high school dance.

I had decided pretty early on that I would go to Cornerstone’s Prom over my own. My reasoning was fairly simple; Prom, in its simplest form, is about having fun, and I knew that I would have more fun with my small group of best friends at Cornerstone, than with my larger group of good friends at Newbury Park. As a matter of fact, “good friends” is probably a stretch to describe my opinion of some of the people at my school. Enough said; Cornerstone was where the fun was at. That, and the ticket price was like half that of Newbury’s.

After that, I set out to find a date. Though I never usually have a problem going stag, I’ve always been a bit of a traditionalist, and figured I should get a date for Prom, because…well, because it’s Prom. I needed a date, and it couldn’t be John Mayer this time (though, I must admit, that was the most exciting dance I’d ever been to). I just needed a girl to ask.

The opportunity presented itself on Nate’s birthday, when we all went to the beach after a hike. We were sitting in the sand, talking and eating and… well, those are pretty much the only two things we ever do as a group. But there we were, doing said things, and we started talking about Prom, and how excited we were for it. Then, Hannah began talking about a certain someone, who shall not be named (but, in honor of Dillon, we shall call him Chud), that she was afraid was going to ask her to be his date. She needed someone else to ask her first.

“Why don’t you go with Travis?” someone suggested.

“Because he hasn’t asked me yet.” She said, in a more-than-implicit tone.

“Hannah!” I called to her from across our circle of friends. “Will you go to Prom with me?”

“Of course!” She replied, happily.

“Well, that was a special moment,” Justin said.

And that’s how that happened.

Date; check. Now we need a method of transportation. Limo, maybe? Oh, for sure, dude.

Elizabeth was organizing a limo for the Cornerstone seniors and their dates. And, unfortunately, I was neither. Elizabeth told me there would be room in the limo if some people neglected to ride in it, but not to get my hopes up. In the meantime, Alexa devised a plan that, should she, Ashley, Hannah, and I not make it into the limo, she would provide a mode of transportation for the four of us.

Fortunately, a couple weeks before the dance, Elizabeth notified me that two of the guys declined the limo offer, so there were four spots open. Lucky us. The price for the limo per person was $55, the same as the price of admission to the dance. So now I was down $220. And there was still three weeks until the actual event.

Date; check. Limo; check. Tux; uh... let’s get on that.

My dad was telling me about how, a very long time ago (we’re talking, like, 1992 here), he saw a tuxedo vest with a Mickey Mouse pattern. “That would be really cool,” I agreed, “But what are the chances that we’re going to find one?”

My dad took me over to a guy that he’d done business with several times before, named Rex. He was a very funny, very helpful man. He talked to me for a long time about shoes. Not relevant shoes, like what I would be wearing with my tux… just shoes in general. And then we got down to business.

“Do you know what color dress your date is wearing?”

Uhm… that would be good information to have, wouldn’t it?

While I got to texting Hannah, my dad brought something up with Rex. “I was shopping around a couple of years back, and I saw this really cool Mickey Mouse vest. And, this guy here, he’s like Mr. Disney. So, we were wondering if you had anything…”

Rex smiled. “Yeah, let me check in the back for you.”

Hannah’s response to what color dress she was wearing was “either white or baby pink,” and she would let me know tomorrow. Meanwhile, Rex emerged from the backroom with a bow tie, with a wonderful Mickey Mouse pattern. It wasn’t so loud that it looked ridiculous. In fact, it was almost discreet; it wasn’t hard to see, but you wouldn’t notice unless you looked at it. Even though it was patterned, my dad described the color as a ‘dusty rose,’ which wouldn’t clash with a pink dress.

“We don’t have the vest piece right now,” Rex explained, “but we will have it by the 31^st. I’m gonna put you down for the Mickey vest, and if your date changes her mind about the dress, give me a call and we’ll work something else out.”

$120 for the tuxedo plus the previously established $220 puts us at $340 thus far, and Prom was still two weeks away. My mom agreed to pay for the corsage, so that was nice of her. Now that I had everything bought and paid for, all that was left was to wait it out.

The end of the year is one of those things that feels like it’s taking forever while you’re waiting, and then it hits and you think, “Well, that happened faster than I expected.” It’s a strange paradox, but I’m sure most seniors will agree with me. Before I knew it, it was May 31^st, and I drove around Ventura County, picked up my tuxedo and my corsage (Hannah had chosen to go with the baby pink dress, so I stuck with the Mickey vest and got her a pink corsage), and headed to the Bridges’ house by 5:00.

I arrived at the same time as Justin, who definitely had the best outfit (though every time someone brought this up, I would shift the attention to my amazing vest). Justin was decked out with a standard tuxedo with a white vest, but wore additionally a top hat, white gloves, and carried a walking cane. He looked like a pimp from the 1920s.

Nate had a blue suit, to match his date Elizabeth’s blue dress. Graham wore a tux with a pink tie, to go with Jessi’s pink dress. And Jordan had a blue tuxedo, to go with Mel’s blue dress. I’m sure you could tell, blue and pink were the prominent colors this year. Babis also wore a blue tux, though he didn’t officially have a date; Alexa was kind of his unarranged date. She wore a white dress. They didn’t match, but they didn’t really have to. There were more people at the Bridges’ house, but I’ve gone over all of the important ones.

Shortly after my arrival, it was declared time to put on the corsages and boutonnières. Hannah and I got ours on pretty quickly; too quickly, in fact, for either of our parents to get pictures of it. So we then had to “pose” as if we were still putting them on, without looking like we were posing. It was difficult, and I’m sure the pictures turned out very cheesy, but probably very funny.

Then we started taking group pictures. The six guys (Graham, Nate, Justin, Me, Babis, and Jordan) took an overabundance of group pictures on the back porch, starting with a couple of pictures where we all smiled, and then some were we didn’t smile. For the non-smiling pictures, I made a priceless expression that was dubbed “smoldering.” I know it’s an actual word, but I’ve never heard it in that context before, and I’m not sure it was being used correctly, but it was hilarious and the phrase was repeated for the rest of the night. “You’re smoldering, baby! Smoldering!”

We then took pictures in front of the limo, starting with senior girls (not me), then all Cornerstone seniors and their dates (still not me) and finally, everyone riding in the limo (there we go). Eventually, we were all seated in the limo, got the parents to stop opening the doors and peeking through the windows, and took off toward Thousand Oaks.

We were eating dinner at BJ’s in TO but we arrived a little behind schedule. Not only had we spent a lot of time at the Bridges’, but getting to BJ’s proved hard for the limo driver, who was having a difficult time making a right turn into the parking lot. Instead, he drove around for a couple of blocks and came around a different way, so that he could drive straight into the parking lot rather than turn. He was a really cool dude, though. As we exited the limo, we asked us if we were up for ditching Prom altogether and driving down to Vegas. “We are so down!” Justin exclaimed.

“Except one of you would have to drive,” he said. “Because I kinda wanna party in the back with you guys.”

We looked pretty cool walking into BJ’s, over twenty kids in tuxes and dresses. Also, Jessi tripped and fell while walking down the stairs. That probably made our group look even cooler. While we were waiting to be seated, I hid my Boner Coke underneath my seat. It had been a novelty when we discovered it in the limo (it was a can of Coke with a bulge in the top that looked like, well, like a boner) but I somehow got stuck with it and it was becoming more of an annoyance. Though, I will admit, it was fun to yell loudly inside the restaurant “Would someone please take my boner from me?”

We’re a very disruptive group of kids. Or maybe it’s just me.

Luckily, we were seated on the outside patio, which meant we had to walk by nearly every other table to get there. There were lots of opportunities to show off. I think our group took up about three tables; Justin, Nate, Elizabeth, Graham, Jessi, Melissa, Jordan, Alexa, Babis, Hannah, and I were all seated at one. We were pretty content with it, seeing as it was all of our favorite people in the group (minus Ashley, who sat at the table behind us). Actually, those ten other people (and Ashley) are probably my favorite people in the world. I was very happy that we were all together for the night. I knew at that moment that I had made the right decision in which Prom to go to.

Dinner tonight was pizza and salad, which we consumed quickly and happily. We then moved on to two giant Pizookies, which we ate as a group. Meanwhile, we discussed a variety of topics, as we usually do. And Graham kept adjusting the blinds to block the sun from the eyes of those sitting on a certain side of the table (conveniently, the side that I was sitting on). What a nice man.

The dance was scheduled to begin at 7:00, and it was at least half past seven by the time we decided to get a move on. It’s a private school dance; about half of those attending were riding in our limo. The dance would start when we arrived; we weren’t too worried about being punctual.

It was probably closer to eight by the time we got to the hotel where the dance was being held. Mr. Martinez greeted us, and showed us out to the back patio, where the rest of the dance-goers were gathered. There was a picture area set up, so we spent a good deal of time with that. Alexa and Babis, Jordan and Melissa, Graham and Jessi, Elizabeth and Nate, and Hannah and I all took pictures as couples, and then the ten of us joined up with Ashley, Justin, Nu, and Tanner for a group photo. They all turned out pretty cute, I must say.

After our group photo, we headed inside for the actual dance portion of the dance. The first hour was pretty uneventful. The majority of the songs played were less than amazing, though we danced along anyway. Things started to pick up once the clock hit about 9:30 (that’s just an estimate; no one was really keeping track of time). The songs got progressively better, as we ran into dance gems like “Get Low” “Crank That” and “Yeah!” Things were starting to get hectic after “What is Love?” where all of the guys formed a line and parodied the “Night at the Roxbury” sketch from Saturday Night Live. My neck was absolutely killing me by the conclusion of the song, and I was feeling lightheaded. I stumbled to the bathroom to chill out for a bit, only to discover…

“Don’t go in that door. That’s not the bathroom, guys; that’s the woofer.”

When I returned from my adventure to find the bathroom and regain my composure, I returned to the dance only to discover that I had failed at my mission to protect Hannah from the man we refer to as Chud; there they were dancing to “I Don’t Wanna Miss a Thing.” And she did not look pleased. I felt horrible. And, on top of that, I was forced to sit out of one of my favorite slow dance songs, making me look like a loner. It was a very tragic moment.

Things didn’t slow down after that. For “Cotton Eyed Joe” we formed a square dancing circle, and put on our best Michael Jackson impressions for “Billie Jean.” I would go to sit down in between songs, but then a new song would come on that I just had to be on the dance floor for. It was miserable.

The last couple of slow songs played, and I got to dance with Hannah and prevent her from having to dance with Chud again, something she hasn’t yet, to this day, let me forget about. The dance concluded around 10:30, so that we would be out of there at 11:00. At first, I thought that was being a little too cautious, stopping the music half an hour early, but I soon understood; we spent so much time talking and taking pictures, we barely made it out before eleven.

Our limo driver swung around to pick us up and Tanner tried to bum a ride off of us, saying that the people he came with decided to leave earlier. But there was no room in the limo, he hadn’t paid for any part of it, and we frankly just felt like being mean to him. So we left him standing outside the hotel, calling for a ride, as we took off for the Ventura Fairgrounds.

Throughout the night, almost immediately after we’d departed from the Bridges’, there’d been some drinking going on. Not by any of us, mind you; we’re good kids. But from some of the other kids further down in the limo weren’t so good. They were drinking and popping pills and generally just having a very rowdy time, and I was okay with it for awhile. Well, maybe I wasn’t “okay” with it, but I wasn’t really uncomfortable. As long as they kept to themselves, I was fine.

On the way back to the Bridges’ (the beach was a bust; we didn’t stay there for very long) one of the drunks passed out. Beforehand, he was grooving in the limo over by Justin, who was imitating him, and you couldn’t really tell that one of them wasn’t drunk. And then the guy passed out. And, as the rule states, if their shoes are still on, they’re fair game. So one of the other guys took the liberty of drawing a penis on his face, after checking to make sure he was pretty gone, poking him and taking flash pictures and what have you.

The guy woke up moments after the lipstick touched his cheek. And he was not happy. The guy who did the drawing was in the military, and the drunk was pretty wasted; if they got in a fight, and it was looking pretty promising, it wouldn’t have lasted long. Eventually, one of his bigger friends got up and sat next to him to calm him down. I think this worked, for there was no more confrontation whilst in the limo.

But as soon as we got out at the Bridges’ house, it was back on. There was shouting, and their dates were getting upset, and the neighbors started peeking out the window. It was madness, madness I tell you. And then out came Mrs. Bridges, followed closely by Garrett, Eric, and David. Linette pretty much broke up the tension single-handedly, rushing everyone else inside and having a good one-on-one talk with John, the buzzed one. Some of the girls stayed outside to console those of them that were emotionally traumatized. Myself, I went inside; I’d seen all I needed to see, and I was now ready for rest.

The party at the Bridges’ raged all night long, though I probably should’ve chosen a word other than “raged.” I suppose that “barely lasted” is a better choice. We sat in groups and talked and watched movies, and I would occasionally switch back and forth between the kids watching Aladdin and Casino Royale, and the kids chilling in Hannah’s room, evidently tired but refusing to fall asleep. At around four in the morning, Mrs. Bridges (who had finished up with John) suggested I grab some blankets and crash in either Jordan’s room or the Bonus room. Finding company with Lizzy, Laura, Ana, and Babis in Jordan’s room, I set up camp at the foot of the bed and slept for a good four hours, with occasional awakenings.

I went downstairs sometime around eight or nine and met up with the kids who had stayed up all night watching movies; they were not a very lively group. They were currently watching A Knight’s Tale featuring the late Heath Ledger. I like the movie, but there was no way I was staying up for the whole thing, and I fell asleep on the couch at one point or another.

I slept through church, to the dismay of Jeff and other people expecting us to show up in our tuxes and dresses. In retrospect, we probably could’ve survived at 10:30 service, but at the time all I could think about was how I felt that I would never be well-rested again. I didn’t completely wake up until around 11:30, when it was announced that we were going to the O.R. Though slightly reluctant, I complied and got ready to go in my tux. However, only like four other people actually ended up at Me-N-Ed’s that morning; everyone else had either gone home or stayed at the Bridges’ for an extra couple of hours. Whatever; who needs them?

Our time in the Operating Room was fun, if uneventful. I can’t remember a single thing we talked about, though I can’t really remember anything about Prom past midnight. Which leads me to wonder why this report is continuing on like it is. I think I shall conclude it right here, seeing as I’m pretty sure that after this point, I went home and napped for a long time.

In conclusion, I had an amazing time at Prom. A much more amazing time, I’m sure, than I would’ve had if I’d opted to go to Newbury Park’s instead. I am totally confident that my decision was the right one, and thusly had more fun that night than at any other time that month, possibly since Mexico. I remember getting home and not wanting to take the tuxedo off for two reasons. The first one being because I was so dang tired that I probably couldn’t remember how to take off the vest. But secondly, and most importantly, because that meant it was over, and I would never get to go to another high school dance as a high schooler ever again. Though, as far as “going out with a bang,” the 2008 Prom did a pretty splendid job, and loved every minute of it. I can’t think of going out a better way.

Okay, so I bet you're thinking to yourself, since you haven't seen me post anything in about a month, that the Mexico Report, like so many other Mexico Reports, has been ditched and left for forgotten. Well you couldn't be wronger... erm... more wrong.

I've been working at a very slow pace, but I've done it. I finished the first day of Mexico. I'm going to post it after I give you this formal warning.

Remember how I said that the report in its entirety would be about forty pages? Well, I'm thinking I might be a little off.

Keep in mind that four days of Mammoth took up twenty-two pages. Mexico is six days long. The first day alone clocks in at eighteen pages.

Let's do some simple math, shall we? If every day follows the same pattern, the completed report would be over one hundred pages long.

Now, that's not going to happen, let me tell you right now. Realistically, if I had all the time in the world, yes it would be possible for me to write over one hundred pages about Mexico. The trip is that epic. However, it's been two months since the first day of Mexico, and frankly, I don't want to devote a year of my time to this thing. Ideally, I'd like to to be done before Peru.

At the very minimum, I'm going to say that each remaning day will probably take up about six pages each. That leaves us at about fifty pages of Mexico Madness, and while that is only half of its potential, it is still the longest thing I've ever written (as I said it would be).

Dia Uno is so sprawling, it will not fit into one post, so it will be split. I've rearranged them all, so that the first part is located directly below this post, and the second part below that one. You don't need to go scrolling all over the page.

I've been writing at a very slow pace recently, but I'm sure that once summer hits I'll have a lot more time for writing. The new projected end date for this project is end of July/beginning of August. If I'm too far off by the time Peru comes around, I'm scrapping it. If I'm on the last day, though... well, then I have to go for it.

So, without further ado, here's the first day of the massive Amor Mexico 2008 trip report. You might not want to read it all at once; try taking it in small doses. I don't want you to overdose.

 Dia Uno: Arrival Day
Prologue: Introduction to Amor, Party Bus, and Matt’s Head

Mexico is consistently the best trip I go on all year. And, consistently, each year improves upon the last to the point where it seems impossible for the next year to get any better... And yet, it always is.

As a youth group, CCCSM (Camarillo Christian Church Student Ministries)is very trip-oriented generally going on half a dozen excursions a year, and I have become somewhat of an unofficial scribe for our organization. I've compiled several trip reports over the past five years, but this will be the first time I've ever attempted something so huge: a comprehensive guide to my most recent six days in glorious Tijuana, Mexico. Because I am only one man, the story will be told from only one perspective; my own. I will, however, do my best to fill in the gaps of situations and events that occurred while I was not present.

Here’s a bit of an introduction, in case you are unfamiliar with the Amor Mission trips or CCCSM in general. If you went on the trip and are just looking for nostalgia, or are pretty up to date with the lives of me and my cohorts, you could probably skip down until you find the words “The Ongoing Saga of the Party Bus” and start from there. For everyone else, let’s start at the beginning. Well, not the beginning per se, but the part where I first come in.

I went on my first Amor Mission trip with Camarillo Christian Church (my church family) when I was fourteen years old. I didn’t have many friends on this trip, at least none that I knew very well at the time. And yet, it turned out to be one of the better experiences of my life up to that point. Amor Ministries is an organization based in San Diego that recruits ministry teams from churches all over the country and brings them down to Tijuana, Mexico for six days to build a home for a needy family. Since 1980, they have built 13,500 buildings, including churches. That’s a pretty impressive repertoire of grace and love.

On this first trip, we were to build a church for a community, and we did just that. I didn’t work a lot; I was a very lazy and unmotivated eighth grader, but I do remember talking (more like “attempting to communicate”) with some of the local children, or hanging with some of the smaller kids who came along. My first experience with Amor Ministries was something special. Even though now I barely remember the trip at all, I still remember the feeling. I knew I had to go back next year.

And so I did, this time accompanied by one of my friends, Drue Carney. This was the trip where things started to get interesting. Drue was a fun, if sometimes frightening, companion. We rocked out a lot to some Third Day (and, no matter how many times I go on these trips with various soundtracks, “I’ve Got a Feeling” will always represent Mexico for me). We also got into a lot of trouble; we de-tented people on three different occasions, played poker with Mexican gum until the wee hours of the morning, and Drue once stole my bandana, wore it as a loin cloth, and danced around in my tent (an image that, try as I might, I can never seem to completely erase from my memory tract). And don’t even get me started on those random Mexican girls… We both have stories that we may not be willing to share.

This Mexico trip was also a huge landmark for CCCSM; not too many people know it, but the Naked Dance Party originated here. If you’re not aware what a Naked Dance Party is, just know that I was in that same boat during this trip. I had heard some of the college aged girls talk about it, and expressing needs for a plunger and my feather duster that I had won for being the cleanest person on the work site (still lazy and unmotivated a year later) which they claimed were imperative for a Naked Dance Party.

A little less than a year after that, I went to Mammoth Mountain for the second time with the youth group. How does this relate to Mexico? Well, just hold on, and you’ll figure it out. On the car ride up to Mexico, I built (or furthered) four very important relationships in those eight hours. The first one was with my youth leader, Jeff Gin. I’d known Jeff for about four years, but we became much better friends during this road trip. The same went for my other driving companion, Justin Kiraly. We’d been friends for a couple years, but during that car ride we took our relationship another level higher. The third was with a kid named Chris. Chris is mentally retarded, has Tourette’s, autism, ADHD, and OCD. And he is the coolest kid ever, as evidenced by his behavior on this car ride.

And the fourth relationship was the most important one of all. The fourth relationship was between me and a 1991 Chevy Suburban, better known as the Party Bus. The Party Bus is a beast of a vehicle with beat-up upholstery, no air conditioning or heating system, windows that didn’t roll up all the way, dents all over, a windshield that never seemed to get completely clean, and numerous other problems. In short, it was the coolest car ever. I fell in love with this car during that trip, and was ecstatic to learn that we would be taking it with us to Mexico in only a month and a half.

And it was really on this Mexico trip where it all started.

I rode with Jeff and Justin in the Party Bus down to Tijuana, this time joined by Matt Roe (a friend of Jeff’s, who happened to be Asian as well, and equipped with an enormous head), Katie Miller (a long-time friend and, at the time, romantic interest), and three kids who sat in the back that I’d never met before. Their names were Josh, Amanda, and D.J. And D.J. made a lasting impression on me from the get-go. I read the Party Bus rules aloud, going over inside jokes that had sprouted during the Mammoth trip (such as the three elements of the Party Bus; the Vibe, Groove, and Flow), and he intentionally went out of his way to disobey them. And he kicked me in the head a couple times. He and I did not Vibe very well for a long time.

During the actual Mexico experience, it marked the first time I’d actually done some real work. I still wasn’t the go-getter that some other people seemed to be, but it was an improvement. I actually felt like a part of the team, like my presence actually impacted the outcome of the building.

Back at camp, Justin and I attempted to revive the Naked Dance Parties of last year, with the help of our tent mates D.J. and Josh. Because the Naked Dance Parties had been so secretive, though, we weren’t sure exactly how to go about doing one, so we did what we took it to mean literally; we got flashlights ready, created makeshift strobe lights, got naked, and thrashed around like a very small rave. With nudity.

A little further down the road, Naked Dance Parties exploded into the mainstream. Now referred to simply by the acronym NDP, they have become a staple trademark of CCCSM, something we aren’t sure if we’re proud of or not. They happen spontaneously, generally starting with lights going off or a strobe going on, or when a classic Party Bus song comes around (such as the infamous “Save a Horse, Ride a Cowboy”). We stage a fairly elaborate one during Mammoth 2007 under the codename of “Santa’s Got A Brand New Bag,” and had one on top of a truck in Mexico that same year.

The Party Bus died later that year. We were taking it down to Mexico again that fall, not for an Amor mission but for a shorter-term trip to an orphanage in El Porvinir, and it had barely made it more than ten minutes before the engine keeled over. It was a very tragic affair, and for the entire year afterward, our youth group was Party Bus-less.

Then, in the very beginning of 2008, a small team went up and changed the engine for the Party Bus, just in time for the Mammoth trip. And, consequently, the spring Mexico trip…

The Ongoing Saga of the Party Bus (Part One): Camarillo – San Diego

Party Bus seats filled up fast this year. Even though it’s an incredibly spacious vehicle, there are traffic laws that prohibit the number of passengers exceeding the number of seatbelts. A lame law, if you ask me, which forces half of the people who expected to ride in the Party Bus out in the cold. Jeff, obviously, had a guaranteed spot because, well, it’s his car. Justin and I had secured seats because we, like Jeff, were members of the O.G. Party Bus (a cult-like following of the Party Bus and its legacy who traveled with it to Mammoth in 2006 and are more devoted to it than any level-headed person should be to a car). We decided to bring along Nate Bradshaw because he’s practically an unofficial member of the O.G. Party Bus anyway, he travels with us so often. Matt Roe sat shotgun, and no one was going to take it from him because he would head-butt you with his enormous skull, which has a very good chance of leaving one paralyzed. Melissa Foucar and Elizabeth Graham both felt that they had earned the right to ride in the Party Bus after several years of not being allowed inside, and we agreed. They also brought along Sharon Cook, and nobody protested because Sharon’s pretty cool.

The seating arrangements had been made long before March 12th ever rolled along, but so many people had been left out, I had a feeling that some of them might very well try to procure a spot anyway, by getting in the car and refusing to come out, so just in case of such an event, I threw my stuff into my regular spot (the window seat behind the driver) as soon as I arrived at the church that morning, because it’s one of those rules, like calling “dibs.” Nate and Melissa arrived soon after I did, and also put their belongings in the Party Bus.

Then I got a call from Justin. He and I had arranged to meet at the church at 8:00 sharp that morning to go snack shopping, which would give us half an hour, since Jeff wanted everyone to be ready to leave at 8:30. However, our plans were complicated when Justin decided to have an overnight pre-Mexico party at the church with and Katie and Tanner McCarey, neither of whom had been able to secure seats in the Party Bus, and who were severely disappointed. It was only a few minutes past eight when I arrived, so I assumed the three of them had jumped the gun and gone snack-shopping without me, which was confirmed by Justin’s phone call.

“Bring Nate and Melissa over here; we’re going to Rite Aid,” he instructed, and I obeyed. I checked in with Jeff, who had been standing next to the Party Bus looking terribly cool. Jeff is an incredibly confident person, and anyone who saw him that morning would irrefutably agree. You see, every year it is a tradition for the girls to braid their hair so it stays relatively clean during the six days of not-showering. And so, in the months preceding Mexico, Jeff had vowed to grow his hair out so that he too could braid his hair. And he had. It looked amazing. His hair was just long enough to put braids in, but short enough so that they stood up on top of his head, making him look like an Asian Coolio.

“You really did it,” I said as I stared incredulously at his head.

“Of course I did it!” Jeff exclaimed. When Jeff says he’s going to do something, he does it. “You know,” he said, eyeing my hair, “yours is probably long enough to braid, too.”

“Yeah,” I laughed. “We’ll see about that. Nate, Mel, and I are going to the store to meet up with Justin and gang.”

“Alright,” Jeff conceded, “Be back by 8:30.”

“We will,” I promised.

Nate, Melissa, and I then got inside my car, the Flying Dutchman, and drove over to the plaza across from the church where we’d spent every Sunday afternoon for the better part of four years. Generally, these Sundays were spent at our regular hangout spot, Me-N-Ed’s Pizzeria, but today we had more important thins to deal with, so we drove further down the parking lot to an Albertson’s grocery store. I needed an ATM not only for road trip accessories (e.g. Skittles and Combos) but for anything else I might need during my next six days in Mexico.

Coincidently, as the three of us walked inside one of the entrances to Albertsons, we noticed Sharon, Justin, Katie, and Tanner walking out the other one.

“What are you doing?” Justin shouted. “I said to meet us at Rite Aid!”

“I know,” I said, as my group walked over to join his, “but I need to get money, and Rite Aid doesn’t have an ATM. What are you doing here?”

Justin and Tanner held up their energy drinks. “Rite Aid doesn’t have the kind we like,” Tanner explained.

“You know, a lot of stuff is cheaper at Albertson’s, anyway,” I told them. “Why don’t we just do all of our shopping here?”

“Because Albertson’s doesn’t have Combos!” Justin yelled as he smacked my on the head.

“Good point,” I agreed.

After extracting $40 from my checking account (this is Tijuana we’re talking about; how much money did you think I’d need?), the seven of us walked a few stores down to Rite Aid where we grabbed all of the candy, Combos, and carbonated drinks we might possibly need for the next six hours or so. Somewhere along the way, we lost Sharon and Mel, and, assuming they’d wandered back to the church, the remaining five of us hitched a ride back in the Dutchman.

It was 8:32 when we got back. I apologized to Jeff for being two minutes behind schedule. “It’s all right,” he assured me, “but get ready because we’re going to leave in a couple minutes.”

When Jeff says he’s going to do something, he does it… as long as it’s within his power to do so. Unfortunately, there were some unforeseen delays that morning, most notably the fact that Collins Frovarp, one of the kids that go to Mexico every year with his family, was doing something at the school. Fortunately, the school in mention is the same one that is located inside the church building, and it was only going to be a couple more minutes before he could rejoin us and we could be on our way.

In the meantime, we pretty much did what we always do; sat around and talked while some of the girls (and Justin) braided some of the other girls’ hair. We passed around some inside jokes and pop-culture references, like we always do, but we have so many that it’s hard to keep track of them all. For this reason, Melissa and Elizabeth established a rule that all inside jokes must henceforth be cited, as if life were an English assignment.

While this was going on, Matt Roe (or Matty Q, as he was sometimes called) was out and about with his video camera, tapping everything he saw. He attempted doing some personal interviews, but was disappointed with the results. “Every answer I’m getting is either ‘I don’t know,’ or ‘Come back to me.’” He also discovered that Jessamyn Liu, a Mexico first-timer, was camera shy. “Oh, you shouldn’t have told me that,” Matt said with a grin. “Now you’re like a target.”

When Collins’ little side-mission was about to come to a close, some of us headed inside the church building to use the restroom and say goodbye to those not fortunate enough to make it on the Mexico trip, namely Jordan Bridges, Glenn Walker, and Nu. We then walked back over to where the Party Bus (and other less important cars) was parked, next to which the rest of our mission team had begun to form a prayer circle.

Jeff prayed for us; for our safety to, from, and during our stay in Mexico; for our experience to be memorable and uplifting; for our relationships to grow, with God, with each other, with the locals, with creation; for what we would be doing to have an impact on the families and their communities; and when his prayer had ceased, he, Justin, Nate, Sharon, Melissa, Elizabeth, and I got in our designated seats in the Party Bus – Justin and I at our regular positions (middle-right and middle-left, respectively) with Nate in between us and the girls in the back seated Melissa-Elizabeth-Sharon from left to right. Matt was waiting by the exit of the parking lot so he could get the traditional shot of all the cars leaving for Mexico. When the Party Bus, the car at the end of the caravan, pulled out, Matt jumped down from his post and jumped into the passenger seat next to Jeff. And with that, we were off.

One of the greatest parts of traveling in the Party Bus is due to Jeff’s iPod, nicknamed the PartyPod, which has been filled to the brim with over thirty gigabytes of music, ranging from all genres and time periods, some of which Jeff himself is unaware of, due to the fact that we occasionally take the liberty of adding our own musical tastes to the PartyPod’s library. Thanks to the Shuffle feature, the foundation of the Flow, we are able to discover forgotten favorites within the huge of music that fills the iPod, as well as mix things up when we choose to listen to one of our pre-made playlists.

For this particular trip, the playlist we had selected was the biggest one we had; The Sounds of Racing v2.5, created for the Arizona trip we’d taken last August and revised slightly by Nate (with supervision from Justin and Jeff, to ensure the Groove was not damaged) in months subsequent. This playlist would supply us with over twenty hours of music, which was much more than we needed. Jeff hooked up the PartyPod to the Party Bus, and we rolled out onto the US-101 South, with the Vibe in full throttle. Next stop: San Diego.

Well, you’d think so, wouldn’t you? After all, we’d gotten all stocked up at Rite Aid prior to leaving, the gas tank was full, we weren’t traveling with Chris, and we had been able to make it down to San Diego in three hours four months ago when we came down for the Niño's De Baja trip in November. So what held us back this time? Well, a couple of things.

First of all, we forgot to bring something with us. This is inevitable; it happens on every trip we go on regardless of the circumstances. It happened like this; we were maintaining a steady Groove all the way through Ventura County, and we made it into the Greater Los Angeles Area without delay. Along the way, we made great use of our new “cite your sources” rule, finding that most of the sources we’d quote were our handicapped friend Chris, or Caboose from the popular online show Red vs. Blue. The line “I had one of those, but I threw it out. It didn’t have many pictures,” is a line that he used in a certain episode in reference to an “English to Blarg-Blarg Dictionary,” but we began to use the line for much broader subjects and eventually (like many of our inside jokes) we started using where it didn’t even make sense.  For example, someone might say something about Magic Mountain, which would cause Nate to say, “Oh! I went there once! But I threw it out. It didn’t have many pictures.”

The music was superlative, as it usually is, but at times, the back three would have some trouble Vibing – their musical scope was not a vast as the PartyPod’s. We would occasionally need to reprimand one of them because “there is no sleeping in the Party Bus,” to which they would smartly retort, “I wasn’t sleeping! I just had my head back and my eyes closed and I wasn’t responding when people were talking to me.” Occasionally, during a song that had the entire car bouncing (usually a Disney song or some top 40 nonsense), Matt would peek his large head around from his headrest, camera in hand, and film some of our antics.

It was probably the use of the camera that reminded Jeff and Matt of the fire wire cable that they didn’t bring with them. Jeff pulled the Party Bus off of the interstate into Woodland Hills, while Matt 411-ed for the nearest Best Buy or Target or anywhere that might carry such a cable. “What do we need a fire wire cable for?” I asked.

“To jump rope with,” Matt replied sarcastically.

“I didn’t know you could jump rope with fire wire. I thought they were too short,” I said.

“Well, that’s why we need one; to see if they’re long enough to jump rope with.”

We found a parking spot close to a Best Buy, and while Jeff, Justin, and Sharon went to investigate, Mel, El, Nate, Matt, and I stayed behind with the Party Bus and stretched our legs. While we waited for the others to return, Matt started filming us, and occasional would capture some seemingly random scenes (stores, billboards, and the like) surrounding the parking lot. At one point, he started filming my t-shirt, the TWLOHA one that reads “LOVE IS THE MOVEMENT.” “Oh, that’s good, I can use that,” he said to himself as he held the camera up to my chest.

“What are you doing?”

“I’m filming words that I might be able to incorporate into the video. Like ‘love,’ that’s a very mission-trip-type word, and so is ‘service’ and ‘Jesus’ and…”

And ‘Super!’” Nate shouted, as he pointed to a sign next to a building a few feet over.

“Oh! And Yoga!” Melissa squealed and pointed to a store window that advertised Yoga classes, strangely situated in between two gun shops.

“It has to at least be relevant,” Matt said. “If you can show me how it relates to this trip, I’ll film it, but I’m not going to get Yoga just for the sake of getting Yoga.”

“What if we all started doing Yoga right now?” Nate asked. “Would that count?”

“Oh, hey! I can do that!” I said as I sat down and folded my legs on top of each other. Matt brought the camera back out and started filming as the other three sat down and did the same.

“Look, I can walk!” exclaimed Nate, as he brought himself to his knees, with his feet still crossed, and started hobbling around on them.

Elizabeth was having a harder time. “I can’t do it!” she cried, exasperated at the fact that she could get one leg crossed, but couldn’t bring the other one up over it. “I suck at Yoga.”

“Sssh!” I shot at the other three’s boisterousness. “I’m trying to meditate over here!”

“Oh, this is great footage,” Matt said from behind the camera.

“What are you guys doing?” Jeff asked, as he and Sharon and Justin emerged.

“Yoga!” Melissa proclaimed proudly.

“Fair enough.”

“You get the fire wire?” Matt asked.

“’Course,” Jeff replied, as he instructed us to get ready to pull out once again.

The first song we listened to, once back on the freeway, was Istanbul (Not Constantinople) by the legendary They Might Be Giants. Immediately, the Party Bus whipped into high gear, and Matt whipped out the camera, as the Party Bus veterans sang and danced along with the song, which had quickly become one of the definitive Party Bus Party Songs. You’d think that, having spent so much time around us and the song in mention, that even those who don’t frequent with the Party Bus would be at least familiar with the chorus of the song, but there seemed to be some Groove issues in the back of the Bus.

That wasn’t the only unfortunate mishap to befall us on our journey toward San Diego. At a completely random moment, most likely during a Groove-filled song, a large piece of plastic flew from out of nowhere (and I’m not making any of this up) and straight into the grill of the Party Bus, where it got stuck, flapping around on the hood, slightly impairing the vision of the driver. It was ridiculous, and we attempted several methods to remove the plastic sheet, such as slowing down to a near stop while on the highway, but to no such effect. After several minutes of this, Jeff finally pulled over to the shoulder, and Matt got out and pulled it out of the grill, to find that it had been partially burned by the engine. Matt then crumpled it up and threw it in the back at me. “The Party Bus actually eats plastic!” Justin shouted proudly.

Shortly afterward, we stopped at the Rest Area; the same one we always stop at when we head down south. Strictly for bathroom purposes, after we’d all taken care of business, we met back at the Party Bus and took off promptly, wasting no more time than necessary; we were already far behind the rest of our caravan.

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.

With one project finished, another one has just begun...

A couple of things today, ladies. Firstly, Mammoth is done. Before I left for Mexico, I'd finished all but the last paragraph. I thought I was going to wrap it up that morning, but I had too many things to take care of, so it got put off until seven minutes ago. Now it's up, and I've rearranged them so you can read them all right below this post. Knock yourselves out.

Secondly: Mexico. Oh, God, where do I begin? As expected, the trip was epic, and, in keeping with the tradition of each trip improving upon the last, it was the best Mexico trip I'd ever been on. But will I write about it? That seems to be the big question.

I've never actually written an Amor blog. Three years ago, I started one and got about halfway before calling it quits. Two years ago I said I would, but never got around to it. And I didn't even go last year. But this year, because, as I said, it was the best thus far, I've decided I have to write a report on this one. And because it will technically be the first Amor Report, it's going to be huge. It's going to blow all the Mammoths out of the water. I want this to be my magnum opus. I'm aiming for roughly forty pages. We'll see about that.

I know that I tend to be all talk and no write when it comes to these, but to prove my motivation, I've already written down an outline that will guide the report. You can find it at the bottom of this post.

Partly due to the fact that this trip spawned so many inside jokes, I couldn't be too sure as to when each thing happened, so after the main overview (the standard day-by-day recital of what we did and when we did it) I've added a list of Memorable Moments that were trademarks of the trip throughout.

My projected date for this to be finished is the end of April, but my projected date for the Mammoth Report was a month ago. Luckily, Mexico marks the last big trip until summer, so I shouldn't get too distracted. I'm feeling good about this. It has a good chance of getting finished. Just be patient with me. Now, go read Mammoth.

I.                     Overview

a.       Arrival Day

                                                               i.      Prologue

                                                              ii.      The Ongoing Saga of the Party Bus (Part One: San Diego)

                                                            iii.      Carl’s Jr. Intermission

                                                            iv.      The Ongoing Saga of the Party Bus (Part Two: Mexico)

                                                              v.      Arrival

                                                            vi.      Dinner (Part One)

                                                           vii.      Tales from the Campfire (Part One)

                                                         viii.      Bedtime

b.       Days Two – Four

                                                               i.      Breakfast

                                                              ii.      Devos

                                                            iii.      The Ongoing Saga of the Party Bus (Parts Three – Five: Tijuana)

                                                            iv.      Pre-Lunch Work

                                                              v.      Post-Lunch Work

                                                            vi.      Dinner (Parts Two – Four)

                                                           vii.      Tales from the Campfire (Parts Two – Four)

                                                         viii.      Bedtime

c.        Fiesta Day

                                                               i.      Breakfast

                                                              ii.      The Ongoing Saga of the Party Bus (Part Six: Off-Road Adventure)

                                                            iii.      Pre-Lunch Work

                                                            iv.      Post-Lunch Work

                                                              v.      Party Prep

                                                            vi.      Fiesta Time

                                                           vii.      Tales from the Campfire (Part Five)

                                                         viii.      Bedtime

d.       Departure Day

                                                               i.      Breakfast

                                                              ii.      Departure

                                                            iii.      The Ongoing Saga of the Party Bus (Part Seven: Border Crossing)

                                                            iv.      Carl’s Jr. Intermission: Reprise

                                                              v.      The Ongoing Saga of the Party Bus (Part Eight: Azusa)

                                                            vi.      Azusa Pacific University

                                                           vii.      The Ongoing Saga of the Party Bus (Part Nine: Camarillo)

                                                         viii.      Epilogue

II.                    Memorable Moments

a.       Angus

b.       The Butt Club

c.        Comingtoyeha!

d.       Jay’s Song

e.       Justin’s Injuries

f.         Matt’s Head

g.        Six and Seven

h.       The Stump

No road trip is ever complete without Skittles or Combos. That is not opinion, it is law. I cannot fully participate in any road trip unless I have these two snack items somewhere in the vehicle, along with an energy drink of some kind. These items greatly improve my Groove, which, as we all know, is essential for the Party in the Party Bus. After all, without Groove, there is no Vibe, and there can be no Party if there is no Vibe, understand? Probably not. Sometimes, I wonder why I even try.

Anyway, the point is, I needed these snacks, and that’s why I went to 7-Eleven after I dropped off my luggage at the church and took my wallet that I’d left at youth group the night before back from Jeff. I didn’t realize that I was the only person who had yet to arrive. Usually, there’s twenty or thirty people hanging out in the parking lot before we riggity-roll, but I guess not today. There was an early group that had left sometime when I was in Economics (apparently, mine was the only school that was holding classes that Friday) and the only people waiting to go to Mammoth were the ones eager to ride in the Party Bus. These people were Jeff, Chris, Justin, Nate, Tanner, Rossi, and Wes. Well, and me.

We said goodbye to Katie and Josh, who had come to see us off. We told them we would try and miss them, but in reality, we were going to have too much of an awesome time to think about petty people who obviously didn’t care enough to go with us in the first place. I’m just kidding; I love you guys a little.

The Party Bus did it’s best to Party with maximum Vibe all the way up to Mammoth Lakes, but it wasn’t without a couple of snags. Incidentally, all of those snags happened to share a single name: Chris. It happened as early as the first gas station we stopped at; the 76 station on the same street as the church. As Jeff left to go get air, Chris started spouting off profane words like fireworks. And that’s how that happened.

It didn’t really stop either. Of course, he’d stop to take a breather once in a while, but it seemed that he yelled “Fuck!” on the average of a couple times a minute. The only way to remedy this was to keep his mind occupied on something else, but this was only temporary, because whenever he thought of something that would remind him of… whatever… we would experience another stream of profanity. It was ridiculously annoying, and there wasn’t a lot we could do but attempt to ignore it.

Chris is usually a lot of fun on car rides, especially to Mammoth, but because he was struggling with his change in medication (we believe this is why his Tourette’s was so bad) we had to turn to other forms of entertainment, namely the tunes. Nate had mixed up the Freakin’ Mexico playlist to accommodate some newer songs and throw out some that had gotten stale. The playlist was now in its entirety twenty-three hours long. The downside to this was that we could not make it through the entire playlist in one trip (Mammoth is usually only about eight hours one way, sixteen hours total) leaving some staple Party Bus songs out. Luckily for us, traffic was horrible due to the recent rain, which gave us more time to whittle down the list of songs.

As for the Vibe, Chris was notoriously void of it. The kids in the back (Tanner, Rossi, and Wes) were occasionally asleep, but would sometimes sample of slice of the Party in the front of the Bus. For the most part, however, it was Justin, Jeff, Nate, and me who got into the music the most, as it usually is. We just have really good taste, I guess.

For dinner, we decided to stop at some random town with a Jack-in-the-Box. We ordered a lot of food, only to discover that none of us was very hungry. In total, five of us probably ate the equivalent of two or three burgers. Chris was acting up again, and because this was a public restaurant, we sent him outside so that he wouldn’t be disturbing the other customers. This only made it creepier. A woman entered and talked to Jeff, Cara, Nate, and Jen. “I just wanted to let you know,” she said, “That there’s a strange man outside cussing loudly and staring at you folks.”

“We know,” Jeff explained. “He’s with us.”

“Oh,” she said and smiled. “I was just concerned because you have a child,” she said, in reference to Ben.

“That’s why,” Nate told us later, “I’m telling my son that Chris is saying ‘buck’ and not… that other word…”

After a very meager dinner, we headed back outside to the Party Bus and waited for awhile. For what, I’m not entirely sure. We took the time to figure out some of the mysteries surrounding the Party Bus, namely why one of the doors would only open some of the time. We kicked, shoved, pushed from both the inside and the outside, but the only one who seemed to be able to get it to work was Wes. No one is sure why, but Wes seems to have control over the Party Bus, a seemingly uncontrollable force.

Our next and last stop was a gas station in (I believe) Bishop. We’d been to this station before (it’s where I bought my Elton John glasses in the ninth grade) but I’d never realized how completely disgusting the bathroom was there. My God, there were strange, dark liquids lurking in everything porcelain; sinks, urinals, toilets, you name it. I was very uncomfortable in there. Chris, meanwhile, was getting worse, and we were discovering how hard it was to take him anywhere in public. At this point, he was screaming the words rather than just mumbling or coughing. And, unlike in the beginning of the trip, it was pretty audible at this point. Anyone could tell that he wasn’t saying “buck.”

We took him back to the Bus and waited again while Jeff was doing something. It was very cold because the back window was down. Only, we didn’t really know cold yet. We thought we did, but we didn’t. Just wait; in two days we would discover the real meaning of it. When Jeff finished up we began our long trek up the mountain to Mammoth Lakes.

When we arrived, Jeff told the Pible Study crew (me, Justin, Nate, and Tanner) that we should keep an eye on Chris in one of the lower chalet rooms so that the other people would not be distracted when he went over the rules and regulations (remember who you’re representing). This was slightly upsetting because my favorite part of the rules is yelling “Shawn Pritchett!” when Jeff asks who our youth leader is if we get in trouble. I also like reciting the “Do not make Purple” rule, but we never follow that one anyway.

So when we arrived at the Sierra Nevada Rodeway Inn, we went upstairs to the Purple Room to say hi to everyone in the early group (which was, as I’ve said, most of us), but didn’t have a lot of time before we went downstairs with Chris to one of the lower rooms to occupy him during the unpacking and debriefing sessions. His Tourette’s had gotten progressively worse up to this point, and it was starting to drive me a little crazy. Attempting to get away, I went and sat in the bathtub while the others tried to get his attention with the television, but Chris was too distracted by himself, even for TV, and he followed me into the bathroom and talked to me about how upset he was. Repeatedly, I told him to go outside into the room to watch some TV but he told me he didn’t want to. He kept saying over and over that he didn’t understand why he was acting like this and whatever. I stopped caring and he started getting frustrated.

He could tell that I was mad at him, and he started getting mad. I got out of the bathroom and he started hitting things and screaming obscenities. Sometimes they were Tourette’s, and sometimes they were a result of the Tourette’s (he was intentionally cussing at his unintentional cussing, if you follow). I went outside for a breath of fresh air, because it was all starting to get to me. As I went back into the room, Nate Wigert noticed me, and thought that it was my attempt to get out of unpacking the cars. “Believe me,” I told him, “I’d much rather be doing that.” I explained that we were instructed to occupy Chris so that he would not be a distraction to the others. He and Mr. D came in the room with us and effectively calmed him down. Not completely calm, mind you, but calmer than any of us had been able to get him.

Using this period of downtime to my advantage, I snuck upstairs into the Purple Room, away from Chris for the first time in over eight hours, and got to spend some time with my  friends from the early group, namely Babis, Elizabeth, Emily, Glenn, Hannah, Jessi, and Jordan. There were also over ten “new” people, some of whom I met and talked with a little. We didn’t spend a lot of time together, though. We’d had a long day, and some rest was required. The girls and some of the underclassmen boys went off to their respective hotel rooms with Nate, Ben, and Mr. D. Then, Chris got the couch that rolled out into a futon, and the remaining nine guys (me, Justin, Jordan, Glenn, Rossi, Babis, Nate, Wes, and Tanner) squeezed into the Blue Room opposite him.

It didn’t take us long to realize that sleep was not going to come easily.

It didn’t take us long to realize that sleep was not going to come easily. After we had settled down a bit, Chris still hadn’t stopped cussing, and I realized he wouldn’t until he fell asleep. I let the other guys calm down (because I didn’t expect them to just get in bed and fall asleep) and went out into the Purple Room and sat on the futon with Chris. I had him set up his bed, and I talked to him about anything and everything I could think of to keep his mind away from his Tourette’s. It worked for a little while. But I knew that as soon as I left, he would start up again. The only way around this I could think of was to stay with him until he fell asleep. But that wouldn’t work for two reasons. First of all, if I were to stay with him, he would not be able to fall asleep for that very reason; he would just keep talking to me. He does not have a “slow down” button. Secondly, that’s just creepy. I’m not spending more time than I have to with Chris in his bed. Last time that happened, I was a freshman, and Wes and I woke up to an eyeful of something neither of us will ever be able to forget.

And so I left after I felt like he’d been soothed enough, hoping that maybe, just maybe, he’d fall immediately asleep.

Oh God, who was I kidding?

Not one minute after I had left his side and settled in next to Jordan and Justin (yes, we were sharing three to a bed again) did I hear several “Fuck!”s coming from over the half-wall that separated us from Chris, accompanied by a couple “dzzeah!”s. It was going to be a very long night.

It’s not something you can sleep through. It doesn’t matter how heavy a sleeper you are; when you are only separated by a half-wall, Chris’ noises are piercing and shocking. There is no rhythm or pattern; it happens at random times and you’re never sure when the next one will strike, putting you into a state of near-paranoia. You would feel yourself start to drift into sleep, and it seemed like every time right before you’d hit that point of letting your dreams take you away, you’d be shot back to the chalet with an annoying ‘Fuck!” I’d like to call it miserable, but that doesn’t even come close to what it was. It was easily in the top five worst sleeps I’ve ever had. And I’ve had some pretty bad sleeps.

It was apparent that Chris was getting annoyed by himself. He was trying desperately to fall asleep, despite his own yelling. That’s why we couldn’t talk amongst ourselves that night; if one of us as much as coughed, Chris would yell at us, “Would you guys please knock it off?” A couple of times, he actually got up and went into the bathroom for some reason, and cussed in there, then went back out and laid down on his futon… and did the same thing…

I think either he fell asleep or I just got used to it, because at one point around three in the morning (keep in mind, we went to bed a little after midnight) I fell asleep, but was woken up by some alarm clock at around five. The snowboarding crew got up, and this outbreak of commotion led Chris to wake up. And now he wasn’t going to fall back asleep. Fantastic. It didn’t help that the snowboarders were probably the loudest of all of us (Wes, namely, but they all contributed). After they left, I didn’t fall back asleep again until Chris left.

Lucky for us, Chris takes skiing lessons every time we go up to Mammoth. Even though his lessons weren’t until eight, Jeff didn’t know that and so they left as if the lessons were at seven. Using this opportunity, those of us left in the chalet (Tanner, Nate, Justin, and I) slept soundly for another two and a half hours, totaling about four hours of sleep that night. Needless to say, we were exhausted for the rest of the day.

We didn’t get a lot of time to ourselves, however. After we all got up, showered, and done whatever else needed to be done, Chris rejoined us. And in our couple of hours of peaceful bliss, his cussing hadn’t eased up a bit. Fearing that tonight would be just as painful as the one we just lived through, we declared an ear plug run was in order, and so the four of us (Tanner, Nate, Justin, and I) took Chris and set off for Rite Aid.

This marked the first time that I had actually been responsible for Chris in public since his medication switch, and I must say it was pretty embarrassing. Nate and I discovered the secret of keeping his mind occupied, and we would implement it whenever we would see children passing by, but sometimes it didn’t work, and we got several angry looks from concerned parents and passers-by.  When we got to Rite Aid, I gave Chris the option of coming inside with us or waiting for us outside. He chose to stay outside, because he said he didn’t think he would be able to go inside without causing a commotion. That, to me, told me that he knew it was a problem, and that he really was trying to get it under control. I admired that in him, but that does not mean my frustration was gone.

We walked through Rite Aid, looking for ear plugs and other things we thought we might need. We ended up buying ear plugs that would block thirty-two decibels of sound. We weren’t sure how many decibels Chris was, but he couldn’t be much more than thirty-two, could he?

As we passed the entrance of the store to get over to the checkout area, Chris noticed us, waved and yelled, “Hey, guys!” followed by a “fuck!” so loud that the lady who was walking into the store past him jumped a little. Oh, yes. He could certainly be louder than thirty-two decibels.

After we bought what we had our hearts set on, we walked back to the chalets, Chris tagging behind us by a couple of yards. “I need some actual human interaction,” Nate said. “I’m tired of babysitting Chris.” We all agreed. We needed to hang out with real people. We’d just spent over twenty straight hours with the kid; it was someone else’s turn.

That someone else presented itself to us in the form of Mr. D. He was waiting when we returned to take Chris sledding with him. We thanked him graciously, and went over to H2 (codename for “our chalet” and don’t ask why) to speak with Jeff. He related to us some pretty humorous stories of Chris at his ski lesson.

“He told me he had to go to the bathroom,” Jeff told us, “so I was like, ‘All right, dude, you do your thing,’ and I turn around for like two seconds, and when I turn back around, I can’t see Chris, but I do see the door to the women’s restroom close. And I just think to myself, ‘No way…’ Sure enough, another minute or so passes, and good ol’ 123 emerges.

“He also nearly got security called on me.” Jeff had similar experiences to what just happened to our group when we took Chris to Rite Aid, except the startled people that Jeff ran into almost went above and beyond a mere irritated glare. “I convinced them that he was harmless, though,” Jeff concluded. “It wasn’t too bad. You guys wanna get breakfast?”

I immediately thought of Hennessey’s, which was a pub situated up in the Village. We had eaten there last year, and it was delicious; I was not hesitant in wanting to go back, and both Nate and Tanner agreed that this would be a delicious spot to eat, though Nate was also leaning slightly toward the Peta Place. However, because Cara, Carter, Mrs. D, the Wigerts, and some of the non-snowboarders were already at Schat’s, we decided to rendezvous with them there. We took Ben and Melissa Fisher along with us, because they had just arrived when we were out buying ear plugs.

We cavorted through the winter wilderness, occasionally pausing to grab some icicles in the shape of spears hanging off the roofs of low buildings, or galloping through several feet of snow, only to discover that the “shortcut” we thought we were taking only led us further away from where we wanted to be. Come to think of it, it was usually Justin who did these things. Nate described him as having “no impulse control.” Justin would think of something and do it, regardless of how dangerous or stupid, and Better Judgment wouldn’t kick in until afterward.

We passed Mrs. D escorting some of the non-snowboarding girls (Stacey, Steve, etc.) in the opposite direction of Schat’s.  They’d already visited, but because Cara and Jen were still there, we continued on. Once inside, Justin ordered a sandwich or something, so that was his meal. Nate, Tanner, and I still wanted to eat at the Village, however, so we just bought a big dinosaur cookie and split it to tide us over. Meanwhile, we conversed with people who weren’t Chris, which was nice for a change, about things ranging from babies (Carter, Maddie, and Jen’s near-born were inspiration for this topic) to the character on SNL whose stories must always one-up anyone she’s talking to. Jen and I got very into it. Here is an example of our conversation:

Jen would say something like, “I saw National Treasure with Nate the other day. It was good; I liked it.”

Then I would retort with something like, “Well, I loved it, so… that means, I guess, I liked it a little more than you did, so… it’s just a little more…”

And she would respond, “Well, I don’t think that’s true, because I’ve seen it like a hundred times, so that’s more than you’ve see it, so I guess that means I like it  more that you, so…”

“Well, I have the movie on DVD already… ‘cause I like it so much… and, so… I watch it everyday…”

“Well, I have it constantly playing at my house… y’know, 24/7… so… I’m pretty much watching it all the time, so… it’s always being watched… I also own all the rights to the movie, so…”

“Well, I’m actually Nicolas Cage, so… I was in the movie, so that’s like more than just owning it… and I also played all the parts… and I wrote it, too, so… it’s like everything…”

And that’s how that happened.

Jen laughed, “You should do that to Nate; he’s really good at it.” Interpreted, that means, “I give up. You win.” Damn straight.

Surprisingly, I had found that the giant dinosaur cookie was pretty filling, and when it came time to leave Schat’s, I found that I was no longer in the mood for Hennessey’s. Tanner, because he didn’t have part of the cookie, still had his stomach set on the pub, and Nate was still up for the Peta Place, but we found ourselves going back to the chalet. And you’ll never guess who was waiting for us there.

“Hey, Travis! Fuckfuckfuck!”

“That’s exactly what I was thinking, Chris,” I sighed.

As with any excursion with Chris, Mr. D had some stories to share with us from Chris sledding. “We pretty much had the place to ourselves at one point, because he’d scared everyone else away. Parents would see him coming and ask their kid, “Hey, do you wanna sled somewhere else? C’mon, honey, let’s go somewhere else…”

Hi, welcome to Camarillo Christian Church. This is our friend, Chris.

Inside the chalet, we all sat on Chris’ futon and watched some television. Jeff told Chris to go take a nap; God knew he needed one, as he got an equal amount of sleep as we did. Although Chris was incredibly tired, he for some reason didn’t want to, and whenever Jeff would command him to rest, he would always ask “for how long?” as if he were expecting something to happen at a certain time that he didn’t want to miss. Nevertheless, he did attempt to sleep after Jeff gave a definitive time frame (his usual response of “twenty”), but had a hard time. He repeated his frustration from last night, and actually began crying and cussing in the bathroom at one point. At this time, I realized I no longer wanted to be in the chalet with him. So, as Jeff tried calming him down, I went outside to see what the other cool cats were up to.

Mr. D had brought out his sleds, and along with Nate, Ben, Justin, and Nate, were sledding out on the giant hill of snow in front of H2.

To avoid further confusion, Nathan Wigert will, from this point on, be referred to as “Quintana” while Nathanael Bradshaw will simply remain “Nate.” Also, Ben Fisher will be specified as “Big Ben,” while Quintana’s son will just be “Ben.”

So, Quintana, Ben, Nate, and Justin were sledding with Mr. D’s sleds, and I decided to join them. I think Tanner did too, at one point. We had a jolly ol’ time doing this, until I decided I was tired, and went back into the chalet to rest. I also wanted to try out our new earplugs. I’d never worn earplugs before, and apparently there’s a certain way to put them in (I always thought you just stuck ‘em in there, but there’s some sophisticated technique). I failed many a-time at my attempts to get them in all the way, so I eventually just gave up and left them as is. I fell asleep within minutes.

When I came to, I thought I had only been asleep for a couple minutes (twenty, maybe thirty) but Tanner told me that it had been over an hour. The best news was that, during my sleep, Chris had awoken, and started doing that thing he did within a few feet from me, yet I did not wake! Wonderful; the earplugs served their intended purpose! This was a hopeful sign for the rest of H2. Maybe tonight we would be able to rest peacefully.

We watched some more TV, and one-by-one, more students started dropping by the chalet, until the entire Camarillo Christian Church representation of Mammoth Lakes was in the tiny little room. A running joke that spanned the remainder of the trip (and is still, to some extent, running) popped up around this time as I was sitting on the futon and Hannah was sitting on a chair across from me, next to the TV. She began kicking my feet repeatedly, and when I asked her why, she replied in a quiet voice, “I like you. I’m flirting with you,” and then she giggled. I played along and replied, “Oh, gosh…” echoing Bashful from Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.

When it was time for dinner, we rolled up the futon back into a couch and filled our plates with chili, cheese, and Frito’s, except for Nate who couldn’t eat fried foods (‘cause of his stupid New Year’s Resolution), so he substituted the Frito’s for CrouchBerries.  As we ate on the couch, Hannah would occasionally tap my shoulder or leg and giggle, or nudge Elizabeth and whisper loudly enough that I could hear, “I like Travis,” to which Elizabeth would smile and roll her eyes. “I know,” she said. I’m not sure how everyone else got in on it, but it soon became a well-known joke, and Hannah and I couldn’t look each other in the eye without laughing.

When it was time for our first session, we loaded up in the same cars we’d driven up in, so I reclaimed My Spot (behind the driver’s seat) in the Party Bus. There was no time for the Flow, so we threw on a They Might Be Giants CD and listened to Istanbul (Not Constantinople) at least twice. We were the first ones to arrive at the middle school, so when we got out, we weren’t sure what to do. It was cold, so I climbed back into a car, though it wasn’t the Party Bus. She doesn’t have heat. But the Bridges’ car did (the Bridges’ car also had Hannah), so I warmed up in the passenger seat while waiting for the other churches to show up. They never did.

We figured out soon enough that we were in the wrong area (as it has been tradition for us to go to the wrong place on the first night since 2006) and drove around to where the session was actually being held. Around this time, I got a phone call.

We interrupt this Mammoth Retreat to bring you a message from Ryan, who obviously was not aware that I was on vacation, as he called and started asking me stuff about school and if we were supposed to email an assignment to our teacher. It wasn’t that I particularly minded the phone call, but it was just that half my reasoning for going to Mammoth is to escape from the Real World, and that phone call was like a friendly reminder from said World, as if it were saying, “I’m still here!” which was kind of disappointing, because I had made it thus far without a single worry, excluding that of “I worry I’m not going to be able to sleep tonight because Chris is a monster.” Ryan figured out where I was calling from, and asked who I was with. I named everyone in the car, and he squealed after Jordan’s name. He said, “Tell Jordan I say hi.”

“Ryan says hi, Jordan,” I called to the back of the car.

“Tell him I’m not here.”

“Who’s Ryan?” some other people in the car wondered.

”Just be glad you don’t know,” I told them.

“I just lost the Game,” Ryan said over the speaker, causing me to lose the Game, causing everyone else to lose the Game. These people were not happy with Ryan, and they’d never even met him. That’s the length that his infamy goes to.

We arrived at the place the session was actually being held, which coincidently happened to be the other side of where we just were. At least we were close. We got out of our cars and walked inside the school. Some people were complaining about the cold, but Justin reminded them that it was nothing compared to two years ago. “Remember, Travis? Remember how cold it was?”

“Oh, I remember…” I said.

“It was like twenty degrees out with a seven degree wind chill, blowing at like fifteen miles an hour. We had to squeeze like seven people into a three foot radius just to stay remotely warm. So don’t even talk to me about cold,” Justin concluded.

Inside the session, everyone was wondering how Chris was going to hold up. We were slightly reluctant to even take him out in public with his condition being the way it was, but Jeff said we would give it a go, and if he started acting up, someone would take him back to the chalet. I think Chris lasted about ten minutes into the worship portion of the session before Mr. D took him back to H2.

The session itself was great, as it usually is. I wasn’t familiar with any of the worship songs save for maybe one, but that just helped because I could focus more on the lyrics than the music and melody and get into a spiritual mode. Our speaker’s name was Trevor, and tonight he spoke mainly about what it is to be a Christian, and how some people claim that they are Christian, but act in a contradictory way. He touched a little bit about faith, but saved most of it for tomorrow night. Like usual, this was just the introductory lesson; the good stuff usually was uncovered on the second day.

At the end of the session, it was revealed that we were having a contest, and the categories were Best Injury, Funniest Person, Best Mountain Skills, Worst Sleeping Partner. We decided that Chris could qualify for all of them, but would most certainly win the last one. Forget Mammoth, Chris was probably the Worst Sleeping Partner on the planet. Half a dozen of us filled out slips nominating him for this category. Under “grade of nominee” we were forced to put 13^th, since he has technically graduated high school, and for “reason for nomination” most of us just put one word: Tourette’s. We thought it was pretty self-explanatory.

We left the session in the Party Bus, listening to more They Might Be Giants. At this point, only Justin, Nate, Jeff, and I are singing along, but we’ll win everyone else over eventually…

When we got back to the Inn, we gathered in the Mountain Dew Room for the first time that trip (it was not open for breakfast for some reason) and talked a little about the session. Then we were told to split into pairs with someone that we did not ride up with (Jeff’s intention was to get us to better know somebody that we hadn’t really spent time with before). Hannah asked me if she’d like to be my partner through a giggle, and I complied. She then went on to brag to Elizabeth about how Travis was her partner. Elizabeth said that was good for her.

In our small groups, we discussed things that we liked about the session and prayed. Afterward, Jeff made an announcement that Chris had fallen asleep in the chalet, and that we needed to be extremely quiet as to not wake him. It was a nice attempt, but I knew with the type of guys that were bunking in H2, there was no way 123 would stay asleep for very long. Disappointing, yes, but if worse came to worse, I still had those thirty-two decibel earplugs.

Sure enough, as Justin, Nate, and I entered our room, Chris had stirred. He wasn’t fully awake yet, and the amount of cussing had minimized, but he was no longer sound asleep like we’d hoped. “This really isn’t fair,” I said to them. “It’s not fair to us or to the leaders that we have to keep sacrificing our vacation to look after him.”

“I heard Jeff and Mr. D talking,” Nate explained, “and it sounds like there’s the possibility that he’s going to be sent home tomorrow.”

“That’s probably best,” Justin agreed.

“Yeah, but that’s not fair to the person who has to take him home.” We talked a little more about this, in a hushed as to not aggravate Chris. “We need to go somewhere else to talk,” I suggested. “How about the Mountain Dew Room?”

We walked outside to find Mr. D and Jeff standing on the porch. “The tribe has spoken,” Mr. D greeted us.

When we looked confused, Jeff clarified, “We’ve voted Chris off the island. He’s gonna leave tomorrow.”

Trying hard not to look overly excited, I asked, “Really? Who’s going to take him?”

Mr. D raised his hand. “You’re a better man that I,” Nate said.

We related to them what we had just discussed in our room, and decided it was best for everyone if Chris went home, though we were very disappointed that Mr. D had to leave to accomplish this. We told Jeff our plan to hang out in the Mountain Dew Room since H2 was off-limits, and he gave us the key, which for some reason was attached to a block of wood that someone had written LOVE on. Nate, Justin, and I sat in the vacant room for a couple minutes, eating pizza, listening to Bob Marley, and watching Flight of the Conchords on the iPhone.

Ten or fifteen minutes into our little pow wow, we heard a knock on the door. I opened it to find some Newbury Parkians asking if they could use the Room for Rock Band, as if we were the owners. We said they could (because, really, who are we to deny them?) and so they went to get their “equipment.” When they came back, their number had multiplied by about five. We felt slightly isolated - three of us and twenty of them – so we handed Shawn Pritchett the Wooden Block of LOVE, and left the room, only to bump into Jeff and Mr. D, who were walking in. “You guys want to go to the store?” Jeff asked. Did we ever.

Usually, on these trips, we end up making several trips to Vons, but this marked the first and only time I went (though I did visit Rite Aid a total of two times, and therefore could say that I “went to the store” three times, which is a pretty normal number for Mammoth retreats). When we got there, Jeff asked, “Alright, what are we getting?”

I was confused; I had been led to believe that Jeff and/or Mr. D needed to pick up supplies for the remainder of the trip, and we were just tagging along to keep them company. But, as it turned out, nobody really had any reason to be there; we just kind of went. That’s part of the strange power of Mammoth: even when you don’t need to go to the store, you go to the store. It may have had something to do with the fact that it was On.

So we grabbed whatever we thought we might need. I got some Advil for potential headaches, macaroni and cheese because it’s delicious, Lucky Charm knock-off cereal because why not?, and long underwear because it was pretty cold. We were in Mammoth, after all.

Justin, meanwhile, had bigger fish to fry. He called his beauty consultant and asked her what he needed to buy for the best possible face mask experience. I asked him who he was talking to, and he mouthed the name, “Elizabeth.”

I squealed. “Oh! Tell her to tell Hannah… that I said hi.”

Justin did, and then put on his best impression of Elizabeth putting on her best impression of Hannah. “Hi, Travis…” he said, bashfully. He then resumed picking up a cucumber big enough for twelve eyes and a couple bags of SweetHearts, because they were on sale (this is Justin we’re talking about; he’s incredibly cheap). We checked out and had a nice little conversation with our cashier. He was a cool person, and Jeff said you kind of had to be if you worked that late at a place like Vons.

When we got back to the Sierra Nevada, we discovered we’d reached a dilemma. Y’see, the “don’t make purple” rule was only acceptably lifted for H2 (hence the “Purple Room”) which was off-limits due to Chris-related reasons. But since Justin and I were not women, we had no idea how to apply face masks ourselves (even though, realistically, we probably could’ve figured it out) and we needed assistance, and we couldn’t enter their room because doing so would create purple.

After a couple of phone calls were made, we determined that we could use Mrs. D and Mrs. Bridges’ room and it would be deemed “acceptable.” But after we’d weaved through the maze of hallways that was the Sierra Nevada Rodeway Inn, we were disappointed to learn that the girls didn’t really want to play with us. They just used us to get their hands on the cucumber, and then left us out in the cold. Actually, it was rather warm in the hotel. Nevertheless, we weren’t going down without a fight, so instead of just going back to the chalet to find better things to do, we sat right outside the door of the girls’ room and slid Marshmallow Magic under their door. I also wrote Hannah a love note that went as follows:

Dearly Beloved,

                We are gathered here today to witness the joining of Travis and Hannah. All opposed, speak now or forever rest in peace with liberty and justice for all.

                Amen.

                P.S. Love, Travis.

I thought it was damn near the best love note ever written, and was very content with it, so I slid it under the door along with some marshmallows and SweetHearts.

Soon after this, we were joined in the hallway by a kid that I recognized from my school. I believe he has mild autism or something like that. Very calm compared to Chris. We explained to him our situation, that we had been locked out of the girls’ room, so he began banging on their door, loudly. Even when we told him he needn’t do that, he continued doing it, until we realized we needed to get up and go so that the neighbors wouldn’t get mad at us. We retreated into Mr. D’s room, which was shared by some of the underclassmen boys and Quintana. After waking them all up, we escaped that scene and walked back outside the hotel en route to our chalet. 

Along the way, we passed a window that we though belonged to the girls, and sure enough, after a minute of standing around, it opened up and we got to watch Emily and Jessi climb over the railing into the snow (I couldn't figure out why, but it was hilarious) while Elizabeth yelled for us to come clean up the mess that we'd slid under the door and Hannah blew me kisses. We caused such a comotion, that a representative from another church came outside the chalet we were standing across from, and reminded us what time it was (eleven) which we took as a "shut the hell up and get to bed, you freaks." 

We crawled back into H2 and found Chris who was in, essentially, the same state we had left him in; slightly awake. Even though this was an incredibly calm Chris moment, I still shoved my ear plugs in, just in case. You can never be too careful with that kid. He’s full of all kinds of surprises.

Thankfully, I slept soundly that night. I know not if it were due to the ear plugs amazing sound blockage, or the fact that Chris did not stir after I’d gone to bed. Either way you slice it, the rest I got that night compensated for all the sleep I didn’t get the night before. Sort of.

We were scheduled to go to a church service (a bigger one than last year’s) at around eight, but I like to drag my sleep-time out, by waking up at one hour, and then lying in bed for another hour, leaving myself only a few minutes to get ready.

“Travis! Travis! You gotta come see this!” Several people shouted to me, but I moaned and refused to get up. “It’s snowing like crazy out there!” Tanner cried. Great. Still not budging. Meanwhile, the rest of H2 had helped themselves to my Marshmallow Magic, including Justin who, in his frustration that everyone (namely Jeff) getting bigger versions of the things he had, searched the entire chalet for the biggest bowl and then went around bragging about how his bowl was the biggest. Seconds later, Jeff showed up eating my Lucky Charm knock-offs out of a cooking pot.

After awhile, I knew I had to get up or risk sleeping through the church service. I regretfully climbed out of the bed that Jordan was still asleep in, grabbed some clothes from my bag and hopped in the shower. When I got out, I walked into the Purple Room and looked out the large sliding glass window on the far side. Down in the parking lot, I saw the three feet of snow covering all of our vehicle, plus the mounds of snow on the ground that almost completely swallowed their tires. I started laughing; I couldn’t help it. It was the most snow I’d ever seen in my life.

I grabbed a snow jacket and a beanie and stepped outside into the snow. Jeff, Mr. D, Nate, and Quintana were attempting to remove Mr. D’s car from the mountain of snow that had formed on and around it, while the rest of the guys ran around throwing snowballs and a bulldozer went around the lot, making drivable paths. I helped with the car for a little while, but soon decided that it was too windy, too snowy, and too damn cold for me, and I went back inside to help Chris pack up. The sooner that was done, the sooner he was out of here, and the sooner I would be free.

Soon, it was time; the moment a lot of us had been waiting for since we heard our first stream of profanity at the 76 station on Arneil two days ago. We high-fived Chris, hugged, thanked, and wished luck to Mr. D, and waved as we watched them drive away.

“Okay,” Jeff said when they were no longer in sight. “Let’s eat.”

The snow was falling too heavily for church to be an option anymore, so we instead walked over to a restaurant that Jeff had raved about eating at yesterday: the Good Life Café. We trudged through the blizzardy wasteland until we finally found refuge in the warm environment of the café. We sat and waited to be seated for a long time, and when a table did open up, it was not large enough to accommodate all of us, so we split up: students and adults.

We had a jolly old time, conversing with each other, watching the snow  fall outside, making fun of Babis’ name, and eating way too much food. I ordered the French toast, thinking it would only be a couple pieces (and there were, in fact, only four) but they were the second biggest pieces of French toast I’d ever seen. I could only down two and a half, and I gave one of them to Nate. I also got into a heated debate with Quintana (though we were sitting at different tables, we were close enough that we could communicate through yelling) about who’s food was bigger. The argument ended when he claimed he gave birth to a woolly mammoth through his urethra. You can’t really trump giving birth to a woolly mammoth through one’s urethra, so I surrendered. Jen was right; he was really good at this game.

After our stomach’s had been filled, we walked back over to the chalet in a much easier fashion than we’d walked from it, because the semi-blizzard had lifted. Outside H2, on the snow mound in the parking lot, we were surprised to find Glenn, Rossi, and Wes snowboarding on a crudely-crafted ramp they’d made themselves. Apparently, the weather conditions had proved too hectic for them, so they decided to chill at lower ground today. We let them play, and Babis, Tanner, Justin, Nate, and I went upstairs and took our pants off, making the Purple Room a very heavy shade of Blue.

Before long, we turned on the television, and searched for something to watch. We started on the Sci-Fi Channel, watching the ending to one of the dumbest horror movies I’d ever seen; it could easily have been Mystery Science Theater material. We kept looking and finally found Comedy Central, which was airing it’s Stand-Up Countdown. This brought back nostalgic memories of our first Mammoth trip, where we’d watched about an hour of the special. It was then that we were first introduced to ventriloquist Jeff Dunham. We started at number 19 and figured we would watch a couple of them, for old time’s sake, but ended up watching it for damn near the whole thing.

19. Doug Benson – We only got to see the end of this man’s act, but he was fairly funny. Nothing memorable, though, because we only saw about ten minutes worth.

18. Chelsea Handler – Consensus: Women aren’t funny. All that this chick talked about was sex. And she used a lot of explicits. She was censored more than Dane Cook. She was one of the foulest, horniest women I’d ever seen. Not funny. Next.

17. Steve Byrne – After two less-than-incredible comedians, we were relieved about two minutes into Steve’s act to discover that he was actually a very funny guy. “You like that? Of course you do. It’s magic!”

16. Maria Bamford – We were disappointed to find, after the very funny Byrne, another woman. Handler had already proved women weren’t funny but Glenn (who had joined us at this point) said we just had to give her a couple minutes, and if we didn’t laugh then it was official; girls weren’t funny. But try as we might, we couldn’t help but laugh at Bamford; she was easily one of the strangest comedians I’d ever seen, but she was very funny. “If I keep the kitchen floor clean, no one will die.”

15. Rich Vos – I was getting a little restless by the time Rich came around. We’d been watching TV for about two hours, and I sort of wanted to get up and do stuff, but one glance outside reminded me why I couldn’t. I wasn’t going out there, not in that weather.

I don’t remember much about Rich, because I started moving around, eating and talking and such. I do remember the commercials though. Apparently, only a handful of sponsors were willing to support this special, and we saw all five of them every time they took a commercial break. The one that showed at the beginning of each break was an advertisement for the premier of Dane Cook’s Vicious Circle at the end of the Countdown. This was usually followed by a commercial for Strange Wilderness which looked like a very stupid movie, but we all found the shark with strange teeth funny. His laugh would be echoed for the rest of the trip.

14. Dane Cook – We had thought Dane was disqualified because his special was at the end of the Showdown, but there he was at slot number fourteen. It was a very old routine, and much less funny than his current stuff, but I still watched it because, well, because it was Dane Cook. “I’M YOUR SON FROM THE FUTURE!”

13. Steven Lynch – This guy was essentially just a funny guitar player, not unlike Flight of the Conchords except in the fact that he was not New Zealandese and there was not two of him. Wes (who had also joined us by now) liked him, but the consensus from everybody else was that he was not as good as the company he was in. Halfway through his act, I left the Purple Room and took a much-needed nap in the Blue Room.

12. Mike Birbiglia – Due to my nap, I missed the majority of this man’s act, but from what I could gather from everyone else, he was incredible. “Sometimes when I'm driving I'll listen to the radio for hours. And I'll listen to Christian Rock, by mistake. Because it always starts out like a Bon Jovi ballad you know? (starts playing guitar). It'll be like. 'I woke up in the morning, and I got myself some oatmeal, and I put some raisins on it, and... Christ is God, Christ is God, God God God.' And I'm like, 'What about the oatmeal, I thought this was the oatmeal song…”

11. Demetri Martin – I’m not sure about everyone else, but Demetri (of The Daily Show) was easily one of my favorite comedians on the Showdown. His act was essentially a string of one-liners (occasionally two or three-liners, but very rarely more) but they were amazing. “If I have to move up in a building, I choose the elevator over the escalator. Because one time I was riding the escalator and I tripped. I fell down the stairs for an hour and a half.”

Around this act, H2 was invaded by all of those who had disappeared throughout the day, including the girls and those brave enough to snowboard on the mountain.

10. Mitch Hedberg – This man appeared stoned out of his mind, and presented his show in a similar fashion to the guy who preceded him – one-liners. I only watch a bit of it, and then volunteered to help Jeff, Tanner, and Josh get the pizza, because I needed to get out of the chalet. One of the funniest things I heard him say before I left was “I like escalators because an escalator can never break: it can only become stairs. You'll never see an Escalator Temporarily Out Of Order sign, just Escalator Temporarily Stairs. Sorry for the convenience. We apologize that you can still… get up there.”

We took the Party Bus out for a spin and drove it down to Rite Aid to pick up some sodas, or something. The Party Bus does not have chains on its wheels. Because, as Jeff puts it, “If you need to put chains on this car, you should not be on the road.” The Party Bus is, to put it simply, a beast. Nothing Mother Nature can pull will triumph over it.

At Rite Aid, we picked up some sodas and then drove over to pick up the pizza. While Jeff and Tanner went inside to wait, I stayed in the car and educated Josh on the history of the Party Bus and the Mammoth saga. He seemed interested, but had a hard time grasping the concept of the Vibe and Groove. Many people do. After we procured several boxes of pepperoni and cheese pizza, we drove the Monster back to the chalets, where we were greeted like mighty hunters who’d just slain and cooked a woolly mammoth. Actually, it was more like unenthusiastic “Sweet, the food’s here,” or “About time,” remarks.

9. Jim Gaffigan – I had no real interest in watching this comedian, because (thanks to Ryan) I’m pretty sure I’ve heard all of his good routines. I’d missed the majority of his act anyway, so I was much more preoccupied with getting some food. Ironically, although I had helped bring in the pizza, I ended up at the very back of the line, somehow. After several minutes of standing in line, I grabbed a couple slices and went and sat down on the couch to watch the next comedian.

8. Pablo Francisco – I was busy talking with Justin and Elizabeth and Hannah to really notice this guy, but I did notice he was making strange and annoying sound effects throughout his entire routine. I was thoroughly uninterested in him for the most part, probably because I’d just spent the better part of six hours watching television, but I did notice a couple of funny bits near the end such as “Huevo Splash; for the man who shaves his huevos,” and the brilliant “Little Tortilla Boy.”

7. Kyle Cease – Kyle was probably my favorite comedian of the night. It could’ve been his endless energy, his interactions with the crowd, or his montage of his own act at the end. Maybe it was how he reminisced on the “good ol’ days” with Super Nintendo’s and “Psych, I hate you, bitch.”

After Kyle’s montage ceased (no pun intended), we got dressed up and ventured back outside, this time to drive to the session. At this point, the wind had gotten more intense than I had experienced yet, and we scrambled to our respective cars as to spend as little time in its path as possible.  The tunage in the Party Bus remained as before. We had another listen to Istanbul, but it was still the same people singing. Come on, you guys, it’s not a very difficult song to learn!

During the very short voyage to the school, it seemed like the wind grew even stronger. When we exited the vehicles, we had to try very hard not to get knocked down by the heavy air current as we walked over to the doors. “Now can we say it’s cold?” someone asked Justin.

Justin smiled, pushing through the wind in only his T-shirt and jeans. “Nope,” he said bluntly.

Trevor’s message tonight continued where his last one left off. He spoke about how our faith in Jesus should prompt us to live our lives like He did, and that our actions and attitude should reflect that. “Your attitude should be like that of Christ Jesus.” That’s a Bible verse from somewhere, and I’m pretty sure he referenced it.

We retreated back outside where the wind had reached unforeseen heights. We ran to the cars, and Justin stumbled along the way, eventually falling all the way down into the snow. “Is it cold now, Justin?” I asked him once we were both safely inside the Party Bus. He didn’t say anything, just shivered.

Glenn, meanwhile, had taken Chris’ shotgun position and was busy clearing away the steam from the windshield so that Jeff, when he got in, would be able to see through it. Jeff did not come for several minutes. The snow had fallen so hard, the other cars weren’t able to move, so he and Quintana and a handful of others were clearing snow and pushing cars so that everyone could get on the road successfully. In the meantime, the rest of us were rocking out to the strange sounds of They Might Be Giants. We branched out from Istanbul and listened to such gems as “Particle Man,” “Birdhouse in Your Soul,” “Ana Ng,” “Don’t Let’s Start,” and many others.

Back on the snow-covered roads, the monstrosity that was the Party Bus was fully unleashed. On the sides of the roads were small snow dunes that had been pushed onto the sidewalks to make the streets more drivable. This resulted in several parking lot dead ends that other, weaker cars had to U-Turn out of. But not us. We simply plowed through the snow, taking daring and pointless shortcuts and, at one point, nearly driving up a tree.

Our adventures ended and we went to the Mountain Dew Room, where we had another short recap on the lesson, followed by a PSA from Jeff that there was a very small chance that we would not be going home tomorrow due to fierce weather conditions. There was a murmur of excitement from the congregation, but Jeff explained that we still had to wake up early and pack the Party Trailer, and only if worse came to worse (not the expression I would’ve used) would we spend another night in the Sierra Nevada Rodeway Inn.

We all began praying for a blizzard.

1. Jeff Dunham – We arrived back in the Purple Room of H2 just in time to see the last half of Jeff Dunham, who had (understandably) been chosen as the number one comedian of the night. We’ve loved this guy since our first Mammoth retreat, so we were happy to see him in the top spot, rather than someone stupid.

0. Dane Cook’s Vicious Circle – After having to sit through forty (not an exaggeration) commercials for it, we finally got to watch the network television premiere of Dane’s HBO special. Jeff was familiar with the program and told us to use our best discretion because he was heading to bed, but he didn’t need to worry too much; they’d censored (sometimes completely cut out) the naughty bits. Besides, the only people watching it were the inhabitants of H2 plus Elizabeth, Hannah, Jessi, and Emily; it could’ve been worse.

When Dane’s hour-and-a-half special came to a close, the girls realized it was past curfew and they left the chalet. We concluded that it would be best if we too called it a night. H2 was still very messy and if we were going to get it clean and ready to go by nine o’clock tomorrow morning, we were going to need our rest.

When I woke up for the last time in the Blue Room of H2, it was no longer snowing outside. Disappointed, I got up and hit the shower once it was empty. Everyone else had gone outside to load up the trailer, so when I stepped out of the bathroom, the Blue Room was completely empty. Using this to my advantage, and due to the fact that I was still very tired, I jumped back into my bed and spread out. It was the first time that I did not have to share it with two other people, and so I took the liberty of spreading my appendages as far as they could reach, then rolling around and repeating the process in a violent manner, all while screaming “Yeah!”

I then looked up to find Glenn, standing in the doorway to the Purple Room, staring at me as if I had worms crawling on my face. To break the awkward and embarrassing silence, I just starting squirming around in the bed some more, shouting a long and exaggerated “Yeah!” after which Glenn started laughing. Now, whenever we see each other, we both exchange a “Yeah!” similar to that one.

Outside it was still snowing, albeit not as much as the night before, but enough that I didn’t want to spend prolonged amounts of time outdoors. That, unfortunately, was not an option; the Party Trailer had to be loaded up, so I began grabbing bags and throwing them in the trailer conveniently located on the far side of the parking lot. Even after all of the bags had been loaded, H2 was still cluttered with people’s belongings, a phenomenon I could not understand. Overwhelmed, I gave up, knowing that all of my belongings were safely inside the trailer, so everyone else’s crap was their problem. I sat on the futon and began watching TV and eating CrouchBerries.

“This is the life,” I told Jeff. “We really should spend one more night here.”

“All it really comes down to,” he said, “is if I said I didn’t feel comfortable driving in these conditions, I’d call your parents and we totally would. If Carter wasn’t with us, I’d consider doing it.”

We passed the time with Marshmallow Magic and our seemingly endless supply of Crouchberries (we must’ve consumed six boxes during that weekend) while sitting on the couches and futon, watching The Price is Right, Gilmore Girls, and other random television, and generally just keeping each other company while the weather raged outside.

We probably chilled in the Purple Room for a good three hours after we’d packed up, and then Jeff announced it was time to head out; the winds had died down, the snow had stopped falling, and the streets were probably cleared by now. The only problem was we were missing a handful of our roster. “Oh, I think they went to the Village,” someone suggested.

Why would you go to the Village – without permission, I might add – on the day that we were supposed to be leaving? Jeff wasn’t very happy. Neither were the rest of us.

We called them and had to wait a couple of minutes before they arrived back. They were reprimanded while we cleared out what was left in H2, and loaded all of the cars up with last-minute necessities. And then we rolled out.

The interior of the Party Bus was covered with snow; on the ground, the seats, the ceiling (somehow), it was everywhere, so we kept all of our snow gear on. Keep in mind, the Party Bus has no heating system of any kind. We spent the first couple of minutes driving through the snow-caked wilderness outside of the town of Mammoth Lakes without any music, but we didn’t really need it; we Vibed just as well by talking to one another and goofing off. I scavenged Justin’s bag of Sweethearts for the perfect message for Hannah; Justin hung out of the windows and thumb-twiddled at people who were stopped on the side of the road because their bus broke down (EV Free); and Glenn, the newest addition to the Party Bus roster, more than established himself as a great Party Bus participant. The other new kid, Josh, more or less just sat in the back and kept to himself. His Groove was not as good as Glenn’s.

We turned the music back on once the scenery ceased being covered in snow, and it was actually very beautiful. I wish I’d gotten some pictures, but my phone had died. Before long, we decided to stop for lunch in Bishop.

A lot of our group headed for a Schat’s Bakkery, but, honestly, who goes to a bakery for lunch? So a handful of other and I headed over to Carl’s Jr. across the street. At Carl’s, we saw a sign advertising some new breakfast food with the label bold and in caps reading “HUEVOS GRANDE.” This caused us to endlessly recite Pablo Fransisco’s speech from the night before about Huevo Splash, the laugh from the Strange Wilderness commercial, and random spouts of “YEAH!” which only Glenn and I truly understood.

Once we were served our food, Glenn, Tanner, and I walked over to Schat’s to reunite with some other members of our group. Not finding any, we decided to eat our burgers in the bakery by ourselves. I’d finished mine by the time Jen and Quintana came over and made us give them their seats because they’re mean authoritarians. They told us we should be eating our burgers back at the burger place.

So we walked back and, lo and behold, who do I find in Carl’s Jr. upon my arrival? Why, none other than my good buddy Wesley from my ex-Mass Media class. This was truly bizarre; what are the chances that we would run into each other at the same place six hours away from where we lived? It was not planned at all. Wesley explained to me that he’d cut his finger on something like a staple or some other not-manly way of cutting his finger. I explained to him that he should have thought of a better story, like how he saved a baby from a flaming piñata. He said he would, and I took him over and introduced him to my friends as the kid who saved a baby from a flaming piñata. They were all very impressed.

After lunch, we all met back in the Party Bus and ducked down, hiding in between the seats until Jeff arrived. When he did, we all popped back up and shouted “Surprise! Happy Birthday!” Even though his birthday is not for several months, he was flattered nonetheless. I’m sure you’ve been able to figure out by now that this was all Glenn’s idea.

Glenn continued to offer us with some astounding antics throughout the car ride back to Camarillo, and it is for this reason that he has been awarded the Jimmy Award for Mammoth 2008, following in the footsteps of those who won before him; Chris, Jeff, and Jimmy himself. Some more reasons for Glenn being declared the winner of the Jimmy Award, in addition to coming up with Jeff’s Surprise Birthday Party, are:

• Folding his beanie into what appeared to be a yarmulke, and pointing to it saying “Okay, basically… yarmulke time!” followed by violent dancing.
• Guessing the next song the Flow would present (in his head, so there was no way to verify that he guessed what he said he did) and then loudly declaring “I AM JESUS!” when song showed up.
• Bringing up Huevo Splash as often as possible.
• Impersonating the Shark Laugh.

And other reasons that are too numerous to list.

More driving was met with more awesomeness. Not all of it translatable onto paper, so we’re going to fast forward a little bit to right before we hit Camarillo. As is somewhat of a tradition, once we got close to home, we took over from the Flow and listened to some songs that hadn’t shown up on the Shuffle yet. We started off with Business Time by Flight of the Conchords, because we’d repeated the chorus very often in the chalets and around the town. Then we hit up a little Anberlin with The Unwinding Cable Car because that song is beautiful. And then, to top off not only this trip, but the entire series of Mammoth retreats, we picked the song that has become synonymous with Mammoth Mountain over the past four years.

Knock, knock, knockin’ on Heaven’s door…

That’s what I’m going to miss; the soundtrack accompanying each trip. I’m also going to miss the relationships I’ve had the opportunity to further, with God, with my friends, with myself. I’m going to miss having nothing to do for four straight days, spending large portions of the day sitting on my ass watching TV or in a car listening to music. It may sound boring to you, and you may tell me that all of that stuff could be done down here in Camarillo, but you’re wrong. It’s different in Mammoth; it’s not boring up there. Every year has been more exciting than the last, and if I could relive any of them, I’d probably pick this most recent one. I’m not totally sure why; maybe you can find it somewhere in these last twenty-something pages. But there was something about this excursion that made it more… significant, I suppose is the correct term I’m looking for, than the rest. 2006 was the year of “Call the Bush” and 2007 was the year of “Shut Up and Drive” but 2008 didn’t really have a tagline, and maybe that’s it. It was too meaningful to be summed up in one phrase.

Is this the Grand Finale? Will there be no more Mammoth Reports? Only time will tell, my friends. Technically, in the canonical scheme of things, this should be the last high school Mammoth trip I will go on, seeing as next year I will no longer be in high school. But we’ll see. Nothing’s ever set in stone. After all, Chris isn’t in high school either.

Right now, I should probably be doing something important, like finishing the Santa Cruz Island trip report, finishing the Mammoth 08 trip report, finishing packing for Mexico, or finishing something else that I started that I haven't gotten around to completing yet. Instead, I would like to share with you something that I wrote today in GIS. It is technically an example of my schoolwork, and generally that would not be as entertaining as some of the other things I tend to write about, but I think this case is an exception. Essentially, this is just a testament to how rad I am because I did in fact turn this in as part of a project I was doing. I'm not going to elaborate on the project, because it isn't nessecary; you might be able to figure it out by the context it's in. So here we go: