Went to San Antonio
Yesterday, I kind of impulsively went to San Antonio with a guy from South Africa and one from New Zealand. The day started pretty cruddy. I was forced to stay back with Gareth while everyone else had the day off. Gareth and I are teaching riflery this summer, and we had a lot of work to do with sighting and cleaning the rifles, and getting the range into shape. I had asked the Program Director for times to do get this done repeatedly before that day, and every time he told me there would be enough time. Then, twice he said I could go down to the range and work, and at the same time sent down 30 other counselors for me to run a mock class for. I can’t get much done when I’m responsible for the saftey of 30 counselors shooting as much as they can. So there I was, on my day off, making up for work that I could have done before but wasn’t allowed to.
I will say that Gareth and I have had the advantage of the experience of an F.B.I. Agent who was a former rifle director here. He comes down every year to train the new instructors. He’s painfully thorough, but at least he’s thorough! We learned a lot and it’s helped us prepare for doing our best at the range.
After meticulously sighting 6 or 7 rifles with Gareth yesterday morning, being very fatigued mentally and physically, a counselor with nothing better to do came down to see if he could shoot. I let him, but it was extra effort to make sure he wasn’t doing anything stupid and to answer all his questions. Then I had a backfire, in which the round exploded in my gun and shot powder into my forehead and totally split my eardrum, giving me a massive headache. After that, I told Gareth I just had to walk away and get out of there.
A little later, we decided it was ok to call it a day (since it was our day off anyway and we were out there all morning and the night before when it was our night off as well). Gareth and I were both a little stir-crazy from being out here at camp and in the country for so long and we were talking about going to San Antonio. I liked the fact that it was pretty much set that whatever we were going to do, we were going to do it together as a pair. I like having a friend like that, the kind you don’t even have to think about whether you can go where they go–and if other people think about what one of you are doing, they know the other will be coming too. It was already 1:30 PM, so we knew nobody else who has a car would be going to San Antonio (which is an hour and a half drive) who hasn’t left already. So, since I’m an approved driver, I thought about getting a camp van and going. That idea got shot down by the director, since the only van left might not even make it that far. Then a guy said he was about to go to San Antonio in his truck and there might be room! I asked him and well we hopped in and went. There were 4 of us, as I mentioned above, and we were heading down the highway in no time, listening to Death Cab for Cutie album Plans, which is a great album.
I thought that the drive (who was from Oklahoma) would pretty much know what he wanted to do and we would just be along for the ride–but in fact nobody knew what they wanted to do and we ended up just parking and walking around the city. We saw the river walk and the Alamo in about 30 minutes, then asked someone what good stuff there is to do here and they said “Go to the river walk and the Alamo”. That stuff was pretty cool! I tried to imagine a big battle happening right there, but just couldn’t quite picture it. I don’t know what the Mexican army looks like now, but it was fun to think of a time when there was a mighty Mexican threat with soldiers wearing crisp, navy uniforms, marching on a haggard fort full of scruffy Americans.
Later we pulled into a gas station and the guy from Oklahoma, who is a real friendly nice guy, came out with 4 scratch and win lottery tickets–one for each of us! My first reaction was to decline it and tell him to take them back–but when I saw how it was all done in fun and really just silliness, I figured it was ok for me to do it because it wasn’t even my money. And it was totally fun! We were all just laughing so hard and the four of us won $12 on the first round, and bought more tickets, and only won $2 on the second, bought one more, won nothing; so we stopped. We were like laughing so hard the whole time on how stupid it all was, and I think it brought us all together in fun. Not saying it was a great, awesome thing that I would do–just saying it was really silly and harmless, and probably worth the $4 it ended up costing. Then we went to the mall and walked around, and it was great to get the South African’s and New Zealander’s reactions to everything.
When we got back, everyone was going to go to a rodeo/social club thing to probably drink, but I talked Gareth out of it and found some other guys and we all hiked up to the top of Joy Bluff to enjoy the moonshine and some really amazing shooting stars.
Then I got to call my love, the girl I’m courting, Sarah for a whole 30 minutes! What a great way to end the day every night–and I can’t wait to see her again.
