Camp Week 4: Pecos River Valley

Have you ever seen a father so tired that as he half-sleeps, he allows the resident toddlers use his body as a jungle-gym? That's oddly enough how I feel about the flies here at Glorieta. Do what you will fly-children, but biting comes with consequences. For what it's worth, Glorieta gets too cold at night and doesn't have enough water to support mosquitoes. Seems like a fair trade to me.

This week began with a scenic drive through the Pecos River Valley in Casey's truck, yielding some fantastic shots. Casey was apparently eyeing the drive for a potential date. After I reminded him that I am a chaste damsel who does not take kindly to such forward advances, Casey clarified his plans involved someone else. While this came as a relief, I couldn't help but feel cheated. ... "Was I know good enough?" I wondered as we wound up the valley walls. The beauty of the place took my mind off of my betrayal...

This is a Mule Deer. It does not care about you.

Now, I want to tell you a story.
Once upon a time, Kitchen Crew was all "yo, Day Camp, ya got any spare staff?", and Day Camp was all "awww yiss, I gotcha back", because Day Camp was mad flush with workers.
The End.
And that, children, is how I came to work on Kitchen Crew this week.

The Kitchen at camp is a magical place where you can prep cook to house techno music, and clean up to pre-teen club music. The tween pop music playlist was owned by Rod, a middle aged black man with a really legit scar across his left eye. He has around 40 stories that he cycles between to explain how he got the scar. My personal favourite is the gang fight with a maul of grizzly bears. "You should have seen the bear".

It was very familiar to me since I worked in the kitchen at Degage for two years, but cooking for a couple hundred is very different from cooking for almost 2,000. Some of the different include using three flat top grills at the same time [which were named: R2D2, Katy Perry, and Shadowfax].

One of the challenges this week, however, was working with some of Kitchen Staff. It wasn't the full-time staff, but some of the part-time staff and volunteers who I had some trouble working with. In particular there were a couple staff wives and mothers who were bossy at times. I have an unfortunate problem where I do not like being told what to do in most situations, which is especially true if you are snappy and condescending while doing so.

All in all though, I really enjoyed the Kitchen Crew, but am ready to return to be among my people. Day Camp!

Here's to stories behind scars that are better than the truth.
-Patrick