Ring the bell, school's back in!

School's back in, and you know what that means- squish the adventures into the weekend!
The return to school was relatively tame this year- I kept my same two schools, my numbers are manageable (exactly 55, in case anyone was wondering what a speech caseload is supposed to look like), and the new staff members seem relatively competent and approachable.  Whew.  The kids are all over the place, but anything less would be disappointingly mundane.
First thing I did to celebrate the new school year:  Head back to Monterey!  I couldn't convince the Monterey people to join me for kayaking when I was there, but I did manage to join them for an afternoon on Elkhorn Slough when I should have been back on the other side of the state.  In honor of Elizabeth's birthday, she got the lucky purple kayak.  Trust me, no one in their right mind was going to stand between her and this particular purple boat.  Once we convinced her that she was not in danger from killer whales in the estuary, everyone had a good time.  It was gray and cool and and a great day to be on the water.  And a great day to eat Mexican at The Whole Enchilada.  But really, that's true of just about any day.

 

We even had church, with the slightly
odd addition of dogs running through
and people slapping bugs right and left.

Another week deserves another weekend.  In fact, a whopping 8 days of school deserves a 3-day weekend.This one was spent camping with some single friends at the ridiculously beautiful Buck's Lake in the Sierras. I heard there were snake bites and bee stings, people going home early and staying up late, and one night I slept in my car because I was too tired to put up the tent- but it was still a lovely time. 

 Saturday was spent- where else- on the water. This water was a day of white water rafting on the Lower Truckee River.  When I say day, I mean approximately 7 hours and 25 miles, ending well after dark with a paddle under a warm Blue Moon.  Sure, why not?  The guides were doing a trial run on that stretch of river, and anticipated a 3-4 hour run.  They had done their homework, but were given in/out information that didn't match the actual run.  So we just kept going, and going, and going- and no one uttered even a peep of complaint, not even my new friend Christine who got skewered as we went under a lethal porcupine of a tree blocking the width of the river, or either of the guides who spent as much time out of the boat as in, or Jeremy Larson, who was remarkably pleasant for a guy who didn't get lunch OR dinner.  The purpose of the trip was to see if this river or the regular run of the South Fork of the American River would be preferred.  It didn't take long before we figured it out.  Whenever the going was particularly rough, we would just yell- SOUTH FORK!!  

When we still hadn't reached our destination by 9pm, we pulled into shore where we could see people camping.  We decided to leave the hazy VW bus alone, but in the next campground we found a nice angel man with 3 kids, a fire, and tacos waiting for us.  He also had a truck, and moved all his tent and gear to give us a ride to our car.  Thank you, Dan the Angel Man!

So, kids, be sure to remember this lesson:  there's a lot to learn in life, and very little of it comes from a classroom.  Eat your veggies and say yes to adventures!