Test of Manhood?

Okay so I was overwhelmed in a good way at the amount of feedback and suggestions on blog suggestions.  So some of these will be easier than others and I should have said that I stay away from politics.  Not my strong suit.  I will leave that for the more opinionated  people for the time being.

So this is how I think this is going to roll.  I will write a blog for each of the suggestions as a way to keep my writing rolling (No not like the Alabama rolling, they can roll in mud for all I care).  Some of these suggestions are for sports, past trip experiences from Eckerd, Coaching and so on.  I hope that some are funny and enjoyable.  Please feel free to leave comments as a way of critiquing if you like, it just makes me better.  I will also tag you in the post so you know that your suggestion is being written about.  Enjoy!!

I started at Eckerd Youth Alternatives back in February of 2000.  Shortly after my training ( a month long training, in the fun and sun of Florida aka Catatoga) one of our MC's at the camp I was working at, asked me to go on  a 3 week river trip with a group of 10 boys on the Suwannee River in Georgia and Florida.  In this environment we had to make menus for three weeks that we carried in dry bags and dry boxes.  These bags and boxes were made so that if your canoe tipped over (mine had a habit of tipping a few times, more on that in a later blog) the food and tents and such would stay dry and would not sink.

We spent on average a month and a half planning, routing, re-routing, making connections and so on, to pull off a trip on the Suwannee.  If you have never been, the Suwannee was sprinkled with several natural springs along the way.  These made for some nice swimming holes, with the exception of sulfur springs which smelled like?  Use your problem decoding skills like 007, and you get what?  Yep you are correct, Sulfur!

So most everything you need you bring with you, including your porta-john, but now named ETOOL!  No sorry folks, no actual ports-john on the back of a skid or floating along the boats.  Once campsite was located we had an outside crew that would go search the most pristine toileting area, where we dug a nice hole where you "did the business" wiped threw it in the hole and then you either burned the TP or you buried it just enough for the next person to use. Right before we moved on to the next leg of our trip you would completely bury it, leave the campsite better than we found it with no trace of us being there.

Now for the ladies out there, that love to shower daily, yeah not so much on river trips.  Every once in a great while we would be able to stay at a state park or camp ground that would have access to public washrooms and toilets.

So it is at this public campground that we were staying at.  I was a part of the outside crew where we went and scouted a bathroom, in this case an actual bathroom.  So I took my crew of 6 with me looking for that sweet spot, to use the restroom and get the legs back under us after 6 hours of paddling.  I myself used these newly found pristine facilities and as I came out to my amazement and astonishment, finding several of my kids sticking their hands in a fire ant hill to see who was the "Manliest" of the group.

People, not an ant hill, a FIRE ANT HILL!!  We will call this young buck, Chet Black.   I guess you would have to say that Chet was the "winner" if you can call a hand the size of an elephant foot a winner.  Not just for two seconds or five seconds, but for like two  to three minutes, Ole Chet finally pulled his hand out of the hole, not OFF of the hole, OUT of the hole!  He dug into the ant hill to make sure he got in the deepest of the hole and fired up the ants even more.  As he pulled out his elephant foot of a hand, there were no less that 150 ants crawling and biting his poor hand.

So here I am less than a month and a half on the job, and NO emergency room within miles and driving vehicles of where we were staying, and I had to go back to my supervisor, to report that I just witnessed several of the campers do this and that ole Chet took it to the next level.  I thought for sure, Dan was going to call camp and tell them I was being let go, right there on the side of the river, to fend for myself.  We were lucky that we had plenty of Benadryl on hand.

As the trip flowed on (river reference) we had to make it a rolling joke.  My name is Chet Black and I am a fire fighter!  Just because I put out fires for a living, doesn't mean fires are friendly.  Unlike Firemen, Fire ants are NOT friendly...