ralph saves the day

Wait, I wasn’t done telling you about Memorial Day! Remember how I referred to a parade of idiocy, but then gave but one paltry example? I can’t believe you settled for that. What kind of sad parades do you frequent? (don’t answer that, ellie) The dog/roast drama was just a teaser, I have two more stories for you.

And before you ask? No. There are no photos. No photos of the world’s most awesome conjoined campsites; complete with a full bar, a carpet and vacuum, a 12 foot table, a massive woodpile and an impressive assortment of small appliances. No photos of all the wonderful peeps who gathered there. No photos of the tangle of bikes and helmets that accumulated everywhere the pack traveled. No photos of the scurvy pool that looked like sunburned kid soup (you’re welcome). Just, no photos.

I do have no less than a dozen clear shots of this guy, though.

And a few others from a couple of boat adventures.

But I digress, and you’ve been promised two tales of idiocy. It's A Tale of Two Idiots, with the part of both idiots being played by yours truly. 

First, I fell off my bike. Spectacularly. I just got this bike, you know that. And it was so fun to be in a place where the primary mode of transportation was bikes. Campland! is always lousy with bikes.  It’s perilous to drive at all, there seems to  always be a tiny unhelmeted human spurting forth from between blind spots. I was riding along with the gang one afternoon, diligently dodging toddlers and drunks on my way in for a pit stop at our camp, which was right around the corner from base camp (with the bars and the vacuum and all the wood).  As my peeps waved and moved along on down the roadway, I turned to the right to pull in next to my car just as a tiny unhelmeted human sprang straight from the earth’s loins and directly into my path. His dad was right there, exclaiming at our certain fate. I avoided the kid, but just barely… I had something in one hand and was trying to brake with the other while turning and avoiding the kid and getting my feet down and I was wearing a dress and was so close to making it… I had it, and I was already apologizing to the dad for my own unsavory exclamations when suddenly I did not have it. Crash.  I don’t know what happened, I was still moving forward when I dumped, and I might have gone over the front, might have fallen from the side, might have slid off the back. The damage was minor, my front reflector plate thingie was smashed and the alignment had been knocked out of whack. I had a bloody scrape on my left foot and a painful right ankle, and my left wrist was pretty thoroughly smashed. My pride and my dignity were pronounced dead at the scene.  Idiot.

My next and final tale of woe is less dramatic, but way more annoying.  On our last day, we packed up camp and shoved all the dirty things into frightening piles and bags and buckets until we could successfully shut the doors of our vehicles, then we took off by boat for the ultimate experience in laundry avoidance.  We were out there all day, stopping hither and yon for food and bevs and fun. I bought sandwiches and a 6 pack at our first stop, which is also where we met Ralph.

At our second stop, we saw a familiar face.. see her there on the slide? It’s Beth’s girl!

That was a fun and funny treat, we had seen her the day before when she came to visit Campland! So our girls recognized her bathing suit from the dock where we were pulling up to see if we could crash the yacht club. We could! They just wanted us to spend some money, which was no problem, no problem at all! Except… where’s my credit card? We all searched and searched and searched, I called the sandwich place twice and they searched and searched. Then I sat in the sun at the yacht club and called to cancel my card. I don’t think it ever turned up, but I did ask everyone not to tell me if they found it, so I guess I’ll never know. Idiot.

And now that I've got all of this off of my chest, we may move on to Summer!