Junior High: Id Ra Ha Je 2008!

We spent the last weekend up at Camp Id Ra Ha Je in Bailey Colorado. It was a lot of fun! We played lots of games, sang crazy songs, did High/Low Ropes, and learned a lot about trusting Jesus!




(Above image links to ALL images on my Flickr.)





After supper, the guys set up Heroscape... I've seen people play Heroscape before, but Aaron has a seriously large collection of Heroscape sets. I think Andrew knew every hero by name. Matthew, Rocket, Cristo, Sam and I just picked whatever looked powerful or fun. This strategy worked for Sam and Rocket and they managed to wipe out most of Cristo, Matthew and Andrew's forces with few problems!




After setting up Heroscape, Zach and Esther led us did some worship where we learned some cool Czech songs like "Anchor for My Soul" and "He's Alive". Then Allison led us in our first lesson on Trusting God.




Aaron and Zach led us all in interesting prayers for breakfast, dinner and supper. I've never prayed quite like this before, but it was fun and interesting!





We played a lot of really fun games! We ate Pretzels, tossed balls, ate Alka-Seltzer, tossed rings, played Egg/Chicken/Eagle/Bear/Mongoose (Rock/Paper/Scissors), Mafia, Super Munchkin, Heroscape, Truth or Dare, and lots more! Here are a couple videos:







I think the most fun part was the High Ropes course! Unfortunately I did not think to make a video of everyone on my team like Aaron did (I actually didn't get any pictures of Matthew, Andrew or Kassie at all as they went before I had my camera out) But here is a video of Sam going down the Zip Line at the end!




If you were with us at Id Ra Ha Je and you want to see all the pictures of yourself, do a search on Flickr for 'SmilingCowboy "Id Ra Ha Je" '! All of the pictures are here.

Juggling Record!

Yey! I'm 2/3rds of the way to my goal of 100 catches of a 5 ball cascade this year! I just spent 40 minutes focused on 5 balls (the longest I've spent probably this year) and my arms sure are tired! I had several runs up around 50, but my arms kept getting tired and my left arm would randomly throw a ball 5 feet in front of me. Finally I managed to slow myself down enough and made it to about 67 catches!

People ask me this all the time... how do I count so fast? I always count by 4s, starting with 1 on the first ball I catch, it is subconcious really, when I'm out joggling I find myself counting by 2s or 4s. When juggling 4 I count the same ball as hit hits each time. With 5 I just kind of count every other right without thinking about it much. Anyway, lets say my total count is C (18 today). Then if I finish with 5 balls in my hand, I caught C*4+1. If I have less than 5, I just assume (C-1)*4-1. If I had caught the last two it would have been 73, so I just subtract 5 off since I'm not sure which of the 5 balls I dropped. Note: In reality it should be (C-1)*4+1, but I figure I'm less likely to overstate my count with (C-1)*4-1.

Anyway, if I make it to 100 throws this year, I guess my goal for next year will be a full minute of 5 and a full minute of 53444 (4 ball tennis)...