August 15, 2005

• I know this is going to be a long post, so if you skim through it, thats ok, but be sure to read the last paragraph.

  I'M BACK, and once again, am very appreciative of indoor pluming. I
  guess I should explain that we went on our annual camping/whitewater
  rafting trip in Wisconsin this weekend. We left on Thursday. Loading up
  the cars here and at Keith and Heather's house was a bit of a pain, as
  it was raining. Actually, it pretty much rained the whole drive up.
  Even after we got there, it drizzled on and off for most of the night.
  However, once it finally did stop, the weather was perfect. No rain,
  low humidity and sunny. Couldn't ask for it to be any nicer.

  First a little background of our trip. Here is link of the campground
  http://www.shotguneddy.com/ in case you were curious. My friend Keith,
  his grandpa's cousin owns this place. I have been going up here with
  Keith and a bunch of our friends since 1991 (with the exception of 1992
  and 2004) and we usually stay on an area of the campground that
  is...........not very public, at least until the public area starts to
  get filled up. We stay right along the river.........in fact, not only
  can we hear it and see it from our site, but it is only about 20-25
  feet away. Its very pretty and when there is not much noise in the
  morning, its great to lay in our tents and just listen to the river
  flow. There is, however, an outhouse about 50 feet away. They do try to
  keep it smelling as fresh as possible, but sometimes, it can get a
  little...........potent, if you know what I mean. Normally, we have a
  group of about 10-13 people going, with no kids and none of Keith's
  family (with the exception of his wife, Heather, but, I guess we are
  all sort of camping family by now). This trip, however, had Keith &
  Heather's kids, along with his grandparents and aunt (who stood at a
  local hotel) and his 18 year old cousin and his cousin's 3 friends.

  So anywho, on with the trip. We hit some traffic on I55 and 294, but
  besides that, things went great. We didn't actually have to stop until
  we were about an hour away from arriving. Now, keep in mind, this is
  about a 5 1/2 hour drive and we had a 5 year old and 1 year old with
  us. Normally, we don't have kids with us, but have to stop at least
  twice. So, all things considered, I think we made great time. We got on
  the road after 11.........could have been 11:30 for all I know. We
  arrived about 4:30ish............I'm just guessing at this, though, as
  I did not look at the clock. They had been nice enough not only to rope
  off a rather large area for us, but also raked it and made it look as
  nice as a sandtrap. It really pays to have grandpa come up with us!

  One thing that was new this year, was right next to the little shack in
  which you pay for your raft, there was a map of the world on a board
  and people sign it saying where they are from. It looks like Shotgun
  Eddy is now world famous! In addition to people around the midwest,
  there were people that had come from as far away as England, Germany,
  Japan, Australia, Madagascar, China and even Ethopia! I was looking to
  add our names to the board and walked up to the shack and asked for a
  marker. I looked up on the wall and saw a very familar picture and did
  a double take. Hanging on the wall for the whole world to see was a
  picture of all of us camping friends from Dave and Kelli's wedding! How
  fucking cool is that! See, back in 2001 when Dave and Kelli got
  married, we took a group photo of all of us that go camping together.
  Keith and Heather sent a copy to his grandpa's cousin and they hung it
  up in the office!

  I'm going to skip a lot of the mundane details of the trip. For
  example, Thursday night, Randy and I went to buy wood and make a phone
  call. There was a cute guy behind the counter where we got wood. It was
  great to get wood while I was buying wood, if you know what I mean.
  Anywho, the first night was pretty uneventful, but still fun
  nonetheless. When we first arrived, John, Randy and I had all sorts of
  issues setting up our tent, or I guess I should call it the
  "in-compa-tent". We have been using this tent for over 10 years, so I
  don't know why this was such a fucking chore.

  The next day, we got up about 8ish. We had already decided that if we
  were going to raft, it would be on Saturday. We spent most of the day
  just relaxing, hanging out and playing horseshoes. Keith's grandparents
  finally arrived about 3:30. Grandpa even played some horsehoes with us.
  He asked us who was the worst player (at least among myself, Randy and
  Keith) and I answered yes. He said he would play on my team. The first
  game started sort of rough. We quickly fell behind 8-0, but grandpa got
  his groove and I started to do ok and we won. And won the next game.
  Nothing too exciting, but it was fun.

  About 9ish, Keith's aunt (Kim) and cousin (Scott) showed up. His cousin
  had 3 friends with him. 2 of the friends were identical twins named
  Mike and Matt. They also happened to be identically hot and with great
  bodies. There was another friend, Kerry, who was easy on the eyes, but
  not nearly as hot as his friends. He is known for doing crazy shit and
  even got on MTV because of one of his crazy things. Anywho, I had mixed
  feelings about these guys. They were very immature, but were fun and
  could still hold good converstations. Also, they brought a glow in the
  dark football, which was really cool. It was pitch black out and when
  you threw it, all you could see was the ball. I was playing with Mike,
  he had on a white shirt which I could only faintly make out. Each time
  I threw it in what appeared to be his general direction and he would
  throw it back. The problem with this was that we could not see anything
  else. For example. I was going for a ball he threw and ran right the
  fuck into Scott's parked car. Still, it didn't stop us from still
  playing. Oh, did I mention I was drunk at the time?

  After awhile, we joined everybody else around the fire. The
  conversation turned to politics and religon. I was poorly trying to
  argue evolution to Mike. Why do I talk politics and religon with people
  I just meet.

  I skipping ahead now. The next morning, we decided to go rafting. Keith
  and Heather were going to take their 5 year old daughter, Nicole, up a
  shorter, safer trip. The rest of us (me, John, the twins, Scott and
  Kerry) were taking a longer, more challenging trip. When we first got
  into the water, it seem as cold as fucking ice, but after we were on
  the river for a little bit, it seemed to warm up. The river was packed
  with people. The best part about this, is that there were a lot of HOT
  guys with their shirts off and very little clothing on, including the
  guys I was with. The twins are truley identical, even their stomachs
  and chests were identically SMOKIN! Scott...........well, Heather reads
  this, so I won't go into more detail about him, as I'm sure she doesn't
  want to read about that sort of thing. Anywho, back to the trip. I
  witnessed what might be to this point in my life, the worst parenting I
  have ever seen. Some lady had her 2 underage daugthers on the river
  with her. The 3 of them shared a raft and a jug that was filled with
  some un-named liquor. The youngest daughter, who I swear could not be
  any older then 15, was pretty damn well hammered. She was just chugging
  from this jug almost constantly. She was walking..........no,
  staggering is the right word.........behind the raft that her sister
  and mother were in. In fact, she could have falled right the fuck into
  the water and they never would have known. What the fuck was her mother
  thinking? I mean, mixing alcohol with rafting is never recommended for
  anybody, especially a teenager who obviously is not a very experienced
  rafter or drinker. It was downright shameful.

  The trip down the river was fun as usual. I have done this trip 12
  times now and it is still a rush and still a little scary at times.
  Because of the lack of rain we have had, the river was quite low and
  therefore, we had to do a lot of dragging the raft through some rocks.
  In fact, the river was only inches high in some places. After about 4
  hours, we finally got to the climax of the trip, which is going over an
  8-10 feet waterfall. Upon going over the fall, I screamed out
  "evolution" hoping Mike would hear me. Even if he didn't, it was filmed
  by Keith and I have watched the video and I could hear me say it.
  Heather is going to email me the clip, so if any of you want to see it
  sometime, let me know. Going over the fall, I was in the front of the
  raft and John was in the back. He shot forward with his oar in his hand
  and whacked my arm with said oar. It hurt like hell for a few minutes
  and my arm even went a little numb. Although I don't have a bruise or
  any mark on my arm, it does hurt occasionally, especially when I press
  on it. I guess I would say its sorta like when you get a shot, how it
  is sore in the area of the shot for a few days.

  Later on that night, I was sitting around the fire with the boys (we
  had 2 separate fires). Kerry, although a good kid, seems to need some
  sorta of lesson on what to ask and not ask a person. For example, he
  asked me what I did for a living. I answered him and he asked how much
  I make. A little later on, we were discussing sex. He asked me straight
  out if I was gay, as John had made a comment the previous night that
  peaked their (the boys) curiosity. I told him that he had a lot of
  balls asking me the questions he asked me. I then told him yes, I am in
  fact, gay (for the record, I never did tell him how much money I make.
  Hey, I don't discuss my finances with anybody, but sex, I will
  discuss). This brought on a flood of questions which I was more than
  happy to answer. Remember earlier when I said Kerry was going to be on
  MTV? Seems he had his 15 minutes of fame because he wore a dress to his
  prom and took a gay guy as his date. Kerry (and every one of the boys)
  proclaimed to me several times that they were all straight. I do
  believe them, but throughout the weekend, they were making some gay
  comments and jokes. And, as straight guys are prone to do Kerry was
  pretending to be gay. I should have found all of this offensive, and in
  a way I did, but I did not let it bother me. I had thought they were
  just being immature. Now, during the conversation of my sexuality, I
  learned some things about them. They are not homophobic at all.
  Although they think being gay is a choice (don't worry, I defended us)
  and are not interested in being gay, they were very open-minded and
  accepting of gays. The twins work with gays. They have no problem with
  them, which is good to hear and good to see that the next generation
  seems to be more open-minded and accepting. Anywho, they continued with
  the questions. Questions such as "when did you first realize you were
  gay?" "have you ever been attracted to a girl?", you know, all the
  typical questions. One of them asked me when the last time I got
  action. All of a sudden, Matt asked me a questions that was about as
  far from typical as you could imagine. In fact, it stands as one of the
  5 weirdest questions anybody has ever asked me, if not the weirdest. He
  asked me of the 4 of them (Matt, Mike, Scott and Kerry), which one was
  I most attracted to. Why would he care? I'm pretty sure he is not gay
  (maybe bi-curious) and most straight guys I know would never even
  consider such a question. Most straight guys not only don't want a guy
  to be attracted to them, but they also don't even want to take into
  account that another guy would find them hot. I asked him why he wanted
  to know and he said that it was just like when a girl finds them
  attractive, they want to know which one is considered the hottest. I
  tried to dodge the question, but he kept asking me. I decided that it
  would be ok to answer, so I did, not knowing what type of reaction I
  would get. Honestly, they were all fine with it. I had just told them
  which ones I found attractive and they didn't even flinch or move away.
  It was great. Even
  after that whole conversation, they never treated me any differently or
  looked at me in a different light. It felt good to not only be accepted
  (not that I really care, I mean, its not like I'm friends with this
  guys and will probably never see any of them again), but more
  importantly, it gives me hope that people are becoming more open-minded
  to gays. Anywho, thats all for now, as there was nothing else too
  noteworthy to write about, although to be honest, I will probably write
  more tomorrow.

  • 1:02 am
  • 2 Comments