Dear Lorena and family

I spent many of my life min. with the Dayley/Davis clan in high school. While I have a ton of embarrassing moments with them all and I could go on for many days of experiences, I am going to focus on 3 physical activity memories.

You see this wonderful family loves physical labor and hard work. I learned fast to buck up and deal with it when I was around them. There is no room for ninnies, and while they may love you despite your lack of physical drive, there is also no room for failure.

Physical feat #1

I learned to move pipe at their house.

Being only 111 lbs in high school I looked very silly in those giant rubber boots. I looked even more silly the first time I tried to lift the pipe and it didn't to anything. But I was tough and I imagined my non-existent dying children trapped under the pipe and lifted those pipes full of water. I think it was on the second one I was shown how to drain them first. Even then I didn't always wait to empty them because I was a slow worker. Like I implied before, an attribute such as this wasn't the most valued. So I grew some muscles and carried those water laden pipes because I wasn't about to fail, because FAILURE is unacceptable.

Physical feat #2

I learned to survive.

In an effort to do activities more like the boys, Katie and I formed a coalition to backpack like scouts. We worked together, with help, and put together a backpacking trip that the scouts had been on before us in search for a trail to the lake. Never having found the lake, we too were subject to the hard work of 14 miles through the brush, trees, bugs and mud. This first trip was littered with beehives. Lucky for all of you, I can only guess which ones came. If I rack my brain, I think I could get all your names, but I am choosing to just leave these up for the imagination.

The Hike started out well, everyone had energy and we worked well together. However, eventually the hiking went something like this:

in result, packs became heavy. At first we split the goods between the adults, however that only worked until they all had almost 2 times the weight they were supposed to be carrying. We had to make it work so Kate and I took extra weight as well. I remember it as a large amount more than we were supposed to have as well. We didn't have a choice we had to keep going because whether we made it to the lake or went back, we had to learn to survive. (ah ha! the magic lesson word!)

After splitting up some of the packs girls were carrying, we came up with a better plan for the hiking Kate and I were in the back this time setting the pace from behind. Efficiency. Beautiful.

This is where I mainly learned the "no room for ninnies" rule first hand because Kate was quite the slave driver. She did a lot of yelling/encouraging. But we got there! in just enough time to set up camp for the night.

This being my first backpacking trip, I learned how wonderful food is. It's amazing what you can survive on. It's also amazing how good bare essentials can be when you have been working so hard for them. I am specifically trying to get to squeezable peanut butter. We only brought one tube for one lunch of crackers and peanut butter. After the lunch was over Katie and I had the responsibility of holding it, which meant we ate it while we walked. I can't describe how fantastic it was to squeeze a strip on your finger and lick it off slowly. I've tried it since and clearly it's not the same. However! I can't shake the memory as one of the best things I have ever eaten.

The next trip Katie and I had to carry all our own food because we needed to be punished for eating all the peanut butter.

Physical feat #3

This has no lesson learned and doesn't really end all that happy.

Those that wanted to were invited to go on the 20 miler with the scouts out on the BLM land. For those of you who need to know what BLM land is

It's just like this. Its barren land that animals are allowed to graze on. The only water sources are large tractor tires full of water in the middle of nowhere. Usually they have dead rodents floating around in them because the mice are so desperate for water they dive in and then can't get back out.

Clearly you don't drink out of them.

It was hot and long and supposed to be done in one day. We didn't bring anything other than food and water really. Some barely brought that. In fact, many ran out of water. We were having to ration our water between all of us. I remember one person needed water so bad and then drank a whole bottle. All this no water business occurred half way through.

Those boys they trucked through without one complaint. Well, maybe that girls were out there and they had to share their water. Something stupid to say would be "well we created opportunities for them to be prepared little scouts." I guess we did do that, but I don't think in scouts they teach you to be prepared to give all your bare essentials to idiots that didn't bring their own.

In the end most of the girls got picked up with 2 or 3 miles left. One got picked up because of blisters that had popped and come back and popped a few times and had taken over her feat. All in all I did it, but it isn't a fond memory.

And there you go, a tribute to yet another of Lorena's posts. While I enjoy the physical activities, I hear ya sista!