This coming camp season, I will say goodbye to the ways of a traveling team and will be at Millsaps College the entirety of the summer. In honor of the farewell to travel for the summer, I’ve prepared this list of those things in a traveling schedule that can be considered the worst … and the best… part of your summer. It’s funny how so many things at camp carry that connotation. The worst experiences tend to be the things you love as well, and the things you look back on and talk about as the summer ends. Here are 5 of my favorite dislikes at camp…
- You spend the entirety of your weekend in a 12-passenger van attempting to sleep sitting up. It normally doesn’t work extraordinarily well… good thing you have 11 of your closest friends to keep you company. You get to know your team incredibly well on these long drives.
- You drive a 24ft moving truck a significant leg in the 15-hour drive your team is making between Friday night and Saturday afternoon with a short stop to sleep on the way. It may be a long trip, but the best conversations always happen in the Ryder truck (also known as the Budge or Budget. We know it doesn’t make sense to call it that, but just go with it. Even the language of it makes it more fun).
- On that 15-hour drive… your truck could potentially breakdown halfway. Although it’s frustrating to talk to Ryder on the phone once every two weeks at least, I’ve never seen a team pull together like I did when 6 of our boys decided to stay with our truck, knowing they would have to unpack an entire truck and repack a new truck… and the rest of our team huddled and prayed over them. Here’s just one of our many Ryder breakdowns
- Sometimes, staffers get sick at camp. It’s just WAY more fun when you are traveling. From Texas to Alabama is quite the distance, and the stomach virus has little mercy for it’s victims. When sickness stricks, it’s amazing to watch a team serve each other. There’s no amount of staff bounding that can compare to cleaning bathrooms and packing a sick teammate’s stuff for the trip. It also brings plenty of laughter a few weeks after recovery when they hear about the funny things they said while taking their pretty intense medicine.
- You eat fast food every meal that campers aren’t present. Why? You have to eat fast and get back on the road. You can, however, compare every major fast food restaurant’s chicken sandwich, and you get excited when you get to stop at a Chick-fil-a or a mall’s food court because that’s “real food.”
There are so many fun moments that come from traveling. Expect to see 5 more in the coming days!