Workcamp to Bootcamp...

It's been a crazy few weeks. Absolutely crazy. But completely incredible, too.
On July 19, myself and three other chaperones (yes, people actually entrusted their teenagers in my care) left with 18 youth aged 14-20 to head to Wheaton, MN for a week of mission work. Where is Wheaton? Well, it's pretty much as far as you can go in MN and not be in the two Dakotas. Kind of where all three come together. Anyway, the drive there wasn't too bad. We rented luxury mini-vans which included a DVD player, Satellite radio and an MP3 player plug-in. Everyone was entertained- well, mostly everyone. One member of my van pretty much pouted whenever his ipod was not the selected ipod for listening. Things became better when they decided to pop in a movie. Great. Except that for safety reasons, the view screen is not anywhere that the driver can see it. However, I can hear the movie through the car's speakers. Great if you are in the van that opted to watch Aladdin, which the driver had seen multiple times and therefore had no problem following the action. Not so great if you are in my van- where they chose "She's the Man". It stars Amanda Bynes and is a modern-day, teenage take on Shakespear's Twelfth Night. I have never seen this movie. Multiple times, there was laughter at which point, I had to ask for a clarification as to what happened. Oh well. Such is the life of a chaperone.
Anyway, we got to our destination just fine and on Sunday got all checked in. Everyone had time for showers before the afternoons programs began. The first day went very well- met my crew (which is made up of kids from other groups in an effort to force everyone to meet new people) that I would be working with all week at our designated work site. They were great kids and all got along very well. Monday rolled around and we headed to Dumont, MN where Bernadine, our resident lived. We were to scrape, prime and paint her 2-story house. The sheet we got listed the house as requiring "light" scraping. When we finally located the house (in the town of 122 people with absolutely no street signs) there was nothing "light" about the scraping required. The task seemed overwhelming from the start. Not to mention that with a 2-story house, there was a lot of areas that had to be done while standing on the roof or on a tall ladder and Skipper is afraid of heights. Ugh. Again, as the chaperone, I had to suck it up and to quote Nike, "Just do it". Well, by the end of the week, we made it. We finished the house for Bernadine who was just like most grandmas- offering desserts and treats every time we turned around. We had a little extra help from another crew for a day and a half, but by 2:40pm on friday, we had finished the whole thing. I had heat rash on a good portion of my body and bruises all down my legs from leaning on ladders, but it was done. Of course, then we went back to the Wheaton High School where we were staying to be greated as we were every day by a freezing cold shower. Apparently, the high school has something like a 150-gallon water heater. There were 384 people staying there for work camp, so if you didn't get one of the first 20 or so showers of the day- you pretty much felt like you were polar bearing every afternoon. There are tons of other stories from that week- but telling them would make this post ginormous, and many of them are probably only funny to those of us that were there:) But, the week was an amazing experience and I feel like I grew just as much as the kids did during our time there.

Anyway, I made it home. Had a week off and then had the MS150 bike tour. This was my 5th year riding the tour. You leave from Waukesha on Saturday and bike approximately 75 miles and wind up at Whitewater. Then we stay overnight in the dorms and get up on Sunday to bike another approximately 75 miles to Madison. Now, with all the travel lately, the training on the bike has been lacking. I knew my legs could make it, I wasn't so sure about my butt. Saturday was great- awesome route, relatively flat, great weather, everyone in good spirits. Sunday, not so much. Very, very, very hilly. And people just wanted to be done. But, as a team, we finished. Along with my friend, Wendy, who rides on the back of a tandem bike as she has for 6 years now. Her MS has gotten worse every year, but she keeps going with rarely a complaint. One funny story from Sunday, though. They decided to have us ride around the capital building this year. Traffic-wise and everything, just not a great idea. But, as we are riding up towards the capital, we passed some sort of alternative club or bar. Really wasn't paying too much attention until I saw the people standing outside, cheering for us and high-fiving our riders. Only, these weren't your average cycling patrons, these were well-decked-out transvestites. But, hey, at least they clapped and cheered for us. Just not what you are expecting to see after that many miles on a bike.

Now to the last section...
So, after 150 miles over the weekend, on Monday morning I was awake at 4:30am to go to Bootcamp. No, not the real bootcamp. I didn't enlist or anything. It's this workout program called Milwaukee Adventure Bootcamp. A friend convinced me to do it with her. (well, didn't really convince me, she took the class in July and called me several times telling me how great this was and how in-shape she was getting- she knows how to convince me to do something:)
Anyway, 5 mornings a week, from 5:30-6:30 from August 4-29, you will find me down on Bradford Beach doing Bootcamp. Day one was rough getting up. I was sore from the bike tour and still very tired. As we were heading down to the lake, we saw some lightening, which made my friend comment that class would probably be canceled as the instructor doesn't do class with lightening. Well, wouldn't you know, since it was the first day, she decided to chance it and keep an eye on the weather while we got started. It actually wasn't raining when we started, so we did some warm-up stuff and in the middle of stretching, it started to rain. At which point, she informed us that rain will not make us melt and to keep going. I truly felt like I was at bootcamp. Finally after 15 minutes, the weather got too severe and she canceled the rest of class. I went home and was cold and tired and decided to reward myself with an Egg McMuffin. Oh well, the diet can begin again tomorrow- that was a damn tasty sandwich.