April 19 2009

Moving, slowly, but moving

Our new campsite.

We decided to stay in Quartzsite until the 27th of April so that Ty could attend day camp and would be able to attend his pack meeting where he will receive his wolf badge. Our permit to stay in the long term visitor area expired on April 15th so we needed to find a new camp. Since Ty's day camp was in Blythe we thought it would be a good idea get an extended permit and camp in the LTVA (Long Term Visitors Area) near Blythe for the day camp. We were disappointed to learn upon arriving at the LTVA in Blythe that one needed to go to Yuma to get the permits. This wasn't practical of course so we simply returned to Quartzsite and setup camp in their two week area and arranged with Ty's leaders to get him a ride to day camp.

I continue to be impressed especially after being in camp for a long time how quickly we can move. I feared adding the wall tent and not really knowing where it would fit would make packing very slow. I was pleased that the tent didn't take very long at all to strike and even though I am eventually planning to get a covered car topper to help protect the tent from rain, for now the tent straps very nicely to the top of the car. Setting up the tent wasn't too bad either. I would like to time myself when I don't have a 20-30 mph wind. Even in those conditions I had the tent up, staked and with the fly on in 50 minutes with Ty, Dallin and Natalyn's help. The kids were cute and looked like little sailors in a storm trying to hold the fly ropes in place against the wind. Natalyn and Dallin doubled up on a rope to have more pulling strength. It is very nice to have kids getting a little older to where their help is becoming much more substantial.

Day Camp

Off to day camp!

The day camp here was held earlier in the year than usual to avoid the extreme heat of the summer. Since the day camp spanned school days the way the organizers arranged things was to have camp split over three days. Thursday and Friday camps went from 4PM to 8PM and the Saturday camp went from 8AM to 4PM. At about noon on Thursday I got a call from a highly stressed scout leader to learn that the parent, we had arranged for Ty to ride with, was stuck in San Diego with car trouble. I volunteered to help give scouts a ride over and help at the camp for the day. Internally I was going through a lot of stress because I really wanted to get the part of the game I was working on finished, but I was also happy my employment is currently flexible enough that I am able to drop things to spend time with the family.

I had a lot of fun at the day camp with Tyrell. The camp leader was very full of energy and encouraged a lot of yelling and cheering, which was very popular with the boys. The camp was arranged into stations at which the scouts spent about half and hour each. On Thursday Ty did leather work, first aid, knot tying and geology. They also listened to a speaker from the BLM, and made a den flag. The next day when we were talking to Tyrell about camp I was very impressed with how much information he had retained from camp.

I didn't go to camp with Ty on Friday, but based on what Ty recounted, I am sure the day was as high quality as the first. He came back with a very nice chart of the Solar System and a lot to say about black holes. He also spoke quite a bit about a relay race game in which he apparently had a lot of fun. Oh yes, and he would not stop talking about BB gun and archery safety. He had a class in that and was very excited to shoot an arrow and a BB gun on Saturday. During the day we had forgotten that Tyrell had an assignment to create a container to protect an egg in an egg drop contest. After picking Tyrell up at around 9PM we were up pretty late with the duct tape and bubble wrap getting a drop container ready.

I dropped a very sleepy, but excited Tyrell of for his ride at 7AM and then returned back to camp. Saturday's day camp invited the parents and family at 2PM to watch the egg drop contest,camp skits and have a barbeque. The rest of us were planning to watch a civil war reenactment during the day and then get to the barbeque. We were disappointed upon arriving at the civil war reenactment to learn that the reenactment would not happen until 1:30PM which would conflict with day camp, so we filled the time running errands, shopping for things not available in Quartzsite.

I know it's stupid, unfortunately even when I am aware thinking is stupid I can't always voluntarily push it out of my mind, I was feeling a lot of pressure about the egg drop contest. Being an engineer it seems that I have a responsibility to know how to make a container for an egg such that the egg won't break, and being a father I have a responsibility to pass that knowledge onto my son so that he doesn't have to feel embarrassed about a broken egg. I had been analyzing and reanalyzing the design we had in my mind. The basic concept I know was nice, but I wasn't sure how well it was implemented. I had about 4 design fixes in my head that I would have liked to implement, but was just able to watch in gripped anticipation as the eggs were dropped. The eggs were dropped off a fire truck ladder. I was feeling even more unsure about our setup when I saw how high the ladder was. What we had done was go for a cone shape,and weight the tip, so that the container would drop like a shuttle cock, hitting nose first and then place the egg high in the center of the cone with just a little padding on the top in case the container bounced and flipped on impact. My thinking was that in as much as the contest included a sized restriction we could get about 50% more padding under the egg by directing the side of the impact. In the end with the way the duct tape pennies and milk jug worked out I think we pretty much broke even, in that we lost most of 2 of our allowed 8 inches to pennies. I was also fretting that we did not have break seams along the outside of the container, which would have been able to dissipate a lot of force and allow the egg a longer path of travel in its deceleration. Anyway, with a heavily flowing stream of ideas of everything that was wrong with our design and implementation and having convinced myself that I wouldn't need to seek a refund in tuition or deem myself and idiot engineer if the egg broke, I watched Ty's container fall and was very pleased that the egg was perfectly in tact. If anyone feels the need to remind me that this was Ty's egg drop contest, I'll invite them to reread the first two sentences of the paragraph. At some point I hope the stupid parts of my brain will cease to generate thought, but I imagine that day is a ways off. If Dallin ever has an egg drop contest with similar rules I think the answer will to put about a dozen eggs in the box with a bunch of nitro-tri-iodide (a mild contact explosive) and watch everyone get sprayed when the box drops. See I told those parts of my brain were still firing with all too much power and frequency.

With all of that said I guess I will hold a little to my bad thinking in that Ty was very happy his egg didn't break and seemed pleased with the level of input he had into the project. I remember when I was in the fourth grade my dad had a very high level of input into a science fair project that I did. I won the science fair and looking back sometimes wonder if that little telegraph project didn't start a career as an engineer. At any rate I do think of it as a time that I knew my dad loved me and was paying special attention to me. Even if I was a bit overbearing about the egg drop project, what I want Ty and all of my children to know is that I love more than I can say or understand and want to do everything that I can to bring them happiness and success.

Getting ready to watch eggs drop.

After the egg drop, the firemen were nice enough to spray the boys.

A very wet and happy Tyrell.

A great barbeque to end day camp.

Ty with his egg protection.

An extra drop for fun.

Quick note about the birds and bees

Really this is more about the bees, it was just fun to include birds in the title. Although as long as they are there I will say I have been impressed with the number of raptors we have been able to see here. I am very bad at my birds, I keep going back and forth between thinking our big birds are hawks and vultures. They don't seem to circle like vultures or have a lot of that fleshy material around their head but are very large and seem to fly with their heads dropped. Back to bees... in the desert water seems to be very important. We were very surprised the other day in camp when we looked at our water bottle. It has a small hole in the top. The hole attracted a swarm of bees. The bees in the picture are only a few of the bees that were around the water container. I put a cup of water out away from the trailer. I haven't noticed any bees by it or by our water jug since. It was quite something to see that many bees just show up like that.

Bees by our water jug.