Final Day of Work/Day Before Rec. Trip!!!!

Here it is: The Final Pre-Rec Trip Blog Courtesy Greenteam 1.

Today was a wonderful day. It started off with a wonderful presentation in the Voorhees parking lot from a very kind member of the NJ Division of Fish and Wildlife (sorry if I messed that up). She talked to us about the many species of turtles found in New Jersey as well as salamanders and other amphibians. It gave the morning a nice EE-Day feel. After that the vans departed and we went on with our normal morning routine. It was kind of disappointing that we had no work to do during the time Rachel Lettre was visiting; instead we went on a hike through our newest trail. We ate snack by the rocks and took numerous pictures by the rock structures that we were so proud of. Once we arrived at the vans many of the crew members were upset to see that the people living across the street had left us a note informing us that there had been a lost dog and urging us to keep an eye out for it. We then went back to Mountain Farm and practiced pitching tents until the other crew was finished working at their trail. Once Greenteam 2 was finished working, we went to hike the trail they made at Cushetunk and eventually completed the Cushetunk loop. Everyone from our crew was very impressed with the work the other crew had completed on their trail. During our hike of the loop, many crew members expressed interest in working further along on the trail next year in order to make for a more pleasant hike. That about sums up the day. I'm pumped for the rec. trip.

EE Day Follow Up

Thanks to Rex for that great segue on our Wednesday EE day. It reminded my to post The Story of Cosmetics info as requested, so here it is:
http://storyofstuff.org/cosmetics/
It's not a very pleasant story. Maybe I'll read more about Sky Monkey Palace and the Adirondacks where we'll be headed on Saturday for our rec trip.

Almost the Last Day

On wednesday we had an Environmental Education Day in which my crew went to the other crew's trail and saw all the hard work they did. I was surprised how much they got done and their construction of a french drain was awesome. Then we practiced each of our topics that we are going to talk about when the parents come and learned a lot from Tom. After that we went went to Voorhees State Park and did some games that really got me thinking. Then to top it off we went swimming in the gorge.

Thursday was a great day because Rachael came and got to see our trail. The entire day was spent making water bars for drainage. Tom came to see the trail and I gave him a tour of our trail. It was a very hot and humid day so GOD said," Let There Be Rain." It poured and everyone ran down the mountain to take shelter in the vans. Even though it rained we got a lot of work done and now we only have one work day left. It has been a great year building trails and now we get to have fun on the rec trip in the Catskills. : )

Deep Thought by Dave

Trey not here today
Pat had to carry water by self
Zach helped
Lunch spot at rocks
Southern accents for over an hour
Two more rocks set
Failed attempt to pull down tree
Pat's Stomach
Finished gravel work

Greg

Abby

Crew members spearing each other?

Liz

AJ S.

Anthony

Anthony

Rexifer

Taylor

Lauren and Arielle

The Boss Ladies II

The Boss Ladies

Colin

Zach

AJ R

Jevon

Just your typical day in the SCA

Today was another day of hard work. I was on fill crew with Brittany and Ellen (and Johnny for the most part) ALL DAY, but that's okay because we got tons of work done and Brittany only took dirt out of her bucket to make it lighter one time. We started out the day with another game of leg tag, after (or before, I forget) which Zach came up with his idea of some type of capture the flag/leg tag game that we're going to play tomorrow. We worked hard in the morning and during snack we were entertained by Doug and Zach (and Pat) talking to each other in southern accents. Apparently they'd been talking in southern accents for around 1 hour and 15 minutes (or maybe longer). During lunch we finally played mafia again and it was zombie themed. All in all, it was a productive day. We filled a lot of the trail, people were working hard on crush, rocks were set, and a surprise trail head consisting of pyramids of rocks and a checkstep was built at the beginning of the trail and it looks fantastic!

Monday after last

Well, today was quite an eventfull day considering the events... The morning started as any other, with the trip to Mountain farm, and to our stretch circlespot. And at that fatefull moment, shamus ripped his pants. After the strecthing, a half a roll of tape, and a game of team leg tag we were off. From there we went to our normal work site on point mountain. And a standard day of work for most of us... though some of us could have been delirious( Name that rhymes with Nellie), it was fun. And at lunch we had a special reading, by DJ pajama jon of "The Lorax". It was quite a cool day anyway and it was enjoyed by the crew. Huray!

Wolf Man on the Cushetunk Crew

Ellen

Kellie

Tray-Ceratops

Marcus

Molyneux

Jen

Dave

Sledging Team

Zach

Brittany

Crew Leader Rose

Max

Pat

To Intense For Monks

Today was a beautiful day! The sun was out, there was a nice breeze, and Rich Landy came to work with us! :D It was good having Rich since Abby and Jevon were not at work today :( Marissa had a wonderful question for stretch circle; what animal is the person to the left of you? I was a nematode and lauren was El chupacabra... thanks Taylor :P We played an awesome game of spread'em, where Greg hurt his bad pinky- this was not so awesome. When we reached the top of the mountain Colin took the AJs, Anthony, Rex and Taylor to put in water bars on the lower part of the trail. Liz and Marissa did crush for the far end of the trail. Lauren and I took Greg, Zach, and Rich to finish the last part of RPH2 that Jon had previously been working on. We managed to get the last rock into place and make a game plan for the last parts of the stairs. We decided on getting crush for the middle section.

And in the meantime Greg made a spear:

Greg the cave man!!

I fixed this thing like five times

After break Lauren went to work with Colin and his group and I stayed and ran buckets of crush with Zach, Greg, and Rich. They kept me laughing all day!! And we finished the crush needed for the stairs right on time :) At lunch we planned out what we are going to eat on the rectrip and played a game of Native American mafia, which was narrated by Greg. Lauren, AJ S and I were the mafia but colin killed most of us, and lauren killed her self to cause confusion. Liz and Rex are apparently getting married and Pat will be officiating. Marissa will be Liz's maid of honor and Colin will be Rex's best man.

Over all it was an awesome day! Also Lauren's brother Russ will be joining us! :D I can't wait to have Abby and Jevon back tomorrow, and take the fill pit picture :P

Snoochie-Boochies!

Arielle

Check out the NJ Star Ledger Article on the Cushetunk Crew!

http://www.nj.com/news/local/index.ssf/2010/07/hunterdon_trails.html

Pop, Drop and Lock It

So today was a pretty good day, even the few minutes of rain during break was refresing. We had nice weather and we got a lot of stuff done. The day started off with our usual hike up to the trail. I worked in a group officially named "The Man Crew Featuring Liz". This group consisted of Jon, Taylor, Anthony, Greg and me. We had some difficulty working in rock pit number 2. We started working right away and within the first half hour of working we managed to drop a rock that set itself perfectly. Our whole crew was shocked, although the rock soon became unset and the rest of our work was very frustrating. But in the end we had 2 huge steps added to the pit.

Early this morning a reporter and photographer from The Star Ledger hiked up to our trail to take pictures and talk to some of us. Jevon had a fun photo shoot as the photographer got some exciting pics of him sledging some rocks. We also got some group photos taken. And the article will be in The Star Ledger this Sunday.

During lunch Jon decided to bring a box of cherry tomatoes and gave one to each of us. The challenge was to throw the tomato at Jon's face and he will catch it in his mouth. And, depending on the throw, he ended up catching most of them, including one thrown by Greg across the whole rock pit.
"Pop, drop and lock it", quoted by Jon, is our process of moving a rock into place. Pop- lifting the rock up. Drop- drop into place. Lock it- setting the rock.
another term used by our crew, well just Taylor and I, is P.O.C. which stands for Point of contact.

So our day was pretty awesome and our trail is starting to look superrrr awesomeee :]

sledging rocks in a boulder field, nbd.

Today was a typical SCA day that incorporated: the planning of Rex & Liz's wedding, Jevon being a vampire, finding a fat toad (and naming it Wallis II), being interviewed by Lauren (about Wallis II), a human knot catastrophe, and of course crushing rocks with a sledge. It was about the usual today but totally fun. At lunch we played 3 awesome games of mafia. In the seconds game, it was down to Abbey, Greg, AJ S, and me. Abbey and AJ S were healers, Greg was the mafia, and I was the policemen. When the healers opened their eyes Greg pointed at himself without his eyes open, totally making Abbey and AJ S think it was me. Yeaahhhh so that was pretty much the best idea ever. Anyway, I sledge with Liz the whole day, and Jevon joined us in the morning and Rex in the afternoon. Turns out smashing rocks is a lot more fun then you'd think :D.

Oh and by the way you can edit your posts and change the date by clicking "Post Options" and changing the Post Date and Time if you posted late or something.

A retrospective on Friday's experience

Friday at the beach was so much fun. The weather was so nice it was just an awsome day. I learned a lot about the snow shoe crab and different shells and invasive species. We didn't do the netting which would have been cool but it was still a lot of fun minus the bad sunburn the next couple of days. The water was so nice and the waves were big and a lot of fun to body surf. I really cant believe that when i got home my dad told me that two sharks were spotted one beach over about 30 yards off the shorline the day before we went! Over all that was a great trip.

-AJ R

Group Pictures

WOLFMANNNNNN! RAWRRR =]

Greenteams 1&2

Greenteam 1

Greenteam 2

ExxonMobil and Ultimate Frisbee 2010

I'd like to start off by saying that in this post I will make up for my lack of content in my last one. Right now, I'm feeling a bit competitive(which I hardly ever am, it must be all of the uncompetiveness during Ultimate Frisbee and I feel that I have to make up for it(sorry for the babbling)), so I am going to try to beat Doug's lengthy post from yesterday. Here it goes...

We started the day off meeting at the Voorhees parking lot, like usual, except a whole hour later! You would think an extra hour of sleep would make everyone not as tired, but for today, that wasn't the case for some people. We loaded into the vans at around 8:45 and headed to the ExxonMobil building in Clinton. Rose's van jammed out to some of Jenn's awesome tunes which got us pumped for the day!

When we arrived at Exxon, we were given visitor passes with our names on them and met up with Rich Woods. We were all taken to a conference room and Rich Woods gave us a quick introduction and the agenda for today. After that, Greenteam 1(my team) was led upstairs to the top secret labs where Josh showed us the top secret lab experiments, Unfortunately, I cannot go into detail on the experiments, as they are the most secretive top secrets in the world. Meanwhile, Greenteam 2 was showed a powerpoint about landscape architecture given by Melissa. We then swapped places and Greenteam 1 was showed the landscape architecture powerpoint, and Greenteam 2 saw the top secret labs.

As Melissa was finishing up the landscape architecture powerpoint, Greenteam 2 entered the room and got to see the last few minutes of the presentation again. All of us then were showed another powerpoint, this time about an Exxon employee's trip to Qatar and the northernmost place in North America! Rich Woods then presented us with a powerpoint full of awesome and beautiful pictures from the grounds and wildlife of the building we were in.

Next was lunch! We were given a variety of different pizza choices, ranging from vegetarian to plain and a lot in between, along with salad and a large option of assorted drinks. As we ate, Rich showed us a powerpoint on bears in New Jersey, with multiple cute little cub pictures! After a short break, Rich taught us about biodiversity.

As the day at Exxon was coming to an end, the employees we got the pleasure of meeting today were ready for some questions from us. After answering some good intellectual questions, we left Exxon and headed to Voorhees State Park for some intense ULTIMATE FRISBEE. Greenteam 1 kicked some serious butt! It was probably because of all of our intense practice preparing us for this epic game. Unfortunatly for our teammates, Kellie and I died(figuratively) during the water break/halftime of the game, which led to a couple others also leaving the game.

As the day came to an end, we went to the Voorhees parking lot and people left happy and full of knowledge after a very educational and fun day. I would like to thank the employees at Exxon who gave us a phenominal tour and educational and fun powerpoints(Even though they might not read this, they still deserve a great deal of thanks). And to our crew leaders, Rose, Ellen, Lauren, Arielle, and Jon, along with the apprentices, Colin and Max, I feel like you guys are under a lot of pressure having to be responsible for all of us miscreants(aka crew members), THANKS. Also, none of this would be possible without Rachel Lettre, thank you! One last thank you goes out to you, whoever actually read all of that, thanks a bunch, it took me forever and a day, but I enjoyed it, and I felt that you should know about our epic day in detail.(There were a lot of commas in that sentence, oh well. I'm getting too lazy now to make it better.)

See you tomorrow!
-Brittany

Rain Averted

First off, I'd like to apologize to Max. He made me promise I'd let him post first to keep things in chronological order, but I might fall asleep if I don't post soon. So I am sorry if you are disappointed, Max.

Moving on... It rained this morning before work. It also rained after work. However it did not rain during work. Interesting. This is indicative of something great to come. Not sure what though. So our day started off with a fantastic stretch circle, in which we fantasized about being our favorite celestial body. At this point Pat pretended he knew something about time travel. Our perhaps he does...

Upon reaching our trail, we broke up in to three groups. Rose, nobly volunteered to head back up the trail and work on drainage. From what I understand, they had a great start on a water bar, which soon became a french drain, and later became a mess. Max's motley crew pushed on with the stepping stones and laid down some very impressive work.

As for me, I spent the majority of the day alongside Ellen, Brittney, and Marcus. First we surveyed our trail for the purpose of mapping and data extraction. Ellen taught us a ton about GPS's and cartography and pretty much everything else you could imagine. After snack, we hiked up to determine the path of our next stretch of trail. There were a few proposed options, and a few un-proposed options. Collectively, we picked the best one. We also learned that Ellen has done trail work in Ukraine. COOL! Satisfied with our decision and new knowledge we returned for lunch.

At this point, we endured a very poor quality game of mafia. It occurred to me, that our games have been gradually deteriorating. Largely due to Pat's inaccuracy and Zach's seemingly randomized intuition. It's become far too frequent that the fate of the game has rested on Zach's bouts of rock, paper, scissors. At least it's always entertaining. We also learned a lot about male female relationships throughout the day. Bryan even starred in a few role playing scenarios. Our crew has become very experienced at providing relationship advice. However, I cannot continue to give details. We maintain a strict privacy code.

We've got a lot to look forward to later in this week, as we finalize our current trail and move on to the next one. And tomorrow's Exxon Mobile... and ULTIMATE FRISBEE! I'd just like for formally say to Greenteam 2, Good luck.

-Doug

The Beach! :D

Colin being... well... Colin

The first day working on the first staircase

The crew went geocaching at sunnyside park!

Look at these crazy crew leaders!!

The crew sitting on rocks like a pride of lions :)

Drenched & Dignified

I know I am not assigned to blog today, but I figured since I have a few things to say and the fact that I am a crew leader, you guys will forgive me for posting out of turn.

I want to begin by saying how everyone was in good spirits, despite the heavy rain! This morning, Zach, Doug, and I made the 20 minute hike from our trail to another section of Point Mountain that needs a lot of work. I am thrilled that we were able to see our trail in such heavy rain. It's really nice to see that our hard work is paying off, but what's even better than that is seeing trail work from five years ago still working. The section that we hiked to this morning I worked on with my very first SCA crew in 2005, and it was so exciting to be back there in the middle of a down pour, seeing the trench along the side of the trail doing its job. It's hard to explain the feeling of experiencing hard work from years ago pay off.

If you don't mind, I'd like to offer a bit of advice (especially to all the newer crewmembers): Take pride in all the work you do this summer. Work hard on it too, because chances are it's going to be there for a really really long time, and hopefully for lots of hikers to enjoy. These random moments of joy in your work come randomly and when you least expect it too... I was at Barnes and Noble a few weeks ago, and was browsing the book "50 Best Hikes in NJ" and Point Mountain had made the cut! Even better was that the author had mentioned "it's steep and rocky going down, but you'll thank trail builders for their rock staircases". All I could think was THAT WAS ME! AND MY CREW FROM 2005! It was a fantastic feeling.

Anyway, I apologize for my unsolicited post and advice, see you all tomorrow, hopefully the rain will stay far away.

-Rose

Drought Averted - Trailbuilding Superfluous

Greenteam 1 had an awesome day! We had it all! Movies! Trailbuilding! Rain! Mud! Special Guest Appearances! MAFIA! What more could you ask for?

We started the day with Stretch Master Marcus leading us in a food-based activity featuring Jon's fried minnows. And with a quick Kansasian quote from Patrick, we were off to beat the rain. Only to be caught at the trailhead where we donned our foulweather gear (some of us) and braved the weather. Jenn and Doug, our highly skilled water buffaloes were unable to display their talents as we opted to leave the water near the car where most of the crew would be working. With a quick dash to the tool cache, we collected our gear and most of the crew headed back down to the stream to work on rocks and final trail clearing while Rose, Zach and Doug headed up to the Point Mountain loop to repair an old water feature gone bad. On reassembling at the stream we were greeted by our Special Guest, Professional Trail Builder and SCA Graduate, Alan Molyneux (now working on the TFC for the Appalachian Mountain Club). Alan, brother Bryan and Marcus got immediately to work on settling two slightly wobbling in-stream stepping stones (note that Alan wore both a helmet and gloves, oh and a shirt, too). Jenn (after graciously accepting a macleod from Treyceratops), Kellie, Brittany and I went to finishing tread on the section of trail heading to Penwell Road. The rest of the crew (Max, Dave, Pat, Johnny, Trey and Jon) headed for the stepping stones. While the pitter-patter of raindrops on our helmets created a zen-like calm among the crew, allowing a previously recalcitrant rock to be set with aplomb and the water feature to be repaired with relative repose, it wrecked havoc on the tread and mud was the result.

With great disappointment calls were made and the crew was put in retreat. The rain was helpful in highlighting the sections of trail that need drainage work or tread smoothing but a deluge was beginning. As the NJ State Climatologist's website will attest, it was a fortuitous decision.

Refuge was found at Rose's house and the crew was grateful to the Dattler Family for their hospitality. Not only did we have a dry place to hide but were provided with cookies, towels and a plethora of SCA t-shirts so we could change out of our wet clothes. Some crew members were quick to note their forethought in bringing a spare set of clothes and our special guest mumbled something about "cotton kills"

After a brief repast, we debated the cinematic choices of Toy Story vs. Who Killed the Electric Car? and the final decision was obvious. Who wouldn't choose a documentary over an animated classic? At least during work time. Post film and discussion we were regaled by our guest on the exploits of professional trail building and back country living, including high altitude moose, axe fearing bears and cog railway train robberies.

We ended our day with an intense game of mafia where Doug stole his role from Dave (due to the narrator's lack of concise non-verbal communication (Bryan)), Johnny missed his chance in nabbing the killers, Rose and Trey died without following up on their initial hunches, pillow distributors were cold-bloodedly killed and Pat commited suicide by a late-night wake-up. Zach and Doug, assured of each other's innocence did a slow but in the end effective job of killing off the axe-murdering trail crew of Jenn and Max. Through Kellie's keen insight, the killers were found and right prevailed.

Just another humdrum day for Greenteam 1.

Lauren's Hurricane Method

Okay! So I was scribe for Monday and totally forgot to do it. Monday was pretty fun, Arielle, AJ R, and I put in three check steps that are awesome. Lauren developed a method of killing flies today and I decide that it was very important and must be in the SCA blog (coughshetoldmetocough). First, you blow on the fly just a bit to test it. Then, you blow on it really hard and then hit the fly from behind with your hand and squish it. It actually works...
Anyway this is going to be really short and boring because it's 9:41 and I want to go to sleep.

Rain, and How it Leads to Lauren's Basement

First of all, I'd like to say that today was pretty much the most amazing SCA work day ever, aside from the fact that John was not with us today to enjoy it. Anyway it began just like any other day, meeting at the school at the crack of dawn, Jen rolling up in her graffiti covered car blasting screamo, and me commenting on how motivated everyone is for doing full-body-stretches before the day even started. The weather in the morning was fair, well, it was fair compared the torrid weather we've been having lately. The only problem was that the humidity was actually visible in the air. You know you're gonna be raining on the inside when you can literally see the humidity on the outside. Anyway, the rest of the morning was pretty routine too. Abbey was DJ and basically schooled us in the music department and Jevon was stretch master and had an.........intriguing question? (totally rolling my eyes at this right now) He wanted to know what everyones favorite type of object was and he wanted to do it in a linear fashion. What this means, no one knows. The hike was sweaty, thats all that needs to be said about that and the rest of the day was orthodox until................the rain started.

Now, for those of you who don't know, weather patterns of any sort will excuse you from physical labor in any circumstance. Lauren, with her aspirations to be a drill sergeant and plastic-melting gaze to match it, almost broke that rule. Luckily though, she hates blood enough not to leave us on slippery rocks surrounded by other slippery pointed rocks on the side of a mountain. At this time, I'll be honest, I didn't believe that this day could get any better. That changed when I found out we were heading to Lauren's basement which, by the way, is like a bar/game-room/best-basement-on-the-face-of-the-planet. Too bad we spent the first hour playing "Choose Your Own Life". For those of you who don't know what that is, it's exactly like that "Choose Your Own Adventure" game where you get to make the decisions in your story except no matter which option you pick someone dies. Totally rigged. But, I will let you in on a little secret, if you leave your kids alone for three hours as one of your decisions you get the only happily ever after if the game. And just for the record Green Team 2, abductions where the kid turns out "healthy and well" definitely counts as a happily ever after ending. To wrap things up we finished the day with the most amazing documentary ever, Planet Earth.

Adios,

Taylormander (yeah, thats my Pokemon name, you got a problem, talk to my trainer, Hurricaney)

P.S.

thats totally Lauren, who else would start this up

The Story of Stuff, Cap and Trade and the Water Bottle

3 short fascinating videos

Weather for today:

...and now Zachary Potter with the forecast: rain.

Yes, it rained today. How unfortunate. This is too bad for a variety of reasons, but mostly because it cut our workday in half. In the morning, the crew split in 2 parts: the BLUE SQUAD worked on crushing rocks on the upper portion of the trail and then joined the RED SQUAD down bellow. On the lower portion of the trail (previously untouched), some wonder-tread was made. Two other subdivisions of the RED SQUAD (RED SQUAD ALPHA and RED SQUAD BETA) worked on setting stepping stones in low-lying areas where flooding would likely be a problem. RED SQUAD ALPHA and RED SQUAD BETA combined efforts for a period to move a very large and uncooperative rock that was sleeping in an old rock wall overlooking a pit of garbage (which we need to clean up). Soon, RED SQUAD ALPHA removed another rock for their hole. The hole in question was unforgiving and excessively rooty and generally a jerk. Before we could set said rocks, we stopped for a snack. At the end of our break, it began to rain and we hiked out before we could actually set the rocks.

We drove to the Memorial Park by Woodglen Middle School and wrote letters to ExxonMobil among other time-wasting activities. blahblahablah

Really, I am writing this post for one reason; To post the website of...
!!ADIRONDACK EXTREME!!
WOW CHECK OUT THOSE PICTURES OF PEOPLE SWEATING!!! Really, they do not do any justice to the amount of exclamation points and drops of sweat found on the website. YOU HAVE TO BE THERE. Well for those of you on the other crew, I am posting this because many (I mean all) of our crew members have taken interest in this climbing course from my description. Last year for my rec trip (hybrid crew) we went here and enjoyed it like nothing else on this Earth! And certainly, I am NOT saying to return to the same place for a rec trip two years in a row, but many people wanted to know about the fabled "Sky-Monkey Palace" anyway.

Oh yeah so one more thing, I was talking about a Mafia website where you can play the game with others online for FREE at EpicMafia. Sign up is really easy (no email required) and there are something like 50 different roles that custom games can utilize. I'm not going to explain the website here (to keep this post short), but there is a help tab somewhere on the website... The interface might be confusing.

Yes, that is all! Zachary Potter, out!

I'm not the scribe but this is worthy of sharing...

So it's Jon's "Lunch box".... literally. His lunch, packed in a cracker box, which has his name on it...

PURE GENIUS!

Belated Commentary on Thursday and Friday

On Thursday we had an awesome day, everybody worked hard. I worked fill crew with Greg and Taylor, we all worked hard. It rained a little and it felt good, my awesome idea was to shake the trees for a nice cold shower. At lunch Jon did a lesson on how long things take to decompose. It hit me pretty hard how long some things took to decompose. Jon updated us with the most amazing thing ever!!!!But the other crew must not know. Styrofoam takes 1,000,000 years to decompose and that blew my mind. On Friday we went canoeing, it was awesome, me and Taylor were in the same canoe and we were the best at it. The water fights were awesome, the water was so warm. But maybe the best part was when we went down the rapids floating, that was so much fun. Over all that day was amazing! Sighanora. -AJ. R.

Waking Up Monday Morning Is The Worst

Well it's my turn to be the blogger/journalist for my crew, so here's my blog on the day of Monday, July 12th 2010. The crew split up into three different teams; Ellen was in charge of fill and rock crush, Max was in charge of setting the final check step and fixing up the drainage areas, and Rose was working on a French Drain. I started off with Max's group and worked on debarking the final log and setting it in place with Marcus. After snack, I was with Ellen working on crush and fill. We accomplished quite a lot overall as an entire crew up to this point; the check steps were finished, the French drain was nearly completed, and the crush work was complete in the area we were working on. During lunch, game-master Doug presented us with 3 alternatives to our regular game of Mafia. The choices were: nap time, a core workout, or playing Baccalaureate SCA Edition. We decided on a combination of these ideas. We played Mafia with a Tila Tequila Baccalaureate theme. I also added the idea of doing crunches while we were "sleeping" during Mafia. I don't think anyone participated. Lunch was also when Zach came up with the clever nickname of Trey-ceratops from the bunk of his hammock. After lunch it's safe to say we accomplished much less than we did in the time before. Rose's group completed the French drain and did some re-vegging. Max's group went on an expedition to find more Trees of Heaven/Tree of Heavens. Finally, Ellen's group went to the very beginning portion of the trail that has not yet been started and did some corridor work. Looking forward for the rest of the week, we should be completed with the present trail we are working on by weeks end. Just in time for the BEACH TRIP!!! Anyway, this blog went on for a lot longer than I expected it to, I figured I'd polish up on my writing skills.

Heat wave, day number 2

Today was another hot day but we accomplished a lot! We worked hard through the morning and after lunch, were treated with some awesome ice cream. The tread was finished yesterday and now we're working on adding water features to our trail. Today we finished three water bars and timber has been cut and shaved to be put into the trail. After much discrepancy as to how rocks in the trail should be handled, a Great Rock Compromise was finally reached. There were some pretty strong anti-rock people and some rock-lovers, but we made it work. The compromise was pretty awesome and a lot of thought went into it as our whole group tried to deem what was allowed to be kept in the trail. Doing fill today was pretty brutal, but that was done too. Basically I'd say it was a pretty good day!

Hot Why Not

Today was amazing! Despite the torturing 102 degree weather we accomplished alot of work today. We had an old member, Mike, return and showed us how things were done. I worked with Mike, Colin, Abby, and Liz and we concentrated on doing the rock staircase. We had unfortunate accident were a rock that we were going to set, flipped and hit an already set rock. That was my thorn of the day. Once we reset the rock we tried to move a very large rock but were unsuccessful. This is when we had lunch and hiked back down the mountain. After a long day we went to Polar Cub which was awesome. We topped off the day by going to the gorge and cooling off in the river. All in all it was a good day.

And thats all she wrote

-Rex

july 6th, first day of "heat wave"

Well Now, having worked with the SCA for 3 years so far, we never really had that bad of weather. Though today it had to be over 95 degrees for the whole time we worked. Other than that we had a quite standard day of placing rocks, making tread and doing "Phil". We also had silly ideas of "if you leave a piece of bread out in the sun, will it become toast when we get back to the parking lot?", possibly from dellusions from heat exhaustion and dehydration. Though it was still a good idea...

Rocks, Rocks, Rocks

In the words of Zach Heyman: "I work on top of a mountain in a pile of boulders." true that.

Today it was my distinct pleasure to work with the Cushetunk crew....They move giant rocks...the project has been broken down into a few amazing stations...Arielle's crew worked to build a staircase at the entrance to the maze of boulders...its awesome. Lauren and her montly crew worked on moving other giant rocks the size of my kitchen table. I kind of wanted to eat my lunch on them. Colin led a crush crew that Hephaestus (the Greek God) would have been jealous of. I was fortunate to work with Anthony and Liz, wrestling with a few rocks for yet another staircase. (we won in the end.)

The weather was hot, I mean really hot today....102...but everyone worked hard none the less. I never cease to be amazed by what can be accomplished by a group of determined young people...It really fascinates me.... I want to take this moment to share a long time favorite quote...."Never underestimate the power of a group of committed citizens to change the world, in fact it is the only thing that ever has."-Margaret Meade.

Rock on,

DJ. Pajamajon

PS. I am also enclosing a riddle from Doug...

"Sometimes when I'm running in dreams, I dream like I'm running like a wolf on all fours..."

So today was our first friday with the crew, and it was rather exhilarating. We decided that a half day of work would be optimal considering our schedule for the coming week. Our expectations for the week had been met so we elected to further projects that we would be tackling in earnest on this coming tuesday. Arielle took a few members to do some much needed lopping along the beginning part of the trail, and her efforts showed wonderfully. Colin took on the staircase Arielle had been working on, and made some serious progress despite the difficult terrain. He and Taylor also got to use the pulaski today. They looked totally boss. I was working in the rock pit area of what had been dubbed "the boop" (the name given to the series of rocky hills around which we would be working). there was some serious work to be done and we encountered some massive setbacks. While moving a particular rock (the crew dubbed this rock "Lauren's rock"), said rock shattered into what seemed like a thousand pieces. As if this rock shattering like my dream of being a roller derby star was not enough, the rocks above it began to shift into unstable positions. We spent most of the day brainstorming as to how we should approach the new problem of facing the dangerous possibility of a rockslide. Totally bad news bears.

The second half of the day consisted of caching and hiking back down the trail so we could go on a Pirate Treasure Hunt set up by DJ PhenomaJON aka Jon-a-thang aka Jon Wolfman aka Jon. The treasure hunt was at the Arboretum where we ran around looking for Pirate jokes/plant identification/CANDY! After a very thrilling search, we went to Sunnyside park where we went GEOCACHING! We managed to find a teeny tiny "bison tube" (think about half of your pink finger small). Very frustrating yet delightfully fulfilling. We then visited Arielle's personal cache then went back to school.

ALAS, this week is coming to an end and I leave you with this final tidbit.

Totally funny

Sincerely,

Johnny Law aka Lauren

Fainting Goats

So today was a great day. We had amazing weather and we got a lot done. After our stretches and "Ancient Hawaiian saying", we hiked up to our trail to get started on our work. We split up into four groups to get all the jobs done. We all, to no surprise, worked with many rocks. My group, which was Arielle, Marissa and me. We got one check step set and it looks perfect, but our second step came about as more of a challenge. As we were digging deeper and deeper to fit in another step, we came across a huge boulder that couldnt be removed.
It seemed like spiders came up in many conversations i had today. Daddy long legs are everywhere and many of the crew members arent too fond with them. Arielle decided that its best to pick them up and throw them..far into the woods. haha.

I wasnt completely aware of what the other groups were up to today, but i know much was accomplished. I noticed that most of the trail was easier to walk on because of the awesomeee rocks set in place. A quote i was told to add to this post was "Paper DOES NOT beat rocks" said by Jevon. And as Arielle would say about the rocks, "We have a love hate relationship".

June 30, 2010

Greetings to you all. The prestigious honor of blogging about today's activities has fallen upon yours truly, AJ S. The day began with a feeling of hope, as the cool air seemed much more comfortable than yesterdays heat. The hike up the mountain was much easier without having to carry any tools, and work began on a positive note.

More work was done at the three main sections of the trail: at the first entrance, the rock staircase continued to take shape with more rocks becoming set. At the second portion, where I worked today, many rocks were moved, including a giant step being added after much frustration and a visit from Bob. Finally, in the third section, more rocks were added to the staircase, and a giant project of creating a perfect stair was almost completed. At lunch, the crew leaders frustrated many with their mind games (although I understood both within a few minutes. I kinda rock that way), and the day was nearly perfect.

All in all, a very good day, if I say so myself.

AJ S

There have been many improvements to the crews this summer! First of all, we've got a few new students joining us in our excellent trail-building venture. Also, instead of having two minivans, we've got one, and a gigantic Chevy Suburban that can fit 8 passengers and the entire tool cache, plus helmets, everyone's belongings, and the water cooler. Also, we've got a sweet flip camera with which we can take random interviews and videos with. Hopefully everyone won't be as camera-shy as they are in this video for the rest of the summer.

Today started out with a great game of Ninja that Brittany ended up winning at, then we all broke up in to smaller groups. Throughout the day, each group got a chance to work on new tread, fill/ rock removal, or using the famous CROSS CUT SAW! After years upon years of needing a cross cut, we finally obtained one from Rachel! There was no need for us to Pulaski our way through enormous fallen trees or call upon Buck and Haus, our Hunterdon County Parks Maintenance guys/ chainsaw wizards. Using the cross cut saved a lot of time and effort and the kids really enjoyed learning how to use this new tool. Everyone enjoyed their moments as a lumberjack. The day ended on a high note for me because I beat Jon in our little game of 'who has the faster route to Point Mountain from Mountain Farm'. Jon's route took 7:52, while mine took 7:00, which was excellent. Jon seemed to think his route had something to do with a hypotenuse, but I think he was just trying to sound smart.

Anyway, today was all in all a good day, lots of work got done and fun was had!

-Rose

Days 1 and 2 of 2010 Greenteam

Greetings all,

The task of blogging for Lauren and Arielle's crew has been bestowed upon me (as well as one-upping the stellar blog post from yesterday by Douglas.) Anyway I digress. I'll start with yesterday's "opening day" of the 2010 Greenteam. As it has been for the last three years for me, seeing all of my friends that I have made through SCA together again in the Voorhees parking lot was unreal. Being that this is my fourth and final summer as a crew member, this one was special. One interesting factoid that I came across that makes this summer different than the others is the emergence of two new black Suburbans. I'm glad to see that SCA upgraded (kinda) from the soccer mom method of transportation. I digress once again.

I'll save myself (and everyone else) the time of going through the events of the first day, since Doug described them very adequately. As for our crew, I'm very pleased with what I see. Our crew, led by Lauren, Arielle and Colin is full of potential, though lacking experience. Seven newcomers to SCA make up our crew, with only four returning crew members. Everyone seems to be eager to learn the ways of the SCA. Onward to Cushetunk! Our trail is a mess, to put it blatantly. The hike up to our trail is very strenuous, as the elevation rises rapidly, causing us to stop multiple times to stay hydrated. Once we arrived to our trail, or "The Boop" as Lauren calls it, I was shocked at how short it was, and how rocky. Words cannot describe how many boulders, not rocks, boulders, are on our trail. Putting it this way, our trail is 95%, 5% dirt. Not a good percentage, considering the amount of fill needed. A tall task indeed.

This next paragraph will be short, because I'm straining myself trying to jog my memory. Today was a good day, as Ice Cube once said. It was significantly cooler out, and we started the day off with the first Big Booty game of the year. Considering how many newcomers our crew has, I was pleasantly surprised with how everyone played. The hike up to the trail was, to put it this way, god awful. Carrying the tools with us, combined with the already steep climb, was not enjoyable. The work was great for the first day. One group installed four rock steps after finally winning the battle against two behemoths of rocks. Another group found the largest rock in the area, pushed it down on its side, only to crack in half, becoming the best thing that could have happened to us, the larger half of the rock became a perfect step for what could be the most treacherous section of our trail. Like I said, today was a good day. Alas, I am tired and my eyes are growing heavy, this post ends now.

Take it steady,
Zach H.

Day 2!

Today was a really good day for my crew (Ellen and Rose's crew). We got a decent amount of trail done for it being our first day working. We split up into three groups, one was for corridor(and basically everything besides tread), another for tread, and the last was clearing away the leaves off the sides of the trails and making it more hikeable All in all, things went rather smoothly. It was a sucessful day and hopefully it'll be another great day tomorrow!
Oh, and a number of us suffered from PLS(Post Lunch Sleepies), but we managed!
Sorry this post is a bit short, currently I am suffering from PDS(Post Dinner Sleepies), but I tried to make up for the lack of content by using SCA colors!

-Brittany

Day 1 - 6/28/10: Best first day ever!

So today was pretty much the best first day ever. It's tough to describe how excited I was about SCA this year. Especially since I didn't do the commuting crew last year. Although my national crew was amazing(ask me about it)... But I did miss you guys. In fact, I was so excited to get back to SCA that I actually visited Point Mountain for the sunset last night. I couldn't wait another day to get out to the park. By the way, if you've never watched the sunset off of the top of Point Mountain, that's very tragic and we'll have to make arrangements for that to change.

Anyway... today rocked. It was sweet seeing all of my old pals. And it was very exciting to meet all of the new folk. I can tell already that I like you all. Although I guess part of that is my theory that the kind of people that get involved with SCA are the same kind of people that I'd get along with. But the other part is that you are all awesome individuals. It was particularly exciting to meet Ellen, the "mystery crew leader." I was totally impressed with her ultimate Frisbee skills.

Which is another point I'd like to bring up. How can a crew possibly not be the coolest crew ever if they were all willing to play Ultimate Frisbee on day one? It's a dream come true. Between the Ultimate and a solid round of Spread 'Em and even the first game of Mafia I've played in quite some time, it was a phenomenal day of bonding.

I'm also totally stoked about our trail this year. My crew has a particularly exciting project. We have the job of connecting the Northern Point Mountain section with the Central Point Mountain section. Essentially, after this summer, the entire park can be hiked continuously, opening up fantastic day trip opportunities. The spectacular vistas, peaceful meadows and mellow river scenes from the central section mixed with the pleasantly tranquil northern section are sure to make for a wonderful hike. And with the amount of experienced members we have, I have no doubt that our trail will demonstrate some serious craftsmanship and excellency.

The most interesting thing about today though was the feeling it left me with. I figured that once I got to see everyone and the first day was over, my excitement would die down. Not the case. I am even more excited for tomorrow. I'm pumped to get started.

I was listening to Michael Franti on my way home (don't worry, I'll bring in the album eventually) and this lyric stuck out to me. "At the end of every rainbow, you might find gold; the last bite of your sandwich, hope you don't find mold." I don't really know where I'm going with this. I just thought it was cool so I figured I'd share. That's all of today. Kinda stream of consciousness. Seriously lacks continuity. But it's a blog, not a memoir, so get over it.

Peace.

Doug

SCA 2010...