Tuesday, April 11, 2006

A theme emerges

1. It is possible that my life works along a predictable and bizarre stream of mayhem and chaos. 2. It is also possible that everyone else in the world is mad and I am completely sane and lead a normal life, but given the numbers involved in the calculation the first does seem more likely.

And so it was that I came to our second breakout at a suburb of 'The cest'. Keen to improve on my performance from the last breakout I entered the job with all the enthusiasm I could muster early on a Saturday morning. Which is to say: not very much.

I arrive and find that my job has changed somewhere between leaving the Po and getting to the Cest, I am now required to be in two places at once. A feat not entirely impossible -at least not without with a small amount of time travel and general bending of the laws concerning the time space continuum that is. I rally to the task magnificently and complete my job at great cost to personal freedom and well-being.
Then to our first rotation activity - rafting on the lake. Half way out the wind picks up, we struggle onwards valiantly, make it to the island [oh by the way don't actually go onto the island because there are snakes there], make it back and nearly collapse from exhaustion. The girls team however fare less well and get stuck in the middle of the lake amid now hurricane style winds.

In a moment of infinite stupidity someone says: we should go rescue them. According to witnesses, I was that person. A hasty plan is concocted during which no one actually engages their brain - except for a brief moment when my rational side says: but wont two extra people make the boat heavier so that we wont be able to row them back anyway? It is quickly dismissed in the face of daring chivalry.
Not only that but John - 60 years old and a crazy man - jumps into the water and starts swimming out across the lake. I dump my clothes (ok, my jumper, t-shirt and shoes) and start after him so that I don't lose face. It is not long before I overtake him because he is a lot older than I am. About half way out - at the deepest point - I realise that the water is very very very cold and I am dying of hypothermia. Also it is so windy that I am having trouble swimming. The girls, who by this point have realised that the easiest thing would be to row to the other shore rather than against the wind, mount their own rescue attempt to save me from drowning.
fear not: I never let on that I am 2 inches from death and pretend to be some kind of olympic swimming champion.

Reaching the raft I drag myself onto it and turn around to find that John is in real danger of drowning - he is hardly moving across the lake and looks like some kind of strange frozen ferret drifting hopessly in the water. A herculean effort later and we save him. The two of us bravely row to the other shore (occasionally spinning round because John is actually unable to row by this point due to extreme cold and exhaustion) where John is transported to the warmest place available and given a healthy dose of sugar and tea. Since we have started being extremely stupid I see no reason to stop, so after dumping the girls on the other side of the lake Chris and I row back.

It takes approximately an hour and a half for my feet to warm back up so that I can walk properly - at which point I realised that I had walked through a stack of brambles without noticing. The rest of the day is less eventful. We go home. I warm up again sometime around sunday evening.

And in other news I left the Po for the first time in about 5 weeks last Saturday which was the best thing I have done for a long time. However the post Cest depression that set in was so bad that I was almost unable to communicate with real people on Sunday - let along fulfil my duties and play in the worship band at church.

Apparently I did do both, but no one will vouch for the quality of either.

This week I will be journalling about my own tendency towards stupidity and on how to make daytrips a safer place to be. Expect a book to be published shortly - possibly in several volumes.

2 Comments:

Blogger Daf said...

just when I think my life is crazy, I read something like this to remind me how sane things really are :) D

4:35 PM

 
Blogger snowpanther said...

you are great, guyzer. how do we live withoutyou?

vw

8:35 PM

 

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