The beach was pitch black, the only light came from the mainland. The one scout we had trusted (he was the only one with an alarm on his watch) began to wake everyone else up, and the people he awoke began to wake up others. Soon, the beach was alive with grumbling scouts and the sound of sleeping bags being packed into their stuffsacks. While other scouts searched for their flashlights, I couldn't seem to find mine in the backpack i had packed it in the day before. I gave the area around me a good search, and when i didn't find it, i decided i had left it in camp and headed to breakfast.
We had left our food on a different part of the beach than where we were. It was on the other side of a collection of considerably sized rocks and boulders that didn't seem to frightening by day, but where certainly a problem in the dark when the only light i had was that from the screen of my camera, and the occasional bit of light from scouts trying to "help" me with their flashlights (my poor nightvision). Breakfast was a Chewy Granola Bar Bar (TM) and some yogurt with granola mixed in. The sky began to light up just as we finished bringing the leftover food over the frightening collection of rocks and boulders, and after we loaded up all of the food and personal gear into the canoes, we carried them out into the water and jumped in.
Today, I had decided to switch places with Mick, so i got to paddle and contribute to the speed of the canoe instead of steering. And we paddled. And we paddled fast. And as we paddled, we sang. We sang a rousing "Hotel California", so good that on of our guides, Daniel, began to paddle along beside us and sing along. The water wasn' t as choppy as the day before, and we flew back to camp.
At camp, we paddled the boats up close to the shore, jumped out, and while one person held each boat (for us, Matt G.), the rest of us ran up to the shore and put out all of our life jackets in a line to protect the boats from rocks (called a PFD line). After lifting the canoes from the water and brining them up onto the PFD lines, we unloaded all of our gear and worked together to picked up each boat , flipped it, and put it on the rack. shortly thereafter, we were dismissed and the scouts of Rugged E carried their belongings back to camp.
In camp, everybody agreed on what to do next, shower, cards, and naptime. After all of these important tasks, we picked up our lunch, dininer, and breakfast from the back of the mess hall and headed back to camp, where our guides Kelsey and Nick (Daniel had other work to do) were watining for us to take us down to the bike shop to get the gear we needed for our next excursion. At the bike shop, we lined up shortest to tallest, and we were all given bikes and helmets that were too small for us. On our ride back to our campsite, we found that the gears were also amazingly picky, and tended to get stuck often if you set the bike on a speed you wanted.
After lunch, we began to pack our gear. For dinner, we were going to have some corn bread with pasta and italian sausage, to the cornbread was taped to the only bike with a rack on it, and Justin A. packed the sausage and some ice. Other people took chips, the pasta, our breakfast for the next morning (more granola bars) and the coals for dinner were divided up amopngst the bikers. I personaly carried my sleeping bag in my backpack, along with breakfast goodies and capri suns, with my hat, mess kit, and a large pot for the pasta dangling from the oustide of my pack. Me sleeping pad was attatched to the handlebars of my bike along with my share of the coals, and other people had similar setups.
After we finished setting up, we began our ride out of camp and onto a road with no name. For those familiar with Catalina, it is the one that starts in Two Harbors and goes along the etnire North Easter part of the island, overlooking all of the camps along the way. For those unfamiliar iwth catalina, it is a mountain dirt road like any other, with its fair share of ups and downs. After no more than a half hour's biking, we stopped overlooking two harbors, the same distance it took us an hour to travel by canoe. As we rode into Two Harbors, Nick G.'s right bicycle pedal fell off, and we took a forty five minute break in Two Harbors while we waited for the truck from camp to bring us another. During this time, Matt G., Cassandra G., and I bought a half galon of Neopolitan Ice Cream, which tasted very good.
With ice cream in our bellies and bikes returned to being only one piece, we set out again, although this part of our journey would be much harder. We were never told what the real name was for the mountain we had to bike up next, but everybody referred to it as the Hill of Death, and although none of the scouts of Rugged E gave up, many did walk their bikes (given the condition of their aluminum steeds, i don't blame them). I didn't walk. I could not shift all the way down on my bike, because the chain would get stuck and i would do a wheelie, but i shifted down as low as possible and put my bodyweight into it. After some amazing scenic views and many switchbacks, we found ourselves at a gate, and we didn't know what it was for, but we all passed through it without a secopnd thought and didn't begin to go down the other side of the Hill of Death like we had expected, but then climbed the next few miles, much to our grumbling discontent. we were told that at the top, we were supposed to stop to go over some safety things for going downhill. The fact that we needed a safety talk for going downhill was my only motivation for getting to the top. Soon, we reached a considerably high part on the mountain (the clouds were about 40 feet above us) and we stopped thinking it was the top. When the guides caught up with us, they said we weren't at the top yet, and told us to keep going. After what we thought was our great, relieveing, downhill run, we found some more hills that we had to climb. And we climbed for the clouds.
We could tell when we were at the top, because we could see the ocean in three directions, and we were in the bottom of a cloud. When Kelsey and Nick caught up with us, they told us the rules for going down the Hill of Death; stay at least two bike lengths away from each other, keep both hands on the handlebars at all times, and no passing. Everybody broke at least one of these rules. We decided that Matt G., who has the most momentum of any of us, should go first. The ride downhill was amazing. David B. was hit in the throat in the rock, and if i hadn't had my neckercheif, i probably would have been hit alot, too. After we found our campsite, we got our coals ready for our dinner, and relaxed, playing cards and talking. As the sun went down, we played a few teamwork games involving trying to figure out how we were going to fit 22 people on a 6 foot long log with one foot on the log and one foot off (Cassandra G. turned out to be the brains of the whole operation).
That night, we spread out our sleeping bags close enough to the nearby big, wide palmtree so that if it began to rain, we could get to cover fast, and fell asleep. The next day, we would awake at 5:30 so that we could stop for breakfast in Two Harbors.
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