Mr. Blog's Tepid Ride

from March 22, 2008

Right away I knew I was in trouble: it was raining. Nothing good can possibly come of taking a long bus ride in the rain. Making matters worse was the fact that I wasn’t the driver. Put me in the driver’s seat- I’ll drive! I had forgotten how much I like driving and how much I hate being a passenger. Ever since I learned how to drive I’ve wanted the left chair. It wasn’t so much being in a crowded bus as it was the feeling of not being in control, not being able to change lanes, speed up, slow down. I need the wheel and the accelerator. And of course the brake. Sitting cramped with a busload of LHS kids for up to three hours was not at the top of my must do list.

This particular trip came at the end of a long, long, blah school day. We were scheduled to leave at two o’clock, which meant that I had four classes to teach before the real work began. No problem- we’re reading The Invisible Man so I figured that I’ll just pop in the movie for a while and kill the day the easiest way I could. Sure it’s a cheat, but no way was I going to knock myself out before a three our bus ride in foul weather.

I wanted to make sure I remembered the movie so I left myself a note. The night before I saw the note and went to get the movie. I walked right across the room, went to the movie, reached for it, and, and, um, where’s the movie? Oh, sure, must be in the living room. What? Not there? So maybe I have it on tape. I still have a few tapes, it isn’t all DVD yet. What? It isn’t with the tapes? Then I remember- I don’t own that movie. Yes, I planned on showing a movie I didn’t have and never owned. So bowing to my inherent laziness and my flair for making anything fit, I decided to show the cartoon, Ultimate Avengers. You know, Hulk, Captain America? Those guys. I figured I’d justify it educationally as having similar themes, if not plot, to our story, and I justified it to myself with the simple fact that I didn’t want to work and this would keep their attention. And actually, it did.

Well, the day killed, we boarded the bus. Of course, it was far easier to type that than to actually do it. Each kid needed to have their luggage searched, just like at the airport. Because if one of those kids smuggled Bin Laden to Pinegrove Dude Ranch there would be hell to pay with the DOE. Plus we’d have to call their parents and that would delay the trip even longer. Luckily, Bin Laden wasn’t hiding in anybody’s suitcase and we were allowed to leave without any cavity searches.

Everyone on the trip was given an official LHS duffle bag with official LHS swag- sweatshirt, pajama pants, t-shirt, jersey, windbreaker, and condoms. Just kidding! This was a clean trip. (We let Pinegrove give out the condoms when we checked in. Just kidding again! For real, just kidding.)

Well, I am not a poor traveler, but when the trip started I was nauseous for the first hour. I took Tylenol, drank water, closed my eyes, and blew the  air on my face and I felt better. But I was left with a slight headache that never really went away and I am not too sure how I functioned that first night.

We passed out snacks and water, and I swear you’d think we were going to be marooned on a desert island the way we took care of these kids- extra clothes, food and water- if we somehow ended up on Gilligan’s Island instead of Pinegrove Dude Ranch we’d be able to survive without eating a single coconut thanks to Kathy. But unlike the Professor I can’t turn bamboo into major household appliances so maybe we’d still have some inconveniences.

But, from my point of view, the interesting stuff on the ride up happened about two hours in. First we passed Florida New York, and then Middletown. If I learned anything over the years from listening to The Jerky Boys make prank phone calls, it is that Florida New York is not a tropical state and you can’t grow oranges there, and that Middletown is a long haul from Long Island if you want to buy Civil War memorabilia. Now this may go over all of your heads but those highway signs gave me a chuckle.

Soon we were driving through wooded farm country, uphill, through some low mountains. At one point I looked out the window and, through the constant mist, I saw the land dip down alongside the road and I saw, almost vividly, a small town that looked like the fictional town I created when I blogged a short story about me driving through the mountains. If we had pulled into a gravelly rest area I would have been sure that we had driven into the Twilight Zone.

Finally, to round off the surreal atmosphere, Ratatouille was played on the DVD player, and again I was reminded of a blog, my movie review. This turned out to be a bus ride through the stupider parts of my mind.

Mercifully, we arrived. So far the trip had all the fun of traveling without any of the fun of traveling. 

At this point we were all grateful just to stand up and stretch. We unloaded the luggage, hauled boxes of snacks, and we were given our rooms. The kids were cramped up to six or seven in a room- two double beds and a set of bunk beds. I had the same type of room to myself. The best thing about having three extra beds in my room? Six extra pillows. It was around this time that someone took my LHS bag by mistake. To make a long story short, I got the bag back but the nifty LHS pullover was the wrong size. But, and here I must have been truly blessed, the windbreaker fit. I wore it all the next day.

After assigning rooms the next order of business was dinner. The food was OK. It was served up summer camp style in a large hall. The food wasn’t bad, not too good, but not bad. Every meal was served with pitchers of Kool Aid so sweet that it must have had triple the recommended daily allowance of sugar. Just what hyper kids away from home with their friends need- more sugar.

There were four or five other schools there too. New Utrecht was there, and if I wanted to see New Utrecht kids I could have stayed home and walked to 86^th street. They were loud and annoying. And obnoxious. And unsupervised. Did I mention that they were loud? And annoying? And unsupervised. Their chaperones  did not do a single thing to settle them down. In fact, I am sure that at karaoke the next night one of them was drunk.

After dinner it was “do what you want” time. Kids went to the swimming pool, hung out in their rooms, or sang karaoke. I tried to take as many pictures as possible, but how many pictures of girls shaking their bootys to “Baby Got Back” can I take before it starts getting pervy?  Ditto the swimming pool, where I kept my camera securely holstered and didn’t take a single shot. There were some good pool stories but I’ll leave them to Kathy.

Afterwards there was a party where al the kids crowded onto a dance floor and simulated sex, I mean danced against each other.

As for the ranch itself, it was pretty nice. I guess part of the rustic charm is the fact that it is slightly run down. But it really is a nice place, all western, and when it isn’t full of high school students it must be a good place to go. It has horses, a pool, skiing and skating, archery, rock climbing, paint ball, laser tag, and a bunch more stuff that I’m sure I don’t remember. But most of those stories are still ahead. This is still the first day.     

The ranch has a one a.m. curfew and things began to wind down. We had a wing all to ourselves so we let the kids stay up there until two. Sometime between midnight and twelve-thirty me, Liz, and Kathy all ended up in Liz’s room. Kathy left and when she did she closed the door, leaving me and Liz alone inside watching TV, she laying on her bed and me sitting on the other one. After a while her daughter came in, saw us, and gave Liz a very funny look. When I retell the story I always end it with “so I put my shirt back on and everything was OK.” It is small moments like this that you have to savor in life. 

Then I spent the rest of the night on top of Liz. Seriously. For real.

That’s accurate but not the way you think, perverts. My room was directly above Liz’s room; hence I spent the night “on top of her.”

A quick word: if you know Liz then this disclaimer is unnecessary, but if you don’t. Liz is one of the most devoted women you’ll ever meet, and I can joke like that because there is zero chance that anyone who knows her will ever believe it. Plus it is fun to see her laugh and get embarrassed at the same time.

So had hot sex with Liz all night. (See the previous paragraph.)

Kathy and Chaperone Number Four took the night shift while I tried to sleep. Notice that I have not mentioned the fourth chaperone yet? That’s because he was almost invisible. Except at meals we never saw him. That biggest question from the kids was “where’s Chaperone Number Four?” Of course that’s not his real name. (His real name is Chaperone Number Three but that would have been confusing.) I want to protect him from accusations of doing nothing all weekend. He needs protecting because the accusations are true. Even when we had one actual incident requiring adult supervision he was safely hidden in his room. I have no idea what went on in there and I don’t care to.

I couldn’t sleep. I tried to sleep. I reeeeeaaaaaalllllllly tried to sleep. Even with a dozen pillows on my bed I couldn’t sleep. But it was strange because I dropped off to sleep almost the second my head the pillow (and after the kids stopped acting like a circus troupe on the first day in a small town where the beer was free and the women were too.) I kept waking up about every twenty minutes. I got no sleep the entire weekend, truth be told.

On day two I wanted to go outside. After breakfast Liz and I went to do some fairly cheesy archery in a fairly cheesy archery barn. The guy running the place was not the usual archery guy. I guess Robin Hood called in sick that day. The guy looked like he was a genuine cowboy down to his thin, wrinkled, leathery face, but he knew jack about bows and arrows, leaving it up to Liz and I to show the kids how to do it. He had the kids using the bows upside down. But damn he did a good job making sure we picked up our own arrows.

We went over the rock climbing wall so our kids could amuse us. The LHS girls were hysterical! They screamed, they cried, the screamed some more, and then they got in the harnesses and started to climb. They may have pierced our eardrums with all their screaming, but they made us laugh and all seven made it to the top. I got some good pictures too. I begged the guy to just let a couple of them hang there when they got to the top so I could say I suspended them. Get it? Some of our students got “suspended.” OK, so it isn’t the funniest thing I’ve said so far.

Soon it was bingo time and Kathy was ready. She’d been waiting all day. Kathy takes bingo very seriously. She has a great game face and it was on display, full force. She must have even managed to intimidate the Gods of Random Chance because she won the first round- $3 in souvenir stand bucks. I was no slouch either and I won the $5. Liz, who spent the whole game convinced that the bingo caller was against her, lost every round. However, when we played the next day, well, she still lost. On both days it seemed like O69 was called every game and Liz never had it on her card. (Insert your own joke here. HINT- If you make “O” stand for orgasm, and 69 is self-explanatory, your joke can be dirty. But far be it from me to make a dirty joke about Liz. In fact, since she had kids there, I didn’t make one single dirty joke all weekend, though a couple were on the tip of my tongue. See the extremely high regard in which I hold her, and the respect I have for her? BTW- we had hot sex all night. See the earlier paragraph. )

Lunch came around and New Utrecht became even more obnoxious, if that was possible, and I would have bet it wasn’t. One idiot, who looked a lot like a toad, had some sort of plastic flute-thing with him and he played it loudly at all the wrong times just to be annoying. Sometimes it was just a short burst, other times it sounded like a full Irish tune. With the crowd and the Irish jig music I felt like I was in the steerage compartment on the Titanic. The New Utrecht kids were awful. They always came into our wing and tried to start trouble and had to be chased away. Once they came in and there were no chaperones. They threatened to beat up our LHS girls, who then chased the “Utes” out. (Say, where was Chaperone Number Four? I dunno.) They were rude, nasty, and most of all, jealous. Kathy had hooked up the LHS kids with so many outfits that they came to every meal in another outfit, while the “Utes” wore the same lousy green sweatshirts all the time. They were literally “green with envy.” (OK,. They can’t all be winners.) Hey, it wasn’t our fault that their school doesn’t care about them as much as out school cares.

Lunch was remarkable because of my chicken wing. No, not poultry, Chicken wing is a student. I’ve heard two different stories about how she got her nickname, and neither has to do with a bird. She is a Chinese student whose name includes Wing, so she’s chicken Wing. Simple. She is hard to dislike, even though I wanted to. She sat next to me at every mean and poked me, made faces at me, threatened to kill me, and more. But she was “just keeding!” I got my revenge when she wanted me to pour her some of the super sugary punch. I slowly filled it to the very top, so that only the surface tension kept it from spilling over. She swore revenge.

At 2 pm I had a paint ball appointment. It was cold and rainy. Perfect. We spent an hour just getting dressed in cammo gear and goggles, and getting instructions on how to shoot our guns, Then we tramped out into the country, downhill, over mud and ice, to the woods. Immediately we slipped on the ice. Immediately we sunk into the mud. Immediately out goggles fogged up. Fifteen minutes later Liz and I were done. It was a bad scene anyway. Instructors in orange shirts, unshaven and missing teeth, yelled at us like we were raw recruits on Paris Island. We were literally dumped in the woods and told “GO!”, at which point about a dozen of us said “huh? Go where?” and just stood around. We were cold, wet, standing on ice, on a slope, and had no idea what to do. I leaned against one tree. I leaned on another. Through my foggy goggles I thought I saw someone trying to flank us. I fired, he fired back, I was tagged and I left. So much for paintball. Good thing I was comped.

By now I had very little sleep and still had the same headache I arrived with. But the kids were having a blast. Sure they were loud and banged the walls, but only in our wing. We were complimented on how well they behaved. This was especially nice in light of the fact that some of the other schools had to send kids home or were asked to leave early.

Kathy went out of her way for these kids. Pinegrove has a chuck wagon that gives out unlimited- and free- hamburgers and fries. The catch was that they had to wait on a huge freakin’ line to get them. Kathy greased the guy to make trays and trays of food after hours just for us to bring upstairs. None of our kids had to wait in line at night. And while I’m giving Kathy the rub, the windbreakers saved the day or we would all have gotten soaked. The only time I didn’t wear it was paintball, and the water soaked through my fatigues and drenched my clothes. The kids who wore the windbreakers under the fatigues were fine.

(Allow me to say here, five pages in, that exhausted as I was, I really enjoyed the time with Liz and Kathy.)

The kids were all over the place- the party, karaoke, the pool, video games, all the outdoor activities. But there was a large number of kids who stayed int ehir rooms and played videogames. They brought their PS2 and hooked it up to their TV, which pissed off Kathy since she brought her Wii and her TV didn’t have the right jacks. So the next night she took the kid’s TV. OK, one thing for the adults, but why, with all they paid and all there was to do, would they stay inside and play video games? I guess here they can play for as long and as loud as they want with their friends. We didn’t need to be on top of them (like I was with Liz, heh heh) but for the most part they were OK.

Six of us did Laser Tag vs. a group of the good kids from New Utrecht. They may have been the only good kids from New Utrecht. We killed them, but we especially killed one of our own kids who went to the other side to even things out. I was like a paunchy Jack Baur. This was so cool. And luckily most of the kids who signed up didn’t show so it wasn’t crowded. The room was about the size of the tuna tank at the aquarium. More than tweleve and we would have been bumping into each other. The room was filled with all the usual blacklight neon nonsense that looks like we were playing in the irradiated bowels of Chernobyl. I literally gave one of my kids the (sweat) shirt off my back so her white tee wouldn’t glow with nuclear force. These are the lengths I go to for my kids. This was so much fun and, unlike paintball, I didn’t end up soaking wet or risk breaking all of my limbs on mud-covered ice.

The reason the Laser Tag was so empty was because the kids were prepping for the cross-dressing contest. Yes, I said cross-dressing. Some of the LHS kids got so into it that I started to wonder. Oh, by the way- I was a judge.

This is an annual event in which the Pinegrove Dude Ranch encourages transvestitism and gay pride. Or not. Whatever. Don’t ask don’t tell. Some of the LHS boys leaped into the contest with such zeal that I considered moving their rooms to the other end of the hall, far away from mine. We had three male to female conversions and each walked the walk, literally, in high heels. The girls treated these guys like pieces of cross-dressing meat, and the results had to be seen to believed. And since I have the pictures, you can. Even more amazing were the female to male makeovers. Two quiet little Chinese girls, Chicken Wing and one who is now known as Chicken Leg, took the cake. They put braids in their hair and dressed like Latino gang members. At the contest they jumped around all hard core and stole the show. Even the other schools went nuts for them. At the start of the trip maybe a handful of the others knew their names, now everyone loves them. Good for them! Were I not an older male teacher who wants to keep his job I would have given them a big, non-sexual hug.

I was the LHS rep on the judging panel. I was there with reps form the other four schools at the ranch. The LHS crew arrived just in time and I took my seat on stage just as we got underway. The other judges were, truth be told, and I always tell the truth when I’m not lying, dicks. Stoic and stodgy, they took this with all the seriousness of, say, Abraham deciding which of his kids to sacrifice. (A rare Biblical reference from me, and I bet I got it wrong.) Me? I was there to rig it for my guys.

First they called all the “boys” onto the floor. The music blasted and one at a time they danced across the room. Most of them had the same look: gang members. At any rate, our “guys” came out on top and took the top two slots. And even without my homerism they would have won because the other judges all picked them too. No one thought these girls had it in them.

Then it was the “lady’s” turn, and what a bunch of skanks, skrags, skags they were. I may have made up one of those terms. Anyway, from New Utrecht there was the flute-asshole, creatively dressed in his own clothes, but with boobs. Also there were guys who just put on a bikini top and looked far too comfortable in it. Yes, I am implying something. From the other schools there were kids in short shorts, boots shorts, whatever they’re called, they pretty much ran the slut gamut. But it was our kids who dressed like women and, like the Chicken Parts, took the top two awards.

Onstage I was dying. First, I simply enjoyed the spotlight. I was in front of everybody and the kids were playhing to me but there was no pressure on me to do anything, So I sat back and played Simon Cowell  if he were to suddenly find himself judging a tranny show. I laughed, I kibitzed with the other judges, I acted like I was really inspecting them and made some serious-looking squiggles on my paper when they went by so it would look like I took it seriously. I really had a blast.

But I also knew that this would be sweet revenge against the Utes and all the other schools that were talking smack. All weekend we took crap from them for one reason- our clothes. They were “haters” as the kids say today. Do they still say “twenty-three skidoo?” Our kids kept quiet, gave noting in return, and just turned the other cheek.

So when I gave one of my kids the second place prize ($8 in souvenir bucks) I jumped up and one by one slapped the bills into his palm like they were hundreds. And when I gave the first place prize ($3 and a t-shirt) I stuffed the money into “her” bra. Sure I knew what I was doing- I was sticking it to the other schools, right in their faces.  The LHS Nation got on the dance floor and celebrated. And no other school said a word.

The celebration moved upstairs to the karaoke are, where we took over. LHS sang “We Are Family,” “Celebration,” and “We Are the Champions” and I put down the camera and got in on that one. The other schools gave us some nasty looks but screw them.

When the party broke up around midnight I was talked into doing a karaoke duet with a student and trust me, she regrets it. I was bad. On occasion I can sing an almost nearly OK tune, but that night, well, let’s just say that after our “Living on a Prayer” Bon Jovi killed himself just so he could roll over in his grave.

Around the same time Kathy accidentally got the burger guy in trouble. Curfew is at one am and after one some of the kids went down to help Kathy. The manager wanted to know what they were doing downstairs and the whole plan was exposed. We were getting burgers by the score and now the poor guy was maybe losing his job for a lousy $20. So Kathy threw him an extra $10. Hey, sorry you lost your job but here’s $30. Thanks!

I had hall patrol that night and didn’t mount, er, get on top of Liz until nearly 4:30 in the morning. Not much to tell about hall duty. I sat there with my iPod and wrote until I was sure everyone was in for good, then I went to bed. Thanks to the time change it jumped from 2 to 3 o’clock and I got one hour less of patrol.

Liz got me up (her words) at eight on Sunday morning, the last day. While she had a “massage” (and I won’t speculate, but I wonder if the masseuse’s hand strayed under the towel?) I went to breakfast. The guy who ran the place inspected everyone’s feet when they entered. He explained that it had to do with the board of health and hygiene regulations but I think he just had a fetish. Good con cowboy, but you’re not fooling me. We let Kathy sleep in and she really needed it. We also had a cameo by the mysterious Chaperone Number Four.

After breakfast I packed, and, meeting up with a suspiciously relaxed Liz, we three went to bingo again. There was a gravely-voiced and annoying woman from another school there. Sounded like she smoked three packs an hour. Kathy came through with a winner again, I didn’t get a single win, and Liz had the same O69 problem. (Repeat your own previous joke here.) I think it was divine revenge because she ditched me when we were supposed to go out to the rock wall.

Then lunch, and we got the kids packed and on the bus. It was time to go. I really enjoyed the trip, and I really had good time with the kids. It was my first time ever really bonding with students and it was really nice. I actually like some of them.

On the way home I refused to nap because a short nap is worse for me than no nap. I wake up a wreck and it takes a while to recover. So I turned up my music, picked the hardest rocking songs, and, to keep moving, I did air guitar and air drums to the songs. I was so zonked that I bugged some students to listen to the songs I downloaded “because they were cool.” I was a sight. Luckily, most of the kids were asleep so I was a sight to almost no one.

We got home to LHS, made sure the kids got home, and I went home. I drank real orange juice, and not some watery orange Pinegrove concoction, and slept.

Monday was like the coda to the trip. We printed pictures and I made a bulletin board. For eight years at LHS I never did one, now I’ve done three boards this year. All day I talked about the trip with the rest of the staff and then I reported on it at the staff meeting. I swear, the trip never ended. Most of the kids had the good sense to cut today, but all of us chaperones were in, tired, and sore-voiced.

All in all, it was a great trip, bad weather and all. The kids had fun, I had fun, no one got hurt, and despite our best efforts all the kids came back. Hard to believe, but if I’m here next year I’d do it again. Strange but true, it was just a great trip.

Tags: archery, bmj2k, bus ride, cross-dressing, dude ranch, high school, horses, ice, karaoke, laser tag, Mr. Blog, Mr. Blog's Tepid Ride, paint ball, Pinegrove, rock climbing, trip