Take a Hike

hike - Morro das Aranhas - caminhada de curto percurso - Restinga - Floripa
Originally uploaded by Adrenailha

When I was in about the 3rd, 4th, 5th, 6th or 7th grade, I seriously can't remember anymore, I was a Boy Scout. My friend Bryan's dad was our scoutmaster and he would take us camping about once a month. In order to earn some badges, we had to go on a hike for a day and sleep on the ground during a freeze, I'm pretty sure thats called the Polar Bear badge. The hiking part, I'm not so sure.

So a group of us kids went up to someone's land north of town to camp and hike. Let me see if I can recall everyone's name: Bryan, Matt, Ryan, Patrick, Trevor, Edward, James, John Arthur, Rusty and Justin. I'm not sure if all these people went on this particular trip, but they were part of our group at one time or another.

Poor Rusty could not pronounce his Rs. He would pronounce a Y in its place. Unfortunately for him his last name was Reed, so he was known as Yusty Yeed. One night we were lying in a tent and he said started complaining that his back hurt. "I'm lying on yock," he kept yelling. It took us 10 minutes to figure out what he was talking about.

Back to the hiking story...we were supposed to pack our backpacks so they were something like 20% of our own body weight. We had to pack 3 meals, a sleeping bag, first aid kits, extra socks, etc. After hiking for several miles, we noticed that Matt was way ahead of everyone else. While everyone else was complaining about the weight on their backs and dragging, Matt was walking like he was only carrying himself.

Finally, Wayne, the scoutmaster asked everyone to stop and he was going to search Matt's backpack. While everyone else was carrying at least 10 lbs of supplies, Matt had a backpack with two sheets in it. I can't recall exactly, but I'm pretty sure Wayne made all of us take one item out of our backpacks to put into Matt's.

When we got back to our camp the next day, we found out that the only things that Matt had brought on this trip in his backpack were the two sheets, a machete and a pair of roller blades. He took the roller blades out for the hike.

Eagles

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Originally uploaded by Mattias Sundt

I've had two memorables eagles in my life. One of them was when I was about 12 or 13 years old. I was lying 2 on hole 6 at Paducah, a par 5 500 yarder. About 150 to 100 yards out from the green there is a valley and at the end of that valley is a creek filled with cattails before the 30 degree incline the last 100 yards to the green. I was about 100 out, so I probably hit a nine iron or a pitching wedge. I couldn't see the green, but I found my ball in the hole when I arrived.

A few years later when I was in high school, I was practicing with my friend Eric and our golf coach. I was lying 1 about 150 out on hole 3, a par 4 about 320 yards. I remember I hit a seven iron. As soon as the ball went into the air I could tell it was going to be close. From 150 out I could see the ball fall into the hole.

Is it just me or...

circuito guarah ilha do mel
Originally uploaded by tanapraia

...do people look really dumb making hand signs? Pictures of this just grate on my nerves.

Fishing

Originally uploaded by hnhnzam827

I can't remember when my dad taught me how to fish.

Note to Self: Ask your dad about the first time you went fishing.

Footsteps

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Originally uploaded by courtney_sikes

When I was a child I was very content with being alone. In my late adolescence, I had a lapse where being alone was the worse thing in the world. I have now returned to a younger state. I better get used to it. Now if I could only turn this solitude into something.

Baked potatoes

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Originally uploaded by statnurse

For some reason the microwave will not make baked potatoes. Every time I've tried, the potatoes are left with a about a centimeter layer of soft, baked potato goodness, while the rest is has hard as a raw potato. I've ruined about five potatoes in past two years because I keep forgetting this.

I could probably make a baked potato in the oven but I don't want to turn on the over in the summer, and I don't want to use up that much gas for just one potato.

Maybe I will find someone selling them on the street.

If I owned a boat

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Originally uploaded by winewolf1@prodigy.net

When I tell people that I own a condo on the lake, the first question they ask is "Do you have a boat?"

Note to self: People only care about boats.

Viva

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Originally uploaded by Jen_N

So, I was in Vegas a couple months ago and I watched this same water show on the strip. The water spouts would shoot up in synch with whatever music was playing.

The crappy thing about Vegas is that every 5 feet along the strip there are guys there handing out little cards with prostitute advertisements on them. These little cards and these people litter the whole strip. You can't even navigate. The strip is hard enough to navigate anyway. It's like a freaking 8 lane highway. Oh well..that's what I dislike about Vegas. Next time I'm staying downtown.

Clown Hair

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Originally uploaded by Amanda Hogue

One of my ex-girlfriends. OK, probably the only person I could ever consider as a "girlfriend" was scared to death of clowns. This photo would have probably made her cry.

Back when I had long, curly hair she used to call it "clown hair." I had this thing where I'd be looking off in some other direction and I'd open my eyes really wide and slowly turn my head toward her and look into her eyes. It would creep her out. Said it reminded her of a clown.

I've actually done this a couple times to myself in the mirror. It is actually pretty scary.

How Could I Resist

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Originally uploaded by saranc269

I'm going to go out on a limb here, but I'm pretty sure this is a dude wearing women's shoes. I'm afraid to look at the other photos in the stream because I'm at work. I can see two more thumbnails, and well...I know better than to click on them now.

This immediately made me think of my friend Jessica, who I went with to a Foot Patrol concert. Foot Patrol is a band whose songs are all about loving women's feet, and sucking on toes, and probably wearing women's shoes.

Once, Jessica had a garage sale where she sold a bunch of her size 4 women's shoes. A man pulled up driving a taxi and bought all of her shoes. Ok, either this guy had a wife or daughter with small feet or he liked to squeeze his big man feet into women's shoes. Maybe he just liked to smell them or sleep with them, I don't really know, but I want to.

Black Dog

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Originally uploaded by Loribelle A

I once had a black lab for about two weeks in my childhood. Our house was the last house on a Farm-to-Market road so people would dump their unwanted pets a few miles down the road and then they would end up on our porch.

This one particular lab was pretty smart and he already knew how to shake hands and a whole slew of other tricks. I'd play with the dog and wrestle in the front yard with him every day. He started crapping in the yard and my dad said if I didn't keep the yard clean he would haul the dog off.

I started off being pretty good at cleaning up all the crap. Then I slacked off quite a bit. One time when I came home the dog was no longer there waiting for me at the door. I don't remember if my dad hauled him away or he just ran away.

This image was also in today's Everyone's Uploads. Wowza.

I AM NOT AFRAID OF YOU AND I WILL KICK YOU ASS)

I AM NOT AFRAID OF YOU AND I WILL KICK YOU ASS)
Originally uploaded by Cheo70

I thought the title of this photo was clever. Checking through a couple of the other photos in this person's stream, it appears that he was just taking random pictures of people on the street and attaching witty titles to them.

Plastic Playground

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Originally uploaded by johnwporter

I remember the playground at my elementary school. It was made completely out of steel and if you fell from the top of the slide onto the ground it would have probably killed you. The whole playground was a hodgepodge of slides, teeter-totters, a monkey bars, etc. placed there most likely sometime in the 70s. We even had a merry-go-round. Do those things still exist? Scotty Guggisberg broke his arm on the merry-go-round in kindergarten.

About the time I was in Jr. High they removed all the old playground equipment and replaced it with one of these pre-assembled, multi-colored, plastic, "safe" playgrounds. They covered what was once grass with a bunch of gravel. The new playground basically sucked.

There are two distinct memories I have of the playground. One of them took place in third grade during bus recess, which was the recess I had to go to after school and wait until my mom got off work (at the school) to take me home. We were playing football and I had tackled this one kid and he began pouting about grabbing people by the neck when being tackled. I'm pretty sure I said "Quit being a baby. If you don't like it, bring it." Then he said "No, you bring it," and he pushed me. I wasn't going to take any of his crap, so I put him in a headlock. The teacher blew her whistle to signal that bus recess was over and I dropped him, crying on the ground. This kid had "little man" syndrome and deserved every ass kicking that came his way.

My other memory, I think was in second grade when a kid named Joseph and I had this can and we were playing catch with it by tossing it over a fence. We couldn't afford balls apparently. It was somewhat difficult to get the can over the fence so we put some rocks into it to make it heavier. Word got around to some stupid kid who told our teacher that we were throwing a can with rocks inside. Well, throwing rocks on the playground was against the rules. We kinda got into trouble and our punishment was that we had to carry a rock around with us for a whole week. If we lost that rock we were going to get licks. Even as a little kid, that sounded like the stupidest punishment ever. I ended up losing my rock but was able to replace it with an similar rock before my teacher found out.

Why are you doing this?

Everytime I open my Flickr account I am shown four thumbnails from everyone's uploads. Sometimes you get some good stuff. Sometimes you get some crap. What I'm going to do with this blog is try to come up with some comments with one of the four of "everyone's uploads" each time I log in to my account. Some of the comments may be about the photo themselves, others may be about my life.