We finally went camping

Packing is a bad idea when the more responsible member of the team (i.e. the one who usually remembers all the things I'd forget) has had a few drinks. We forgot chairs, blankets, utensils, cleaning things, food... But no great worry - this is America, land of capitalism so we bought most of the things we needed. I drove us to the lakeside campsite, around the campsite and back out of the campsite again. Who would have thought the place would be full on a Thursday night. We raced darkness as we drove back down the road towards another campsite I'd seen (11 miles from the lake). This one was about half-full, and with night closing in too fast, we picked a spot and put our tent up. Adventure 1 complete.

Adventure 2. I hadn't eaten much all day and I was starving, so we drove back to Payson (half an hour) to get food. We got tacos from one of the few places open that late (10pm-ish) and ate them while watching the lightning across the hill. It was pretty spectacular - all the lights around us went off about half way through the meal. That should have pinged something in my brain, but no. We clambered back in the car as the first drops of rain hit. I was still fine with this - it was probably just a shower. Heh. About a quarter of the way back to the campsite I was driving through rain so heavy I couldn't see 10 meters ahead of me. It was pitch black, and my headlights barely lit the road for all the rain. With each flash of lightning I fixed the curves of the road ahead in my mind. We got there in one piece, our tent had held up masterfully, and we crawled into bed.

I should mention that there was poo around our campsite and all the signs around warned of bears. The outcome of this is that I didn't sleep a wink the first night. I woke up to every little noise. In the morning we woke up to cows in the next campsite over. Who knew cow poo could look so solid. Anyway, I slept well the next two nights.

(Mis)Adventure 3. On Friday night we got a campfire going and cooked burgers. But a thunderstorm as big as the one on Thursday night rolled in as we were cooking. So we had slightly pink-in-the-middle burgers. But that was okay. It was practice for Saturday.
Saturday night's dinner was steak and fish (guess who had what) and Friday had thought us how to get the fire going and how to cook well over an open fire. So we did fried spuds on the pan and everything was delicious. Except that we cooked the steak and fish separately and when Liam got up to help me get the fish onto my plate, River snuck over to his and scoffed half his dinner. I felt so bad that I couldn't hardly eat. I ended up giving half my dinner to Liam. But I'd had enough. Needless to say River was locked in her crate while we finished eating.
And we had toasted (roasted?) marshmallows. They were divine.

So that was all the mad adventures. We went kayaking on the lake on Saturday. That was good fun too. We only rented the kayak (a sit on) for an hour, but more thunder came in after 40 minutes. We'd had enough fun anyway. I'd forgotten to put on suncream and I was paranoid. (I didn't get burned, though.)

We packed up Sunday. I didn't want to go home. Sitting around a campsite surrounded by pine, oak and juniper is the best thing ever. But we've booked another trip for two weeks from now. Can't wait.

I was motivated yesterday

I got so much done yesterday. I was quite proud of myself. I was up at 7 and drove Liam to work, then I came home and fixed the car backseat thing that River sits on. The straps holding the attaching clips had frayed. They had become really brittle in the sun, and I had to cut out the frayed bits and attach the remains back together. It was quite fun figuring out how to best attach them. I ended up sewing them together and reinforcing the join with duck tape.

Next up was the hammock - our old one's ropes had also become sun-frayed and we replaced it. So I got to mess around with more bits of rope. But we have a hammock again. Yeay.

I went bra shopping - unsuccessfully - but even that didn't kill my motivation.

Then I got 1,500 words written. I'm doing an online writing course and am working on an entirely new story. I'm really enjoying it. I'm trying "discovery" writing, so I have absolutely no idea where the story is going beyond the next few scenes. But the characters are fun. The side-kick is a bit psycho-homicidal and those type of characters are always fun to write.

And after all that I fixed the brakes on Liam's bike. This bike is my newest project. It's been a mess since we moved here - flat tires, chain covered in sand, brakes that were so tight the bike didn't move. I haven't looked at the gears yet, but I imagine they are in an equally sorry state. I've always wanted to learn how to maintain / fix a bike and I'm using this as my learning bike. It's funny how not mysterious a bike is when you actually start learning about how all the pieces work. I used think the brake and gear wires were set with some kind of techno-magic-precision-engineering, but it's nothing more complicated than a nut / bolt you can tighten and loosen. And the wire tension you just fiddle around with until it's right. Crazy.

So I cooked dinner then, and after that we went to the shop and bought random things (I got a Nalgene bottle), and then I played Skyrim until bedtime. Ahh Skyrim - I am, once again, entirely addiced. I even got a funny buzz in my solar plexus region the other day I wanted to play so badly. Oh my god. How do Bethesda do it? How do they makes games that do this to me?

Anyway. I must go get some writing done. I'm on scene 6 and I'm supposed to be on 9.