This was the best day of all at CJ'01 for me. Early in the morning, our unit and one other unit from our troop boarded a school bus headed to Cavendish. The bus went to Malpeque, then went east on Route 20 to New London, then east on Route 6 to Cavendish. First, we went to Cranberry Village, which is an attraction featuring Ripley's Believe It or Not!, food outlets, shopping, and mini-golf. We played some mini-golf, and I scored the second best among our two units. While we were playing we were acting out scenes from Happy Gilmore. For example, when someone was lining up their putt, one of us would yell, "You'll never get that in, you jackass!" or "Just tap it in! Just tap it in!" After that, I purchased a bagel from Tim Horton's for breakfast, since all we had for breakfast this morning at camp was "margarined" toast and cereal.
We then walked west on Route 6 to Sandspit Cavendish Beach, which is an amusement park. First, I tried the Ferris Wheel. This particular one is quite tall and fast, soaring 60 feet into the air. Then, I went on the Rok-n-Roll with one of the other guys. This is a ride that moves around in a circle like a merry-go-round, but the capsule you're in flips around and makes you tumble while strapped in your seat. After one ride on that, I spent a long time on Cyclone, a roller coaster. Reportedly it is the largest roller coaster in Eastern Canada, which I find hard to believe. After probably 10 or so rides on that, I went on the Ferris Wheel one more time. One of our leaders took two of the guys and I over to the food stand to get our lunch. It was about 1:45, and we were planning to go to Green Gables at 2:00. When we reached the front of the line, we had to wait five minutes before they even bothered at an attempt to take our orders. Students about my age were running the food stand, and they were obviously very disorganized. After placing our orders, we waited by the pickup window while the students fooled around pretending to work. They were not even cooking our food, they were just having a good time hanging out in the kitchen. We got really bored waiting, so I started talking to a pretty girl behind me in line whom I had seen on the Ferris wheel when I was on it recently. She was about 13 years old, and she said she was from Charlottetown, so I was telling her about how we didn't like how early the stores close there, compared to London. After 20 minutes, we finally got our food, and I ate it quickly.
We boarded our school bus and it took us to Green Gables. There we watched a short video in the visitors centre, then we toured around the site. During the video some of our Scouts were somewhat disruptive, but I can't blame them after a long day! I toured the house, and then I walked some of the hiking trails. Everybody in our two units spread out over a large area, so I couldn't find anybody I knew! I was even wondering at one point if the bus had left without me, but I wasn't worried because there were shuttle buses every 15 minutes back to Cabot Park. A couple of the guys were sitting on a bridge on one of the trails, while everybody else was back in the visitors centre in the gift shop. I went to the gift shop, where I decided to purchase a few souvenirs of PEI. I bought two fridge magnets; one of the Confederation Bridge, and one of a fisherman whom I thought looked like the old man from the Clam Bake on Tuesday. I also bought a miniature Anne Shirley. We sat outside for awhile, then we returned to Cabot Park for 5:00.
After supper, before the sun set, I went on a ride that was being run by our subcamp. It was a sort of rope-driven merry-go-round that takes you a few feet into the air. It was quite fun, and the other Scouts in my troop were quite interested in watching me on it. That evening we held a "prayer vigil" for the return of our friend Mr. Woody. I was designated as the minister. Mr. Woody is a piece of driftwood that one of our Scouts picked up earlier during the jamboree. On a morning this Scout was offsite, another Scout was playing with Mr. Woody and one of the leaders took him away. Mr. Woody appeared to have been left either at Starbucks (the leaders' coffee tent for our subcamp) or the Designated Smoking Area. All we wanted was to have Mr. Woody returned safely to our campsite. We went to the canteen near our subcamp and bought three 750 mL Pepsis and a bag of cheesies that we shared as part of the prayer vigil. Eventually, we got Mr. Woody back safely, and at last word, the Scout who originally found him has him at his home. After our prayer vigil, we sat around by the laneway by our campsite.
Sitting by the laneway, I was not too happy to see the one girl that I liked from the Halifax troop holding hands with some guy and walking by our campsite several times. To this day I wonder if this was a deliberate act to turn me off. The reason I had an affinity for this girl from Halifax was because of the resemblence she had to a girl I liked at the time back in Ontario. A few days before I left Ontario for CJ, I had finally worked up the courage to call this girl after months of hesitation. When I called she had told me that we should "get together" upon my return to Ontario. This was something that made me very happy, and it kept me on a high all through the trip to PEI. Whenever something wasn't going my way or something like that, I would just think of this girl and everything would be good. Basically, I believed that I had a girlfriend waiting for me in Ontario. There will be more on this in my Afterword.
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