Welcome
to another tale of a great Thunderbird adventure! One in which yet
another Thunderbird idiom was born - "Find the Loophole!" became
our cry on this weekend - but more about that later.
On the weekend of July 16-18, Miller, Dave, Todd, Huck, Cory and Lumberman took off for the wilds of Grand Bend, Ontario for a rare all-male weekend of moot-style fun. None of us had ever been to Beach Party Moot, but we had all heard good things about it and were anxious and curious to find out what kind of fun awaited us.
Huck and Lumberman drove up to the Bend with Dave. We got to Camp Attawonderon, registered, set up our site, looked around, sat around until it got dark. Then Todd, Cory and Miller arrived in Miller's dad's van. It seems as though Miller missed the turn-off for Grand Bend, and almost made it to Michigan. No matter - soon we were all gathered 'round making our cardboard boat in anticipation of the cardboard boat race that would take place the next day!
At the camp opening the next morning, we found out that there were just over 100 people at the moot - mostly Rovers, but some Venturers and one Ranger group too. During the opening, moot staff questioned everyone to try and find out who was keeping everyone up late last night with their tape-tearing noises. Oops.
After opening, it was time for morning events! We rocked in the obstacle course (even though we kind of just shoved Dave over the plywood wall.) We also rocked several other events, even though we only got the one plaque at the end of the day... Something's a little fishy there. Anyway, one of the best events was the one where we had to fill up a bucket with water by carrying water to it in other buckets that happened to have holes in them. The leader of the event told us that we could use anything we had on our person, but we couldn't go back to our camp site to get anything. Luckily for us, we found a loophole! Dave had just returned to the camp site to get all of our buckets and everything we brought for the sand castle building competition, so he hadn't heard the game rules! When he showed up a few minutes later with all we could ever want for this event, the staff person objected, but we emphatically pointed out how we hadn't broken the rules. Unfortunately, to punish us, the staff person let the next group in line tackle us during the event. So basically we ended up playing by "the rules" and even though we rocked, we didn't come home with the plaque.
Next was sand castle building. Wow, we came prepared! Shovels, rakes, buckets - the works. A couple of other groups had little tiny castles, but we made one that was about 14 feet in diameter. It would have been bigger, but we only had about 25 minutes to build before the judging started. Unfortunately we also lost this competition, since we put a flag on the top of our castle (full 3'x6' Canadian Red Ensign) that was judged to be "man-made material" (against the rules) even though it was silk, which is obviously a natural material. But we're not bitter.
After the best lunch we've ever had at camp (Dave's chicken breast marinated in white wine fetuccini with mushroom sauce) we headed into downtown Grand Bend for some good beach action. Its too bad that a thunderstorm started about 10 minutes after we parked the car.
Oh well, on to play mini golf and look in some shops. The "Beer-wear" store was particularly amusing, in a tacky-tourist way.
Mmmm... roasted pig.
Later on, the moot dance started, and all of the Venturers and Rangers had a great time. Most of the rovers however went back into town.
We returned to camp at about 1:00am, when some of our contingent (namely all but the two Mikes) decided that they hadn't had enough of the beach earlier in the day, so they took off for the lake with two of our friends from Brantford. I don't know when they got back, but I do know that they weren't arrested, which is good.
Sunday morning, we had another great meal prepared by Dave. This is why we call him 'Mom.' Anyway, soon it was time for camp closing and pack-up. We were on the road home by about 12:30pm and arrived sometime around 2:30pm. All around a great weekend, and a great adventure. Next year we're going to win the boat race.
