Welcome to your friendly neighborhood Texaco

Today I went boating at Yuba Reservoir. As most of you are probably aware, the outhouses at these places smell ummm.....delightful, so I try to use them as little as possible. We were on our way home when I asked Kristina if we could stop somewhere in town to use the bathroom since I had been holding it almost ALL DAY. We stopped at the nearest gas station (Texaco). I went first, and wiped down the toilet seat with soap/tp/water (I think my OCD kicked in), and threw the tp into the toilet and flushed thinking nothing of it. Then all of a sudden.....a FOUNTAIN of water comes spraying out of the toilet! I didn't know what to do....cry or laugh. I tried frantically grabbing the plunger to stop it and it inverted on itself. I was all out of ideas, so I opened the door and all three girls from our car were staring back at me. I asked Kristina to come and help me and they all started laughing when they saw what was behind the no longer closed door. We were all dying of laughter as water was spilling out into the hallway over by the pop machine. Kristina stepped forward to try to help me and sliped on the huge puddle accumulating and pulled the decor cow girl art off the wall trying to catch her balance. At this point I felt that any attempt to stop this massive water flow was hopeless. Luckily Kristina in all her infinite wisdom notified the clerk. She knocked on the door and saved the day! Little did we know this had happened three times earlier today and they hadn't quite fixed it right. We helped her mop up the mess and were thankful that all it was was soap/tp/water....phew! Needless to say, we all had a good laugh and I will probably never live this one down :D

Rendezvous Ranch

Riding horses on the ranch

Some of the boys tying flies

I met a new friend a couple of weeks ago and he invited me up to this service ranch for youth that he volunteers at. I have never been to a service ranch camp before, and I LOVED it! There were about ten young men attending the camp for a two week period. They woke up every day at six thirty and did service until noon. In the afternoon they were able to do various types of free time activities such as biking, horseback riding, kayaking, tubing down the creek, wood working, fly tying, tye dying (which is what I went up and helped with), etc. These boys were amazing :D I went up early one day to help out with service and the boys were building a teepee. They made sure it was perfect, not even a wrinkle, and if it didn't look quite right they fixed it until it did. I work with my fair share of young people, and they don't have the work ethic that these boys did. It was very impressive. It made me think about the importance of teaching young people to work. I will be forever grateful to my parents who taught me that. I really think that these service ranches are a brilliant idea! We should have more of them for youth to go to. I hope that they will let me come back next year and help out even more.

Dear Pot Smokers,

You just killed my reggae buzz.....thanks for forcing me to inhale your second hand smoke at the Toots and Maytals concert.....my brain and lungs thank you!

Sincerely,

Concerned for the youth of today