Le Mix

A pretty long while ago when we were driving from New York to Atlanta we stayed at a dumpy McDumpy hotel (ed. Note in southern Virginia). It was terrible, it looked terrible, it was terrible. The bed sheets felt rock hard, the bed felt rock hard. When the hot water was on full blast it felt like the cold water was on full blast. The colors were terrible it was like the mess if you got a bald eagle and smooshed it and squirted green goo on it.

But looking at the bright side, after that we went to our friends in Atlanta, the D’s [Ed. Note real names not used for reasons of Internet privacy / security] who have a boat on Lake Lanier. We got to ride on a tube towed behind a jet ski. At the start it was freakishly scary, I mean we were going about 28 miles per hour and it was really scary and our friend Mary D. was doing all sorts of things like pretending to do the “can can” and lying on her back without holding onto anything. Then I got the hang of it and started doing all of those things too, though my Mom was a scaredy cat. My friends, Nick, Matt and Zack like to do even more scary things – they like to put four people on it when it’s only supposed to hold three people and they flip it. The people closest to the handles will hold onto the handle and everyone will push forward and the whole tube will flip. My favorite move was the one where you crouch down and jumped and the one where you go backwards with no hands and let the waves take you by surprise.

The day before I went on the tube behind the D’s jet ski, I actually rode on a jet ski for the first time at some of my dad’s friends, the R’s. They also live on Lake Lanier but far away from the D’s. I liked riding in the front of the jet ski. There were two, a red one made for going fast and a yellow one made for bouncing. The yellow one was my favorite but the red one was also fun. I liked to see how fast we were going on the red jet ski which had a speedometer – the fasted I went was 51 miles per hour. I got to ride on the red one with Mr. R. and my mom and my dad, and then Mrs. R gave me a ride on the yellow one. We bounced a ton (boing, boing, boing) and then we sped up and jumped really high waves. Jet skiing is so fun, it’s even more fun than real skiing I have to admit. We were at the R’s on the third of July and after the jet skiing and dinner we got to watch the fireworks at night from a boat. The fireworks were really cool. One of them was a sideways smily face.

Me on the red Jet Ski with Dad

Me driving the yellow Jet Ski with Mrs. R.

For the last week, I’ve been going to a camp called Camp Kingfisher at the Chattahoochee Nature Center. My counselors were Scott and Lucy and we did all sorts of things – We went swimming every day and my favorite part of lunch was not the food but the “bug juice”. They always made some yummy juice cocktail that they called “bug juice”. And there were all sorts of different colors, orange, blue, yellow and pink. We went on hikes, we went to the aviaries, the “disco” center (ed. note, the Discovery Center), all sorts of fun things.

On Thursday I was on TV – Fox 5 news to be exact. They came to camp and were filming us doing all sorts of really fun things. I was filmed in the disco center and we looked at all sorts of things from nature and we were asked to pick out our favorite thing that we found and tell Fox 5 news what we thought it was. I chose a really cool shell that I said “it looks like a pen and the water is like ink – put the shell in the water and you can write.” I was also filmed getting my face painted.

[ed note, below are the two videos. Simon is wearing the orange shirt and appears near the end of each one]

First segment with Simon talking about shell (simon starts at 2:01)

Second segment with Simon getting face painted (Simon starts at 2:10)

Then on the last day of camp, which was today, something very bad happened. We were doing a mini competition and the first activity was tug of war and I was in the front. The rope was too short so we had to tie two pieces together. My counselor Scott was holding the rope together so it didn’t fall, but then it wasn’t the knot that broke, but I snapped a part of the rope and I got a bad rope burn and started bleeding on one finger. But I was a trooper and didn’t cry although I couldn’t join in for the rest of the activities. Today was popsicle day and everyone got a popsicle except if you picked up a piece of trash you got two, but I got three – I got a normal one and then my counselor Scott offered me a second one and then one of my friends in my group said “here take mine.”