This one is supposed to be a free write I guess... To be honest I hate free writing. Having a set of parameters, an outline of what I'm supposed to do is what has kept me going through all of school, creativity isn't really my thing I guess, at least not in writing.

So I'll tell you all a story, and given my scouting background, it might as well be about that. The year was 2013, and it was Mitchell Rigano, Nathan Kerpez, Tyler Benenati, and myself. We were just 15 years old and we went to the National Scouting Jamboree in West Virgina. The facility that we were at was brand new, only used once before for a trail run for the Jamboree, so it was a great place but I guess during the years of construction, they never realized that the location it was built on was the catalyst for horrific thunderstorms.

Now the facility was very environmentally friendly, the water that was used for the bathrooms was recycled from the shower, and the showers were ambient. If you have ever taken an ambient shower I applaud you because they are extremly cold. So on the first day our guide person told us about the showers and said that a good way to get past them being so cold is so sing while taking one, so naturally every time we would take showers we would wait until all six of us were in our separate showers, then we would all sing. Our main song was "Ain't No Mountain High Enough" by Marvin Gaye. By the end of it all we knew the entire song, word for word, note for note. We had our haters, mainly other kids yelling at us for our terrible singing, but we got compliments as well.

The Jamboree was a 10 day experience. All was going well until around the fourth day when things started to get muddy. The sub-camp that we were in was located at the lowest elevation, meaning that when the rain came, which it did, we got the bud of it all. The irrigation systems in place consisted of triangular, 5ft deep 3ft wide at the top channels to provide a pathway for the water to flow out and away from the campsites. Well at one point, there was so much rain water, that the channel was only a few inches away from overflowing and completely flooding our campsite. Every day we were forced to stop all of our activities due to someone hearing thunder, but more than half the time we didn't hear the thunder. So after a few days of this happening in a row we started joking that some jerkwad out in another part of the country heard thunder so they called the camp to tell them to shut it all down. It got very annoying very quickly.

All in all it was a great time. Yeah, that's just some of our good times at Jambo. Also if you want to see what it was like for us there, below is a video that Mitchell took of us eating dinner during one of the less terrible storms. We were all screaming, thats how loud it was. Sorry for me flipping you off.