Camping, a Rifle, and Saying No

Basil Wenceslas, Kathleen, her kids and I went to San Jose Family Camp for six nights.  (This is Monday. We got back on Friday.) Basil and I had a tent cabin on the summit of a hill so we could look over a giant valley filled with redwoods, ponderosa pine, and oak trees.  It was remarkable, as I've never seen those three species growing together before.   Our tent cabin had a balcony/deck built out over the hill.  That's where we slept because of the heat.  I saw at least one shooting star every night.  Two of them were totally amazing.  The one on the second night zoomed across the sky, then there was a flash of light followed, a few seconds later, by a muffled boom.  Then, on the forth night was the other unusual shooting star.  It had a long tail, it drew its white streak though a quarter of the sky.  I had never seen it's like before.
Kathleen and her kids had a tent cabin closer to the river.  I liked my location more.  If you ever go to San Jose Family Camp I recommend tentcabin #605.

During the day we played board games, fished (didn't catch anything), swam in the river.  Basil went over Rainbow Falls (19 feet from top to bottom) several times.  It inspired me to do it, too.  Boy that was a dumb decision.  I barely made it to the top of the falls then I had to wait 15 minutes to catch my breath.  Then, when I went over I was almost too weak to make it to the surface.  But when I finally got my head out of the water and gasped for breath there were two score people clapping for me. Kathleen climbed to the top of the rock beside the falls and jumped into the pool below.  I tried to climb the rock but was too weak.  At night there was a campfire where we all sang silly camp songs and the kids roasted marshmallows.  The last two days we were at camp there was a lot of smoke from a forest fire about 20 miles away.  In fact, the last morning, Basil and I woke up covered in ash that had fallen like snow.  The fire is still burning.

I bought Anselm Samuel a rifle the other day.  It's a Marlin 60.  I took him to the range Saturday and he shot a couple of hundred bullets at paper targets.  He's a pretty good shot.  There was another guy at the rage with the same rifle but with a scope.  Just using iron sights Anselm shot better than the guy with the scope.  I was proud of him.

Yesterday, Sunday, Kathleen and I went to church.  (Basil was sick, Anselm left early in the morning for a Boy Scout camp out, and Kathleen's kids were with their father.) Father John Takahashi was subbing for Father Basil, who is in Scotland right now.  It was good to see him again.  He used to be my pastor when I attended Holy Trinity in San Francisco.

Today I have reached a new record.  It is now 11:30 p.m.  My last drink was at 1 p.m.  That's 10 1/2 hours without a drink.  It has not been easy.  I started feeling jittery about 4 p.m.  The stomach cramps started up about 6 p.m. and for the last couple of hours I've been feeling pretty bad chest pains and my skin feels like it needs to be scratched off.  My doctors wont let me go to detox until I've lost 20 pounds. (Allegedly my heart can't handle detox.)  When they said that I weighed 336.  Now I weigh 321.  But I've been stuck there for a week.  Most of my calories come from alcohol so I have to cut that out to lose the weight to get into detox.  Its going to be hard but I know I can do it.