I just got back to my apartment after the Bandit Racing camp. Upon entering, I collapsed on the floor in pure exhaustion. All I can say is: wow, that was an amazing, intense, soul cleansing experience. The idea of a survival camp was not ours, but stolen from the bigger pro teams. It seemed like everybody was holding a survival camp; if we wanted to compete at the highest level, we needed to hold our own camp in order to bring the team together. It might sound trite, but I am finding it hard to adjust to the real world again. The camp changed something in all of us; it made us all better people. Hopefully this diary gives you an idea of what we went through.

Going in, I thought we would spend our time tossing the football and hunting wild animals by day, and sitting around the campfire roasting marshmallows and drinking boxes of Bandit wine by night. Not so my friends, not even close. We weren’t there 5 minutes before we were struggling to survive in the unforgiving wilderness surrounding River Road.

The “trust fall” was an obvious highlight for all of us. Armand was the first to go. He was scared at first but eventually fell backwards as we caught his 110-pound elfish body. I was next. I don’t remember much of this; I woke up in the woods that night, but was told that I had a good time.

Justin made us have late-night talks around the campfire to bring us emotionally closer as a squad. The idea was for us to open up and talk about our hopes and dreams. Unfortunately, the whole thing went pear-shaped from the start. First off, Evil just wanted to talk about different ways to prepare vegetable entrees. Armand told him to shut his pie hole because baked vegetable lasagna didn’t count as a hope or a dream. Justin showed that he can recite the words of every Led Zeppelin song.  Every one.  Even the B Sides.  Some of them in reverse too.  He claims that this makes him better than us … we argued about it a lot, but he is probably right.  Armand … well if Armand tells me one more time where the best croissant is in New York I am going to scream. Or at least go there and buy a few. Who’s left? Yeah Ryan. Well, after Ryan talks, you end up thinking that Warren Buffett is his best friend. That guy can slip a Buffett quote into any conversation. If you didn’t think that Ryan could make Buffett relevant to a conversation about mountain climbs, lead outs or even changing a flat, he will prove you wrong … again and again. It wasn’t until the third day that most of us realized that he wasn’t talking about the singer. Looking back the “campfire chats” mostly just turned into 5 guys sitting around a fire swearing and throwing flaming marshmallows at each other.

All in all, we had several moments that almost broke the team apart. We spent most of the camp fighting and insulting each other, and many punches were thrown. I think I got kicked off the team on 10 separate occasions. I assumed they were joking so I just didn’t leave. Armand left once in a real tizzie, but Justin calmed him down and got him to return to camp. 

This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 9th, 2007 at 6:22 pm and is filed under King's Korner. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.