Summer Staff: a Time of Service, Growth, and Friendship

For the month of June, I was blessed with the opportunity to serve as a mountain bike instructor and become a “Certified Bike Wrangler” — a title I will bring up whenever the opportunity presents itself — at YoungLife’s Lake Champion which is located in the ever-interesting rural part of New York that is less than an hour out of Pennsylvania.

Throughout the month and even before my arrival I was presented with opportunities for growth, some of which I probably squandered without even being aware of it. It didn’t really sink in with me that I’d be leaving home to drive 8 hours and give up a month of my Summer until roughly a week before, at which point I began to apprehensively pack my bags. I also had to make a plan for how I would get there by noon of May 31st: take a nap around 6 pm the day before on my couch and fall asleep to The Grand Budapest Hotel, wake up around 11 pm to catch the end of Game 1 of the NBA Finals and pack my car, then leave my house around midnight with coffee in hand and 11 hour playlist queued up for the 8 hour drive as I knew at one point I would go on a skipping spree where I would search for a specific song but have no idea what the song I was looking for was until I found it.

Driving on the interstate when it’s just one’s self and tractor trailers is bliss.

Around 5 am or so I am driving through Pennsylvania, the sun is attempting to rear its head through the fog with little success, and I am belting out the words, “I need you so much closer”, from Death Cab for Cutie’s Transatlancism as if it was the only ever sentence I had ever uttered.

The stage of driving where you have to entertain yourself, for the driving has become purely mechanical, not mental reduces me to acting like a child in the best ways possible.

Just before 8 am, I make it on the campgrounds, begin to unpack, and do any last-minute things on my phone that come to mind as I will be turning my phone in to be held under lock and key at brunch which is at 10:30 am as I found out from a whiteboard I walked by in Fox Run, the building that served as home while at Lake Champion.

The first day continues to roll on and Max, the master of the “Summit Mountain Bikes” shack, Zach, my fellow “Certified Bike Wrangler, and I hit the bike trail. I am riding a bike named Beemer which I eventually renamed to Santiago. The trail destroys me, my glutes are wrecked, my lips are shedding, and I think to myself what I have signed up for.

The following day, June 1st, campers arrive. Max, Zach, and I make 500 water balloons for festivities that I will consciously not detail here because if someone who has never been to a YoungLife camp before somehow stumbles upon this I would hate to ruin any surprises that await them. Filling water balloons became something we got quite efficient at, for we filled water balloons on the first and third day of every week, and the tedium of the job allowed for conversation. By the end of the day, we rode around again. This time Max, Zach, and I were accompanied by yet another Max (there were at least 3 guys named Max there to my knowledge), who gave me some pointers which made riding less grueling and much more pleasurable.

As the days went on, the work became more like second nature than conscious effort. I had begun to get comfortable, which is when I believe it is easiest to make bone-headed mistakes or oversights. A pattern in my prayer for the month after the job became rote was to avoid getting comfortable. This was quickly answered by the 4th week of camp when Max, the bike shack commander, and it was up to Zach and me to keep the bike shack which was located next t0 the ropes course from burning down.

Until the 4th week of camp, there were minimal issues that needed to be addressed with bikes. During the last week at camp a chain broke mid-ride, a plastic guard on one of the rear-tires got damaged and warped, and on the last ride of the month, a tire popped during a ride.

The chain presumably broke due to the camper riding the bike not listening to our instructions and shifting gears while not pedaling. I swapped bikes with him and walked the bike he was on through the trail back to the shack and tried to remember how Max showed me to fix this. Fixing a bike chain isn’t hard, but it’s not simple. After 30 minutes or so of frustration and getting closer and closer to fixing it the correct way, I finally got it.

Before Max had to leave in the last week we wrote our name on the wall of the bike shack as well as our favorite bible verse which is not permitted in the ropes shack because ropes are inferior to bikes. I wrote Matthew 6:34: “Therefore do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble.”

The day after Max left he left Zach and me a thoughtful note as well as a verse for each of us to meditate on. He left me Matthew 6:33: “But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.” As someone who always asks or wonders why things are the way they are, it quickly hit me that verse 34 means absolutely nothing without the advice of verse 33 that enables one to take the advice in 34.

As the days at camp blended into one, I came to know the ~40 other Summer Staffers quite well. Those in Room 3, my room, I came to know the closest for obvious reasons. Room 3 played host to some thoughtful conversation, absurd jokes, the kind of collective complaining that fosters camaraderie, interesting bouts of sleep talking that entertained everyone who was still awake, and poor renditions of early 2000’s pop-punk songs.

Regards to Fellow Summer Staff:

• To Laundry: I don’t know how the tedium of folding clothes for hours on end didn’t drain you mentally. Thank you.
• To Maintenance & Landscaping: It seemed as if you were always busy and on the go. Thanks for keeping camp functional and beautiful.
• To Cooks: Thank you so much for getting up early so that there would be breakfast to eat. Without you, we would have starved.
• To Waterfront: Thank you for mingling with everyone when it would have been easy to insulate yourselves.
• To Retail: Thank you for putting up with late hours and monotonous work.
• To Program Techs: You guys were so behind the scenes that I neglected to write you in here initially. However, that seems fitting because you guys did a lot of work without a lot of recognition for it. Thank you.
• To Ropes: Thanks for snapping campers into carabiners so they don’t get injured. Remember this, bikes are better than ropes.