Operation: Preparation Panic

Sorry about the delays, there really hasn't been a whole lot going on lately. Except, of course, for my continued preparations for my summer job. You might ask, what kind of job would need "continued preparations"? Seriously, ask. I'll wait.





All right, you've had long enough. For the first time in nearly a year, I'm leaving the great state of Wisconsin. My bags are packed and shipped, and tomorrow I get on a plane for New York City via Chicago-O'Hare. You see, I got a job as a summer camp counselor at Brookwood Camps in Glen Spey, NY, where I will be dealing with kids aged 8-17 in the cabins, as well as on the soccer and baseball fields.

Please hold your gasps of amazement until the end of the post. Thank you.

I first got interested in counselor jobs in late April, when I was looking on Craigslist and found an open Wilderness Trip Leader position at a camp near Hayward, WI. By the time they got back to me, they had already filled the position, and they pointed me to Campstaff.com, where I found over a hundred camps that were looking for staff. A few of these were in northern Minnesota and northern Wisconsin, and I applied to those, as well as a couple further east. My interview with a place near Brainerd didn't go so well, and the only other one that I heard from was Brookwood. They e-mailed me in mid-May, but I was stuck in a mobile dead-zone. However, once again, I got lucky. The next week, they e-mailed me again to see if I was still interested. I interviewed the next day, and they offered me a job. They then sent me a contract, which I signed and sent back.

Last week, they sent me a load of forms and instructions that were, apparently, meant to be sent out over a span of several weeks. In this was a physician's form. Yep, looks like I was supposed to get a physical before getting there. Of course, by the time I found out about this, the local clinic was booked until next week (6/21), and the next closest place is over an hour away. As I don't have a car, and the family is either unavailable, unhelpful, or simply can't drive that far, I am basically screwed with that.

Another one was a suggestion that I ship my luggage instead of bringing it with me on the flight. Sounds reasonable. However, I needed someone to drive me to the local shipping location. This didn't happen until two days ago (6/15) due to general lack of planning by everyone involved. Luckily, as of 11:17 ET, the bags were in New Jersey and on time to arrive tomorrow.

Originally, I believed that someone from the camp would pick me up at a NYC airport on 6/18, like it says IN THE CONTRACT, so I scheduled my flight to fit that. I took the cheapest flight available, which would leave Duluth at 6:40, land in Minneapolis at 7:35, leave at 11:25, land in Milwaukee at 12:36, take off at 16:05 and land at New York-JFK at 19:19. I was alright with the Milwaukee layover, as the concourse area there is the best that I've seen in my limited experience (Milwaukee, Chicago-O'Hare, Washington-Reagan, Minneapolis, Charleston (SC)). However, in the paper dump, they informed me that I needed to be at the camp by 18:00 ET on 6/18. This resulted in a search for new flights, since I wouldn't be at Brookwood until after 22:00. The new plan has me leaving Duluth at 6:00, landing at Chicago-O'Hare at 7:24, leave at 8:15, and land at JFK at 11:30 ET. I would then have to take a succession of city buses and subways to the Port Authority Bus Terminal, then take a bus to Monticello, NY. I would then call the camp and get picked up from there.

Another SNAFU was for a needed trip to Walmart. I needed to get several things for the camp, and my dad wasn't feeling up to taking me. My sister agreed to give me a ride after work, but she got ticked at Dad over some inane thing or other and took off for Mom's. This made me call Grandma, and disaster was averted. The rush turned out to be unnecessary, as the bags weren't shipped for another four days.

The last thing I have to say is that they are a cell phone, laptop, and camera free camp. This means that there is a possibility of another hiatus this summer. There are computers with Internet access there, but the way my luck goes, they'll probably be Macs.