Afterglow 2010 - Day 4 Tuesday

The balloon kit came with a pump to blow up the balloons, but since the whole set only cost $1.99 the pump sucked. So we went old school and blew the balloons up with some old fashioned lung power. It may have taken a little longer and used up some energy, but I for one got a nice little high from being out of breath when the balloon was fully inflated. It was a lot of work for the payoff, but in the end it was worth the headache.

My Nana had a lot of rules to keep us in check when we were kids, and one of them was "If you're going to roughhouse, go outside or go in the basement." Mom evoked Nana rules so they could play games in the cabin. Since Cabin #2 doesn't have a basement, we went outside.

Brian has always had real rosy red cheeks, especially when he is laughing, running around and breathing heavily. So it would make sense that they would return when we were blowing up these balloons and letting them go. And Timmy was nearby waiting for that moment.

Another thing that Timmy is really good for is "ruining" a picture. Look at the kids enjoying a nice game of Apples to Apples, then look at Timmy in the background. Classic Timmy. I swear that kid can't be serious for a photo. And that's the reason why I love the kid so much.

Craziness and silliness ensues whenever Jenny and Timmy are allowed to use a camera. While Jenny takes pictures of feet, Timmy usually just takes a picture of himself. And you never see him do it too; you only realize it when you are looking through your pics at a later date.

It seemed like a pleasant and calm evening here at Afterglow, but we knew that was all about to change in the coming hours. Even though we are pretty far removed from society up here, we are still connected to TV, radio and the internet (via our mobile phones) so we were well aware of the big storm that was on its way. It sucks when it storms here at Afterglow because then we are forced inside, but when it storms at night it's kind of cool because we most likely would be indoors anyway. Sure we weren't able to have the fire on rage on KK, but at least the storm would be cool.

As soon as the clouds rolled in and the sky became dark, we knew that shit was getting real. Have you ever sat outside and watched a storm approach? I've only done it at Afterglow because in the other 51 weeks of the year I'm too busy to sit around and just wait for something to happen. It's nice sometimes to kick back, relax and wait for the apocalypse to smite you from the Earth. Ok so it wasn't going to be quite like that, but I was hanging out with my family and drinking a cold beverage and just waiting. And it was the best thing that I could have been doing.

None of us claim to be meteorologists, but we could tell from the weather patterns how long and where the storm was coming from. I had a video of the thunder and lightning in the distance before the rain came, but I lost it when my phone decided to call it quits. But even though you can't see it now, we saw it then and it was awesome.

You never know what you are going to get when you take a flash picture in a dark setting. You may get someone doing a weird face on purpose, you may get someone doing a weird face on accident, you may get a blurry sasquatch or you make get the side of someone's head. You never really know, which is why you take the chance.

As the night wore on and the adults were heading to bed we had to figure out something to do. Normally this was the time where we would rage it on KK, but the weather forced us to choose something else. So we all headed North to Watersmeet, MI to the Casino. I don't remember who won or lost, but at I hope at least we had fun.

We stayed outside until the rain started pouring down and the lightning and thunder crackled across the sky. You know, when it's unsafe to be outside unless you're that asshole Ben Franklin flying a kite in that shit trying to figure out how things work. It may have worked out for that old bastard, but we probably would have died.

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