Prelude to Raft Camp Reflection: Round 2

As I returned from raft camp on Friday, August 8th at 10:30 PM after a two days of exhausting complexity, I put off processing all I had learned.  Thursday night, after guiding a paddle raft, a monsoon-ish storm swept through the canyon, complete with lightning, thunder, powerful winds and driving rain.  As the storm gave way momentarily, returning to camp revealed Guy's Camp in a wreck.  Many of us had tents that had fallen over, rain-flies torn off, and flooded living quarters.  It was a mess to say the least.  I got off lucky: one of the tent poles to my bright orange 1972 model pup-tent had fallen over, leaving my pillow and the top half of my sleeping bag sopping wet.

Leaving things out to dry while the weather still looked safe (which totaled about a half-hour,) somehow we had a dry dinner, clean-up, Bible study, and worship and snack time. I had dismantled my tent because of my morning responsibilities as staff, leaving me sleeping under the Big-Top, a tent-like structure formed by spare oars, canvas, and rafting straps.  As soon as the call for lights out arrived, so did the rain.  Even while under the tent, the wind and rain were so strong that they soaked me anyway. So I attempted to sleep in an already wet sleeping bag with a wet pillow. Every time I would almost be asleep, a flash of lighting like that of a camera 6 feet away would "jolt" me awake. By the time the storm again subsided, it was 1 AM.

Yup.

Still cold and wet.

And yet I didn't even have it the worst.  Several of the middle schoolers lacked even dry cloths besides the ones on their backs.  Sleeping in the kitchen tent, they were given garbage bags to keep the water off of them. Yuck.

Morning came at 5:45 AM for me. Hard boiled eggs for breakfast. As I floundered about trying to grasp some semblance of order from my not-so-cognitive mind.  After a bright red sunrise gave the promise of rain, our entire plan for take down was altered. Regardless, we got out on the road on schedule, departing camp at about 9:30 AM. 

 The next several hours passed without incident, my co-pilot Marc and I chewing sunflower seeds, playing Twenty-Questions and searching for anything that resembled music on the radio. Once we passed Tri-Cities, the troubles began to ensue; the truck I was driving threw a tread on one of the tires. As the box truck the church had borrowed stopped to help, the bus made sure we were ok, then continued on to stay on schedule.  The spare was good, and we were back on the road within 15 minutes. 45 minutes later, as we merged onto I-84 West, driving through a thunderstorm, it was the box truck's turn, blowing the rear-inner drivers side dually.  Mark and I made sure he got to a place where the tire could be fixed, then got back on the road to get the luggage our truck carried back to Vancouver as soon as we could.  Of course, 20 miles outside Biggs Junction OR, now the OTHER tire threw a tread.  Neither of us had cell phones.  Radio contact had been lost with the box truck.  We could keep driving, or we could sit and wait for a few hours and wait for help.  

We kept going.

We pulled into a service station in Biggs that claimed to sell tires, hoping to find a used one that could just get us as far as Vancouver.  No, said the attendant who looked about 18 and to have been smoking cannabis on his ten-minute breaks, "we don't sell used tires.  A new one is $150." After some thinking, we decided it was worth it both in terms of time and money. We unhooked the trailer, then pulled the truck around to the garage.  

"Just a second.  Let me check my inventory."

Seriously!?

I took a moment to vent to my companion, pulling out a pizza I had picked up in Tri-Cities and setting it on the hood of the truck.  It sat long enough for me to pull out my Nalgene, find it empty, then look at Marc and say "This is friggen ridiculous, what is going ON?"

At that moment, the wind picked up my pizza and plopped it cheese-side down on the asphalt. I threw down my water bottle and just started laughing.  This was divinity.  If there was ever a doubt about it, it became clear at that moment.  As Marc and I laughed at our terrible "luck," the the attendant showed up with a tire.  Sweet: except that it's not the exact size that's on the truck.  We declined.  We introduced ourselves to the attendant, saying that if he saw on the news that a pickup truck and trailer flipped into the river because of a flat tire that was us and he could say he had met us.  

Next stop, the Dalles.  Hoping to find a tire that fit, we drove 45 mph on the freeway before taking the downtown exit to the Dalles. The theory was that it would take us past more shops.  It did.  But none of them were tires shops.  There were people everywhere.  And really nice cars everywhere. It dawned on us that we were participants in a parade and car show.  More hysterical laughter ensued. Hoping to pick up a hip-hop station to blast, we also worried that our tire would blow right as we passed the judges table or in the middle of an intersection.  Again, by God's grace we made it through.  All the tire places were closed.  We were going all the way home on this tire that was teetering on the edge of destruction.  

It sort of hit me solid right then that God wanted me to stop trying to fix it myself and to just let him take care of the situation.  I found myself wanting to control what was happening, and I couldn't.  Marc noted that Jesus fed 5000 people with 5 loaves and 2 fish; he could probably handle this. It was the coolest thing to watch God work it out.  Like he will work out my future.  I can point myself in whatever direction I want, but he can always give me a flat tire, not have another one for me, or stick me on a one-way street in a car show.

Still out of contact with the box truck, I tried every five-ish minutes to raise them on the radio.  Finally, I spotted them blitzing past me on the left.  Frantically flashing my brights and trying to get their attention, I sped up past where I knew I should have  trying to keep from losing them.  I finally got ahold of them, and found out they never got their tire fixed either.  Now each of us had an escort. Awesome.

We each made it all the way to the church without incident, arriving at about 10:30 PM. After looking at the tire bare all the way down to the metal, I know we shouldn't have made it. It was the ultimate in knowing that God was in control the whole way, and every time I tried to take it back from him, something ridiculous would happen.  

I'll have more reflection in a day or so.  I still haven't really talked about it, other than a few thoughts I put in at debrief yesterday afternoon.