Once we arrived in V.A. the fun never stopped. The first day was spent in greeting old friend. One year had changed many of them. Fortunately it was only outward changes, and everyone was the same friend that we had parted with just a year earlier.
The lectures were as they always have been very good. The themes of which as many of you know was on John Calvin, the theologian. Chris Strevel was given the opportunity to speak the most, which was fine by me. Out of all the pastors in the RPCUS, he is one of the few that I am unfamiliar with and was happy for the opportunity to change that.
The Second day came and with it so did the games. Early that morning I downed five opponents in ping-pong as I started my quest for my sixth straight ping-pong title. After that Ultimate Frisbee was started. My friend William G. Anderson introduced me to Stewart Orr right before we got started. I soon realized that he was a valuable teammate as well as friend. I cannot remember how the first game went as far as the details go, I do know that Stewart and I dominated enough that we were selected for team captains in the second game. I won the toss and got to pick first, which started the end. With some great D from my teammates and some lapses in coverage by Stewart's team, we rolled over them with a 5-1 win. The third game I appointed the two oldest of the group to be team captain's in hope that Stewart and I would be on the same team again. No such luck. We were the first two picked. This time however Stewart and his team blasted me and mine 4-1 as we called the game due to the large deficit the one team faced and the lack of energy left in the players. Sometime between the first and last full day there was one game played that took the top for most well fought game that year. I was late to join, and was disappointed again when I found that I was being put on the losing team. Not that I minded the fact that they were losing, it was that again Stewart was on the other team. Which was why my team was losing. However things were made better by the fact that William Anderson was on my team, which had just given up a third point with out scoring one. The tide turned when another person joined (I do not remember his name) he was fresh and in his place we traded on of the other players who had been playing for awhile to the winning team. With two new fresh players on our team we turned things around. We answered their three point with two of our own before Andrew connected with Stewart for a 4-2 lead. However my team found a second wind and for what seemed thirty minutes of hard playing by both teams, my team put up two more points. We were all knotted up at four. At last it seemed like the marathon game had ended on a little flare thrown to the corner of the end zone by our team after a long drive had brought us with in feet of the goal. However the catch was made with one foot out of bounds. The longest game that I had ever played of Ultimate Frisbee would continue. Not long however, as the other team, now warn out from playing longer then I and a few of my teammates had, made a bad pass that was blocked only a quarter of the way down the field. Two passes later I found myself with the Frisbee and a small shot at hitting William near the end zone. There was one player that stood between us, and as hard as I tried to get a perfect pass off I failed and air mailed the Frisbee. However it could not have worked better. The Frisbee tipped a branch and change from what was a air mail throw while it was over the covering man, to a perfect strike to William. And between him and the lone man in the end zone...no one. An easy toss made us the come from behind winners.
Finally on the last full day Stewart and were on the same team again, for the first time since we had started that first game. And we gave everyone enough reason not to want to let us be on the same team again. 5-0, a complete shout out. However in an attempt to balance the teams, they traded both of us to the team that had just been blasted 5-0. I was surprised but happy. The good news was William was on that team. So for the first time the three of us were going to be on the same team. The bad news was Stewart had to leave for singing practice. The three of us never were on the same team. That last game started out bad. Within three minutes the score was 3-0, we were losing. It seemed as though Stewart and I maybe were to the reason for the 5-0 win in the last game. Ten minutes later however, a whole nother story as we were set dead even at 3-3. We were forced to tie it up again at 4-4 and end the game with an amazing one handed catch from a throw that had started half way back across the field. 5-4 was the final as my team pulled out another come from behind win. After that last game I found Stewart and told him he had mist a great game. He said, "I know, I have been told that. More then once already." Word traveled faster then I had thought...
The Dancing was fun as always, I learned one new dance that I like very well...I will for go the trouble of trying to explain it. Maybe one day one of my sisters will post a video of it, and I will post a link to their sites. Besides that there is not much to say about dancing, it is not like sports where you can go on and on about things my reader(s) (I know at least one person reads the whole thing.) care little about. So that when I get to the dancing I am out of things to say...What a let down I am sure. But what more needs be said then it was fun.
One last note. And yes it has to do with sports. Congrats to Isac Johnson, for holding a lead on me late into a ping-pong game. And then after falling behind at the end, coming back and knotting it up at 20-20. However he fell short 22-20. I went 11-0 in ping-pong this year and took home my sixth ping-pong championship title, and third title without a loss.
Players lost too in V.A. and the win to loss ratio that for those years against those players.
1st year, Pastor Johnson. 2-1 record overall.
2nd year, Mr.Candler. 3-3 record overall. (note: I have beaten Mr.candler all seven times I have played him since.)
4th year, Tommy. 2-1 record overall.
Robert L.
Monday, July 13, 2009
Monday, July 6, 2009
Travels to a far off land.
As most of y'all know me and my family, minus my brother and mother, traveled to V.A. about a week ago. It is a trip that has been made by members of our family for the past several years, since 2004 to be precise. But to start this story I will have to take you a year further back, to the 2008 trip. That time it was my two sisters and my brother who made the trip. My brother was still driving the first leg of our journey when the car started acting up. A sort of sputtering and choking fill to the way it was running. We made it all the way up to Houston before it broke down. This was the first time that we had ever broken down (in my memory, so the time when I was one does not count) on a trip. Triple A came to the rescue within ten minutes, however the toe truck could only hold one other person. So Calvin (my brother) went with the man driving the truck as me and my sisters headed for the closest donuts shop. In Gods mercy the mechanic shop was only a block from where we broke down. So Calvin walked back to where we were and took us to the shop where we began our first wait. Again mercy was shown to us, as the men who worked on the car stayed late to get us on the road again.
Late that night I was driving, as we were pushing hard to make up lost time. Around 11:45 or so I looked down and my thermometer. It was hovering right above the little red line on the wrong side of the meter. After an hour of driving with the heater turned on to full blast and the windows down trying to cool the engine down, we finally made it to a hotel. Next morning we found a mechanic shop and tried checking our selves in. But they were booked. That story repeated two or three times before we found one. But even then they were booked as well. However the owner of the shop felt so bad for the sorry lot of Texans that had just walked into his shop, that he did something unexpected. He came out of his two year retirement from being a mechanic and fixed our car himself. He got us back on the road after only two hours, for which we were and still are grateful. The first time we broke down it turned out to be the fuel pump that had gone bad. The second and final time was the thermostat in the radiator that had went out. It was 1:30 am when I pulled that car into the parking lot at Bluefield Collage for the family conference. We had mist the first night of it.
One year later and two week ago. We were about an hour and a half from home when the van started filling with the smell of gasoline. Upon getting out and inspecting the damage I found that we were leaking gas very bad. My father turned us around and we headed back south for about twenty minutes before reaching a gas station where we tried to find a mechanic who could fix the problem. Only thing was, I had to work earlier that day so we left home at 5:30 P.M. which of course means that all the shops are closed. however we were saved yet again. We got a hold of a mechanic on wheels and gave him directions on how to find us. He soon found the problem after he arrived and with the right tools fix us up and had on the road after only a hour or so lost. Skipping forward. When we left Tazwell V.A. and started home the last thing on our minds was worrying about having car trouble. I mean we already had on breakdown this trip, and two last year...but that is what we ended up doing from V.A. to T.X. after we left, the sound of small part of tire hitting the undercarriage of our van motivated us to pull over. Again I inspected and found that the driver side rear tire had started to came undone. However we pushed on. From state to state, we moved closer to home and the hope that the tire would hold became more and more of a reality. However we never found out. The passenger side rear tire blowout before the driver side. No problem...all we had to do was replace it with the spare tire. Big problem...one of the nuts was striped. Try as we would nothing work in getting it off. Triple A said it would take them an hour and forty five minutes to get to us. So we found a cow pasture and sat down under some trees and waited for our rescue. It came...an hour and thirty minutes early. Not Triple A but a man who had a socket set. He found a socket that almost fit and with the help of a hammer we had, he went to work. It ended up reshaping the nut down to the size of the socket. Again, for the fourth time in two years we were saved, by the kindness of complete strangers. We fixed the other tire at the next town.
Another post will follow highlighting the time that was spent at the Family Conference. featuring new and old friends, good fellowship, fun dancing, and some of the best competition in sports.
Robert L.
Late that night I was driving, as we were pushing hard to make up lost time. Around 11:45 or so I looked down and my thermometer. It was hovering right above the little red line on the wrong side of the meter. After an hour of driving with the heater turned on to full blast and the windows down trying to cool the engine down, we finally made it to a hotel. Next morning we found a mechanic shop and tried checking our selves in. But they were booked. That story repeated two or three times before we found one. But even then they were booked as well. However the owner of the shop felt so bad for the sorry lot of Texans that had just walked into his shop, that he did something unexpected. He came out of his two year retirement from being a mechanic and fixed our car himself. He got us back on the road after only two hours, for which we were and still are grateful. The first time we broke down it turned out to be the fuel pump that had gone bad. The second and final time was the thermostat in the radiator that had went out. It was 1:30 am when I pulled that car into the parking lot at Bluefield Collage for the family conference. We had mist the first night of it.
One year later and two week ago. We were about an hour and a half from home when the van started filling with the smell of gasoline. Upon getting out and inspecting the damage I found that we were leaking gas very bad. My father turned us around and we headed back south for about twenty minutes before reaching a gas station where we tried to find a mechanic who could fix the problem. Only thing was, I had to work earlier that day so we left home at 5:30 P.M. which of course means that all the shops are closed. however we were saved yet again. We got a hold of a mechanic on wheels and gave him directions on how to find us. He soon found the problem after he arrived and with the right tools fix us up and had on the road after only a hour or so lost. Skipping forward. When we left Tazwell V.A. and started home the last thing on our minds was worrying about having car trouble. I mean we already had on breakdown this trip, and two last year...but that is what we ended up doing from V.A. to T.X. after we left, the sound of small part of tire hitting the undercarriage of our van motivated us to pull over. Again I inspected and found that the driver side rear tire had started to came undone. However we pushed on. From state to state, we moved closer to home and the hope that the tire would hold became more and more of a reality. However we never found out. The passenger side rear tire blowout before the driver side. No problem...all we had to do was replace it with the spare tire. Big problem...one of the nuts was striped. Try as we would nothing work in getting it off. Triple A said it would take them an hour and forty five minutes to get to us. So we found a cow pasture and sat down under some trees and waited for our rescue. It came...an hour and thirty minutes early. Not Triple A but a man who had a socket set. He found a socket that almost fit and with the help of a hammer we had, he went to work. It ended up reshaping the nut down to the size of the socket. Again, for the fourth time in two years we were saved, by the kindness of complete strangers. We fixed the other tire at the next town.
Another post will follow highlighting the time that was spent at the Family Conference. featuring new and old friends, good fellowship, fun dancing, and some of the best competition in sports.
Robert L.
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