SodySpokes

We have the great opportunity to babysit Emily on Friday nights while Pam and Joel take a class together. The first Friday we were scheduled to do so, we had a Ward camp out scheduled, so we planned on taking Emily with us.

Following is an account of this excursion with Emily, (w/o her parents,) and of what didn’t happen:

We got a late start, (how weird is that?) and had to hurry to make up for lost time. (They had asked us to get there early enough to help with dinner.) The tire was low but we didn’t have time to stop and put air in it…but we’ll be okay. (A low tire just allows your tires to squeal as you go around corners at slower speeds.)

We were also leaking fluid on the ground, I tasted it and it might have been brake fluid, (but how would I know what brake fluid tastes like,) besides, I’m a scout, we’ve got a bottle of brake fluid in the back of the truck, if we need it.

As we were turning off 41st onto 27th, a cop pulled us over, and cited us for taking the corner too fast. He said he could hear our tires squealing…This made us even later than we already were.

As we drove up Parley’s Canyon we had a debate about whether we should follow the directions on the map they provided. Mom thought it was a good ides, but I don’t need no stinking map! This map was Googled, and we all know how accurate they are… Besides I know a short-cut. So we (collective) decided to take it…

The dirt road was steep with a lot of switch backs. We had some young punk jerks behind us, that wanted to pass, but then we would have been eating their dust, so instead they ate our dust, (figuratively and literally). It was great, whenever they got close to us and tried to pass, we would peel out and leave them a cloud of dust to choke on. When they slowed down to get out of our dust and see better we would wait for them around a bend and again leave them a cloud of dust to choke through. (This seemed to tick them off, but its hard to make out what they were yelling, and I don’t know if hand gestures mean the same things today, that they did back in the day, when I was young.)

The engine started to overheat, so we turned on the heater, (to help cool off the engine,) and opened all the windows, (so we cood breathe.) This made it kind of cold, especially when the rain and wind started up, but Emily was okay, she had a burp rag to protect her.
One good thing about the rain, it wasn’t dusty anymore, a little muddy, but not dusty.

On the way down, we were fishtailing a little bit in the mud, when we had to pump our brakes, but they seemed to pump-up fine every time, so we were okay.

When we got to the campsite the rain had stopped, but there were puddles all over the place. This made the mosquitoes almost unbearable. We could swat them off ourselves but when we would swat them off Emily, people would look at as like we were committing child abuse. She is to little to swat them herself, and her parents wouldn’t let us feed her onions, (this being a natural mosquito repellent,) so we taught her to clinch her fists and tense her muscles whenever a mosquitoes was biting her. This causes the mosquito to get stuck and subsequently burst.
The West Nile Virus was mentioned as a concern, but I don’t think these mosquitoes had had time to fly to the Nile and back, so Emily will probably be fine…

We lost track of Emily after it got dark, one of the grandmotherly types probably had her…at any rate, we got her back. (Probably because most grandmotherly types only hold happy babies.) She was crying a little, but I don’t think she was burned by the sparks from the fire…babies just seem to cry for no reason at all, sometimes.

Her parents finally showed up…something about not wanting to have her sleep over at such a young age. Talk about paranoia!

An enjoyable time was had by all!

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