Fall Rally 2007

It's Wednesday, a full 3 days since I've been back from Massachusetts.

It was a little interesting setting some things in order in preparation for the rally. First it was just supposed to be Aerion Slocumb riding up with me in my car. Aerion couldn't take the coach bus up because he had to work, and I had a meeting Friday afternoon. That was fine, and I determined that my car should be a ride available to anyone who had to work or go to school and couldn't miss, as opposed to "can't get the money to take the bus".

Eventually it ended up being Aerion, Lisa Watson, Rachael Watson, and the Postman (David Post), and of course, myself. We determined to leave at 5:45 from the church, and Lisa's mom graciously offered to make us starving boys some pasta with sausage, zucchini, and squash, so we wouldn't have to spend money on the outset of our trip, to eat out. Before leaving my house to get run over to the church, I was tagging and converting some of Pastor Love's messages from my trip to Poland, so we could listen to a few of them on my iPod (since Rachael was with me on that trip, I thought it might be nice to reminisce about that trip).

Well apparently, there's an issue with syncing your iPod that occasionally it will mess up the (this is where I am assuming) the database reference table which tells your iPod where all your music is located on the device. This mess up makes your iPod think there are no songs. Not a fun situation to be in before driving for 7+ hours to Massachusetts!!

Anyways, I, of course, don't discover this until I've left my house to pick everyone up at the Church. I convinced everyone to come back to my place and we could partake of the pasta there while I tried to fix my iPod. I couldn't, we ate, and we left around 7:45. Aerion's plate had only the zucchini and squash left on it, and he said "I didn't know what it was!" Momma Sloc's soul food must not usually include squash :-P

So we're terribly late to drive to Massachusetts and thankfully Aerion brought his CDs so we could listen to something.

Man... that's a lot of explanation and we haven't even left for Massachusetts yet!
It was a great ride up, heard a lot about Postman's explanations of Kyrgyzstan (growing up there as a missionary kid for the last 5 years, and apparently, I've heard wrong and horse meat is pretty good!). We played a good bit of Catchphrase, which was hilarious, Rachael studiously worked on her homework, and I drove the whole dilly-o.

Wherever we stopped I would look anxiously for my prized Peanut Butter M&Ms (which, by the way, are infinitely superior to the archaic, uncouth, uncivilized, unrefined Peanut M&Ms. I mean let's get serious here, anyone can get a peanut off a tree, but it takes some TLC to properly bring the glorious flavor locked within the infinite complexity of the peanut, to even begin to experience the true joy from this legume). I didn't find any inside our first stop, but we did locate this machine on our way out:


To which Lisa exclaimed: It's an "Emaneminem Machine!" Which sounded oddly like there was a mammogram machine located in the parking lot, which thankfully there was not. Not that I have a problem with mammogram machines, I just have a problem with mammogram machines in a New Jersey Turnpike rest stop parking lot. And it still didn't have my M&M Flavor of choice.

Anyways, we finally made it to the Hotel at about 2:15 AM. The last hour or so was pretty tough driving, cuz the whole backseat was sleeping, and Aerion was starting to lose it up front with me. So we did what we had to, and belted some sweet tunes! This kept us awake enough to make it through the last section of our journey (I wish that Connecticut wasn't so gay with it's excessive traffic!).

The next day was the first day of the rally! Saturday I woke up at a brisk 7:00, did some reading, some showering, and got ready for the day. We went to the Marlborough church for AM service*, then headed over to the Sports Arena for the days activities. Lots of sports activities planned for the day (soccer, volleyball, football, archery. I participated in a bit of Volleyball, and walked around outside with Postman and Lisa. Then Lacey and I climbed the rock wall! (I actually think she was faster than me...shhhh)

Then it was time to leave and we went for some Chinese, as Lisa has purported that Massachusetts (or at least this particular place in Marlborough) has the best Chinese food and the best pizza, I took her up on that offer. It was pretty good, probably better than anything I've had around here so I'd have to be inclined to believe her. Postman and Rachael went for Pizza and Aerion stuck with us for Chinese.

We had the PM service* and awards ceremony (for the sports of the day) at the Marlborough church. Then we went back to the hotel and ended up playing Catchphrase in one of the girl's rooms til about 1:30 in the morning. But it was extra hilarious because when someone would knock, all 11 of us would have to hide somewhere in the room in case it was a leader (a leader who was not cool with us being up so late and boys being in girls room :) I'd normally jump behind the furthermost bed and curl up in the fetal position to avoid being discovered. Good times.

Sorry this is such a ghastly long post.

In the morning we packed up and headed over to the Church for Sunday Morning Service*. Postman stayed over a local's house and picked up a dear 12-year old Ukrainian boy who was in a tragic electrical accident and lost his leg and was burned over most of his body. Since Postman can speak Russian, he was able to translate the service for him and spend some time with him. His name is "Corsta" and he and the girls hung out with him for a while after service, loving him up. Great time. Pray for him, he's going to have a very tough road ahead...

Afterwards we went to Wrentham and ate some fantastic fried chicken at Old Country Buffet. Then we went to the "The Big Apple" and got some seriously crisp apples (which, of course, were purportedly better in New England than in Maryland, and I can agree). So we ended up leaving Mass. at about 4:30.

It was a good drive on the way home with multiple topics of discussion: More Kyrgystan info, the fantasticness of Physics (my topic of choice, specifically conservation of energy...and a few more topics I can't remember), and Lisa, with her nursing background, went into the scary realm of trans-fats.

Now listen here, I hadn't really heard much about these trans fats and the havoc they can wreak on your body. Apparently, if I remember correctly, these bastard oils (hydrogenated oils, thus making them solid at room temperature), get partially broken down by your digestive system. But what is released is a little punk called a "free-radical". Now this free-radical is a messed up fat that searches out another fat to merge with. And your cell walls are composed of fat. What happens now is the free-radical bonds to the cell wall of the innocent cell, destroying the cell wall and itself, leading to the death of the cell.

Not too concerning so far. But what needs to happen is the neighboring cell needs to reproduce ahead of schedule. Cellular mitosis is the process that goes haywire in cancerous cells, where they constantly reproduce and don't perform their normal function. When a cell has to reproduce, it makes a copy of itself, and everytime it makes a copy of itself there is risk of the genetic code getting mixed up and cancerous cells being produced instead.

Either way, I'm not really concerned about things like clogged arteries, obviously, since my youthfulness will keep that clear for a bit, but free radical damage is compounding over time, which is a little more serious.

We'll see if I decide to do anything about it.

Anyways ride ended, we're home. Goodbye!

*Sorry I couldn't remember the messages to explain them! If anyone wants to add comments on what was preached, it'd be a good refresher! :)