(Editor's note: We are pleased to present our first blog entry from a guest writer! Thanks, Matt Lurrie, for being the first. We encourage other members of our camp family -- campers, staff, parents -- to become guest bloggers too.)
I've been traveling a lot recently. I just finished my penultimate semester of college in Shanghai, China, and after a month home, moving up and down the east coast visiting and hosting friends, I arrived in Manchester, England for my final semester of college. But with all this, one of my favorite trips to make is between my house in Queens and the CK winter office in Madison, NJ.
I've rarely been on a New Jersey-bound train with some form of camp not waiting for me, and this cold January day was no exception. I hop off my 11:46 train and meet the winter staff - Tom, Jeremy, and Teri - at the station. Tom enjoys the new, double decker trains, and asks me if I'd sat on top (I hadn't), and we get to the important task of catching up.
Our beverages come slowly at 54Main, but we're in no rush. We catch up on everything. We talk about my time in China (real Chinese food is very different), about world events (we, too, know nothing about North Korea), my inter-term break (in which I run a Hostel for visiting camp friends) and campers and staff of yesteryear (a number of years back for which I almost needed a third hand to count).
Then, as it is a business day, we galavant (drive in a minivan) around Madison for errands. Tom has made good on our promise to watch my favorite show (The West Wing) after I did his (The Wire). Both results are positive.
I'm put to work when we arrive back at the office, rekindling my roots collating policy forms. In between work, as I imagine happens a lot, we continue to talk about this (plans for next summer) and that (NPR). And though I was far away for the reunion, I am nevertheless given my reunion gifts (CK Drawstring bad, sweatbands).
Kurt Vonnegut is one of my favorite writers. And in his nuttier years, he began to write himself and his own situations into the story lines. I guess that's what I'm about to do.
Teri gets an idea. "You should write a guest blog post!" she tells me. I tell her I'll think about it. It's been an awful long time since I hung up my CK Website hat, so I might be awful rusty. (And in editing this, realized that it took on a feeling of the old web photo journals). But I told her I'd give it a shot.
Benjamin Franklin said that visitors and fish smell in three days, so adjusting for inflation, my time was running out. We all said goodbye (clap) and I headed back home.
I hope you've enjoyed this guest blog post. I now return you to your regularly scheduled program.
Matt Lurrie
