Ah yes, there's nothing like your first time standing by your vehicle while speaking to your insurance representative on the phone. I was dropping the kids off at the Monsmas' house today and backed out of their driveway with the truck, totally not seeing the car that was parked in the street right across from their drive. Bam. I bashed in their rear driver side door pretty good. It won't open now. Luckily though, it was the guy's old beater (like a 1995 Sentra, or something like that) so I didn't really wreck an expensive car,and he was totally cool about it. He said he probably wouldn't even bother fixing it if the door would've still opened. Anyway, no damage to the truck, which is good. More embarrassing than anything else.

The event of the century that we've been building up to for the past 2 months...finaly arrived... the Cubmobile race was Saturday. We've worked on them on weekends, worked on them and practiced racing during meetings, rebuild the old ones and built new ones, and this Saturday we finally raced them. And it rained. So, we raced in the rain! And the cold. And man, are the lines long. I can think of several better ways they could manage this race so there wasn't just so very much waiting around. Especially if it's cold and rainy on race day. It was bad enough that as soon as Alex was done racing (which I made as early as possible) I just sent him home with Beth and Missy, instead of waiting around for a couple more hours with everyone else. Not many of us were left by the time it was finally over. We won a couple of heats but nothing else, no surprise. Same old packs won everything again.
Oh, and the freezer we couldn't sell for $30 at a garage sale a few weeks ago just sold immediately on Craigslist for $100. We're going to give the cash to the Boschains since they gave us the freezer a couple years ago.

The Cub Scouts went roller skating last Wednesday evening, in addition to the regular meting on Tuesday. Again, we combined the scouting event with a youth group event from Brad's church, which sponsors the pack. Both of the kids went since siblings were invited too. They're both getting a little better, but they both still can't really leave the railing without my help. Still fun though.
We are now back from the annual Wiessner/Pinkster/Knight/Beavers campout, again this year at Michawana. The weather was awesome, and we all had a great time on the zipline and the playgrounds and just visiting. The Pinksters have a new puppy they brought with them, a yellow lab, the most adorable puppy since...well, every other lab puppy ever. We sent off some Chinese lanterns in the evening, and Neill and I did some geocaching, finding a cache hidden inside a duck decoy floating in a pond. At the end of the campout, of course, we all went to Walldorff's in Hastings and on the way out of town, Beth and the kids and I stopped at Plainwell Ice Cream.

Since the school year is now in full swing, the Cub Scout year is as well. I gave the spiel about selling popcorn to all the kids last Tuesday, and this year we are going to try selling some at Owen's or Wal-Mart. Plus, we are going to try out selling at First Fridays as well. Thursday this week Iris surprised us all by bringing a baby rabbit to the door. Still alive. And then she brought it inside and let it go. The bunny did get back to the wild, though Beth was amazed at the LOUD sound a scared bunny makes...poor little thing sounded like a very angry crow. Between that and Alex screaming and the cat continuing to chase it through the house, it was a wild time...and it came to rest in the stuffed animals downstairs, just like E.T.

Yesterday I went on a 21-mile bike ride/benchmark hunt to find the most awesomest benchmark ever. This was easily one of the most gratifying finds I've ever had, geocaches included. Nothing in the logs had been posted in 66 years, and even then the log spoke of blazed trees, dirt roads, and poles that were removed long ago. I had to walk half a mile down the railroad from the nearest crossing, including hastily getting out of the right-of-way before the oncoming train spotted me, hiding in the brush waiting for the train to pass, and still having no idea if the mark would even be there. Then I had to cross a barbed wire fence into the woods adjacent to the track and search for a good 15 minutes before...yeah baby, there it is! Neglected all these years, easy to miss even if you're searching for it, covered with moss and dirt, but still clearly showing the C182 / 1946 stamp after cleaning it up a bit.

Well, after a hot hot hot hot hot dry dry dry dry dry summer, yet another camping trip has been cancelled due to the weather, but this time it's due to rain. We were going to be camping with the church group at Mississinewa this weekend for Labor Day, but the forecast was for constant rain. So, we cancelled during the week, and it didn't disappoint. It did rain there all weekend. Anyway, I've laid off the running a bit lately because the tendinitis has been flaring up again, so I ran a little bit Thursday and it went ok. Speaking of pain...Beth was on playground duty Friday and walked straight into one of the bars, hitting it square in her forehead and giving her whiplash. Plus an awful headache and neck ache, and probably a lot of chiropractor visits. But since we weren't going camping anyway, we went to visit Judy and Neill at the lake for a couple days. No wasp stings this time. We did some shopping and visiting in Kalamazoo, and discovered a great ice cream parlor called Apple Knockers, rated as one of the best in Michigan by MLive...and Neill and I did some biking / geocaching / benchmarking. Nice visit.