Aeturnalus

So I went Whitewater Rafting last weekend. The day was basically split into two parts, divided by a lunch break. In the morning, we went through a long series of Class 2 rapids, basically short and choppy waves. It was mostly relaxing, until we started having waterfights with other boats in our group.
It turns out there there’s actually a small amount of tactics involved in waterfights between two rafts – positioning the raft can make it much easier to splash the other, and being trapped in between two enemy rafts is a pretty big problem. Of course, the fact that everyone was already wet meant that getting hit wasn’t really a problem.
The second half of the day was definitely the best part. We got to go on about four Class 3 rapids, and we all got completely soaked. There isn’t much that can compare with going down a rapid right into a huge wave of water.
Overall, I thought the trip was a nice escape from the monotony of life. The rest of the summer will probably be quite boring.

I got back from Northern Tier last Sunday. It turned out not to be as good as other people described – mostly the weather. I’m not sure how, but apparently we were followed by a huge storm system the whole time.

The trip overall was fun, and we got to see some really nice sights. We crossed the border on the first day into Ontario’s Quetico Superior provincial park, a place of mostly wilderness.

Highlights of our trip included paddling 23 miles in one day, seeing Native American Indian paintings on the rocks near Tuck River and using a huge rainfly as a “sail” for a bunch of canoes. I’ll be getting the pictures up later, if you want to see them.

We arrived at Minneapolis, MN yesterday via Northwest Airlines. The plane was, surprisingly, an A320 instead of the more standard Boeing plane, but this turned out to be a bad thing – there was no inflight entertainment at all.
Once we arrived, we took a free hotel shuttle over to the Mariott Fairfield hotel, unpacked, and went to the Mall of America (tm?).
After wandering around the mall for a bit, we got really bored and watched Public Enemy.
Public Enemy turned out to be a pretty bad movie, despite a decent premise. It ended up as “criminal rob bank, police fail, rob bank, police fail, rob bank, police fail, person betrays criminal, police finally win”. The end was highly anticlimatic.
Anyways, I’m not going to have internet for the next 6 days or so.

Comments?

Apparently theres a new movie coming out called District 9. It has a very interesting story premise, seeing as it started out as the short film “Alive in Joburg”. Themes within the movie are likely to represent racism, apartheid, exploitation, and the other horrible parts of human society.

Movie trailer:

District 9 is rated R. I think I may download this when it comes out on August 14th.

I’m kinda bored right now…

Anyways, last weekend we had a July 4th party at my house. It turned out to be pretty fun – we played Monopoly for a couple hours. Surprisingly, Monopoly is a decently fun board game. It takes a really long time to play after theres only two players that aren’t bankrupt left, however. They just keep going in circles, hoping that they don’t land on enemy hotels.

On another note, I acquired an Airtech 2000 from one of my fellow Scouts, and I’ve been modding it on and off for the past day or so. Still need to get my dremel back from my dad to finish it, but the three barrels that work get a decent range (70′-90′).

Turns out that summer isn’t much better than school – I still have to do math, and study physics, and play piano. Only good thing is that theres more Nerf, but thats not too common either.