Rusty's Ranch Relay and the Adventures of Chico the Towel Burro

Oh, what an eventful past couple of days! We've been having ranch orientation, which has entailed much training of the 4-star way to clean a cabin. It's been fun meeting everyone, and the housekeeping team is awesome. I'm so glad I decided to switch. But yesterday was when things really started happening.

To begin with, last night was Rusty's Super Ranch Relay. I knew I should be prepared for all possible disasters when I heard that Dace had put Rusty in charge of the "fun" activities, but I was not at all prepared for Rusty's Ranch Relay. There were some fairly harmless things, like trying to pop other teams' balloons while keeping your own from being popped, snowshoeing out to the pasture and having another teammate pull you back on a sled, and naming ten states and their capitals. But the other two completely canceled any harmless factor: The Pudding Challenge and Bobbing for Turds.

I guess Rusty, God love him, forgot we're not all thirteen-year-old boys when he picked those two games. Bobbing for Turds involved fun-sized Milky Way bars in yellow-dyed water with bits of toilet paper floating in it. People had to bob for them the same way you bob for apples. I almost vomited just watching.

The Pudding Challenge was my part of the relay. I had to pull a knee-high stocking over my head and slurp a Snack Pack chocolate pudding through it. It was actually not as hard as it sounds, but gross. I have never eaten a Snack Pack in under a minute before and I never hope to again--esp through a nylon net.

I have to admit, though, the night provided a lot of laughs and a lot of bonding. I think the stories will be told all season.

Today the other big adventure occurred. The housekeepers have been trying to figure out how to make towel animals. None of the instructions we had were for ranchy or western animals, so we tried to combine an elephant and a dog to make a horse. It ended up looking like a burro, which gained the name Chico. Today, we walked into the laundry room, and Chico the Burro was lying on his side with a bull's eye drawn on his side! Naturally we were outraged. We wrote a note from Chico's mother, conveying her heart-brokenness and anger, and left it with Chico on the seat of the ranch hands' truck.

Tonight was also a lot of fun. Tomorrow is our first day off, and lots of people were planning on going out, but it started snowing really hard, so most people just stuck around. I baked cookies, and Anita and Matt had their guitar and flute respectively, so I had a personal serenade while I baked. More people trickled in later, and we played Scattegories for a while, and there was lots of hanging out and some wine and laughs. It's always weird at the start of a season, getting to know everyone and realizing that everyone from last season is gone, but I think this winter is going to be really good.