Fourth Festivities:
Friends, Forest, Fires, Flying Feats
Fun Forfends Flat Funk

Alas, adventuring makes for good blogs, but for poor blogging habits!

For the Fourth of July weekend, a big group of friends and friends-to-be came together at a group campsite in the Mendocino National Forest.

There was a forest…

and fires, though thankfully not together.

In the photo above, we are attempting to start a bow fire, which is not a fire started with a bow and flaming arrow, as I had thought. That would be far too dangerous as California is a tinderbox.  No, it was a more advanced version of rubbing sticks together. We did get them quite hot, but alas, no flames. Next time.

There was a lake in the forest.

I greatly enjoyed swimming with my pool noodle; my $4 floaty both solved my inability to float unsupported and my dislike of weedy lake bottoms (because now I floated well above the vegetation). On the far shore of the lake there was a rope swing, which is where the “flying feats” occurred.

Overall, it was a great weekend with friends, and I was sad to part ways.

Then, as if my car heard my wish and decided to take matters into its own hands(tires) by delaying our departure, my tire picked up this epic rock*:

But like the haiku said: “fun forfends flat funk” or, in other words, “flat won’t foil this fun!”

With the help of the friendly Forest Service employees, we had the spare on in no time. We like to think they saw the American flag on my radio antenna and knew immediately they were needed.

Oh, and an In-N-Out burger on the way home is also a flat-funk-fixer-upper! Yum, yum, yum!

*I kept the rock after it was removed from my tire, and it is far less epic than this picture implies. Seeing it here, you would imagine no less than a prehistoric spear tip, but it is quite dull. On the plus side, I have new tires, and I am ready for more adventures!