Octoberfest Weekend

The tradition of the past four years has been for me to trek to Knoebels on Columbus Day weekend for some festivities with my friend, KK, and her family. I continued in this tradition, though it was limited to just one day since I had a jam-packed weekend of activities planned.

On Friday, I set out for Sunbury, PA, to meet up with KK at the Sheetz by her house. This place alone makes me laugh because I always remember the first time I was going to visit KK and she was giving our friend, Teresa, directions and told her that we should "turn at the Sheetz," but Teresa heard "turn at the sheep" and was wondering how KK knew they would be there. Anyways, this venture took much longer than expected due to the excessive construction on I-80 west and drivers continual inability to merge into one lane when prompted to do so. I eventually found KK and we drove to Knoebels to park my car before running errands for her mom. KK was also trying to give directions to her cousin about how to locate her house and needed to call her mom to see if anybody was home to flag down her cousin. Needless to say, this involved KK being on two phones at once, which was a highly amusing sight. 

We soon made our way to the Crest Haven Farmer's Market to pick up cold-cuts and cheese for our sandwiches before hunting for birthday cards in the dollar store. After mailing the cards, we made it back to Knoebels and located KK's family in the British Columbia section of the campground. We all sat down and enjoyed some sandwiches for dinner and chatted about what was new and exciting. KK's mom insisted that I eat more, which is typical, and I enjoyed arguing back since she was berating me in English and not German about eating more. After dinner, we made our way to the bumper cars for the semi-annual two hours of smashing into each other as hard as possible. KK and I shared a car for the majority of the time, which was a blast, even though many bruises began forming after numerous collisions with her dad, uncles, Gus, and Mots. Following bumper cars, we went back to the campsite to relax in front of the fire. I enjoyed chatting with KK's grandma about life. She was amused by the devilish look in my eye that I had every time I went to hit somebody during bumper cars. I informed her that my oma's nickname for me when I was growing up happened to be "kleine teufel" which means "little devil." Soon we were all exhausted and decided to turn-in for the night.

The next morning I had a nice chat on the phone with my brother and then read some of my book for the book club on Sunday evening. This was followed by a delicious breakfast of toast, bacon, eggs, and breakfast potatoes. Following my breakfast, I packed up my car and set off on my next adventure, which was to locate Josh's family cabin outside of East Canton, PA. I knew that this would definitely be interesting considering part of the directions stated, "turn into a parking lot by a milking parlor and continue around until the barn is on your left and then drive down the road that goes off into a field at an angle. Follow this into the woods and then you have arrived." Thankfully, I only missed a turn once, but noticed it on my second drive-by. Otherwise, I would have been out of luck considering there is no cell phone service in the area. What made my arrival even more entertaining was the fact that Josh wasn't even at the cabin when I got there and I had never met anybody who was there at the time. One of the three Larry's greeted me and told me to make myself at home while he went back out target shooting. I took a seat at a table and continued to read my book. Soon Josh arrived with his cousin and brother. They had their rocket boat with them, but realized that they had left the ignition button at the house, so we all piled into the car and went back for it. 

Once back at the cabin, we all wandered down to the pond to test out the rocket boat. I was part of the rescue crew for the first attempt, so I went out in a canoe with Josh's brother-in-law so that I could film the attempt and then retrieve the boat. The first attempt wasn't terrible, though it flipped when it caught a wave. The second-attempt was quite zig-zaggy, while the third attempt was a beautiful straight shot to the shoreline. Our favorite attempt, though, was the fourth because it went straight for about half the length of the pond before becoming extremely unstable and flipping over. Watching the video amuses us every time. After rocket-boating, we went inside for a tasty dinner, which made for good fuel before going out and shooting rifles. We shot at spinner targets and plastic cups, but soon upgraded to jugs of oxygen acetylene. There is no describing the effects of this, so it is best that you watch the video at the end of this post for the full effect. It was definitely one of the highlights of my weekend, though. We then went back inside and played Settlers of Catan before getting some sleep.

The next morning we ate a heart breakfast before having a little church service at the cabin. Following the service, Josh and I went for an hour long walk through some pastures, woods, and corn fields. It was definitely great to be out in nature again hearing the crunch of leaves under my feet and enjoying the sunshine. After our walk, we played a game of Rivals of Catan before a lunch of lasagna. I had to trek south to the Burg after lunch so that I could shower and make it to my book club down in Coopersburg. It was a refreshing evening chatting about how sin, not men, is the main problem, along with the importance of a woman maintaining her identity, while embracing the roles of wife and mother. The importance of Christian community with fellow women was also discussed because too many get sucked into maintaining their nuclear family and we must not forget what we can learn from each other's experiences and gain from communication. All in all it was a very entertaining and refreshing weekend.