Fremont Lakes

On Friday, we celebrated our friend Venche's birthday with a bunch of our friends over at her house. We played a couple rounds of Taboo, and Vivian and I got to "kill" everyone in a sinister game of Mafia. Naturally, we had to take out Eric "Onion Boy" Adamschick first, who was able to guess just by making eye contact who the killers were. The girls also demonstrated some yoga for the rest of us before one sleepy game of Apples to Apples. It wasn't nearly as hilarious a game without the 96-proof lemon martini in a box.

On Saturday, a bunch of us went up to the Fremont Lakes in Fremont Nebraska for an overnight camping trip. Jenny and Vivian just have to go camping at least once a year, and they needed to get their annual sleeping-on-the-ground-in-a-tent fix before winter creeps up and freezes us all in our sleep (which it nearly did this weekend). Paul brought his boat, so we got to take a ride around the small, man-made lake, and watch Jenny and Jon go water skiing behind us for a while. We almost didn't make it onto the lake, because the boat's battery died and transmission started going nuts, keeping the boat from going in reverse.

It was the most perfect fall weather imaginable, and provided some ample photographic opportunities as the sun went down. We started up a campfire back at the campsite and cooked up some hamburgers and hot dogs for dinner. Afterwards, we passed around Vivian's game of Catchphrase, and then told a pass-along ghost story. I always enjoy putting the hood over my head, shining the flashlight under my face, and starting everyone off with a good yarn about old hook hand with the dog leg and the big black whole filled with Darth Vader Puppies. (cccrick, cccrick, cccrick...)

The next morning, we woke up to gale force winds and some wintry chills in the air. None of our tents blew away, but the sudden cold cut short any hopes for more water skiing or swimming that day. We did get to toast some bagels around the campfire and watch Hugh so some strange belly dancing before we started packing up.

In other news, the starter on my poor Beige Bomber decided to die on me. It started having problems in the Wal-Mart parking lot on Saturday, but I thought it was the fault of a dead battery, since a jump-start and a replacement battery seemed to fix the problem at first. Ben and Jon were awesome in helping me out, swapping out my battery with his just to determine if it was, in fact, a dead battery at fault. I eventually made it back to Omaha with the help of a tow truck.

I was lucky enough to arrive back in town in time to stop by Lindy in the Park. It had been a couple weeks since I'd enjoyed the outdoor swing dancing, and the beautiful, cool fall weather was too good to pass up. My feet were killing me, but I was able to enjoy an hour of dancing. Eric seemed to enjoy himself as well, as you can see from the picture of him lounging on a couple of lovely ladies.

I was especially happy to see Micah back and dancing with us again. Most of you reading this blog already know about this, but Micah's been MIA since our good friend Keith had a bad accident while hiking in Yosemite National Park. He fell 40 feet and sustained a number of injuries, but miraculously survived and is recovering now. He's not a regular among our group, but he's as good a friend as any we have, so it was good to hear the good news. You can read more on Keith and his condition on GAMe's website.

Video from our trip to Fremont Lakes