Laundry

Putting Their Heads Together

Today is my day to be "support" person, taking the team's yellow Tshirts to the laundrymat, filling the rental car with gas, packing, and trying to anticipate what will need to be done before we leave at 4 am for our 7:30 flight home.

The laundrymat was in an older shopping center with a long room full of machines and a glass front that showcase the mountains as I stood in the back and waited for the dryer to finish. When I was in high school I had a social studies teacher that told us the only way to travel was to try to figure out what life was like for the people who lived in your destination. For this you have to go to a local grocery or park or something like that. The laundrymat is ideal because people talk to each other while they fold clothes.

The lady next to me was trying to figure out why her dryer was so noisy. It turns out her four year old's shorts had rocks in the pockets. She wanted to leave the rocks at the laundry, but he said that those rocks were "sorcerer's stones". She sounded like me on the way home from Lake Michigan, telling him "But we already have so many rocks at home!"

We are bringing rocks home from this trip. The mountain trail we took on Saturday was full of mica, rose quartz, and feldspar. Mica was the big attraction and we filled our pockets.

At Boulder Falls
Anna tells me that the spontaneous problem went well, but she won't say more than that since each team must promise not to say anything that might get leaked to a team that hasn't competed yet.


On the tram ride up the mountain