5 Things We Learned from Camping
All photos provided by Linda Guerrette Photography
Collaboration and teamwork are awesome. We received a call from my good friend Amy at Ute Springs Experiential Learning Center. Their specialty is camping and amazing outdoor activities for kids. Ours is biking. She suggested that Ute Springs take care of the camping and The Cycle Effect take care of the biking on a trip together. This was a match made in heaven! So we planned it out and before we knew it we were on I-70 heading to Fruita with a van full of kids and a trailer full of bikes. This sounds easy, but often it is not done between non-profits. We are in a competitive world and the non-profit sector is competitive. I think that everyone in the non-profit world, including me, would say that they have felt this at some point about donors, programming, resources, etc. But our collaboration just created a trip that our girls will remember for a long time. From our girls’ perspective, this entire trip’s theme was leadership and teamwork. They created meals, escaped hail, and bonded together. Hopefully, their future has more collaboration in it because of this trip.
We can do more than we think that we can. This was obvious from our girls that had only been riding for 2 weeks to our girls that have been riding bikes for 4 years best diet pills for men. Our girls created a supportive environment and everyone did something that they did not think was possible. Techy rock sections, long climbs, keeping up with the older girls, to name a few. You can always do more than you think you can.
Adventures make great memories. At 2AM I woke up to heavy rain. It continued until 10AM. It is REALLY hard to get out of bed and get motivated to cook breakfast when it is pouring with rain. And I will admit, I had the hardest time out of our entire group. Thank goodness for Amy and her crew who are pros at this. They are amazing at making things work. I may not have wanted to go out into the rain, but I have learned that you remember very few sunny days. The ones that are the most fun to talk and joke about are the “bad days”. We will be talking about the rain for years to come.
We have created something amazing. I want our program to progress faster than anyone. I am always looking for ways to improve and I critique everything that we do. But as I looked around and saw these girls that REALLY love to ride their bikes and work towards a common goal, I can’t help but like what we have done.
Riding bikes is fun. I have never come in from a ride and thought that I shouldn’t have gone. Even the ones that get rained on or the ones where I fall and get injured. They are always worth it. It is fun to be around people, be in nature, go fast and feel fit afterward. We had major rain and hail, but we also have something to laugh about.
One more that I need to sneak in: we can survive without technology. We spent two days without Snapchat, our phones, facetweeting and everything else. And we survived.
Now, we get to plan our next one.