To read part five of day five, click here.

As I was considering my options, Luke saw another yellow car. What happened next seemed like it happened in slow motion.

Luke saw the car and shouted “Yellow Car!”

His fist was off the seat. I leaned away from him, knowing that he could still hit me. His fist was in the air coming at me and I shifted, trying to see if I could avoid it. I knew it wasn’t going to hurt that badly, but I wanted to see the look on his face if he missed me. His fist was coming at my shoulder, and I bent over, bringing my head as close to my lap as the seat belt would allow me.

The slow motion stopped as Bruce lifted his hand to intercept Luke’s fist before it could hit me. I grinned as he told Luke not to punch a girl. Luke said fine, he would just punch Bruce. His fist landed back in his lap as he started looking for more yellow cars. Bruce shrugged, dropping his hand too.

After that I didn’t have to worry about getting punched back. It was awesome! If Luke tried to punch me, Bruce would stop him. But I could punch Luke. I “punched” Bruce once to see what he would do – he didn’t even move. LOL

(It probably helped that I barely even touched him. He might not have even felt it. :D)

An hour after we started moving, we got onto the gravel roads. We had a half an hour of driving on a gravel road. *shivers remembering how bumpy it was* That was probably one of the bumpiest drives I have ever taken. And that’s saying a lot.

Half an hour later, we had pulled into a parking lot. The parking lot was surrounded by trees and the lake, and we were the only ones in it. We all got out of the car and formed our circle. Jen warned us that there was poison ivy around, so we had to watch for it when we went to the bathroom.

She asked who didn’t know what poison ivy looks like. Maggie and I raised our hands. The rest of the crew looked at me, the question plain on their face. Why didn’t I know what poison ivy was? They couldn’t understand why I didn’t know what poison ivy looked like. I had told them stories of how my family and I liked to go hiking at home, and I guess they assumed that I knew what poison ivy looked like.

Jen took me and Maggie over and found a spot of poison ivy to show us. I nodded – I could recognize that!

We walked away and everyone split up to go to the bathroom. I walked across the parking lot, entered the woods, and realized that I couldn’t remember what the poison ivy looked like.

Oh well – I wasn’t going to go ask Jen to come show me again. I wasn’t going to remember it if she showed it to me anyway. And I really had to pee, because I had drank so much before we got in the car.

I just did my best to not touch any green stuff at all. I guess I did a pretty good job, because I didn’t starting itching! (Ok, scratch that. I was itching, but it was because of the bug bites.)

Once everyone felt better we all gathered by the vans. It took quite a while to get the canoes down. Once we had the canoes off the trailer, we all got in a line, according to how comfortable we felt on the water. It was a self grading thing, so you fit yourself in the line where you thought you stood.

I was at the very end.

Glenn told us to fold our line in half – the least comfortable being paired up with the most comfortable, and the two people in the very middle being paired with each other.

That meant I was paired with Jen, which made me feel better. I was still a little worried about flipping in the canoe, but I prayed that I wouldn’t flip. Our chances were better than the others – with an instructor in my canoe I should do better than the others.

At least, I hoped I would do better.

Click here to read the next part of Day Five.

*Everything here is from my own memory and may not be correct. Outward Bound is not responsible for anything I post here. Thanks to NCOBS for letting me use their photos.*