Camp Champions Blog

22 is becoming my favorite number.  It was the length of our huge family trip this last school year. We spent 8 weeks in Europe, 11 weeks in Asia and 3 weeks in New Zealand.

Susie looks like she is 22 (at least she does to me).

Our oldest kids think they are 22 years old (not so fast my friends, you are 15, 15 and 14).

Also, I was also always a big Emmitt Smith fan, #22 when he played with the Dallas Cowboys.

I am an even bigger fan now.

I am excited to announce the creation of “Team 22”.

Team 22 is a group of high-potential boys and girls (age 11-13) who will be attending Camp Champions this summer.  Their primary sponsor is Pat and Emmitt Smith Charities.  Pat is a television personality and speaker.  She is one of the loveliest people I have ever met, with a deep desire to impact children.  Emmitt, of course, is a former Dallas Cowboy running back that holds the record for the most rushing yards in the NFL. (Susie says I need to add that he won Dancing With the Stars.)

Last weekend, Pat and Emmitt hosted the Emmitt Smith Celebrity Invitational and 1992 Super Bowl Reunion in Dallas to raise money for Team 22.  Here is a picture.

Susie and I were there to meet our future campers’ parents and to thank all the people who helped make the event a huge success.  Frankly, I felt a little odd among some of the greatest athletes I have watched for years.  I felt more than a little odd standing next to Ed “Too Tall” Jones.  Ladies and gentlemen, he is truly too tall.  Susie Ma’am took this picture and said that I rose up on my toes to get a little extra height (I had no awareness of this).

Once we got past the initial unease, I was delighted to learn that most of the athletes have a strong desire to impact children.  Many asked questions about Camp Champions and our program.  Other shared stories of their children and their camp experiences.

It made me realize that children are the great equalizer.  Sure, some of these people are world famous, but when they talk about their children, they become simply parents.  We had a blast swapping stories of kids with this august group.

One of the highpoints of the event for us was standing at the 18^th tee box with Nyle Pruitt, the “Nyealator”.  Nyle does two things very well: he hits golf balls over 400 yards and he raises money.  As each group came by, he would promote Team 22 and the other charities and ask people to make an additional contribution.  He would then hit 4 balls on a par 5 and let the team choose the best of his drives for their first shot.  He hit 5 drives over 420 yards and raised an additional $20,000 for the program.  I hope that one of these was 422. (keeping with the 22 theme)

Here we are with Emmitt and Nyle.

Please let me share a little more about Team 22.

Here is how Pat and Emmitt explain it, “Our son attended camp last summer.  Three weeks seemed like a long time for a 9 year old, but he did not want to leave.  We noticed huge growth in him after camp and decided that Camp Champions would be a great gift to children that cannot afford it.”  We are looking for “Little Pats and Little Emmitts” – talented and motivated young men and women who simply need additional opportunities to realize their full potential.

The program starts with a 3-week session at Camp Champions, but will continue throughout the year with mentorships, service projects and special opportunities (for example, yesterday they met the First Lady).

I designed the application and read all of the applications (along with Susie Ma’am).  We read about how they would like to improve their neighborhoods.  We read about their dreams and their accomplishments.  One boy described how he stood up to a bully.  One girl explained how she helped her mom establish a tamale business.   There were an impressive set of over 50 applications.

We decided to interview just 20 for the initial class.  While we eventually want to have 22 team members, we wanted to the first class to be small to assure that we can execute at a high level.

Pat, Kit Sawers (an amazing woman who is the VP of the Foundations) and I interviewed the students from 7 schools and came up with 10 fantastic students: 5 boys and 5 girls.  Here they are on the same stage that the 1992 Cowboys were on just minutes earlier.  Rich Eisen (formerly of ESPN and now with the NFL Network) introduced them just as he had the Super Bowl Champs.

You may notice that there are only 7 of them.  The other 3 were on a school trip last week and could not make it back.

I am so excited about this program for several reasons.  First, these are great kids who will be fun to have at camp.  Second, they are helping make Camp Champions more diverse.  It is a source of frustration to me that camps are typically Caucasian.  Since I believe that camp is the most powerful youth development experience other than quality parenting, it is almost tragic that few ethnic minorities get the benefit of the experience.

Finally, it is helping raise awareness of the summer camp experience.  Each of the attendees heard about camps in general and Camp Champions in particular.  They also saw that Pat and Emmitt had decided that the experience is powerful enough to deserve the creation of this program.  For 2 committed camp professionals, that is pretty darn cool.

If you have an interest in helping with Team 22 or any of our other scholarship programs, please let me know.  We want more kids to attend camp. We are committed to running one of the best programs in the nation.  Running a state of the art camp is an expensive endeavor.  Having ways to help families with lower incomes attend is deeply satisfying.

Steve Sir

PS  The tournament was 22 days before the first day of camp!

PPS After I graduated from Harvard Business School, I joined a Fantasy Football league with my best friend from school.  We played for two years and won both times, enabling me to buy an armoire for my very patient wife.  We still call it the “Emmitt Armoire”.  In our best year, we had both Emmitt and Hall of Fame running back Marcus Allen.  I told Emmitt this and he insisted that I have a picture with him and Marcus.

Marcus committed “Hey Emmitt, I guess we are in the furniture business”.  This truly amuses me.

[I JUST REALIZED THAT WE NEVER POSTED THIS ONE.  SO HERE IT IS, 3 MONTHS LATE.]

We are back in the states.  To be clear, we are not home.  Instead, we are in a 7 hour layover in Los Angeles airport having already taken 2 flights and been up for 23 hours.  We are a perky and happy lot.

OK, perhaps not perky or happy, but we have had some tales to share.

We started enthusiastic enough.  We took the pedals from Susie’s Valentine’s flower and tossed them from our window at sunrise.

At least the day started well!

The sweet girls from the dance studio drove to the airport to see us off.  I was delighted to find out that they live relatively close to the airport.  I found coming to an airport at 8AM on a Saturday almost too generous an effort.

The girls joined the All-Blacks rugby team.

If you cannot tell, the girls are the two closest to you

And then there was the flight.

Virginia, our most sleep-dependent child, managed to stay awake on the trans-Pacific flight despite taking a Benadryl to clear her ears.   You might think that we will be reaping the benefits of this herculean feat for many hours to come.  You would be right.  But the fun has already started.  A stalwart traveller with a rock-solid stomach, she nonetheless managed to throw up a remarkable amount, covering the bathroom in the plane.  I felt sufficiently bad that I volunteered to clean it up.  The flight attendants did nothing to discourage me.

The fine folks from Quantas kept feeding us.  Nothing fancy, but the offerings were frequent and filling (until, as noted for Virginia, they became unfilling).  We had a dinner, breakfast, sandwich role, apple, cake, cheese + crackers and 6 different drink services.  While generous, this avalanche of foodstuffs helped assure that many of us never really slept.  Just as we started to nod off . . . bam! . . . another snack.

One snack did not get consumed.  An apple purchased in New Zealand (ironically, grown in the US) was in Susie’s backpack.  She was aware of this, especially after we were stopped entering New Zealand with food 3 weeks ago.

[Note: I am not sure if I adequately described this before, but here it is in short.  We arrive and throw away all our snacks/candy/food in the bins provided in compliance with their quarantine warnings.  An adorable beagle came up to our bags with an enthusiasm usually reserved for tween girls at a Justin Beiber concert.   He sniffs and forages and finds a moldy muffin that had laid dormant for 4 weeks in one of our backpacks.  Actually, “laying dormant” is highly inaccurate.  Let us instead say “incubating life".  The New Zealand woman was amused and let us off with no real issues.]

Anyway, we were sensitized to bringing food into a country.  When we landed, Susie remembered the apple and decided to eat it prior to clearing passport control or customs with the intention of tossing it into available bins.

No bins were available.  We asked a guard what to do, she said there would be trash cans near customs.  We double-checked with the passport security guard and he told us to take our time eating it “no need to choke.”

At customs, Virginia was holding the eaten core like a rotten fish and looking for the trash.  Upon seeing it, we earned a trip to “Aisle A”, which entailed an extra scan of all our baggage (much appreciated given our frayed nerves) and treatment akin to what I would hope a real smuggler would get.  We did learn that the apple core made us eligible for a $300 fine.  The agent “waived” the fine as if she had sprung us from the Big House.  I suspect we did not look as appreciative as she might have hoped.

As you might guess, this first-blog-from-America is not rife with insight.  I had hoped that the muses would visit me and inspire deep insights into life, wealth, culture, family and life.

I am rolling snake-eyes on that goal.  This is all I’ve got right now.  But at least I am doing something – here is the rest of the crew.

Excited to be back in the U S of A!

Steve Sir

Tomorrow we fly home.  We do not know quite how to feel about it.

Part of me is delighted the end is here.  After all, we have had a LOT of togetherness.  Nerves are a bit frayed.  Each of us has discovered at least one newfound pet peeve within the family.

We are tired of wearing the same outfits and living out of backpacks.  We have unpacked and repacked one too many times.

We have traveled a lot.  We have flown on jet planes, prop planes and helicopters.  We have ridden gondolas, funiculars, subways, trains, mine tracks, taxis, tuk-tuks, bike, scooters, pickup trucks, busses, vans and elephants.   We have floated on kayaks, rafts, junks, ferries, water taxies, bamboo boats, long boats (Laotian style and Thai style) and tour boats.

We will have flown 17 different airlines with at least 26 sets of takeoffs and landings.  We have cleared customs in over a dozen countries.

In short, we have scratched our travel itch until it bled.

Also, we have much we look forward to seeing again.  We are excited to see our friends and colleagues.  We want to see Fenway.  We miss the camp.

And yet . . .

We have also really bonded as a family and a traveling unit.  Little rattles us any more and we feel equipped to address almost any challenge.

We have come to love the variety of each day.  We appreciate the chances to learn about history, about geography and life.  Seeing people who live (happily) on less than $1,000/year is enlightening.   Much of our society suggests to us that we need lots of things to be content, yet we saw evidence that this is not true.  Further, we got a chance to live it – we lived in a sardine can but got along lovingly.

We have most enjoyed coming to understand the kids as well as we have.  We left thinking our children were younger than they truly are.  Sure, they have grown while on this adventure, but we also realize that we were holding onto old impressions of them from the past.  They are borderline adults.  The boys will get their driver’s permit this year. College is close.  We are glad that to see this now.

I also think they have come to understand my relationship with Susie even better.  At least, I hope so.

Our last day has been a great ending.  We walked the city of Christchurch one last time.

This is a new mall made from shipping containers. All the other malls were destroyed.

We went to a museum,

Liam trying to look cool on this cycle

the botanical garden

Wiley found an impromptu hammock

This model, made by an 11 year old, is of the destroyed Christchurch cathedral

and a butterfly exhibit.  The one year earthquake anniversary is next week and the community plans to release 182 Monarch butterflies to commemorate each death.

Before you say anything, please know that a 70 year-old female volunteer placed the butterflies on Susie

Terrill enjoying her new friends

We talked with the parents of Terrill’s dancing pen pal.  They are simply lovely people.  They understood that she wanted to spend her last evening with us and not at another dance class, but they have insisted on coming to the airport at 8AM on Saturday to see us off.

We will be traveling for 30 hours, so I’ll have a break before I post my final blog once we return home.  I hope you have enjoyed our traveling blogs.   I know I have loved sharing!

Steve Sir

We are in Christchurch, the scene of the massive earthquake roughly a year ago.  Some estimate that this event created more monetary damage than any previous earthquake.

We are having some trouble processing the disaster.  To be honest, we have not personally witnessed any true disasters.  My grandmother was an infant during the Galveston flood of 1901, but I did not really understand the stories.  We had a tornado in the Marble Falls area 10-12 years ago, but we did not really see the effects of the tornado.

I have seen some floods and droughts, but nothing like the event that grabbed the world’s attention in Christchurch.  I think the important difference is the fact that the massive earthquake was centered incredibly close to a population center.

Even a year later, the majority of the central city is absolutely closed and all estimates are that it will take years, perhaps a decade to recover.

The beautiful Arts Centre is closed.  The epicurean group of restaurants is closed.  The major museum is closed.  The city is struggling. One resident we spoke with talked wistfully of her backyard birds that disappeared for months after each successive earthquakes. (two major and one minor)  She said the silence, after the typical morning chocophany, was the erriest effect of the quake.

Last night we experienced a 5 plus aftershock.  It occurred at 4 am and we were in our campervan. Susie and I both remember being awakened, but as our campervan has horrible shock absorbers, we attributed it at the time to a child thrashing in her/ his sleep.

Despite the massive reparations, even now, we see churches with spires lying next to churches.

This spire was on top last year

Note this office housed an engineer

The people are pulling together.  We had a wonderful direct experience today.  Our older daughter Terrill has a pen pal (technically facebook pal)  from a dance studio here.  Her dance school in Marble Falls sent all the proceeds of a recital to a ballet school in Christchurch that was devastated during the earthquake.  The girls still refuse to dance on a second floor.  Their original studio was damaged beyond repair and the new studio they found is just one floor, making everyone happier.  Terrill joined her pen pal (Jess Pugh) and her class during a class today.

Terrill and Jess stretching

The entire class was so inviting and lovely.  They made Susie, Terrill and Virginia feel completely at home.  They even gave our crew a ride back to our hostel.  They also invited them to come back tomorrow.

Susie was so moved by their emotional generosity.  They are the ones that had a terrible year, but they acted as if Terrill needed their love and support as much as anyone.

Tomorrow is our last full day.  We plan to walk the city and see the beautiful (the gardens) and the devastation.  It is hard to think that the trip is ending, but I think that Christchurch (and its positive populace) is a great place to finish.

Steve Sir

PS I also want to leave you with this picture.  It is a group of local students in uniform.  I wonder what our campers would say to this apparel.

Looking good! Those are not sea snakes around their necks.

We had an uneventful day.

We have been packing.  We turn in the campervan tomorrow morning, so we need to arrange the chaos of the past 19 days into 10 large bags and 6 backpacks.

This is not that much fun at all.

I do not know exactly what to share that will amuse you, so this will be short.

We will share our favorite example of odd marketing in New Zealand.

Read this carefully

The folks at McGregor’s are proud of their pies, but they might have some of the oddest ways to express this.  Lets look at the ad in detail.  First, they claim to be successful since “Adam was a cowboy”.  I missed this part of Adam’s history, but I will take their word for it.

Second, they extol me to “Wrap my laughing gear around one today”.  I find this both amusing and slightly too familiar.  What I do with my laughing gear remains my business.

Third, we have the coup d’etat: “Baked at Sparrows Fart”.  I am all for being proud of your home.  I also believe that one should make the best of bad situations.  But when you are trying to sell foodstuff, I generally advise avoiding any reference to flatulence, be it avian or not.

That is it for today.  I think we will have more tomorrow.

Steve Sir