A-Camp Recap #1: Movin’ On Up (The Mountain)

Welcome to the first of four fantastic recaps of our entire experience at the First-Ever A-Camp, which took place two hours outside of Los Angeles at Alpine Meadows in Angelus Oaks, California, from April 26th-29th.

The idea was to take the spirit of the website into three glorious dimensions while simultaneously creating an affordable option for queer ladies for whom other lesbian events (such as Dinah Shore) aren’t a good fit. So, we rented out a summer camp in its off-season and enjoyed a transformative weekend of fun, friendship, panels, workshops, classes, sports, entertainment, events and so forth.

These epically long monster-posts will do their best to explain and extrapolate upon the camp experience, from shitstorms to emotional revelations to glory/triumph.

Today we are going to be re-capping all of history as well as Thursday, April 26th, which was mostly a shitstorm.

The idea here is that you’ll be on the edge of your seat wondering how everybody ended up being so happy by the end of the weekend!

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AND A DREAM WAS BORN

Riese, CEO/Executive Editor: I may’ve mentioned this already — but back on some fateful night in July 2010, I woke up at 3am and wrote “CAMP – THIS WILL BE OUR THING” on a notepad I keep by my bed for nocturnal moments of genius. The next day I pitched the idea to Alex, and she agreed (re: its genius) and we’ve been talking about it ever since, both to each other and to other team members.

Marni, Camp Co-Director: Riese had been talking about camp for months (/years) and we’d had lots of excited conversations about it, and at some point I turned to her and said, “You know I used to run a summer camp, right? I can do this.” And she said “Okay. So do it.”

Riese: I was in New York in October 2011 for a panel and that’s when I pitched the idea to Robin, Carly, Jess & Stef. Everybody agreed it was the Best Idea Ever, especially Robin, because Robin loves camp. Although they’d never met, I knew right away that Robin and Marni would make an amazing team to lead this kind of thing.

Marni: And we were off.

Riese: We’d been waiting until we had the resources and following to put together a week-long camp event, but it became increasingly clear going into the fall of 2011 that we’d never have those resources, so in December I emailed everybody and said “let’s just try it for a weekend in California,” and everybody said YES LET’S DO IT.

 

The Lead-Up

Riese: I made a spreadsheet and Marni called a shit-ton of campsites and ultimately we picked Alpine Meadows ’cause it wasn’t affiliated with any religions that hate gay people, didn’t utilize life-scarring communal showers, was Vegan/Vegetarian-friendly, was reasonably priced and had VIP cabins for people like Julie Goldman who is “a Jew first, butch second.”

Further fascinating developments included: booking plane tickets for our entire staff, freaking out about the possibility of nobody wanting to come. But then we built it, and announced it, and everybody wanted to come. We filled all the spots in two days and had an enormous waiting list. It was one of the best feelings EVER.

Marni: I’ve never organized a camp via email before — in the past I’ve been on-site, with staff, planning things and training all together. This was a group of 35 women all over the world, with school and jobs and schedules to work around. Robin and I would have weekly phone calls where we’d plan out emails and spreadsheets and deadlines. There were lots and lots of emails.

At one point I was sitting in front of my little laptop struggling with this spreadsheet, trying to juggle workshops and make the schedule more balanced, and I just said fuck it, I need to touch this with my hands. So Riese and I biked to Walgreen’s and I bought colored cue cards and painter’s tape and I converted my entire bedroom wall into a giant schedule. I haven’t taken it down yet.

Riese: I was handling all of the financial, registration-related and logistical elements of getting staff and campers to camp, including constructing cabin groups by a highly specific socially-engineered process that involved asking everybody to rank their affinity for AS and to certain personality adjectives like “socially anxious” and “outgoing.” I used Marni’s leftover cards and my entire floor to make this happen — the final cabins were named Forever 21, The Golden Girls, The Troubletones (original name: “Trouble”), Cherry Bomb, Rubyfruit, Little Rascals, The Sharks, The Beats, Littlefoot, Wolfpack and Hotel California. I can’t tell you how I organized them, it’s top secret.

Robin, Camp Co-Director/Photographer: January to April is my slowest season as a photographer, so I just kept reaching out to them and offering to help with whatever needed to be done. I worked mainly on the schedule and keeping in touch with instructors and counselors and Hannah.

I’m much more comfortable having things organized and structured really far in advance, so it was hard for me to allow certain parts of A-Camp organizing to come about in an organic way, but Marni is a really wonderfully calming presence.

Marni: We were so nervous as the date approached. I started waking up at 5am every morning with unfocused anxiety, like “how are we going to organize the icebreakers???” I didn’t realize at first but Riese was doing the exact same thing. The sun wouldn’t even be up yet and we’d both be lying there staring at the ceiling. It was nervousness but at the root of it was excitement.

Riese: Per ushe, I underestimated the amount of work involved — at some point there was a situation which required buying out the campsite for the weekend to avoid sharing it with 50 Pastors who apparently wanted to “retreat” that very same weekend. Also I had a mental breakdown, but that’s to be expected.

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Getting Our Shit Together

Marni: I got the idea for the pigeonholes based on a smaller-scale version we’d had for just staff at my old camp, but wasn’t sure how I was going to realize it. I went to this place in Oakland called the “East Bay Depot for Creative Reuse” and for 10 dollars I got 200 toilet paper rolls and a dozen or so cardboard things that I thought could maybe work and I spent the next two days sitting on the floor of Riese’s bedroom painstakingly tracing the tubes and cutting circles out of each piece of cardboard, and scraping off the bits of toilet paper left on the rolls. Riese was totally grossed out and I think was a bit unconvinced that this was the most worthwhile use of my time. (It definitely was.)

Robin: Our original document for camp was named after our first working title “Camp Fear,” which was named because of an email thread in which we discussed scary nighttime camp games. The document is still named “Camp Fear” and it makes me smile whenever I open Google docs. I would still like to plan a Stratego/Capture the Flag game for the next session, loosely based on the Hunger Games. Very loosely based.

Laneia, Executive Editor: I was put in charge of gathering workshop supplies, probably because I would be driving in from Phoenix and would have room for everything, but I like to think that Robin also knew how much I love making lists and buying sharpies. I cleared out my Trapper Keeper and set to work printing out spreadsheets and organizing shopping lists. I was sending emails asking “Can you clarify ‘assorted beads’ please?” and “What are your feelings on craft lace?” What I’m saying is, a childhood spent organizing office supplies swiped from my mom, cataloging doll accessories and coordinating elaborate sleepover clubs had finally, finally paid off.

Riese: I created a labyrinth driving schedule for airport transport that involved renting six 15-passenger vans from Executive Van Rental and having various counselors drive them 2.5 hours to the site. However, this plan quickly escalated into a Situation, and here’s why:

“Merging is something that I’m generally very scared of.” – Katrina

“I lost my driver’s license and debit card three weeks ago.” – Taylor

“I’m a New Yorker who doesn’t drive so… I am NOT useful behind the wheel of a car.” – Jamie

“I feel like now is a relevant time to tell you that I can’t drive.” – Grace

“I do not know how to drive.” -Carolyn

“Also did I mention that I have no driver’s license?” – Carmen

“I’d better not drive. I’d probably end up driving on the wrong side of the road.” -Crystal

“Even on a good day I probably wouldn’t have the attention span to safely drive a 15 passenger van to a place I’ve never been.” – Lizz

Therefore, I also had to book some Roadrunner Shuttles (they come with drivers!) to compensate. Soo, I’d given up on enticing any New Yorkers to drive when, much to my surprise, Gabby and Stef volunteered — with great enthusiasm! — to drive. Basically, I had a fantasy that I could make airport transportation both totally affordable and totally reliable. That turns out to be impossible. I forgot about this:

Gabby, Cherry Bomb Counselor/Writer: Working tv/film production I’ve driven a hot mess menagerie of vehicles: 15 pass vans, cube trucks, sprinter vans, sprinter-hybrid-cargo vans, Escalades, Smart Cars, golf carts etc. If it has wheels, I can pretty much handle that and I’ve got stamina for days (rim shot, please). I can drive forever on highways, side roads and sometimes even sidewalks. So at first I was super surprised that Riese didn’t have me on the camper pick-up schedule. I really wanted to drive and contribute and get right in there and meet some of you. Thankfully, Lizz asked if someone could switch with her. Enter: Gabby is driving a van now, yay!

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Tuesday, April 24th 

Riese: I jam-packed our tiny rental car to the absolute brim and drove down from San Francisco alone, where I spent the entire trip talking to myself, imagining that I was talking to campers on the first night. Then I listed to “We are Young” (the Glee cast version) on repeat for an hour and started crying about my dream coming true and how much I loved everybody and was so excited, and then I talked to myself some more about that.

Robin: Marni, Riese, Taylor, Carly and I stayed in a hotel room together on Tuesday night. We were all anxious and nervous, but extremely excited for the new experience. At one point, I looked around the room to see Riese and Carly on their laptops, Marni organizing her folders of notes, maps, and schedules and Taylor taking photographs, and it reminded me of what it felt like to be present at those very early Autostraddle meetings many years ago.

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Wednesday, April 25th

I. Nobody Said It Was Easy / No One Ever Said It Would Be So Hard

Riese: Alright, SO. It’s about 1 PM on Wednesday and we’re waiting for Rachel/Emily/Stef/Crystal/Carolyn to arrive from being in the air.

We were moments away from departure — and the girls are arriving — when we got  a super-unexpected call from the good (read: terrible) people at Roadrunner Shuttles, who were thrilled (read: totally unphased) to inform us that there was “a computer glitch” and our shuttles (3 for Thursday, 1 for Sunday — although I’d planned on booking three for Sunday, I just hadn’t decided the times yet) would cost $140 more, EACH. They already cost between $250-$350 dollars each, so this was a serious issue.

Me: So what you’re saying is your business made a mistake, and now my business has to pay for your mistake?
“Karen”: Or I could cancel the reservations, ma’am.
Me: But I have no choice! I’m literally hours away from losing internet access and I have 116 women I’ve gotta move from the airport to a campsite 2.5 hours away in 24 hours! What I want is to have shuttles at the price I reserved them for, that’s what I want.
“Karen”: We can’t do that, ma’am.
Me: ARGHHH!!!

Robin called to yell at them some more and Karen made up three different stories to avoid putting her on the line with a supervisor who did/didn’t exist and was/wasn’t in a meeting. We ended up canceling half the shuttles we’d booked, and reserving more vans for Autostraddle drivers to compensate.

Then I frantically attempted to devise a new plan for Thursday during the time I’d set aside to organize Sunday (this quickly became evident on Sunday.) Amid this stress I LEFT TINKERBELL IN THE HOTEL ROOM!

Then we made the drive to camp. It was a really beautiful day.

Laneia: By the time we left for California, I was 85% certain that I’d thought of everything we’d all ever need forever — even the stuff that wasn’t on the lists! I was wrong, of course, but the back of Megan’s SUV definitely looked like I’d succeeded. We stopped at the Cabazon Dinosaurs and I hyperventilated a lot.

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II. Preparing For You

Riese: The drive up the mountain to camp is alternately like a nature movie and a horror movie. Within a few minutes of our arrival, Laneia & Megan showed up, as did Alex.

Alex, Autostraddle Co-Founder/Design Director: We spent Wednesday night putting together the gift bags and finishing the pigeon hole mail boxes. This night was awesome because I got to reunite with my fellow staff members/writers, many I haven’t seen in more than a year and many I hadn’t even met yet. The night was exhausting but the anticipation was high… finally Camp was happening.

Riese: I was so excited and nervous about everything, like my gut was tied up in star-shaped knots.

Stef, Wolfpack Counselor: Meeting up with everyone from Auto staff was surreal and beautiful; some were friends I’d known and adored for years, while others were people who had previously existed (to me, at least) only as avatars. I was familiar with everyone in one sense or another and it was really exciting for us to all be in the same room.

Laneia: Riese, Rachel and I wrote little notes for each camper while everyone else did the hard work. We talked about how it felt like a tv reunion special, with people from the original cast and the new kids. I kept looking up at the other girls and getting super overwhelmed with everything. At one point Robin said, “Can you believe this?! It’s like, who signed off on this idea? Who gave us permission to do this?”

Emily, Sharks Counselor: I had been awake for about 20 hours after two hours of sleep and two plane rides. We had our first staff meeting at around midnight and the excitement was still palpable, even though we were all exhausted. I was really tired and my eyeballs fell out.

Laneia: Riese had us quiz her with the campers’ names because she’d accidentally memorized them all, which is impressive but not necessarily surprising, if you know Riese.

Riese: Most importantly, Marni got in touch with somebody at the hotel who said they had Tinkerbell and we could get her tomorrow!

NEXT: We actually talk about camp actually happening, almost!

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Thursday April 26th: Let the Games Begin

Carmen, Sharks Counselor/Contributing Editor: Waking up at 4:30 AM meant Katrina and I were extremely excited to get our hands on two things: food and beverage. But upon finding out that the in-terminal restaurant didn’t serve booze before 8 AM (exactly 15 minutes after our flight left), we decided to take our massive breakfasts to go and eat them on the plane in an attempt to fall into a food coma. This worked.

Annika, The Beats Counselor/Writer: Marni had called me on Wednesday night with an urgent request: “Annika, I forgot something really important and you’re the only one still left in San Francisco! Can you stop by my office to pick it up for me?” So Thursday morning I drove to the Canadian Consulate to collect these brightly-colored plastic buzzers for lesbian jeopardy. I kinda felt like a queer secret agent or something! With the mission accomplished, I then drove nine hours to camp.

Lizz, Rubyfruit Counselor/Fashion Editor: My game plan was to leave Boston at 5:55am and arrive at LAX at 9:15am PST to greet campers. At 10am my plane was still sitting on the tarmac at LAX. There was some sort of medical emergency on the airplane so we waited while the paramedics did their thing. I was supposed to meet campers at 9:30am and the first three vans were scheduled to leave at 10. I finally deplaned, checked in with the van drivers and somehow negotiated myself from Terminal 7 across the world to Terminal 3. Luckily, it was easy to spot the A-Campers, based on the fact that they were the only giant group of lesbians. There were approximately a million of us.

Laneia: Riese and I were scheduled to drive two cars down the mountain, drop off snacks for everyone still at LAX, and bring back a 15-passenger van full of happy homos. I had two panic attacks before I could even leave the campsite, so I just took the xanax and cried to myself while we drove down the mountain that I’d eventually develop a solid love/hate relationship with.

Riese: The weather ended up being gorgeous all weekend — but Thursday was way rainy and foggy and dark.

Lizz: We all had to get to camp on vans that fit 10-13 people, and by 10:30 our meticulously laid plan was already starting to crack. At some point in the next twenty minutes, between packing luggage on the vans and meeting Brittani for the first time, I turned into a raging dictator stomping around with my clipboard like I’d just been assigned 4th grade Line Leader.

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Camper Quotes:

“Sara Medd is the best shuttle driver ever. That fearless mother fucker. Through fog and cliffs. I BELIEVE IN SARA MEDD.” 

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“When Brittani stopped at In-n-Out Burger, all the villagers rejoiced.”

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“I drove with Sarah Croce and I believe I was drooling the entire time. We get in and she says ‘I have some Ani CD’s in here somewhere’ I DIE.”

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Gabby: Lizz and her ‘you can’t touch this’ clipboard loaded me up with 11 campers, bags a-plenty and one solid California chica as a navigator (Hey, Katie, Heyyy). Then it was peace out LAX, hello open highway and omg we’re going to A-Camp feelings! The road stretched out before us like it was made of yellow bricks. 80s music played from the radio including Rick Astley’s ‘Never Gonna Give You Up’ and Cyndi Lauper’s ‘Girls Just Wanna Have Fun.’ It was THAT kind of trip and all my girls were chillen. Somehow the topic of coming out came up and I shared my story with Katie and whoever was close enough to hear me.

Riese: Laneia and I got to LAX with snacks and when I saw all these lesbians standing there for the first time, I felt like:

a) Do you believe in magic?

b) I want to sit & listen to them talk for the rest of my life

c) I have no idea how to talk to all of them at once

d) Do they even know who I am? Probably not.

e) LAURA!!!!!

On the way over I’d imagined myself being, I guess, a totally different person, that I would walk in and be like HI EVERYBODY I’M RIESE WELCOME TO CAMP, but when I got there I realized that I’ve never done that before in my life — addressed an unstructured group with ambiguously defined intentions — not ever, and didn’t know how. Is this real? Is this really happening?

Carmen: Being the snack captain while trillions of lesbos boarded shuttles to a faraway haven known as “A-Camp” translated into a lot of rejection on my part. The thing is, I just couldn’t eat the Cheez-Its alone, so I started doing lame jokes loudly in order to entice people into taking them from me. This did not work. I talked about meeting Brittani a lot at the airport since as time continued passing I became convinced I would never make it to the actual campsite.

Riese: And then Gabby called to say her tire was busted and they were stranded on the side of the highway!

Gabby: The vibes were good and strong until the steering wheel of the 15 passenger van started to shake uncontrollably. I know these types of vans and they don’t do that. We were in the middle lane of East 10 and the van shuddered super hard making it almost impossible to control the wheel. Inside I panicked, outside I took deep breaths looked to my left and saw a mom in a minivan pointing at my tire. Fuck, we immediately started to smell smoke and I had to get us somewhere safe. Where is somewhere safe on a freeway? Without freaking, I slid over into the fire lane in between hard jolts, thunder-clap loud rumbles and stopped the car. I didn’t feel at all comfortable driving the van to the next exit, not with the smoke and not with the tire looking like shredded wheat.

Gabby: Questions popped up immediately from my girls. Co-pilot Katie jumped right on her phone and started making calls to AAA, highway assistance and anyone else she could think of. I also got on the horn with AS head homos and let them know that I was stuck on the side of the LA freeway with a busted tire, 11 beautiful babygirls and life was ok but we needed it to get better.

Riese: Clearly I wasn’t leaving the airport ’til we’d assured Gabby & her campers were okay and we’d made a new plan, which involved again spilling all of my folders onto the floor of the airport like a crazy person and ordering people to call people with cars, etc.

Laura, Little Rascals Counselor/Associate Editor: Organizing airport transportation on Thursday was the most fun I’ve had since that time I shut my hand in the trunk of my friend’s car. Mostly I just let Lizz handle it (because she is in charge), but I did have the distinct pleasure of speaking to Mister Van Rental when Gabby’s tire blew out. When I asked him what he thought we should do, he said they should just wait until “some strong man” stopped to help them, which is when I hung up on him.

Gabby: Everyone was on it. Alex Vega was coming to try and rescue me. Lizz was trying to get triple AAA and Riese filled my ear with adorable we loves yous/ I’m so sorrys. At one point, one of my girls started to question my judgment. ‘Well, why can’t we make it to the next exit?’ and ‘I’m sure the tire isn’t that bad. Can you just not change a tire? I can.’ My gut reaction was to say, “Hush your young ass mouth, Gabby’s in charge” but I didn’t. I thoroughly considered her suggestions, double checked the state of the tire and trusted my gut. I wasn’t gonna lay or have any of them lay on the side of on-coming traffic to fix a fucking tire. (It was the left rear tire btw). Also, I refused to risk damaging the 15 passenger by trying to reach an exit or put my girls in any more danger.

So my ladies did what they came here to do. They opened the doors and made friends with each other. They played getting to know you games and chilled on a small green patch of highway Narnia trusting me to do my job. And being the protector type and not wanting anyone to think I was afraid, I still checked out the tire and made attempts to change with the help of my actually quite handy naysayer. We realized quickly that this wasn’t something we could do. Tractor-trailers were whizzing by our head and the rental company was being dicks about helping us find what we needed to change the tire anyway.

So we sat, and sat and sat watching the games being played until C.H.I.PS showed up son! Officer Sean, looking like a Caucasian version of The Rock, showed up and even he was like, “This is too dangerous for me to try and change giving the location of the tire and the severity of the shredding. So we’re going to wait for freeway assistance.”

“Our tire exploded but Gabby handled it like a champ!”

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He waited with us and we waited and waited… and still my girls played their question games and remained very calm. I thanked them over and over for not crying or getting cranky. From their reaction, I knew camp was going to be just perfect because these were the type of young women that know how to adapt to all of the things.

By the time freeway assistance arrived at 3:45pm, we’d been waiting almost three hours. This dude was a machine. He changed that tire in less than five minutes while Officer Sean shut down the right lane with lights and his cop car which I hoped Eric Estrada would be in but he wasn’t. I made sure Freeway dude checked all of our tires and gave us an ok before we headed out. Thank goodness because our other tire was super low on air pressure. By this point, I saw that the high-energy smiles from my A-Campers were turning into bleary delirium face. Executive decision: put air in tire, get gas, make bathroom stop, and FEED MY GIRLS. So we did those things and made it up the mountaintop anyway but goddamn, did it really have to be so extra?? We missed like an entire day of camp and that’s like missing one day of rapture.

Riese: Once I was confident Gabby and her girls were not about to be run over by a monster truck or — worse — be unhappy –Laneia and I loaded up our van with an adorable assortment of fantastic human beings whose last names I’d already memorized – PJ & Mareika, Sugar & Fitzi, Allison, Alissa, Britley, Emma and Keisha. The only problem is that there was no time to get Tinkerbell, but Alex said she’d get it on her way out when she came to LAX later.

Crystal, Troubletones Counselor: My role for the afternoon was part-welcome wagon, part-bell hop. I spent hours standing in the carpark or at the lodge window like a puppy, waiting for cars or vans to pull up so that I could race outside and greet campers. The moment when Gabby pulled into the drive way and hollered at me through the window, when a dozen of cute happy smiling queers piled out of her van – that was the moment when the reality of what we were about to do really hit my somewhat jet-lagged brain, like I suddenly realised just how amazing and magical the next three days were going be. One of the major highlights was hearing a few other Australian accents around the camp site – I was completely in awe of those five or six campers who flew half way around the world just to be at A-Camp.

Stef: I spent most of this day stuck in traffic while Rachel Walker sat behind me talking about a million better ways to transport campers to the camp “WHAT ABOUT PRIVATE HELICOPTERS?!?!?!” and, while the van hissed and sputtered up the mountain, “HAVE YOU SEEN THAT SHOW ABOUT AMERICA’S MOST DANGEROUS ROADS!??!?!”

Riese: I’d actually been excited to drive a van ’cause I wanted to get some QT with at least nine human beings before planting myself on a folding chair on stage for the rest of the weekend, thus we had a delightful time asking everybody in our car invasive questions about their sexual awakenings.

“Well, it took forever to get to camp, but I got to be in Riese and Laneia’s van, so.”

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Laneia: One of my fondest memories of driving back up the mountain was when we pulled over to place a liquor store order with Alex, who was still in LA. It took four phones — thanks to dead/dying batteries and who had/didn’t have service — but we did eventually get the shopping list sent, which was just the first of many examples of how down and cooperative everyone was. We would’ve had to pull over anyway, though, so we could figure out how to turn on the headlights.

Riese: It’s possible our passengers were dying a slow death inside from transportation fatigue but I was enjoying all the lesbo-bonding-experience. Everyone was so cool and fun and smart!

Laneia: I was torn between wanting to talk to our campers forever and feeling like they probably didn’t want to talk to me because of my lameness and general anxiety, which was stupid, in retrospect. Everyone practically fell into tears when we unloaded in the parking lot of Alpine Meadows. I wanted to kiss the trees.

Next: What’s happening at camp?!

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Meanwhile, at camp…

Emily: Thursday morning Deer Lodge was empty save for one Taylor Hatmaker, who couldn’t figure out how to use the TV.

Taylor, Golden Girls Counselor/Tech Writer: Thursday was GO TIME. I was woefully (not woefully) stranded at Camp all day, since I lost my driver’s license at a Cults show in Portland three weeks ago. I was admittedly nervous as I drifted around the site, occasionally donning Robin’s captain’s hat for confidence, but as soon as the first van rolled up in the early afternoon Shit Was On.

Emily: By the afternoon, Deer Lodge was full of blooming queer ladies making messes, lanyards, friends, and paper airplanes. I watched people play Scrabble and hopefully made a few funny jokes but I can’t really remember. There were so many faces to look at! Everyone looked so good even though they probably just traveled across the country and drove up the side of Killer Mountain on a spare tire.

Taylor: As soon as the first bushy tailed little darlings rolled out of what looked like a kidnapper’s van, it was clear that everything would be basically absolutely perfect from there on out. I whisked campers from the loving arms of registration to DEER LODGE ALL CAPS starting in the early afternoon and the delights continued to pour in thereafter.

Stef: Camp didn’t become real until the first round of vans started pulling up and dropping off dozens of girls with nervous smiles and cute haircuts… I think everybody became a little overwhelmed with emotion as we realized this was actually happening, that people had actually shown up, that this was in fact a thing. What if they hated us and everything?!?!? What if we were all awkward internet weirdos who were afraid to talk to each other in real life!?!?!

Taylor: I set up a spread of crafts and nervously DJed on my iPad as the queers rolled in, crafts in their eyes. There were friendship bracelets, paper airplane deathmatches, and good vibes had by all. I hovered around like a nervous denmother of sorts until I realized that everyone was having a really grand, gay ol’ time all on their own. Then I think I had a beer.

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Back to LAX…

Lizz: I thought as long as I never stopped checking people in, making van groups, counting heads or filing people into vans I wouldn’t realize how hungry or tired I was and we’d all finally get to go to camp. Dictator-Lizz lasted until Alex fed me Chipotle with Laura, Carmen and Grace at 9pm.

Carmen: Laura Wooley and Grace and I became actual best friends as I stared out Sarah Croce’s car window with my mouth wide open and repeated the phrase, “Oh my gosh even CVS is beautiful here.”

Meanwhile, Closer to the Mountain…

Riese: So, then it’d been like two hours since we’d gotten back and Whitney, who’d left the airport at the same time we did, was nowhere to be found.

Laneia: Riese and I were so panicked about Whitney and her group, especially because they were in my girlfriend’s SUV and I felt 100% responsible for every second of their trip. This was my fifth panic-stricken situation of the day since 7am, so you’d think I would’ve been all out of adrenaline and fear, but no, you’d be wrong. We tried calling Whitney’s phone to no avail, then we used our detective skills to track down Britley — a girl who was friends with a girl who was in Whitney’s group, Stacey (are you still with me?) — and eventually got in touch with The Lost Girls. They were stranded on the side of the mountain about 14 miles from camp. (Marni: “Oh they were so close!”)

Whitney, Rubyfruit Counselor/Contributing Editor: Driving up a twisty mountain in the dark in the fog is pretty scary, but driving up said twisty mountain only to find that your car’s (Laneia’s car’s!) steering wheel stopped working is even scarier. What happened? The power steering line snapped, as in the steering wheel wouldn’t turn to make it around those snake-y mountain curves. On the right, there’s this craggy mountain face with a sign that reads “WARNING BOULDERS” (and shit, it looked precarious) and on the left was a several thousand-foot drop off a cliff into the darkness.

When I realized the steering wheel wouldn’t turn, I stopped the car to try and find cell phone reception. No luck. So I continue driving between the WARNING BOULDERS and the cliff, pulling the steering wheel as hard as I can to get the wheels to turn around the bends. It came to a point where I couldn’t pull the steering wheel enough to get the car to turn (scary moment — we almost flew off the road) and I stop the car next to a call box. Here, we finally got cell phone reception. One of the campers in the car, Alicia, had a gold AAA membership, thanks to a yearly gift from her father which, I’m sure, she hadn’t found entirely useful until that moment. This card — and in turn, Alicia’s dad — pretty much saved our lives.

Riese: So, along with Laneia and a very lovely camper named Erika who had a large bottle of vodka (that she hadn’t even started drinking yet!) and an SUV, we caravaned down the dark foggy mountain of death and despair in search of five homos stranded on the side of the road. I’ve henceforth dubbed Alicia “AAA Conley,” because duh. I drove Stacey and Whitney back to camp and we all talked about Michigan and I kept trying to give Stacey the verbal equivalent of a hug without being weird.

Laneia: I stayed behind with Alicia to wait for the tow truck, fighting the urge to hug her until her eardrums burst. Incredibly, from what Alicia told me, even this group of campers had managed to keep their spirits up through hunger, frustration and near-death. It’s impossible to overstate how grateful I was to each of the campers who’d stood super hero-style in the face of their respective fucked up situations and said HELL NO, I DID NOT COME ALL THE WAY OUT HERE TO LET THIS GET ME DOWN. Just, I mean, who does that? Who brings that kind of determination to have a good time no matter what? A-Campers, that’s who.

“It doesn’t matter how long it took. It got me to A-camp and A-camp changed my life!”

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Moral of the story: GET HIRED TRANSPORT. IT IS WORTH THE EXTRA MONEY YOU GUYS. (Yes, there will be hired transport at the next A-Camp, but wasn’t this fun!)

Riese: Jess S. was coming to camp straight from work on Thursday night, so we’d given her the assignment of picking up the two mega-late-comers on her way in.

Jess S., Forever 21 Counselor: As I was pulling up to the terminal to pick up two campers at LAX, someone waved at me and smiled. I didn’t know what the campers looked like but I had described my car to them, so I let this person into my car thinking her name was Angela and she was really excited about camp. As I pulled away, we proceeded to have two different conversations–I was trying to get her to talk about A Camp, but she ignored that and just wanted to talk about someone named “Erica.” After about 30 seconds, we realized our mistake. WRONG PERSON. I made a joke about trying to kidnap her and she hurriedly exited my car while I found the real Angela.

Julie and Brandy, “The Talent”: We were late getting out of LA. Unbeknownst to us, half of camp had already been stranded on the same mountain that we were now trying to navigate in the dark. Pitch dark. With clouds. And not the kind of clouds that keep you company on a picnic… The kind of clouds that cling to a freezing mountain top. The kind of clouds that you usually only see from the window seat of a plane. The kind of clouds that are so white and thick, they reflect your headlights back into your eyes, rather than illuminate the way. It took us thirty minutes to go four miles, but we finally made it up the windy road.

Alex: Mission: Get the 160 campers to the top of a mountain using three vans and maybe a car or two. We tried. We really really tried, especially Riese, to make this transportation situation work. Though I was happy to finally and officially have everyone at Camp by 11pm Thursday night (mission accomplished), it would’ve been better if I didn’t miss the whole first day/camp fire.

“It must’ve been painful being part of the coordination of the shuttles and watching the confusion happen on the way to camp. It was crazy and all, but it also gave us a few funny stories to tell when we got back so that’s fun.”

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II. Campfire and Ice: 

Riese: Marni, sensing my state of complete distress, told me, “Julie and Brandy are here, why don’t you go see them,” because she knew they would make me happy and I’d be happy to see them. And it worked!

Thus, after a long afternoon/evening of worrying about campers and counselors getting run over, I was ready to drink more than anybody should ever drink when they’ve had four hours of sleep, haven’t had a moment to eat in two days, left their precious lifetime companion Tinkerbell in a hotel room, and are on the top of a mountain.

Brandy: Before the campfire, Marni and Riese came to our room to discuss how Julie could sing “Gay Baby Army” at the campfire with no microphone. It had been a while since we’d all hung out together, and we were giddy with the feeling of, “Holy fuck, this camp is really happening!” Marni stood by the door, talking into her yellow walkie-talkie, and Riese sat on the bed, drinking Bulleit whiskey straight out of the (almost empty) bottle. They told us that only water was permitted outside the cabins, so I poured vodka into Arrowhead bottles while Julie tuned her guitar. (It’s important to note that Riese ended up leaving her bottle of whiskey in our room, because it will resurface later).

Carmen: As I began to put names to emails and vodka in my cup I realized I was going to like this. This persisted after I got lost and fell in a puddle walking from Cabin 7 to Cabin 18.

Lizz: I hadn’t seen Rachel in at least six months and our meeting at the airport had been brief to say the least. When I got to camp I had exactly on thing on my mind: find Rachel. It was pitch black across the camp but I’d heard rumors of a campfire. So I started walking towards the noise and jokingly called out her name in desperation (mostly to make Carmen laugh) and to my surprise Rachel called my name back! We reunited and I felt like camp was finally beginning.

Brandy: The whole opening campfire experience was so overwhelming and profound, that I had to spend the next 2 days of camp drunk & high just to deal with my feelings. (Oh- and I’m pretty sure that I got low-grade frostbite on my kneecaps since I refused to change out of the tiny skirt I arrived in). Julie said that singing without a microphone was a challenge, but nothing compared to trying not to be burned alive by the humongous campfire.

Marni: After she’d rallied everybody around the fire with her song “Gay Baby Army,” (itself a really special moment), Julie brought Riese out onto the little mini-stage thing and everybody around the fire stood up and started cheering. It was an incredible, overwhelming moment. I immediately started crying. I turned to my right and Laneia was losing it, too. I don’t think there were any words to describe seeing all the love and gratitude pouring out from the sea of smiling, glowing faces. There was a lot of love in that moment.

Laneia: I don’t really have a lot of experience when it comes to seeing the physical results of someone’s dream coming to fruition, so I wasn’t prepared for this campfire situation. We usually exist behind what feels like a sprawling, infinite computer screen — and then there we were. I could’ve held all of the faces and looked into all of the eyes! But instead I cried about how much I loved everyone for loving her and us enough that they would stomp to the top of a mountain and cheer around a campfire.

Riese: The campfire was a blur. It was surreal — Julie Goldman played a song about the Gay Baby Army, and she introduced me, and everyone was cheering for me, and I couldn’t believe it. All of their hands and the night and the big fire and everything. Whenever I have to speak in front of a large group, I can never remember what I said afterwards, but I’m guessing it wasn’t anything like what I’d practiced in the car. It was so profound to see all these bodies there, instead of gravatars.

Riese: After all the things happened, we had our first all-staff meeting. At some point I learned that Jess S had tried to get Tinkerbell for me but they said they didn’t have it and we’d have to come back in the morning, which meant I’d have to wait all weekend for our reunion!

Crystal: Half of the campers from my cabin, the Troubletones, showed up fashionably late, but when they did we had a cabin huddle; I put on my responsible adult voice and gave them a talk about drinking at high altitudes which I feel confident in saying that they (respectfully) ignored. These girls turned out to be some of the most amazing, hilarious, talented and adorable Autostraddle readers. Making room in my heart for eighteen new crushes hurt a little.

Riese: It had been such a heavy chaotic day, but nobody’s spirits were remotely dampened. From this point forward, things got exponentially more awesome.

 

P.S. FYI, Roadrunner went ahead and charged us for the shuttles we cancelled. They claimed a week ago that they’d refund us for those immediately. They still haven’t refunded us that money, despite multiple inquiries. Whatever you do in your life, don’t ever use that company, not ever!

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