For Glad, Sad And Forever – What I Learned This Weekend

At the end of each Free Beer & Hot Wings morning show on 99.1 The Whale, the question goes around the room - "What did you learn today?" Some of the answers are a bit silly or otherwise.

But as the question itself goes, I think it's a good one for all of us - one that we should ask ourselves everyday. Learning something everyday is good for us. At least that's what I believe.

When I was listening to the show this morning and the question went around the room, it got me to thinking about things I learned over the weekend. Some were silly, some were informative, some I'd like to forget and some I will put to good use going forward.

I spent a part of my weekend at camp. With the weather finally being cooperative, I decided to thaw out the spiedies I had stored away from the cold and wet Memorial Day weekend. I turned on my pellet grill and set it to smoke for the two minute warm up.

But for some reason the grill was not warming up. I opened up the grill to check that the pellets were getting into the fire burn pot. It appeared that the pellets were barely moving, so I grabbed a fist full, dumped some in, closed up the grill and turned it back on.

Well, that did the trick all right. Way too much smoke came pouring out, almost making it look like my camper was on fire. I learned that is not a good idea. I think I was just being too impatient. The grill fired up nicely after the  top of smoke had cleared, and those spiedies tasted so good. I learned that spiedies cooked on a wood pellet grill taste so much better than a propane grill.

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Later that evening, I headed over to spend time around a campfire with my camp friends. I learned more listening to their conversations than I probably wanted to. Like how a person can really make no sense on a topic after consuming a few too many drinks, and how bad ketchup tastes on a sausage sandwich. It was dark where the food was, and I thought I had put a hot dog on the bun. It was not.

And I learned how close we have all become at camp, opening up to each other about our personal lives. We raised our drinks to toast one person turning 60, to honoring the memory of a person's father on the one year anniversary of his passing, to another person's dad who recently passed away and to a couple who unexpectedly had put to their 13 year dog to sleep earlier in the week.

Most of all, this weekend I learned how much I need my weekends away at camp and how glad I got the chance to make so many good friends with my fellow campers.