Chapter 11

The next few days were fairly uneventful, most of my time spent simply working. However I did want to keep up my fitness so I made sure I ran between 3 and 5 miles on at least 3-4 mornings a week. The pace I kept was always pretty easy, what we would have called a 'conversational' running pace.

The one thing different was that I'd actually taken a few days off work, Thursday through Sunday this week, so that I could go with my parents when they took their science class down to southern Utah to go through several of the National Parks in that area. It was the longest of the trips they would do; they would go through Zion and the Grand Canyon, also visiting Cedar Breaks National Monument. Since I had been working most of the time this summer I hadn't been able to go with them for any of the other trips they had done, but this longer trip was always one I'd enjoyed, so I'd made it a point to get the time away from work to go with them.

The kids that my parents taught were all about my age, coming to the class from the county as a whole, which meant from about a 30 mile radius. The class itself was designed to be for at-risk students, those who didn't have the advantages that others would. In most of the cases it was kids coming from families that were well below the cut off line for welfare services. There were two things that the class did to help those students: provide the additional educational opportunity and actually pay them a minimum wage while doing so. Overall it wasn't a bad bargain for them. Sure, they had to spend the time in class over their summer break, but it was in a smaller class environment with only 10 students compared to the usual 30 or more we would have.

This summer's class had a decent mix of kids from each of the schools in the county. Unfortunately for me I only knew one of them at all, a girl named Patricia, though she always preferred to be called Patty. I'd gone to school with her as long as I'd lived in Kaysville, back in elementary school, and had always gotten along well with her. It didn't hurt any that she was a genuinely sweet girl and attractive to boot. The others I only knew by what I'd heard from my parents, which wasn't much.

The thing I knew that was important at this particular time: I had to pack! Today was a half-day of school, then everyone would be meeting back at our house to load into the vans and get on the road. With my family included we'd have a total of 15 people between the 2 vans we'd be taking. On a good day the total drive time to our first stop was going to be 3-4 hours. Given the number of people going and the gas mileage of the vehicles, we'd be lucky if it took only two tanks of gas to get down that far south.

Meet up time was 1pm and the kids were let out from class at 11am. They were supposed to use the time in between to either finish packing or do whatever else they needed; also get some lunch. I did the same thing, first packing and then going to Arby's for a couple of their roast beef sandwiches. I called at the Phillips 66 to get some snacks and a couple of drinks for the trip.

I made sure that I had all my 'stuff' done by noon; packing, running errands and eating. I had anticipated needing to help out with family stuff in getting ready but also it would give me some time to maybe start talking to some of the kids. Since Patty was the only one I knew it'd come in handy to work some on getting to know the others; after all we were going to be spending the next three days together, with a good portion of that time being on the road in cramped quarters.

Planning ahead time-wise did end up paying off. I was tasked with loading a drinks cooler as well as hauling and loading the family bags into the van. Loading the bags was made easier because Justin showed up early too. He was one of the older guys of the group, going to be a senior, and my parents seemed impressed with his work ethic and personality in general. He wasn't asked to help, but when he saw me coming out with a couple of bags he came over to help and we got everything loaded up.

Justin did seem like a good guy from the little talking we got to do while getting ready and waiting for others to show up. He lived in Bountiful and went to Viewmont High School. It wasn't too far, but still about ten miles from where we lived. On the sports field Davis and Viewmont were the big rivalries, but as with most kids I'd run into that didn't matter when it was person to person. I knew from my parents that he was one of the kids who were in the program due to his family's economic status, not because of any physical or mental deficits he may have. Most of the kids were the same way, though there was one girl, Amber, who was there because of a minor developmental/learning disability.

Patty arrived with her little cheerful and energetic approach. Her mom dropped her off and she took a quick minute to throw her bag in the van before coming over to where Justin and I were talking, waving at Justin and giving me a smile before stepping in for a quick hug. Patty was one of the girls around school with whom I was pretty well at ease. It helped that she was one who I'd known since moving to Kaysville. We'd even had at least one class together each year of school since then so that had certainly helped the rapport that we'd developed.

"I was starting to wonder if you were going to be able to drag yourself away from your girlfriend and work to go on one of these trips with us. Or I guess I should say ex-girlfriend, sorry to hear about that, by the way," she told me.

That last comment was par for the course with my parents. Unless I expressly asked them not to, aspects of my life were open for discussion in the classroom. It had advantages and disadvantages: it did actually help people know a little about me, but it also helped people know a little about me that I wasn't necessarily happy to have them know. Sure, my dad knew when to draw the line on things that I really didn't want aired in public, but if it was something relatively harmless it was fair game as far as he was concerned.

"Jeez ... it's only been a few days since I've broken up and my dad already put that out?" "Yeah, well you know how he is, though I'm sure there's worse things he could have said but didn't." She'd seen that sort of thing first hand, too. One of the classes we'd taken together in junior high had been my dad's earth science course.

Our conversation was interrupted by the need to get the final few people and their luggage loaded up before departure. The two vehicles we were taking were a mini-van and a full sized van. I took the opportunity to set myself up in the bigger of the two, towards the back. This was not only to insulate me a little from my dad, who was driving it, but also to immerse myself with some of the kids. As luck would have it, Patty and Justin both ended up in the same van, although it didn't surprise me that Patty chose the same van. I think she was looking forward to our being able to catch up a little bit, after not having seen each other since school let out for the summer.