Day 47 - June 8, 2012 (Episode 8)

Today will be the first day of Episode 8.  Frustrating at times, but overall, a good day!  And the story goes….

We got started at 7:00 a.m..  Loaded up a van and took off for our destination place, which was an hour and a half drive away.  Well on the drive, a new fire was lit!  I was sitting in the middle back of this three row van, surrounded by the remaining cast members.  I was immediately struck with the fact that these five are all I have to beat to win and looking at each one, I know I can beat them and feel incredibly confident now!  It made me pumped and I’m super focused now!


The remaining six cast members, shortly after arriving
at the Bevo campgrounds.
Our teams after getting our grill dresses!
We got to our destination around 9:00, which was a RV park/campground outside of a city called Fredrikstad.  Shortly after that we were given our intro by Henriette.  This episode is going will focus on how Norwegians vacation.  (Although, we’ve learned that most Norwegians seem to be rolling in cash and would quickly opt to go to Spain, the U.S. or Greece, rather than go camping.  With that, I’m quickly gaining an impression that those that go camping here, may be coming from the “financially-

challenged” homes of Norway.)  Then, we were given our teams along with a color-matching track suit!  They call them “grill dresses”, which apparently used to be what the Norwegians that opt to go camping would wear.  I looked like a gym teacher!  The teams would be myself, C.J., and Amy on Blue and Alf, Jessica, and Johnathan on Red.  The challenge would be pretty simple, but have several steps.  Each team would have to park a large RV trailer within a really tight lined area, unhitch the trailer, put down some braces to stabilize the trailer, then set up a fence, grill and picnic table, all of which was stored in the RV.  Our team would go first. 

A shot of the Bevo campgrounds and the trailers we had to park.
I, being the only one that has driven a trailer, would drive for our team.  C.J. and Amy were in charge of directing me to the spot.  Henriette gave us the go and off we went.  My plan was to drive around this large rock, so I could set up the trailer better for backing up.  Problem was that the trailer was much bigger than I realized.  About 3 seconds into the race I drove the trailer into that rock!  Oops!  Good thing is that I noticed it was about to happen at the last second, so I was able to slow down enough that I only slightly damaged the trailer.  I immediately backed up, got straightened out and pulled up to our camping area.  Over the next several minutes, I tried time and time again to park this thing in this small space.  It was the most frustrating thing!  Finally, we got it in and could go to our next stage, unhitching it.  That went pretty quick, but the wheel it was supposed to stand on fell out, so we had to fix that.  Then, we stabilized the back of the trailer and could move to get everything else set up.  The rest of the stuff went up pretty quickly, but not without problems.  C.J., who was in charge of setting up the fence, was really struggling, so I had to help him there.  Also, I ended up temporarily breaking our grill and my chair, but we would get them fixed.  When we were all done, we were pretty upset, because it felt like it took us forever!  Most of it was on me too, for not getting the trailer parked right away….oh, and hitting a boulder!




C.J. getting interviewed after our first competition.
We did some short interviews and then went and hid while the Red Team went, so we wouldn’t know how they did.  Knowing that Alf basically drives trailers for a living, I was pretty worried.
 


After Red Team was finished, we gathered for the results.  One team did it in over 15 minutes, which we thought could have been us, but the Red Team looked pretty upset.  Sure enough, Henriette said congrats to the Blue Team!  Apparently, we destroyed them!  Not only did they struggle on everything but Alf apparently really struggled with parking the trailer!  I was even asked in a later interview how it felt knowing that I kicked Alf’s butt in parking!  What a relief!  We would get an advantage in tomorrow’s team competition!

We followed up the results with a quick interview, but then got busy on our next step which was to go around the trailer park inviting everyone to a party.  We quickly realized that a large majority of these camp-ground attendees don’t speak English, which was very different than most of the people we’ve met here.  Very different.  Either way, for some reason, they all understood “party” and we ended up having about 50 or 60 people show up!  Over the next couple of hours, we supplied them with food and beer and tried to communicate the best we could.  It was definitely difficult at times, but we still had a lot of fun!  A bunch of them even invited us to their trailers for after parties, which most of us would later take a part of.  More on that to come.



A look at our party that night! It was tough to get it started,
but once we had everything up and rolling, it was a blast!
Eventually, all of the cast had to hide, since the locals weren’t leaving and they had now eaten all of our food, without leaving us any.  After a little bit in hiding, they started to leave and the crew pulled out some hidden food that we ate for dinner.  After dinner, more interviews.


My girlfriend for the night!
After interviews and dinner, Alf, C.J. and I decided we should go check out an after-party.  We went to trailer 116 and found five guys who were very welcoming and even shared their beer with us.  We spent


the next couple of hours there and then C.J. and I went to head to bed, while Alf stayed back to have some more drinks.  He was in his element!  However, on our way back to our camper, we found another camper with 60 to 70 year olds in it drinking.  Of course, we had to invite ourselves in and spend another hour drinking and hanging out.  It was pretty funny, especially with this 60 year old lady hitting on me and another 70-year old guy pretending to sleep, but kept peeking at us!  However, we knew we had a competition tomorrow, so we didn’t want to stay out all night.  We said our goodbyes and headed back to our trailers, which would be our home for the next two nights, and head to bed.



A great day!

 

Day 47 Over!

A lovely option for a snack that I
found at the gas station!
 

C.J. contemplating life!
 


Johnathan, checking the water at our campgrounds. 

 

Johnathan getting his interview on.  Notice how
Eli has to get lowe, so that Johnathan will have
to look right next to the camera for the answers.
Poor tall Norwegians!
 

Jessica getting interviewed.
 
 
Jessica and Alf after the first team competition.
Not looking too happy with their performance!
 

Stian, one of our sound guys, checking
out our campsite.

Johnathan, showing off all of
his cinged hair!
 

Alf and C.J. getting the campsite
set up for our party that night!
 

Myself and one of the locals at our party!
 

C.J. and Alf hanging with the locals!
 

I was missing my two German Shepherds at home,
so I snapped this photo of a local one.
 

C.J. at the after-after party!
 

Myself and our two hosts of the after-after party.
 

C.J. teaching some locals on how to
do "The C.J." camera pose.
 

Went for a midnight walk before bed and found a
red and blue boat.  I was sure that they had to be
for our second team competition!  I was wrong.
 

 
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