Aug 24, 2003 - 9:10 pm: Since joining a small group from church, I've been getting more and more involved with Focus group (which is a group for singles in their late 20s to 30s). The members often put together an event that end up being alot of fun. The last event was yesterday; it was a canoe trip down the St. Croix River in Taylor Falls. About 50+ people showed up at the church parking lot early yesterday morning. Brad offered to drive which worked out perfectly. We ended up carpooling a couple of girls- Kristen and Marisa. Upon arrival we kind of took over the Quest Canoe Rental. Hanging out there while the poor staff tried to get us all going I ended up getting in this great discussion with a girl named Melissa about the Boundary Waters- she had just been up there last weekend. We finally got our turn in the very old van that shuttled us to the launch site. It seemed someone left their passenger in the first wave so we ended up taking a nice woman named Sarah with us to the rendezvous point. Two moments from launching out canoe, we discovered it had a rather large leak. So we traded it in for one whose seat broke the moment Brad sat down. Our 3rd canoe was the one we had for the rest of the day. Sarah was pretty cool. She was from Haiti and Brad and I grilled her about that. We didn't mean to and she didn't mind. She was very glad to be in America. But there was some communication glitches between her and Brad. We rendezvoused and she was united with her crew so it was just Brad and I from that point on. There were other church groups out on the river from different companies, but ours was the most rowdy! Brad Oren and I shared a canoe all day and we met so many awesome people from Woodland Hills. We launched again. The day was perfect for canoeing. It was so nice to be on the water again (having grown up on the Wisconsin River). Brad and I were ahead of most of the fleet, but that didn't stop us from being attacked by a couple of the instigators with their splashing paddles. Brad had his cel phone, which saved us from excessive splashing. We shortly found the next rendezvous point and met for lunch. Another opportunity to meet more girls, er I mean people. We sat with Chandelle and Brenda- the bee killer (she was very good at killing bees). Had some grub and off we went again for the last leg of the trip. Here is where we found our stride. I picked up on Brad's rhythm and played off that and we became very efficient. We made it back to the end point and packed everyone up. We were one of the first back to the church. After everyone got back, a bunch of us went to IHOP for some late breakfast. I am very very glad I went on this trip.