camping away from... no wait, at home (homecoming part 4)

after the more than somewhat depressing results of my efforts to figure out who bought me the plane ticket back here to drumheller for my my 5th hatching day, i was kinda wanting something fun to happen...

well this afternoon it did happen, well in a way. i'm starting to find this whole coming home thing to be a mix of coolness and unfortunately some sadness.

as she promised the other day, my old coworker amy tracked me down after this week's session of summer camp was done. man i haven't seen amy in a long time!

it was awesome catching up with her. though like everyone around here she thought my having ran off to the other side of the world was more interesting than her life... i should tape record the story. i've been having to tell it a lot!

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i sort forgot how funny amy was (i didn't really forget, but because it's been a while i wasn't used to it anymore if you follow what i mean...) it was really enjoyable being reminded of it!

our catching up was the biggest highlight of the trip so far. i really enjoyed the afternoon.

yet at the same time it made me a little sad. talking to amy reminded me of when we used to "hangout" in the old days...

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the times when we both worked at camp!

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the royal tyrrell museum's badlands science camp to be precise!

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the most dinosaur and fossil packed summer camp you'll find anywhere. that and one of the awesomest summer camps anywhere too... well that's what craig said anyway, and if anyone would know it's him. he's worked at few camps.

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back than i was one happy camper... well okay staffer. i might have hung around camp alot with the kids, but i wasn't really camping officially speaking. i was merely an employee (slash resident) of the museum (and being a resident it kinda felt like i camped at the museum... all the time hehehehe).

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the job was so fun though that with my small brain i'd forget sometimes. so even though i might have been wearing a staff shirt (like always!) i could just as easily have been wearing one of the kids' orange hats!

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so what was my job at science camp you might ask? well it's not an easy one to answer.

my old job at the museum had been to hangout in the cretaceous garden as a saurian part of the greenhouse, and educate/entertain visitors. what that amounted to really was me pretending to be a statue. from management's point of view that made sense.

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due to my ability to speak in english and that i usually did so without thinking much about what i said the higher ups, well, they thought it was best i didn't talk to the tourists. of course due to my small brain size i often forgot these instructions, and well the boss dudes they got sick of it, and decided to stick me somewhere the people i talked to might appreciate it. even if i didn't often know what i was talking about...

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which is why i ended up at camp. the big cheeses thought that kids won't mind a pea brained t-rex getting stuff wrong all the time... on that count they were wrong. kids can be way smarter than adults a lot of the time... that alone tyrannosaurs!
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at the same time kids LOVE me... i wish it was them running things instead of adults. than we dinosaurs would get some respect in the human world!
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anyways, i was one of the science camp educators. which meant i was supposed to help out the camp staff lead educational programs and activities... i say supposed to, because well, often i didn't actually get what we were doing or what i supposed to talk about right...
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like for example here where the idea was me talking about what science is... i tended to have to get everyone else working at camp to correct me before i'd get it right... man how embarrassing.
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one of the guys i worked with a lot was strong-man the strongest dude on earth. don't believe me? just look at his colossal muscles!

we used to tag team on leading stuff in the fossil lab. there were all kinds of cool things the kids would get to do there. here we were leading fossil casting. the kids got to make replicas of actual fossils and take home the copy!

lucky ducks. i never got to keep anything from work... oh right, they weren't working...

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now strong-man ,he was a lab expert... well okay except for his wearing shorts and open holed shoes in the lab... otherwise a real expert (besides the fossil lab was the lab for the public and not very dangerous... as for the real prep labs in the museum. well me and strong-man weren't allowed in them for various reasons. broken fossil reasons. me on account of being less than smart. strong-man on account of accidental crushing a few things with his HUGE might!)
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i on the other hand was... well, not so much of an expert!
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i was entertaining though! the kids loved me, and the only thing they loved more than me was my dr. phil currie puppet!
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man i love puppets. they crack me up, and the kids thought like me... which is funny cause again they're usually a lot smarter than me. how could we be thinking alike with such different sized brains?
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sadly strong-man didn't like my dr. phil currie puppet as much as the kids.
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he also didn't like it when i took things too literally... which i don't get. when you're talking shouldn't you mean what you say, and say what you mean?
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like this time when strong-man said fossils tell stories about the past just like books tell stories. i thought that was silly. books don't tell stories. they don't laugh. they don't sing. they don't do anything! they just sit there and go like this... well that in the picture.
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i get what he meant now. though i stand by my confusion back than. you read stories from books. they don't tell you them. the effort is up to YOU!
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anyways sadly our lab sessions almost always ended in strong-man losing his cool at me... which is too bad as he is a real cool dude. just not when he's angry. i really don't like him when he's angry. the angrier strong-man gets the stronger strong-man gets!... which kinda bugged me. it wasn't my fault...
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not that it bugged the kids. they thought it was funny! which i guess it probably was. i just at the time didn't think so. i kinda thought at times they were laughing at me...
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fortunately it wasn't all stuff i had no clue about. i also got to do the dinosaurs of alberta talk. if there is one thing i've always known a lot about its dinosaurs!

of course there were lots of other fun activities that the campers would do that i wouldn't have to do much for, cause none of the staff trusted me with anything serious.

i really liked the canoeing. we got to reenact how the old time palaeontologists explored this area. back than they didn't have roads to drive around on. the only easy way to get into the heart of the badlands was by the river that carved them.

which was the sort of trip we'd go on with the kids. including some authentic fossil hunting on the shore! in the middle of no where (the best place to find fossils)!!!

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okay i liked the canoe trips... sometimes the poor camper stuck on the boat with me didn't like it as much. i wasn't the best navigator... sure i'd been canoeing a lot by the end of my camp summers, but you try paddling with arms as small as mine and we'll talk okay!!!

the kids also got to see lots of stuff the normal museum visitor wouldn't be allowed to. like tours of both the collections AND preparation labs.

i learned a lot about real palaeontology while hanging out with the kids on these tours. learning from real scientists and technicians, like my pal caleb (whose now training to be a real palaeontologist... i'll have to look him up while i'm here in canada!)... though the campers sometimes complained cause i asked more questions than them, and sometimes didn't stop when it wasn't my turn anymore...

still me and the campers were buds by the end of any day. again unless the staff needed me to do something in particular, i was just like one of the kids and hung out with them mostly.

doing all the stuff they did... which come to think of it, with the amount of arts and crafts i did you'd think i'd have learned to draw or paint or something cool like that!?!

i think it was doing all that stuff at camp that started to make me grow up a bit. when i began working at camp i was 2 years old, and i left just after my 3rd hatching day (yeah one year on the calender, but TWO whole summers at camp). in t-rex years that had me going into "teenage"dom (though as a t-rex making it to your teens makes you OLD!).

everyday at camp was full of adventure, and you were always doing some different and new. even if you worked there all summer! i'm serious, at the end of a summer after 6 separate camps doing roughly the same thing, it never felt like the same thing! that and i worked it twice, remember people of the web wide world. it WAS different everytime, even if on paper they were all the same!...

the thing i miss the most about working camp though was it was the first time i was treated equally by humans. i wasn't just a specimen or display at the museum. i was part of a team, and depended on by the camp team EXTREME! (that was what we camp staffers used to call ourselves).

amy noticed me zoning out into the past, and brought me back to the present. after i told her i wanted to work camp again she sympathized. amy had just come from helping take camp down. the kids had all gone back home, and camp was done for the season.

ah nuts...

though don't get me wrong people of the innerweb. it was super awesome to visit with amy. we had fun going over old memories and stories, and remembering all our camp friends who'd since left drumheller.

sure it was sad to think those days were over, and they were never coming back, but it reminded me that new adventures must be just around the corner.

which i guess i was going to need to find. with no sign of who ever brought me back here, and everyone i knew around town leaving what was i going to do? i had a lot more time in drum to kill this trip, and it seemed i was fast running out of people to catch up with. amy was leaving after this catch and and heading home too...

though an idea was occurred to me people of the innerweb. sure all the people of my past weren't sticking around, but my past itself can't go anywhere. i'm thinking maybe i should look into it!

what do you think?

shouldn't i be the one who is surprised? (homecoming part 2)

now that i'm back at my old home, drumheller, it was time to figure out who'd bought me the rather huge but yet not credited hatching day present that'd gotten me here.

the obvious place to start looking was the royal tyrrell museum, as that's where most of my canadian friends (both human and dinosaur) worked.

almost immediately after walking in the front door i ambushed from behind with the most powerful hug you can imagine... i seriously thought i'd being hugged by a bear (again).

of course it was no bear, the museum doesn't typically hire them (unless their of the rare cave variety anyway ;p ), rather it was someone with a big enough heart to mimic the hug of a bear!

it was my old buddy krista. so my mystery gifter had reveled themselves first thing into the museum. that was way easier than i'd expected...

of course that would have made it too easy. sure krista was really psyched to see me again, but she hadn't been expecting too on any level...

in fact based on her initial reaction it became really clear that who ever bought me the plane ticket hadn't been advertising the fact. not only did she no idea i was coming, but she couldn't think of anyone around who might have. well that was making things a little less easy than i'd hoped, not that my list of suspects was that long.

catching up with krista was awesome! tons of stuff had happened to both of us, and though i wanted to hear more about what she had been up too, we ended up talking about all my adventures right after my being fired, especially my BC quest (as krista is from BC... uh the province not the time period!), and of course my adventures down under in new zealand and australia...

it was funny she was insisting my life had been way more interesting than her's, but i'd never thought it was. heck how could an unimportant dwarf tyrannosaur like me compete with a full on human. i mean you biped mammals out there have a run of the whole world. me all i can hope for is a slightly better opening in a museum... not that i mind museums!

after a nice catch up with krista we both realized it was time to get back to business. krista was still technically on shift, and me well i had a hatching day ticket buyer to track down.

that run in was just me stepping foot in the front door of the museum. i was now going to direct myself to specific parts and try to track down key people.


since my first gig had me as a helper in the education and interpretation department, that was my first destination.

sadly there was no one i knew present when i showed up... in fact it turned out that most of the old gang from here was no longer with the museum, and the few i did know were out doing programs and tours.

there was a really nice girl named megan attending the office. which was a little odd. apart from lunch time everyone education-wise should have been out with the public, and not in the office. it was handy though.

she was interested to hear that i'd worked at the museum long ago, and seemed nice enough despite being distracted. not that i can blame her. working in ed during the seasonal rush can be really full on.

i noticed she was working on something with the regions stratigraphy. that is a fancy word for geologic layers.

"oh yeah," she said taken aback. i must have embarrassed her. "just a project i have going this summer."

cool! i thought. i missed seeing and getting to help with everyone's projects around this place. before i could ask anymore questions, megan got me back on my main task by asking if she could help me find someone else.

it occurred to me where the likely "culprit" would be. it had to be one of the camp team EXTREME! of the museum's badlands science camp...

megan was very helpful in helping me figure out roughly where they should be at this time of day. i thanked her, and as i started out of the education office i realized something. megan looked of sort of familiar, like we'd bumped into each other once long ago, but only briefly. she thought about this suggestion, and said she couldn't think of anywhere at moment. though if she could remember she'd let me know.

well that was a nice enough encounter. good to see the new people around here are still as nice as the ones from my time. the question that remained were the dinosaurs any nicer?!?

it didn't matter. it was time for me to track down some badland campsters. as the title implies the best place to do that is in the badlands!

with a rough idea of their timetable of the (and also having worked their 2 years ago) i was able to track down some of the blue t-shirted campers pretty quickly.
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as i got closer the kids grew excited, which caused one of the staff to turn around to see what the their commotion was about. if amy was a little confused by the kids noticing "a small dinosaur" approach them at camp she was dumb founded for a moment to see me strolling up to camp!

not that she remained speechless for long! amy was es tactic to see me again!

once again it was all questions about me... which was cool, i wasn't used to being the centre of so much interest or attention... but only for a minute.

when you're at camp the kids come first, and as she was supervising the whole lot of campers i would have to wait...

at the same time amy got me excited. she said first thing when camp was out we'd have to meet up for a proper catch up! AWESOME to the max!!! i'd really missed amy. she was always really nice to me.

i did manage to quickly ask her if she'd been the one to buy me the plane ticket. she had no idea what i was talking about. big shock there. oh well. she had an idea of who it could be...

this guy right here, my main man while i worked at the museum tyler. now tyler used to run camp, and here was helping out by cleaning the ever famous badland broom (you've heard of the badland broom right people of the innerweb?!?).

these days though tyler, having been promoted to, an assistant of THE museum director is now a pretty big roller... meaning if someone from camp could afford to fly me out for a surprise, it was him.

only he hadn't, and of course he was astounded to see me wander up to him at camp.

no go. again.

catching up with tyler was most excellent! yet again my exploits were the main focus, though i did get tyler to talk about his own big deal promotion. it was funny back in my days here, it always felt like i was taken for granted, but now that i'd been out on the world i suddenly seemed to be way cooler in people's eyes!

tyler couldn't think of anyone who'd buy the ticket. i tried to help him out by rattling off everyone i could think of that i used to hangout with. tyler thought them all highly unlikely.

i'd run out of people when it hit me! of course. who was the one guy i'd spent more time with here (well other than my very missing legal guardian craig)... my old roommate dan!

tyler said there was a chance of that, but he seemed unsure. i asked tyler what was up and he said it wasn't really for him to say. just i should try to track down dan as quick as i could.

well that settled the matter! i was going to go see my old roommate, and craig's best friend... if anyone would want me back for old time sake it would be him. right? no wait i just thought about this. would he? please tell me yes people of the web wide world?!?

NEXT: The News of the Old Roommate