Nate and Kyle's excellent adventure

After Nate aced his test, Kadech drove us to the beach we went to yesterday. The waves looked pretty good again, so we got our boards off Kadech’s car and brought them to the sand. We walked out carefully, keeping a wary eye for urchins. We got out to the break after a tough paddle through incoming white water. I stood up on one wave, but crashed on the drop in. I got worked as I tried to get back out. I got pretty far out and a couple big sets came in that scared the crap out of Nate and I. Now that I think about it the waves weren’t huge, but they seemed pretty big at the time. Nate and I caught a party wave in, but then decided to go back out, thinking that the waves had gotten shorter. We immediately realized that my decision was a retarded one. The waves had gone up in size and were even more plentiful. Nate and I began paddling for any wave that might shape up. Unfortunately, if we didn’t catch it then we would have to paddle all the way back out without getting crushed by the rest of the set. Finally I caught a wave in and was followed by the rest of the Sweasey family. We got into dry clothes back at the hotel and began the drive to Abud and the Villa. The Villa was a place my parents had been talking about constantly for the past few days. They said Joseph Delo had a friend who lived in Bali and whose house we could use while we were on the island. We had already booked the hotel, but we could need a place to stay for the last night in Bali. The drive was spectacular, especially with Kadech, who was awesome and explained a bunch of stuff to us. We saw plenty of cool temples and rice fields. The towns were amazing and everything was so foreign. Everyone was totally breath taken when we saw the Villa. It had a beautifully ornate living house, an amazing little guest house, a kitchen, a great outdoor swimming pool, and the view was unreal. Afterwards we went to the Monkey forest of Abud. As I entered the forest I thought that we would see about two or three monkeys up in the trees about one hundred meters away. Boy was I wrong. I was completely taken aback as I saw two large monkeys walking on the wall of the walkway. I was looking around at the exotic jungle that surrounded us when I saw another monkey in the trees. All of a sudden they were everywhere. I soon figured out that if you looked in the trees just about anywhere you could see the shape of a furry, grey monkey. It was so cool to be within an inch of such an exotic animal so similar to humans. One part of the forest had pond in the center and there was a large group of monkeys getting fed. One monkey brushed by me, stopped turned around, and put out his arms like he was going to give me a hug. I backed away remembering all the stories of monkeys suddenly leaping at a person. Luckily it was only asking for food, so it walked away. There were a bunch of spectacular temples within the forest. We also went to a holy spring shaded by a massive Benya Tree. None of the pictures that Dad took can fully show the true majesty of what was seen. On the way back we saw two amazing spectacles. One a large mother monkey was sitting on the walk way wall clinging to a nearly hairless baby monkey. The cute little creature had three black Mohawks on the top of its head, which was only about a centimeter around itself. The other spectacle was seen only by Nate, Mom, and myself. A monkey whose front paws were full and for some reason needed to run decided to stand on its hind legs and jog quickly with its meal held in front of it. It was a hilarious sight that can’t really be described. Kadek, who had walked with us in the jungle, then drove us to the market where I bought an awesome Van Nistelrooy Madrid soccer jersey for six bucks.

Nate and I crawled into the alien machine before us. We strapped into two seats and the guide closed the door. I now took notice of my surroundings. We were in a large rectangular box about four feet tall, four feet wide, and six feet long. The walls were completely black and there was a large screen in front of us that said "Prepare to Take Off." We began. Nate just swung us back and forth for a little while at first. He was angry that I had got him into this. I too had growing doubts not thinking about my claustrophobia until it was too late. Finally, we did our first barrel roll. We hung upside down for a little while, as Nate fidgeted with the Control Stick. When we came back so we were parallel to the ground again I was feeling excited, naseous, and claustrophobic at the same time. My empty stomach gurgled angrily. I realized we didn't know when it would stop or how to stop it. It was then we looked at the screen and saw the little red dots flying past us. It was the enemy planes. They were behind us. Try as we might we couldn't figure out how to turn. Eventually we got one on the screen, but couldn't get the plane in line of fire. Since I was the gunner I fired my machine gun rapidly to no avail. I decided to press a different button and out flew a missile, instantly destroying the enemy fighter. It was fricken sweet! Nate Turned us 90 degrees so we were sitting completely sideways. It wasn't uncomfortable at all, suprisingly it was really cool. We did some more barrel rolls, I was just starting to really have fun and then it ended. Well it happens.

Root Canal

Today was a day that life would be redefined for Nathan Sweasey, we left the RV park and struggled to find a place to park the Big Rig, during the search my usually strategic father made a wrong turn that would affect many lives if only for five minutes. He turned the RV left to try to get to the other lane across a break in a grass field that separated the two lanes, too late did he realize that he had made a grave mistake and was now blocking two lanes, he couldn’t maneuver properly until my mom could get the Honda out of the way, and by this time we were the target of many glares and fingers, the Ohioans were not fond of us. Finally we were in the office and I was awaiting my inescapable doom. It started and I began to relax, then the lady, who I previously misinterpreted as I nice woman pulled out a very long needle. The dentist let slip in a conversation with my smiling mother that he had served in the army, not a good sign, especially since, at this time the anesthesia needle was being stabbed into my upper left gum. He said it was going to be just like a mosquito bite. If so he must have encountered a slightly larger, more aggressive mosquito (however, later I would find that eight or ten stabs would have been almost sufficient in assuaging my great pain. After stabbing me with this “mosquito” twice he produced a miniature jackhammer from his pocket which he used to literally drill a hole into the back of my gum and then down. Yes, it hurt. But I have to say that the process of scraping away the dead nerve was probably the worst. He took out a strange drill-like instrument which didn’t look to threatening, but dentists are sly men, and this man was a war veteran, so I never let my guard down. He proceeded to insert it into the all to convenient hole in my gum, just above my tooth, and I can honestly say that it was the greatest pain I have ever endured, while he held it there I began to shake slightly as the pain went up through my head, but I knew better than to struggle because this would almost surely result in the insane man “accidentally” jabbing it in harder, a very common technique which I have witnessed among many dentists. Finally the excruciating pain relented and I began to relax until it was once again injected into my aching tooth. Finally it was over and then the process of flushing began, this wasn’t as painful as it smelled and so I won’t go into great detail about this, but when I heard the man say “okay lets flush him” you can imagine that I was on the edge of my seat bracing myself. Finally the rubber mask and pink goggles were taken from my face and I was sent free where I met my brother in the lobby, I sat down next to him and he told me of the epic battle he had with the Sudoku puzzle while I was getting a root canal, “or whatever.”

-Nate Sweasey

Unfortunately we didn’t make it to Chicago. Instead we stopped in Wisconsin and went to dinner and to the Piggly Wiggily store. The next day after a short drive we dropped the RV off, thank god, at Arts RV and drove into the city of Chicago. We checked into the Indigo Hotel and walked around the town. We had lunch and saw Lake Michigain and made fun of the rich people behind their backs. “Darling, don’t breath into deeply when we pass the commoners.” “Grandpuhpa how much money will I get when you die.” Were some of the things we thought up to pass the time. I know its mean, but no one was going to stop us. We returned to the hotel and caught a cab, yeah you heard me, to a comedy club called Second City. It was hilarious. We were the only kids there, but it was still fun. The main point of the whole comedy act was focused on Barrack Obama. Even though we didn’t understand some of it I still thought it was awesome.
The next day we rode our bikes along Lake Michigan for awhile and went by the aquarium into the Field Museum. We saw all kinds of animals. Of course they weren’t living. It was kind of boring and I wanted to go to the skate park. We rode back home and watched some TV. Our mom and dad went to dinner while Nate and I stayed home and watched Chuck and Larry. As we watched we ordered room service, chicken and Cheesecake. We rode to the aquarium the next day and checked out a ton of cool fish. We also saw a bunch of Komodo dragons, an anaconda, and some huge bird eating tarantulas. We went to the skate park finally. It was for really advanced people so I only went for a little while. That was the first time I landed a nose slide. Yay!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

We went to the Capital of Montana to visit our aunt Theresa and uncle Randal who have the coolest climbing wall in their garage. We found this skate park and had a great time...more excellent photos to come!