UtterlyBoring.com is produced by Jake Ortman (e-mail, resume), a 30-year-old dad, percussionist, freelance Web designer, consultant and jack-of-all-trades computer geek, living in Bend, Oregon. He created this so that his expensive journalism and technology degree isn't getting totally wasted. In addition to editing this site in his free time, he is the IT Director and Ad Designer at both Sunray and Discover Sunriver. He has LinkedIn, MySpace, Facebook profiles if you're trying to stalk him.
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If you're reading this, you have too much time on your hands.
Easter egg hunt spoiled when 26 people are stung by bees
OK, it's not really funny, as it hurts quite a bit when those little buggers take over. The only reason I linked to this as it reminded me of a similar story from my high school running days. I was up at the Steens Mountain Running Camp for my 3rd year. A big part of the camp is the cross-canyon run -- where you and a bunch of runners from schools all over Oregon and the west coast team up into groups of about 8 or so and run a point-to-point race through knee-deep sagebrush, bushes, and barbed-wire. You know you need to find the finish line -- you don't exactly the right way to get there, but you know you need to find the school bus about 4 miles away. It's a hell of a lot of fun, and you have to start and finish as a team.
Since I was the most experienced member of my team that year, I was given the task of leading the way, and I knew a fairly quick (though excruciantingly painful) path to the buses as I had run the race a few times (the teams had a staggered start so everybody pretty much took their own route). We made pretty good progress considering we were the last team to start, and we had passed a good chunk of the teams. With about a mile to go, we were on pace to break the course record, until we plowed through a set of bushes and I managed to boot (yes, kick) a bee hive that was hidden in some bushes I was tromping through. The thing went flying, the bees got pissed, and I was stung 6 times in my right leg. Everybody on my team (minus one guy) was stung, too, at least once. Several of the teams behind us had followed our lead, but then ran into the same pissy groups of bees. We missed the un-official course record by about 30 seconds because of that little slow-down. My leg was swolen up for the rest of the day.