Super Summer Camp and Sailing Dreams

      At a strange summer camp. The counselors all had clipboards, really computer pads. They had some sort of checklist on them and they were always writing our names under on section or another.
      I got written up the first time for running on the pool deck. The counselor told me that was one demerit, and I didn't want to know what would happen if I got three of them. We were told to go explore the camp, and we were allowed on anything we found within the camp grounds, "Now, go have fun; away from the pool this time."
      I set out with a couple of others from the camp, but soon found myself alone as they went and played on a tree fort that really didn't interest me. I walked the narrow trails for awhile and finally came out on a real road that led down into a hollow. It looked like some sort of strip mining operation had started, but been suddenly abandoned.
      On the narrow road next to a shallow pit was a huge steam shovel. I looked around for the camp fence, thinking for a moment that I'd somehow wandered out of the camp boundary. I couldn't see it anywhere, I even went back down the trail a ways to see if the fence had been on either side of the trail. No sign of it.
      I raced back to the steam shovel and climbed on board. The control cabin was open, and very odd. There were no actual controls, just a couple of handles to hold on to. I grabbed them, pretending they would work the giant tread units below me. The shovel roared to life, I let go of the handles and jumped back, turning for the doors of the control cabin. They slammed in my face. I turned to the small windows, they shuttered up immediately. The steam shovel lurched and I grabbed the handles. They still didn't move, but I somehow managed to pull the shovel back from the edge of the road and drove up out of the pit onto the main road. It was difficult, as I couldn't really tell what I was doing as I had to stand on tiptoe to see out the little four inch high slit in the steel plates over the window. The earth moving leviathan started picking up speed and I tried to keep it on the main road. I couldn't figure out how to slow the darned thing down. I followed the main road, and through the gates that marked the boundary of the camp.
      "Crap, I'm in trouble now" I shouted to no one in particular. I wondered how much fuel this thing had and I suddenly had a display on one of the walls showing, not a fuel gauge, but a power gauge for a small nuclear reactor. "oh, shit!" I said aloud. I was distracted by the display long enough to miss a turn in the road and I went down a fairly steep slope into a ravine. I was about to panic when the steam shovel shuddered to a stop, but with the reactor and steam pistons idling. The doors popped open. I thought about running away, but decided to stay and face the music.
      Sure enough a counselor appeared. They lifted the entire digging arm and the control booth off the treaded unit, leaving me standing next to the control handles.
      "You left the boundaries of the camp, that's going to cost you two demerits."
      "But that makes three demerits, what's going to happen to me?"
      The counselor showed me his clipboard, "That one was in a different category. So you only have two in this category."
      I wasn't fast enough to read the sub category I had the two demerits in, but the main category was "leaving without permission."
      "You need to get this thing back to the camp in one piece. Here's a map. You can't go over any bridges and if you use a main road you'd better obey the posted speed limits."
      He showed me a topographic map of where I was in relation to the camp. It looked like I would be able to follow the creek bed I'd driven into around until I came across the main road again. Then it was pretty much a straight shot back into the camp. I noticed there was one bridge that I would have to get off the road and make my way around, but there looked like there was shallow canyon that allowed me make the side trip without too much trouble.
      I wanted to ask the counselor how she'd pulled the top off the vehicle by herself like that. Then I noticed that it wasn't really pulled off, it was on a set of really large lift hinges, like the cab of a truck. She told be I'd better be getting back, or I'd miss dinner. Then she was gone. I didn't see her go, there was no pop or puff of smoke, she was just gone.
      I turned to the control handles. The engines revved and the steam pistons filled I wondered how much water I had to make steam and I saw that the tanks were nearly full. There were hoses in the creek. They immediately withdrew when I thought about how was I going to get underway if we were loading water. I hesitated about lowering the cab, until the shutters all opened. The cab lowered, using the shovel bucket arm to push itself down by curling the shovel against the stream bottom. I went slow as I didn't' want to tear up any more of the countryside than I already had. I studied the controls of the shovel a bit with my mind, then figured out I could lift it almost straight into the air, allowing me to turn in place and head directly back to the road. I had to use the shovel to pull myself back onto the road, but after that I just rolled the couple of miles back to camp. Used the shovel to set the fence and gate back in place behind me, then drove out to the quarry. I actually dug out a couple of shovels full of rock and loaded them into the crusher, which I was also able to make run from the cab of the steam shovel. It seems the pit was a source of silver and aluminum ore.
      The smelting station had never been put online, though, so I couldn't smelt any ore. I promised the steam shovel I would be back tomorrow during my free time, I swear it purred. As I ran towards the dining hall I heard it give a couple of toots on the whistle. A part of me seemed to still be able to feel it working behind me.

      Sailing ship picking up women (Shanghaiing women?) at the dockside pool where we stopped so we didn't have to sail against the incoming flotilla of pleasure boats. We were leaving with the tide, but it was coming on evening so most of the smaller boats were motoring in for the night.
      The ship was a three masted sloop of some kind and the crew was just myself and a few others. That is, until we offered a bunch of bikini clad women a ride. What we didn't tell them was that we planned to sail all the way to Hawaii, about a three month tour.