It’s a prank that keeps growing and growing. It all began with one toilet paper tube, and it has since grown into something about 300 times bigger. 

One little toilet paper tube. It came up at our Monday morning meeting, “Who left the empty toilet paper tube in the bathroom, instead of replacing the toilet paper?” No one took direct responsibility – however, I have been guilty of doing this in the past, so I did mention that it may have been me. We all agreed to try harder, and we moved on. We didn’t think about it much more… or so I thought.

Later that week, I came down to my desk to find a toilet paper tube sitting in front of my keyboard. Now at first, I thought this was a passive aggressive message. I thought that someone had found an empty roll left in the bathroom again and I figured they were trying to let me know I had messed up again (which I hadn’t this time!) but that wasn’t the case. I learned that my office mates had decided that a new office-wide practice of placing toilet paper tubes in random locations was the logical next step. And I was happy to play along! I proceeded to pass on the toilet paper tube to a new location and went on my merry way. The tube floated around the office for a while, finding new homes – and as the days rolled by, the tubes multiplied and the placement of the tubes became more and more creative.

My dad was visiting over the summer, and I brought him to work one day. As I was leaving, James (who was standing near my car) said something like “don’t forget to use your turn signal!” My dad and I didn’t know what he meant, so we just carried on with our day. A few days later, on a rainy day, I reached down to turn on the windshield wipers in my car and instead of feeling plastic, I felt cardboard. I realized that James mistook my windshield wiper controls for my turn signal controls. Everything became so clear. James had crossed over into new territory – by hiding a toilet paper tube in my car, he had brought the prank out of the office realm and into my personal realm. It was a whole new level of Toilet Paper Tubing. I giggled.

There were many other iterations of the prank. I found a piece of paper on my desk with a picture of a toilet paper tube that had a smiley face on it (See cover picture for this post,) and subsequently found the actual smiling toilet paper tube somewhere else in the office. At times I found myself sitting on toilet paper tubes left on my seat. James sent out this fuzzy picture of a pile of about 80 toilet paper tubes. 

The toilet paper tubes were advancing rapidly – and James was the top prankster.

And then a beautiful thing happened – James went on vacation. Kyle and Farlin had been planning to stuff one of the cabinets in James’s Airstream trailer full of toilet paper tubes so that when he was on vacation he would open it up and they would all fall out – but the three of us ended up deciding on something different. Something bigger. We had saved 150 tubes between us, and we set out to find even more. A couple of Etsy/Ebay purchases later, we yielded about 300 tubes altogether and we began to set our trap. We put our heads together and designed a hair-pin mechanism that would make it so that when James entered the office, a trap door of sorts would open up from the ceiling and drop 300 toilet paper tubes from above.

Below is a diagram of our mechanism – created by Farlin.

After much trial and error, we had a working product. Below is our test run in slow motion (with about 2/3 of the total amount of tubes we ended up using)

The finishing touch was that we set up a motion sensing trail camera in the office that would activate when James entered the office, so we could document our success. We didn’t end up capturing much, other than a couple shots of James looking up after the fact and admiring our handy work.

Who knows what’s next. Is there still room for bigger and better toilet paper tube pranks? Or have we hit the ceiling? Time will tell.

This Summer we crafted a new activity that we’ve grown quite fond of, called Pacific Voyage. We used this activity with a handful of clients, including Poly Prep Country Day School in Brooklyn, International School of Boston, Groton School, and Acera School. This activity can be done in a few ways, but we often use it as an extension of our GPS Scavenger Hunt.

We provide a scenario to each group of 6-12 participants, wherein their team is getting ready to depart on a sailing trip across the Pacific Ocean. In order to sail across the ocean, they need to find resources that might come in handy during their sailing trip by going on the GPS Scavenger Hunt. By using the GPS Unit to find hidden riddles and solve them, they earn points, which they use to acquire resource cards. They search for riddles until they acquire all 25 resources and then they’re off on their sailing adventure.

However, shortly after they “set sail” their trip goes awry and they find themselves in trouble, stranded in the Pacific Ocean on a life raft. While the groups lose many of their resources, they are left with a specific selection of items and they are given the initiative to work as a team to figure out how they would need to prioritize these items, in order of importance, in order to survive.

This activity is great fun and it adds a new dimension to our GPS Scavenger Hunt. While coopetition is always fun for participants when we use our original design for the Scavenger Hunt, this new format allows for a more group tailored experience, where their goal isn’t related to the progress of the other groups. This culminating teambuilding initiative spurs in-depth conversation and the need to problem solve as a group – not to mention that everyone learns a thing or two!

As we wind down for the winter, we look forward to more Pacific Voyage and all of our activities next season.

If the image above looks familiar to you and you can’t figure out why, look no further than our homepage! We thought that this was a fitting way to design the logo for this year’s FOOT Program shirts! It will be appearing on the back of the Amherst College t-shirts that new students will be wearing as they venture off on their FOOT trips during their college orientation.

We’ve been running the FOOT program with Amherst College for many years now. These First-Year Outdoor Orientation Trips help build a strong foundation of community and self awareness for first year students at Amherst College. We take students on a handful of different trips, including 3-day overnight expeditions and medleys that consist of several day trips. We also work together on a team with student leaders who are upperclassman at Amherst College. We help them out by showing them some tools-of-the-trade, but these enthusiastic student leaders always take ownership of their role as a trip leader and as someone who can help new students become acquainted with the ins and outs of college life. A lot of the time these student leaders were on FOOT trips at the beginning of their first year!

The following are the expeditions that will be going out this year, and a few photos from past year’s trips.

Advanced Backpacking: Students make rich memories with one another as they summit peaks, pitch tents each evening, gather firewood, cook meals, pack backpacks, filter water, share stories around the fire, make s’mores and play cards beneath the stars. They hike high along the Appalachian Trail following the scenic Taconic Range in Mount Washington State Forest.

Canoeing: Students get out on the water for a canoe expedition, navigating the scenic flatwaters of the Connecticut River that wind through gorges and farmlands in Vermont and Massachusetts. Participants are entirely self-sufficient, packing their gear in the canoes and camping in picturesque campsites along the river banks. With plenty of opportunities to get wet, play river games, and connect with canoeing partners, this is always an unforgettable trip.

Eco-Service Project: Students enjoy the wonder of the outdoors while contributing in a way that will impact others’ ability to share that experience for years to come. Students make memories and take pride in a legacy with their peers through the contributions that they make together.

Rock-Climbing: Rock climbing and rappelling is a sport that challenges one’s own perceived physical and mental limits and demonstrates in real-time their ability, tenacity and resilience. The locations that students visit offer a variety of routes that meet any ability – beginner to advanced. They spend time in purposeful and supportive communication with their group members as they belay new friends and scale the walls above.

We also have 7 medley trips going out, where students will spend each day of FOOT doing a different activity. The variety of activities we do in the medley trips include Hiking, Kayaking, Canoeing, Primitive Living Skills, Eco-Service.

One of the beautiful outcomes of FOOT for us here at AIAO is that we frequently hear about students who meet on their FOOT trips and cultivate relationships that turn into long lasting friendships that they keep throughout their college career. We are very excited to run another round of transformational FOOT trips this year, and can’t wait to see how these new students will rise to the occasion – they always do!

January 2018

Dear Adventure In Adventure Out Staff and Clients,

I heard recently that the shortest distance between two people is a story. If this is true, then what must make community is the intersection of layers upon layers of stories that draw people closely together. Over the last eight years, AIAO has been that point of intersection for me. Be it the very first expedition I led for AIAO seven years ago (Hey, Camp Ramah Niv ’11!), getting my feet wet (figuratively and literally) roaming the woods of Western Massachusetts with the AIAO outing club, or collaborating with an amazing group of people to send 140 college students off into the woods for three days, each memory has built upon the other to teach me something about who I am, what I value and how I want to be in the world.

As I step out into new adventures, I realize there is a gift I am carrying with me. One that you all have given me. It is the gift of understanding how our stories can create meaning that matters. That when we share our stories… courageously, vulnerably… we offer up strength to ourselves and to others. It is being witnessed in our stories that allow us to see our own capacity, individually and collectively. To see that we are significant in the world around us. And, as each of you have offered me the gift of your stories, of who you are and what you have been through to get here, it has buoyed me in my courage to rise to the occasion of my own story. This is the magic we have created together, and the gift you have given me as my community.

So thank you. Thank you for allowing me to be a part of your story, and for choosing to be a part of mine. Thank you for eight unforgettable years of meaning making. And, thank you to our director, James, for believing in me all those years ago when I first knocked on his door. I will carry the love, laughter, memories and learnings for the rest of my life. And, I will be cheering you all on as you continue to change lives with your own brand of magic!

With great love and gratitude!

Ben

The 2017 summer season found us in the fortunate place of turning over our aging Old Town kayak fleet and replacing it with Wilderness Systems Pungo 12′ recreation kayaks, as well as two 14′ versions for instructors. These new kayaks are a big step up, both in terms of design and performance. The Pungos are faster and more stable, and also more maneuverable. The hatch cover seals and enclosures are much more user friendly. The Pungos offer three different areas of seat adjustability which also makes for a notable upgrade in comfort. On top of it all, these are significantly lighter vessels for loading, unloading, and transporting which all add up for our instructors over the summer season. Overall, AIAO staff and participants have been very happy with this upgrade to Pungo kayaks.

So… we went out, strapped a camera to the director’s head and sent him down a very – very big hill.

Enjoy!