Dunay knocks at 7:34am. “Breakfast at 8:00,” she warns. Ugh, this is not going to be a sleeping weekend. I ask my roommate Christine Lambert what time she finally went to bed. “Oh, I don’t know,” she ponders, “2am, I guess.”

At breakfast we enjoy tasty food, family-style dining and pleasant conversation. The husband-and-wife team across from me have their class strategy in place. She goes to Web Graphics, he goes to AppleScript. Each takes copious notes.

I attend the AppleScript class, taught by Bill Britton, who bought a Mac in 1985 instead of a used car. He steps us through the concepts and passes out a CD of resources. Our class project is to create a script that restores desktop icon positions should they ever get messed up (common after changing screen resolutions). Unbelievably, I write a script that actually manipulates the Finder. Very cool.

I blow off afternoon classes and go for a hike. Really, how can anyone resist? Silver Falls State Park is an amazing place. Swampy-looking trees with moss so thick it’s like petting a mangy-haired cat, super fresh air, and waterfalls everywhere.

After a seven-mile jaunt, I rejoin fellow MacCampers for the last half of Tom Rohlffs’ Intermediate Word class. He covers styles, the mysterious mail merge feature, labels for envelopes and two-column documents. I walk away with a really cool handout, passing by Karen Yurka’s Finance Your Life with Quicken class on the way back to my cabin.

After dinner, it’s time to stump the experts: A service center founder, two programmers, and two consultants. There are no stupid questions, they say. Ask anything you want. Should I buy a G3/G4? Will there be enough software? Is Mac OS 9 worth the hassle of upgrading? How do I set up a firewall? Monroe has a G4, how does he like it? Can I hook two machines up to one Internet account? The experts have answers for all.

The deck outside the gamer den vibrates as I approach the door. Inside the mood is intense, dark, and loud. Guns blasting, jeers at the enemy. The gamer-dudes are absorbed mind, body, and soul in Quake Arena. Empty Coke cans and Cheese Whiz abound. They barely notice the flash of my camera.

“The gamers tend to stay up till three in the morning,” says Charles DeVore, MacCamp Master Planner. “They really slow the network, so we got them their own.”