camping

The Year of Travel

When I was a child, my greatest fear was falling. I would dream about falling from a building, or a tight-wire stretched between buildings. I don’t know why I should have these dreams. I would never consider actually walking a tight-wire, but there you are. Now that I’ve grown up, my greatest fear has evolved. It’s no longer a selfish fear – a fear for myself. It’s now a fear for the safety of my children. I guess that’s every good parent’s greatest fear though. It makes me shaky and sick to think of something happening to them. I am, therefore, necessarily opposed to taking my children to New York.

It’s not that I think it’s that much more dangerous than anywhere else. Right now I live in one of the top five safest cities in the United States. So yeah, I feel pretty comfortable where I am. But it’s just that I don’t feel like I have control of anything when I’m in New York. Number one, I don’t drive a car, and probably never would in Manhattan. It seems to me to be a place where you live close to work and either walk or take public transit to get there. There aren’t a lot of parks and playgrounds for the kids. At least not where I was. It just doesn’t seem like a very kid-friendly environment. I guess maybe Queens or The Bronx would be better than Manhattan.

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Dear Lord! Is It Already 2012?

Now that my baby girl is old enough to take care of herself (she’s almost three), I’ve been given back some of my evening time. It’s nice when they’re potty-trained. No more diapers. They tell you when they need to go potty. This means no diaper bags packed with pull-ups and wipes. This means you can do fun things like family bike-rides, visits to the basketball court to play some round ball, and little trips out into the channel in the boat.

I also have a lot more personal time as well. Not that I spend it locked up in an office or anything. In fact, I don’t even have an office. Hmm. I guess I need to remedy that. But my personal time is spent in my reading chair, or on the couch solving my cubes. Or sketching or writing. I actually resolved this year to read more books than I’ve ever read in a year. Now that I’m very rapidly approaching “the hill”, I have finally been able to slow down a little and start reading a lot more – just like I’ve always wanted to do.

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Back to Our Roots

Happy Cinco de Mayo, friends! This year, it happened to fall on May 5th, which happens to be a hump day. Couldn’t have asked for better timing! And you can’t ask for a better topic than what I have for you today: music. I like music. In fact, some have said that I even “like it a lot”. I listen to all types of music, and don’t really tie myself down to one genre. Heck, I’m not even one of those guys who says, “I listen to everything except rap,” or “country”. I listen to it all – as long as it doesn’t sound like a bunch of untalented bullsh. There are some rap and even some R&B songs that I dig quite well. I’m very open-minded. Now one thing I cannot stand is that assy sounding crap where the R&B singer just holds out a syllable and tries to hit every note in the scale. You know what I’m talking about? Listen to the Fugees’ Killing Me Softly cover if you’re not sure. That crap makes me want to murder music in the face.

But other than that, yeah, I think I’ve made my point. I like music quite well. But here’s what this column is about: sometimes I like to break into a certain style reminiscent of times gone by. You know. Something like that. And here’s how I really explain it: I am not one who takes a radio with me when I go camping – even though I love and live and breathe music. I go camping to get away from techmology. I don’t want to be bothered by radio waves. But there is a growing list of music I would be okay with hearing while I sit round a campfire drinking Cold Ones and enjoying the sights and sounds of nature. Let me show you this list.

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Top Five Camping Must-Haves

My wife and I (and most of my close personal friends) are avid campers, as most of you who aren’t my close personal friends probably know. And those who are close but are not personal might know as well. But definitely not those of you who are personal but not close. Wait. Let me go through that again. Those of – you know what? Forget it. Let’s move on.

But yeah, anyway, as I was saying, we are pretty serious when it comes to camping. We like to be prepared. Now I say we, actually here I probably mean “me” or “I”. I like to be prepared. And of course, my wife and buddies tag along. I know they like to be prepared too, but not to the extent where people would laugh at them. Like they laugh at me. Yes, they mock me for having a shower box full of shower supplies, toothpaste, medicines, soap, Q-tips®, tampons, razors and everything else you could ever need in the medicine and bathroom department. This also includes the first-aid kit. Bandages, snake bite kit, water purifiers, needle and thread for Rambo-style arm sewings, fingernail clippers, triple antibiotic ointment, anti-diarrheal pills and, well, you get the idea. They laugh at me that I carry a convenient box with all this stuff in it, neatly organized, but then who’s laughing when they get bit by a snake? Or need good clean shave? Or have to sew up a wound on their arm? Huh? Who’s number one now, bitches?

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And then we camped…

So let me tell you about our camping trip last weekend. It was hotter than a fresh pile of jalapeno-stuffed dog shit. We had fans in our tent, too. I also had a window unit air conditioner. I had it sitting on a TV tray, which was nice. Except that somewhere in the middle of the night, the cat ran into the TV tray, and the whole thing toppled over, crushing her. Rest in peace, Peachez. Damn, I’ll miss that cat.

There’s – well, there’s really not much to talk about. I mean, we camped out. That was about it. We didn’t really sit around drinking beer or anything. I mean, it was just a camping trip. Anyway, I told you I would tell you about it, so there you have it. Now you want to hear something real exciting? Read on, dear friends. Read on.

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Thank God it’s Friday.

No, it hasn’t been a really long week or anything. I haven’t had a series of bad days. I just don’t really like having to get up every morning to go to work. I’m beginning to believe I was duped into this career field. When they told me cleaning and emptying portable toilet systems would be fun and exciting, I believed them. I’m beginning to think differently though. Maybe I need a career change.

We’re going camping this weekend. And by camping, I mean setting up tents and sitting outside getting sweaty and drunk. And by we’re I mean a whole big group of us. Should be fun. I’m bringing my electric grindcoil and Stout is bringing the baby mouse livers. As long as the girls bring their marble guns, we should be all set for a helluva time!

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