It’s my second camping trip of the summer. That’s twice the zero I managed last year! Refrain from going “ackchyually”, I know about multiples of zero. What I typed is a perfectly cromulent statement.
I’m happy to be “mobile”. I’m composing this (at least part of it) on an old Linux laptop at a picnic table in a campground. I camped a few nights in 2025 but it was in my yard so they don’t count. My backyard faffing about is vastly wilder and more “natureiffic” than nearly any campground, but if you’re not away from home you don’t really shed the feeling (good and bad) of home.
My camping skills are rusty. Fortunately, I chose to camp at a tame park in the middle of summer in good weather. That’s not my usual first choice. It makes sense for now. Even if shit goes sideways, life is easy in such a playground.
Reservations were key! Without firm commitment (such as reservations), camping gets postponed. Fortunately, Mrs. Curmudgeon is wildly supportive of me going camping. (She rocks!) At her urging, I wound up abandoning my semi-fixed tractor on my not quite mowed lawn. A mowed lawn is never really that important (to me).
Trying to knock out errands, I drove initially in the wrong direction to buy fuel and send mail. Then I backtracked but also made an impulse buy of bacon (and a bag of ice). I also grabbed an impulse bag of chips. I try to avoid junk food but I’m only human.
It all wound up haphazardly flung into a cooler in my truck bed. I’d already grabbed bratwurst and whatever else I found in the kitchen. I absconded with the ketchup, mustard, and bag of buns. I also had 4 eggs. I wasn’t very organized but it was surely “good enough”.
I arrived at my campsite late. That’s fine because I was at a campground, not on a wilderness trek! It was almost literally the longest day of the year so I had plenty of leeway. As always, my combination of tent, cot, mattress, sleeping bag worked flawlessly. Time elapsed from parking the truck to “set up” was 16 minutes. Yay me!
I dithered a bit over my CPAP. It’s a new (to me) superstition. I can’t help being paranoid about the damn thing. For power, I have an Anker C1000 which seems like overkill. It weighs like a bowling ball and I feel like it ought to support three arc welders and a Vegas casino. Yet, without any particular effort on my part, it’s enough for 2 days and 2 days only with the CPAP. Surely I can improve on that.
As a form of procrastination, I did some “exercise hiking”. I have new trekking poles and something about those things motivates me. The poles reject a lifetime of “saunter”, walk carefully and observantly, and “stop to smell the roses”. They induce what I call “sled dog mode”. Normally, I hate marching around like an automaton but for this specific purpose, it’s probably ideal. It’s good exercise. I wore my ass out in a mere hour. It would be nice to go longer but it is what it is. Back at camp I flopped in a lawnchair with a cold beer. I was cooked and sweaty but the day was basically over.
More in Part 2.
