Adaptive Curmudgeon

If you’re going to follow a route someone else mapped (like an adventure touring route) you’ll be using navigation software and a GPS. Paper maps are fading. For better or worse, we’ve all been thrust into the e-world.

I’m very much in favor of pure GPS devices. Pure GPS devices receive satellite signals but can’t send. Just like your FM radio receives a signal but can’t transmit one. It cannot tell anyone anything about you. They’re totally private. If you’ve got a handheld GPS in your pocket while you bury Jimmy Hoffa, nobody cares. (Wipe the device’s memory after you’ve done whatever stupid thing you did!)

A true GPS will NEVER need a data plan. They NEVER need cell service. They NEVER require a monthly subscription. They’re satellite receivers and little else. Half the time your cell phone is using cell towers and acting as if it was using the constellation of GPS satellites. You might think it’s the same bit it’s not.

A handheld GPS is best because it will provide you with navigation information and nothing else. You may ignore it, value it, or discard it. You’re in charge. Single purpose GPS devices are getting edged out of the market by cell phones that do everything and just happen to do navigation too.

I have a Garmin Dakota 20. It’s nothing special. It’s about 10 years old. It runs on AA batteries. They’re discontinued but cheap (prices hovering at $100 on Amazon). Uploading information to the device is not user friendly but I’ve managed to load it with anything from routes to satellite imagery. All I need is a USB cable and some swearing. Years ago I had an Etrex that I wore out. They make upgraded variants of Etrex but I haven’t used one.

My Dakota has a small screen… as was once common of all of GPS units. It’s fine for slow stuff like elk hunting or canoeing. It’s suboptimal at motorcycle speeds. I find myself stopping at key junctures to take a gander. I’m ok with that because it has considerable advantages over a cell phone:

Heed my warning about electronic navigation; a phone is not your friend and it doesn’t work the same as a GPS receiver. A phone is a payment plan, vice on your balls, and an unbreakable link to remote dopamine manipulation. Your phone was not designed or programmed with your best interests in mind. Cell phone navigation entails subtle hazards to your soul. 

Everyone and their dog uses a smartphone as a navigation device. I don’t. You don’t have to either. Humans need not be herd animals. I humbly suggest you think very carefully about what you’re letting the device do to you. Yes, that’s how it should be phrased; the device is doing things to you. Cell phones do evil things. They didn’t have to become what they are, it’s the monsters that program them that are evil. Regardless of how it happened, that’s where the technology went.

A smart phone is always doing insidious things. It’s tracking your every move. Even worse, it’s manipulating your head. Is it queuing up the next ad for something to sell you? Is is cross referencing the local weather to sell you a rain jacket? Suppose you glance and the sky and think “meh, it’s no big deal”… will the phone send you a heightened weather alert that supplants your judgement? Will the alert apply to the place you’re actually occupying or is it tuned to make pussy suburbanites 200 miles away lose their shit? Will it convince you to bail out too soon because global warming something something something? Will a raincoat ad make you feel like a moron for having forgotten your jacket? Will it do the opposite; tell you how sunny it is at your hometown and encourage you, hundreds of miles away, to ignore dark clouds and mosey right into a maelstrom?

Will the clock display make you rush past cool things? What if your boss texts? Or your girlfriend? Or your accountant? Will screen wallpaper of the Grand Canyon blind you to the subtle beauty of a 50′ deep ravine?

A cell phone will work very hard to isolate you from the reality of your natural environment. It will substitute instead a false reality. They’re surprisingly good at it.

Suppose you’re at the juncture of two trails. You’re pondering the choice before you. At a strictly local level all you know is that one path has a pretty fern and the other goes uphill. It’s a magic moment. These are the moments we are free. Savor it!

Suddenly a notification blinks on the cell phone map. It’s front of your monkey eyes and you read it without even thinking about it. Politician X just got caught stealing money from orphans and selling cocaine to puppies. Someone on F***book is pissed right off about it. She says “if you’re not outraged it means you’re not paying attention” hashtag PuppyGate! Now you have a new opinion about that politician and possibly the virtue signaling NPC that posted about it. Did any of that benefit you? Aren’t you less in the moment? You’re physically in nature but your brain is removed. It’s thinking about some shithead in Congress. Did you just forget about the neat fern?

Suppose you’re about to start a campfire to warm up over lunch. Suddenly you see Aunt Gladys virtue signaling about Ukraine. Meanwhile, Judy, an old high school friend, is preening about vegan food. Gladys is a fat dumbass that can barely waddle past the refrigerator. You just climbed a mountain. At this place and at this time Gladys doesn’t merit your consideration. She couldn’t get here, she’s never been here, she doesn’t know shit about what you’re doing or why. You have earned, through physical effort, a Gladys free moment. You begin to work on the fire but now you feel judged because you brought beef jerky as a snack. You had some dried apples but you forgot them. Fucking Judy would never forget the apples. That skinny bitch hasn’t eaten a full meal since 2015! Meanwhile Gladys thinks driving her Escalade to the park in downtown Detroit is “nature”! A cell phone allowed the two of them to fuck up your peaceful lunch.

See how quickly you wind up losing the subtle connection to your world?

Cell phones also make you dumb. It doesn’t take much to get a monkey to make sub-par decisions. Suppose you change your path from county X to county Y because the mountain pass is slippery, that’s a totally legit decision based on conditions on the trail. A warning about the higher official COVID transmission levels in county Y might nudge your mind into staying the course. Will you faceplant in the slippery snow because of some obscure CDC statistic that has nothing to do with your situation in the hinterland?

I can think of an thousand examples and they happen all the time. If you’re trying to be at one with the universe, isn’t an Amber Alert from fucking Boise the worst possible thing that could happen to you? You’re not in Boise… but now you’re thinking about it. Poor little Suzy has been kidnapped by a jerk driving a Lexus. Did you need to know about it? What good is it to inform you, some dude in the middle of a fucking canyon, about the Lexus in Boise? What clarity of mind did you just lose?

If you catch a trout is it the right thing to take a photo for external validation on social media? Even if it’s just a trout, you’ve killed a mortal being. Is it not nobler to fry it up in peace. Eat the fish in harmony with the cycle of life. Isn’t that better for both of you than killing the thing on TicTok so some dipshit in Baltimore can pass judgement on your fish based diet?

You don’t have to take my word for it. Test yourself. Jam your phone down to the bottom of your daypack below your GORP and the water bottle. It’s still there in case you have “an emergency” just like the flashlight you stashed in the same spot. The phone and the flashlight should fade from your consciousness as you go about your day. Does the phone fade? You won’t spare a single brain cell over the flashlight. Is the same true of the phone? If not; you know the thing is doing you harm.

Using a cell phone for navigation is dangerous. It gives our overwrought dopamine addicted society another vector of attack on your inner peace.

One last note, cell phones strapped to motorcycle handlebars have exactly the kind of lifespan you’d expect of a delicate expensive device strapped to a jackhammer in the rain. There are elaborate mounting mechanisms and everyone uses them. They work until they don’t.

Everyone eventually bitches that the screen got cooked in the desert sun or it got wet in the rain or a bird shit on it or whatever. If you just cracked the screen on a $100 GPS it’s a lot cheaper than nuking a phone.

As always, feel free to ignore everything I say. YMMV. Etc…

A.C.

I was happy. You might think this meant the conditions were great. Nope! They sucked. Happiness comes less from perfect weather than a mental framework of peace; at least that’s my theory.

My gear helped. The new jacket kept me warm and dry in the intermittent misty rain. I was camping in a place with which I was unfamiliar. The new terrain wasn’t better than my usual haunts but the novelty appealed to me. The paperback I brought wasn’t great writing, and I ran out of beer. (I found a liquor store and bought a bottle of bourbon.) The point is, you don’t need much to go well provided nothing goes completely to shit. I had fun.

A contributing factor was the screen tent. It did a good job keeping the bugs at bay. This allowed me to chill out and relax rather than flail about trying to keep ahead of the mosquitoes.

In the middle of this peaceful revere, a snarky SpotX message from Mrs. Curmudgeon stirred the pot. “You riding the TWAT yet?”

Damn funny! It’s a dumb joke between us and it’s not what you’re thinking! Some background will explain all:

My dirt bike and I stick to the far edges of human civilization; meandering solo and returning to base camp at night. My bike might have a shotgun or fishing pole but my tent gets to its location through the power of Dodge. I can handle aggressive trails but spend most of my time sputtering down scarcely used, half maintained Forest Service roads. A Yamaha TW200 does this very well. Its Achilles heel is speed. It’s too slow for fast traffic. A dozen miles on country pavement is tolerable but Honey Badger never sets a wheel to interstate concrete. The one thing I haven’t done yet is plan many A to B trips.

The closest in mechanics to me are single track dirt bike guys. They don’t do A to B trips either. They do A, to the speed of terror, and back to A again. While I stop to smell the roses they they blast above, below, over, and through the roses. Their bikes are barely (or not) street legal but they’re fast. Unlike Honey Badger they carry close to no gear. Unlike me, they travel in packs. They consider nature an arena in which to play rather than the whole point. They’ll blast by a guy like me picking berries on a hillside faster than you can say “did you see the bearded geezer back there?”

There are other ways to play the game. Mrs. Curmudgeon’s joke related to trails for “adventure tourers”.

An adventure tourer carries all his shit on his motorcycle and camps at a new spot every night. To get to campsites and to see nature, they’ll go on mild off-road tracks and remote back country roads. Adventure touring motorcycles are uniquely (and cleverly!) suited for this. They handle off road conditions fairly well but they’re taller, heavier, and bigger so it’s a bitch if you dump one. (Smaller and squatter Honey Badger is easy to lift and doesn’t seem to give a shit when I drop it. True dirt bikes appear to shrug off being hurled directly at rocks.)

Adventure touring bikes have compromises to can handle highways and highway speeds. On pavement they’d smoke me and Honey Badger like a jet fighter passing a mule. They’d easily pass a true dirtbike on a paved switchback.

Adventure touring motorcycles look cool; I mean REAL cool! If a motorcycle looks like it might be handy to chase a giraffe across Tanzania… it’s an adventure tourer. A good example might be a BMW R1250 GS ($25,000). An adventure tourer will spend more on saddlebags than I spent on my entire motorcycle!

Unlike adventure tourers, cruisers and sportbikes are generally only happy on pavement. The cleaner and smoother the better. Tourers who forgo off road trips don’t need the “adventure” part of the equation either. A “touring motorcycle” is practically a two wheeled stretch limo; heavy, massive, and useless off-road but glorious on the interstate. Examples might be a Honda Goldwing ($25,000) or a Harley Davidson Road Glide Limited ($28,000)

Anyway, I don’t have an adventure tourer but like the idea of adventure tourer trails. Many people have mapped out routes for adventure tourers. Sometimes these are carefully curated GPS tracks. In the old days they were paper maps. People scout the GPS files or maps, make a few bucks selling the information, and invariably advertise with glorious YouTube movies. There are dozens of drone flight videos of small packs of adventure tourers on scenic adventure trails.

In America, about a dozen trails are called Backcountry Discovery Routes. They’ll have the state’s initials in the name and end with “BDR”. I had to cancel plans for the New Mexico Backcountry Discovery Route (NMBDR) when COVID came and society shit itself. Another system of trails are called the “Trans America Trail”. The “TAT” crosses 14+/- states as it goes (as you’d guess) from coast to coast. You can buy TAT maps for any of the 14 states.

Some smaller trails begin with the state and end with “Adventure Trail”. Not all of these are formal. Some are just online GPS downloads, threads from motorcyclist forums, blogs, and so forth.

One day I found out Wisconsin has an adventure trail. I was intrigued. Wisconsin is less likely to kick your ass than say… Nevada. The NVBDR; the Nevada Backcountry Discovery Route is a good way for a novice like me to wind up a set of bleached bones on the edge of the Mojave desert. The land of cheese curd might be a gentle beginning level adventure trail!

I mentioned to Mrs. Curmudgeon I was considering the TWAT; the Trans-Wisconsin Adventure Trail. She began laughing and making jokes about twat-riding. I deserved it. I’d pitched the ball right over home plate. I was fatally embarrassed. TWAT-jokes abounded around Curmudgeon compound for several weeks.

By the way, I’m pretty sure every jeep and motorcycle rider who’s heard of the Trans-Wisconsin Adventure Trail gets the joke and they love it. Someone has probably made T-shirts.

Mrs. Curmudgeon had a great many laughs at my expense over the TWAT. But it did give me an idea.

I was nowhere near Wisconsin but there are trails everywhere. The next day I drove my Dodge to a place with wifi. I hunted around cyberspace and I found a reasonably close trail.

After a some hassles I’d downloaded a GPS route, uploaded to my GPS, and was back at camp. Time to try an experiment!

My old GPS which is nothing but a GPS was now loaded with valuable coordinates. I mounted it on my handlebars (I have a mount meant for that purpose.)

I tested it out. A little arrow on the tiny screen kept trying to guide me toward the trail. At forks in the road I could tell where I should go. I could see how far I’d deviated from the route when I tried that too. It worked! I rode twenty miles along the trail and the route data / GPS worked just like it should. Proof of concept!

I sent Mrs. Curmudgeon a SpotX message. “Testing my GPS with a Standard Listed Unpaved Trail. The SLUT ride is doing well.”

I hoped she would get the joke. Otherwise I’m going to die. Just for the record, she started it!

A.C.

P.S. While I joke about TWATs and SLUTs I really did prove a concept. I have the parts of a true adventure… just waiting for assembly. Honey Badger seems rock solid mechanically. Strapping down a sleeping bag wouldn’t change its center of gravity much. I had no problem following the GPS trail I’d loaded up. The TWAT is supposedly 600 miles and only 50% pavement. It’s not hard core like a desert run. My bike is cheap and slow but it could do it. Will I trailer out east and give it a shot? I don’t know… maybe.

I’m not saying I woke with a hangover; but I was a bit fuzzy. No worries. It was a good morning to sit on my ass brewing coffee and being lavishly unproductive. The weather report wasn’t great, so my plans involved doing nothing but sitting in my screen tent. I would read a book and enjoy some good old fashioned day drinking. The book was mediocre but I was particularly looking forward to the day drinking!

It was clear and cool. The bugs had mostly left. The air was dead still. No need to fret over my neglected sailboat on a day that could hardly ruffle the wings of a butterfly. The bike was close at hand but there was no need to deploy it if I didn’t feel like it.

If it had been a bit warmer it would have been uncomfortable, the humidity was just shy of fog. Since it was cool, it wasn’t so bad.

As I brewed coffee my bike spoke to me. “Let’s ride!”

“The weather sucks, maybe tomorrow.” I explained..

Then a new voice chimed in. “Ride. Ride forever!”

Uh oh!

I recently purchased a set of motorcycle touring pants and jacket. They were scandalously expensive but I consider them a pre-paid emergency room (if I’m lucky they’re a shot at avoiding such a thing altogether). The unexpected part is I like the outfit more than I’d expected.

In my head, the jacket was talking!

The outfit wears like a glove, which makes sense because I ordered it based on a series of measurements. If you think Google is violating your privacy, try wrapping tape around various body parts to configure an ideal touring jacket. I think the tape measure got to third base!

Now that the money’s spent and there’s no point in worrying about it, I can enjoy what I’ve done. My last jacket was bought used from a guy in a barn; it happened two decades ago. Now I have a touring outfit that’s world class! It has been making me giddy as a schoolgirl. Good adventure equipment is too awesome to ignore. It offers options. It suggests potential futures. It generates adventure simply by existing.

The jacket was hanging in my tent. It’s dangerous. It’s likely to cause me to have big dreams. Big dreams lead to ideas. Ideas lead to deeds.

Most people truncate themselves so completely they barely have dreams. So sad! Those few that persist all the way to deeds get the occasional adventure. Adventure is not the same as success. It’s hard, dangerous, expensive, smelly, and unpredictable. Adventure will happily kick your ass. But sometimes it’s glorious! In a way it’s the struggle that makes the glory.

Once summoned, the idea of adventure cannot be denied.

The jacket is already affecting my thinking. The difference between a Walter Mitty loser and a man drinking life by the pitcher isn’t merely equipment but equipment helps. Good gear in the presence of a receptive mind is a catalyst. I do stupid fanciful things all the time. What greater levels of fun could I have now that I’m equipped so well? That jacket took the plastic shovel from a kid in a sandbox and gave him a steam shovel!

The jacket knows goddamn well what it’s doing to me! It was built from the molecular level to encourage people like me to act as people like me tend to do. It’s a thoroughbred beast, built to explore. It won’t take “no” for an answer! It’s a beefy array of thick strong material. Everything is double stitched, waterproofed, over-engineered. At every weak spot in the human anatomy there’s additional extra strong material. It’s strategically positioned over well placed padding. It’s a jacket meant to chase dragons. Now that I own it, I find myself scanning every horizon. If I see a cloud that harbors a dragon I’ll be off in a flash.

This was a long time coming. I never cared who Ewan McGregor was (all actors are just dancing monkeys to me) but the dude made Long Way Round (a television series where he and a friend rode motorcycles East from London and all the way to New York). I watched it years ago. For most people it’s a dumb concept; morons struggling through the mud in Siberia. For a small few, that shit’s crack!

Then and there, while sipping coffee at my campsite, I nearly had a relapse.

Honey Badger, my cheap but tough little Yamaha TW200, was a compromise between ATV payments and fun. It turns out to be more than the sum of its parts. I’ve squeezed a ridiculous amount of joy out of the cheap little farm bike. As suits my personality, I bolted survival shit to it and learned how to keep a dirt bike upright and that’s all I’ve needed. I’ve been roaming ever since. I never really thought about it but the final limiting factor was riding around in hiking boots and tattered Carhartts. I’ve bought motorcycle boots, a new helmet, and finally top quality pants and a jacket. I’d geared up for a higher level without considering the overall effect on my actions.

“Let’s go explore!” Said the bike.

“Nothing is too sketchy for us!” Said the jacket.

I thought about the new jacket. It’s hardly broken in but brimming with potential. From now on I get +5 on all my saving throws!

I glanced at the skies. It was predicted to be light intermittent rain. I’d brought a paperback and a comfy lawn chair for just such an occasion.

“Rain is nothing. Go!” Said the jacket.

Somewhere, buried in the reams of literature associated with the jacket, was something about Gore Tex. Or maybe it was X-zillion thread count something or other. Whatever it was, it mentioned something about being rainproof. I’ve ridden in lots of rain and I’ve had rain-jackets on bikes but I’ve never had an excellent rain-jacket.

I sipped my coffee.

“Do it!” They said.

And so I did.

As soon as my coffee was finished, Honey Badger was off the trailer, chain lubed, gear lashed down, and idling. My coffee cup was cleaned and drying upside down on my painting scaffold.

It started to rain. I didn’t care. I had no plans; no destination. I was camping on a forest road in an unfamiliar area. I turned north, for no particular reason.

Some people live their whole life without ever feeling so free.

Having deployed a campsite that felt like a mansion it was time for the last lesson of the day. I don’t have to do Jack Shit if I don’t want to!

Honey Badger, my dirtbike still perched on the trailer, called to me. “Let’s go explore!”

I was drawn to it. I had a dirtbike and a few hours of light. Yet I was tired. Do I have to always explore?

“Yes! You have to always explore!” The bike explained.

The siren song of unexplored trails tugged at me. Yet, I’ve been trying to mellow out. I deliberately intend to get in the habit of “chilling out” more often. (Not an easy thing for me.)

It took real effort to be lazy. How odd is that?

“Be lazy” was the plan and I (just barely) stuck with the plan. I fished around in my truck for another paperback. I’ve just finished re-reading Children of Dune but I had a “beach book” on stock. Soon I was engrossed in the lazily written, slightly overwrought, B- writing of “The Perfect Storm”.

One beer led to three and eventually I wasn’t reading. I was drinking and enjoying the birdsong. At sunset I dragged my “trash-can of legit firewood” to the firepit. Some places don’t want you bringing in external firewood (for good biological reasons). Buying wood in $7 shrink wrapped packets breaks my cheapskate heart. My solution is nail-free kiln dried palette wood, carried (brilliantly) in a waterproof trashcan!

This place, being dispersed Forest Service camping, was fair game for gathering firewood from the adjacent forest. I’d brought my little electric chainsaw. Could be fun! But I had enough beers in me that I shouldn’t have been operating a can opener much less a chainsaw.

Wisely, I merely played with fire.

The place had a serviceable fire ring but I folded out my portable firebox which is a lot better for cooking (and uses far less firewood). I put that on top of the grate over the fire ring.

I stoked it up and let it burn down to good cooking coals. The wait for coals wasn’t long but I got distracted by beer. I had to relight it and stoke it up again. By now it was dark. I lit my Coleman lantern, which attracted every bug for miles around. The bugs here weren’t as bad as my last campout so I shrugged them off as I cooked bratwurst on the firebox grill. I even toasted the buns. (We can’t be uncivilized now can we?)

God I love camping when I can bring a huge cooler! Mustard, relish, ketchup, cold beer, endless bratwurst. Life is good. I retreated to my screen tent, left the lantern outside but shining over my shoulder, and ate like a king. Then I listened to shortwave radio in the cool evening air.

I picked up a blues show from Miami. It felt like I was in 1980’s eastern Europe; listening to free music from a happier society just across the iron curtain. I listened to civilization from across time not distance but the feeling was the same. I made a brief foray into local FM and was assaulted but autotune ghetto shit. Some skank singing about her skankness? Count me out. Local AM was sleepy classical mixed with NPR’s propaganda feed; not interested. Far distant Miami had what I needed; 60 year old virtuoso guitar-work from Lightnin’ Hopkins. Florida wins again!

Darkness settled in. Loons and owls joined the crackly SW broadcast. It was a magic hour and time seemed to slow.

I wanted to go out and turn off the lantern but there was a wall of bugs waiting for me to leave my screen tent. Inside the screen tent I wore a t-shirt in bug free peace. Outside, the bugs swarmed. I guess that proves the screen was working. I left the lantern on… who cares if I waste a little fuel?

I sent an all-is-well message to Mrs. Curmudgeon on my SpotX. “Camped at location X. I’m happily drunk in a fabric cage.”

Satellites orbited unseen overhead. Messages crossed through networks of immense complexity. The NSA pondered the secret meaning of my words. Elon Musk considered how to turn the information to a profit. Text in space was routed back to terra firma, shunted along trunklines, emerged at a cell phone tower, sent in packets to Mrs. Curmudgeon’s phone, and displayed as if it wasn’t a miracle of technological prowess. This entailed a short delay. I started to wonder if Mrs. Curmudgeon would fret at my cryptic message. I needn’t worry. Her response came back through the aether; “That’s great, don’t forget you brought pudding. Love, Mrs. Curmudgeon”.

Pudding? Heck yeah! Is there anything more decadently indulgent than chocolate pudding while camping? I really had forgotten. She knows me better than I know myself!

Two servings of pudding and an undisclosed integer of additional consumed beers and it was time for bed. I managed to turn off the lantern without dropping it and soon after was sleeping like a baby… a big hairy drunk baby, but a happy innocent one nonetheless. It had been a good day.

My good and loyal homebuilt sailboat got shafted. Tragic! By the time I was able to go camping I’d run out of time to get the boat ready. Also the winds were predicted to be too calm. It takes less preparation to bring the dirt bike so I loaded it on my old utility trailer (I use it for both boat and bike) and headed out on a camping trip. I swore I could hear the boat weeping.

I’m learning new camping approaches. My progress may be slow but it’s progress nonetheless. First, I had to beat it into my pointy head that not all campsites must be in the middle of the wilderness. Then, I had to find the part of my skull that fixates on lightweight backpacking gear and drop a luxurious 20 pound folding cot on it. Then, I had to accept that it’s OK to drive to a campsite with a huge Dodge and camp right next to it. Then I got in the habit of trailering a boat or dirt bike so that I could spend nights at a base-camp & all day having adventures. Then I had to level up to dispersed free camping instead of convenience but dependency through expensive on-line reservations. Recently, I told myself a screen tent is not a mark of shame. All paths are but many individual steps.

What I can do, others can too. Find what holds you back and work on it.

Incidentally, I camp solo. Most people won’t or can’t do that and I think that’s tragic. There’s no rational reason for a healthy person to be so fearful and many good reasons to go out there and find a place to THINK. Mankind was meant to stride like a colossus on our planet. If you find yourself clinging to the herd like a terrified mouse, you’ve lost your edge (maybe you never had it). At most, being solo is matter of risk mitigation. Figure it out and do it. The spandex crowd at REI acts like a human alone in nature will be struck dead within the hour. Can you imagine such fear? Is that why they put on masks and cowered like children for two years?

Unless you’re a complete fucking idiot (or live somewhere incredibly dangerous) you ought to be capable of taking care of yourself outdoors. At the very least you should be able to pop a tent at a Park and roast some damn marshmallows. If you’ve nobody with whom to camp, go camping anyway.

I arrived like a boss! Witness the glory of my carefully rehearsed and well planned “operation old-guy camp setup routine”. I pull up to the location in question, assess the best place to park a tent, turn off the Dodge, and BOOM! Done in ten minutes!

I have a Gazelle T4 tent, a Teton XXL cot, a Teton XXL mattress, a Teton XXL sleeping bag, and a tattered old Spiderman pillow. They work together like peanut butter and jelly. Note: I provide links to the things I’ve bought because they serve me well. As for the cot/pad/bag be careful to choose all Teton XXL things and they’ll work together very well. Be aware that the combined setup is very large… it won’t fit in all tents. On the other hand the combined effect is more comfortable than most beds! (Note: I get a tiny kickback from Amazon if you use the links.) I think it’s hard work to sort through the many options out there so when I find something that works I put up a link. I hope to spare you the effort of re-inventing my wheel.

None of my stuff is free but it’s not too pricey if you buy a bit at a time. I have no links to the Spiderman pillow because I stole it from from my child. It is just the right size for camping. (The pillow, not the child.)

The important thing is to get out in nature. I mention specifics but use whatever gear suits you.

Unlike backpacking gear, all my current shit is huge, heavy, and carried in my 8’ truck bed. I never lug it more than 100 yards. It’s a good solution for its intended environment. Heavy shit is easier to deploy, often more rugged, and usually a little cheaper than specialized backpacking stuff. The sole issue with this is that I don’t have a truck cap. If it’s looking rainy I have to wrap my shit in tarps while driving. Ironically, a generic mini-van, of the type that subtracts points from your man-card if you drive one, would be better than my truck for carrying tents and stuff.

Everything I’ve chosen is heavy duty and comfortable. Also, all my stuff is very fast to assemble. This was important to me. I can setup camp in 10 minutes without rushing; that didn’t happen by accident.

I’ve honed camp deployment to nearly an art form. The Dodge engine goes off and I’ve erected a situation that’s approaching hotel room comfort without breaking a sweat. Someday there may be an emergency reason why I need to go from driver’s seat to sheltered cot in 10 minutes. I’m not sure why, but it could happen. In the meantime, I simply love easy setup and takedown. (Takedown is necessarily slower, but not by much.)

This time I added the Gazelle G5 screen tent. It, like my sleeping tent of nearly similar “pop up” design, takes 90-120 seconds to erect. I popped up my screen tent right next to my sleeping tent. Two tents for one man! Why not? Look at me, I’m a fuckin’ high roller!

I dragged my cooler into the screen tent, added a lawnchair, and used an old painting stand as a “mini table”. It went fast! I was sitting comfortably, cold beer in hand, in the screen tent only a few minutes after my main camp was situated. (Yes, that’s a full setup. I always stake all corners and midpoints of both tents and the rainfly was on the tent too.)

Note: what I called “painting stand” is a “folding scaffold“. I wasn’t going to screw around dragging a picnic table into the screen tent (not sure if it would fit anyway). My scaffold is coated in a million colors of paint but it still works fine as a low table. Just so you know what I’m talking about, I included a link to one that’s about like mine. This was the first time I tried a scaffold but it’s pretty slick. It’s aluminum so it’s waterproof and also you don’t have to worry about a hot campstove damaging it. It’s strong enough to stand on. It folds and it’s light, but it doesn’t pack down small. It’s a great option for a guy taking a whole truck camping… especially if he already owns the scaffold. It wouldn’t fit in a Subaru. I’m thinking of buying a smaller scaffold just for camping.

Maybe I’ll review it in more detail later but so far the screen tent is PERFECT for one man! Just right for a solo Curmudgeon. Neither too large nor too small. It should be good for two men or an adult married couple. It might be too small if you’ve got a herd of kids running around or you’ve got uncle Fred and Sister Edna cluttering up your campsite. Both Gazelle products are built like a brick shithouse and are fast to setup. They don’t match in color or shape. The sleeping tent is a cube (which just barely holds the massive XXL cot) and the screen tent is a pentagon. If you knew that you’d ALWAYS want the screen tent you can get a sleeping/screen tent combo called the T4 Plus. It’s a real cool tent; damn near a beach villa made of fabric. However, it’s so elaborate that you lose options. I might want to forgo one half or the other of the screen tent/sleeping tent pair and sewing them together takes away that option. Also I like lightning fast one man setups and the combo tent is probably a little bit slower during a one man deployment.

Call it 12-15 minutes or so from engine shut down to ass in chair, feet up on the table, and first beer cracked.

It. Was. Beautiful!

A.C.

P.S. I coined the term “operation old guy” in 2019. You can find it on my “Walkabouts” page or click Sail/Camp Adventure #2: Part 3: The Idea Of Operation Old Guy,
Sail/Camp Adventure #2: Part 4: The Execution Of Operation Old Guy.

My last camping trip ended with a wilted, singed, itchy Curmudgeon. I returned minimally hydrated and nursing a million mosquito bites.

I also had a huge smile that lasted days. Why the smile? Because, nature is good for the soul; even (especially?) when it’s a bitch. I don’t mind privation in nature nearly so much as the bob and weave of avoiding humanity’s shitshow. Barely evolved apes regressing into panicked herd animal morons vexes me. Individual effort builds character. Marching in lockstep formation amid identical thoughtless fools is the absence of character.

Shortly after I got home, I ordered a screen tent. My old method of adapting to mosquitoes was to either delay camping until autumn or look for ecosystems with less bugs. I’ll happily camp amid sidewinders and celebrate the absence of mosquitoes. However, there are only so many paths in life and the world changed to limit some of them.

Now I go camping when the spirit moves me and conditions be damned. With society entangled in it’s own ass, waiting for a more opportune time is unwise. “Do it now or you may not get the chance”. It’s always true. Are we not mortal? But it’s more relevant now than before fear of COVID (not COVID itself!) allowed a handful of people to deliberately infect most of the rest of society with their suicidal intellectual flaws.

At first I was mildly ashamed to admit I wanted a screen tent. Years of backpacking and canoeing trained me to think of a screen tent as hopelessly uncool; something one associates with a boring Dad at a State Park trying to shut up his complaining kids and wife. Alas, practicality outweighs romanticism. I’m not the guy I was 20 years ago and I’m not doing the shit I was doing 20 years ago. I’m not backpacking or canoeing. I have a Dodge that doesn’t care how much I carry. Why not bring every option I can muster? I’m gonna’ be in nature come hell or high water so I might as well gear up for comfort in sub-par conditions. To do less is to devolve to a “fair weather/no bugs” camper.

After overthinking a screen tent purchase like it was the fueling system on an interstellar rocket, I ordered a Gazelle G5 screen tent. I even sprung for the optional 3 pack of side panels. (It was financed, in part, by donations to this blog! And yes, the link to Amazon shoots me a minimal kickback if you use it.)

It arrived promptly via the monopolistic hand of Amazon. The speed of arrival was impressive, as were its origins. It might possibly have been made by Americans, in America, to serve American customers? Could that be? Who knew such things still exist? I’m not sure where Gazelle tents are bred/hatched/sewn but mine have high quality parts and construction.

With the screen tent added to my arsenal, I was anxious for another go at it. I returned to my boat (still on sawhorses all summer!) and prepared my sander. Time for minimal basic maintenance. I’d slap on a coat of paint and within a day or two camp on a beach. From there I’d sail to the horizon!

Almost like I’d been felled by lightning, I got sick. Despite sincere intent I didn’t refurbish a square inch of hull. I tried to shake off the bug but it was no good. I’d fallen into one of those ill defined maladies that strike all humans from time to time.

The clock ticked. A precious weekend passed. I was not completely immobilized but I was not firing on all cylinders.

I’ve been sick in a tent. It sucks. I wouldn’t risk it. Also, I was in no shape at all for the yoga-like stress test of sailing a tiny boat.

During that time I noticed something. Humans have been sick on and off throughout time immemorial but now there is only one possible illness in the human psyche.

“Do you have COVID?”

“I don’t think so. It’s probably hay fever or I ate a bad burrito.”

“The symptoms you describe could be COVID.”

“Or a bad burrito.”

“You should go to a Doctor in case it’s COVID.”

“Of the massive universe of options, what treatments will a Doctor offer a man like me with mild symptoms… even if I do have COVID?”

“Probably nothing but…”

“But what?!? If a Doctor can do nothing, or more specifically if the doctor will choose to do nothing, what’s the point?”

“To find out if you have COVID.”

Finally, I took a home COVID test, which came back negative (as I knew it would).

“The test came back negative. I’m going to lie down now. Rest and fluids will heal me. It’s the same approach humans have used for minor bugs since we were living in trees.”

“Maybe the test was wrong?”

I swear to God, people have: Just. Plain. Lost. It! They think everything from flat tires to inflation must be attributed to COVID. I see now that, collectively at least, we’re no wiser than our knuckle dragging predecessors from 50,000 years ago.

Theoretically we all have some basic understanding of the science of biology. Even a C- high school student knows what a virus is. In general, even the dumbest student knows they differ from food poisoning (bad burrito) or allergies. Despite that intellectual basis, humans make decisions utterly devoid of that knowledge. It’s not just flaking out over ineffective masks and sketchy “vaccines”; everyone forgot what grandma taught us. Sip some chicken soup, shut the fuck up, and sit on the couch or lie in bed. Let time pass and generally, our body can heal itself.

A standard issue iPhone clutching meat puppet is naught but a superstitious peasant from the Middle Ages… if that. All basic modern knowledge of anything (including their own experiences with the occasional cold) has been redacted from their mentality. They’ve become Neolithic cave dwellers shaking a colorful rattle at the universe; hoping their magic amulet will cast a spell against the COVIDIAN evil eye. They’re the pitchfork and torch crowd looking for a witch. They’re fools who blame the lousy turnip harvest on the Fauchian God of Turnip.

Anyone can be temporarily buffaloed, but there’s a line of intellectual self-delusion that was crossed two years ago. If you choose to persist in the drama, particularly in the presence of information to the contrary, you’re just having a tantrum. Wise people do not indulge in tantrums. Making a choice to elevate animal level thinking over your own mind is not brave, it’s not courageous, it’s not noble, and it doesn’t make you special. Nobody is morally elevated due to their own self-inflicted suffering.

Act stupid of your volition and you have become stupid.

As for me; I slept a lot, drank juice, and cooled my jets. My new screen tent sat in its box in the corner and I sat in a chair next to it. It sucked a while and then I was right as rain. Ironically, that same sentence could have been said if I really did have COVID.