Something I have done three times — THRICE! — this summer is leaving my car window down all night and then waking up to find that there had been a massive rainstorm.
It got so bad that all I had to do was show up at work in the morning with a hint of a scowl, and my co-workers would say, “Really? Wet butt again?!”
Yes, again.
I imagine that wet butts are your whole life if you ride a motorcycle and you don’t have a garage.
So this one’s for the motorcyclists who also like to go camping. Motorcycle camping sounds awesome, by the way.
Consider what happens when you swap your wage-slavery for a rucksack: adult hierarchy is flattened, utensils and resources are pooled. Tasks are performed as a unit: you may lay on the food, but your friend is a better cook, and her boyfriend will clean the dishes. There is no question of people being paid differently for different tasks.
Of course, my personal position is the same — I love the idea of camping and I love the idea of communism. But both can be miserable experiences as much as they sound awesome. And, frankly, I love camping.
Comparing the two is good jumping-off point for conversation, though I’m not sure it would persuade anyone who’s deeply anti-communist.
(Anti-communist feeling, in my experience, is generally an anti-totalitarian feeling. Communism can be an economic system, not necessarily a political one — there’s no real reason it couldn’t happily exist with democracy. It’s just never been tried that way.)
If I had ever thought about far-future humanity RVing through the stars, I suppose this is the “roughing-it” vehicle that I might have imagined.
Actually, it has a retro flair to it, as well — something like the Buckminster Fuller’s “Dymaxion” car from the ’30s.
Apparently a project of Belgian art/architecture firm dmvA called the Blob, its egg-like shape looks like it wouldn’t be too difficult to pop some wheels on it, hitch it to a car (or a Jetson-mobile) and head camping.
Here’s what it looks like (partially) on the inside:
I guess you’d have to put some mesh netting on all those alcoves to keep things from jostling out, but you can’t tell me that isn’t a fantastic-looking space inside there.
When William Henry Harrison Murray (also known as Adirondack Murray) wrote a book proclaiming how wonderful the wilderness was, and how great a time her had there, and everyone should do it, I don’t think he meant everyone everyone. But his book, “Adventures in the Wilderness” included handy tips on this newfangled camping, including train schedules on how to get to the Adirondacks from the city. It was the first time many city-dwellers had ever considered a vacation in the wilderness.
The result was a low-level stampede. Nobody counted, but current estimates range between 2,500 and 5,000 visitors to the Adirondacks that summer, principally from Boston and New York. It doesn’t sound like much, but it was 10 times what the area could accommodate.
The first problem was the weather. The summer of 1869 bore a depressing resemblance to the summer of 2009 – cold, rainy and buggy. That was only the stage-dressing. The full tragedy wouldn’t be revealed until the cast arrived.
Unaccustomed as they were to vacationing, the aspirational urbanites heeding Murray’s call made three serious mistakes. They over-packed; they overdressed; and they under-prepared.
Pouring off the trains in hoop skirts and three-piece suits, loaded down with luggage they didn’t need and couldn’t carry, most were confronted by a handful of dilapidated hotels in the town of Whitehall, on the New York-Vermont border. More importantly, they found dilapidated and completely full hotels. Most hadn’t bothered to write ahead for reservations.
And they hadn’t even gotten to the campgrounds yet! Read the rest of the story — eventually, the hordes of vacationers become known as “Murray’s Fools” and many of them return home convinced they’ve been the victim of a hoax.
Personally, I like camping, but I can understand that it has some tough things to get through. I’m trying to convince Amy that it’s actually fun and enjoyable, but the weather never co-operates.
(Oh, and I found the picture at a blog called “Photo Sleuth” which is a really interesting investigative blog about old photos.)
For Father’s Day, my mom snapped up something for my dad that she happened across on the bargain table at Canadian Tire. I had never heard of it, neither had my sister, and neither had my dad. It was a collection of dishes made by a company called Orikaso.
Dishes? These came in a package that looked more like my mom had wrapped up a package of address label sheets for a laser printer.
Orikaso dishes are made of polypropylene, and they’re flat. Like, flat flat. They’re like a millimetre thick — or less! — and they’re creased in an intricate pattern so you can fold them into usable shapes.
Here’s a video of the mug, in action:
Isn’t that cool?! The package my mom found includes two mugs, two square dishes and two round bowls. They’re designed for lightweight camping, but once you get the knack of folding them (it was a riot to figure it out, and it’s fun and satisfying to tuck the tabs in and put it together) they’re easy to use.
Plus, when flat, they can also be used as a cutting board. And they’re non-stick and couldn’t be any easier to clean.
The package shows about a hundred different uses for them — you can leave some of the folds open and use the dish to hold a coffee filter, for example.
We had some worries that repeated folding will cause the dishes to eventually fall apart, but this site, which sells them, says that “Polypropylene is practically the only plastic that can be folded without breakage, in fact the more you fold it the more durable it becomes along the hinge.”
At $4 a dish or so, I never would have picked these up for myself — they look kind of flimsy at first glance. But now that I’ve held them in my hands and played with them, I’m a fan. You could use these forever.
(My mom says she got a ridiculous deal on the set, so maybe it’s worth checking out the clearance section of your local Canadian Tire?)
