Tent and a path to the sea, what more do you need to feel free.
Friday July 17th 2009: Camping, whatever is that? I had read about it, seen pictures and heard reports from several excursions. It all seemed fun and an environment protective and a green thing to do, at least in my imagination it is. Sometimes, as now, I don’t believe my own imagination, or perhaps never should do. So whatever this story has to tell us, don’t believe it to be true, unless you actually have experienced something like this yourself.
Okay camping: I got the idea from Shelly, of course, and worse, I got to borrow her gizmo dude xPod something to help me out. You know: that getting lost device Shelly and I practiced in
Now however I was supposed to deal with Gizmo myself and as I had read, seen and heard everything that was needed to know about camping, so “NO BIG DEAL” I thought. Getting lost? No not with me in charge. I had planned everything very thoroughly and everything was set, so no mistakes this time. So, on time I got into a car with a chauffeur and all taking me to my exact camping spot where I was supposed to put up my tent. Clever I thought, as I didn’t quite trust Gizmo to guide me there. Not so clever considering the price tag for the trip, but it was a flexi-fuel car so I did something good for the environment I thought up as an excuse.
So I got right on the spot where I was supposed to be. Strange however, there was a big house there and there was even more houses, roads and such spread out there right in the middle of wilderness. I checked my camping magazine with fancy color images and all from 1982, no houses, no nothing. How the…? The car with the chauffeur had left so I was on my own. But this must be right, I can’t have been dropped of at the wrong place? Great I thought and picked gizmo up to give me the location and it did. I was right on the spot with coordinates given and all. But zooming in, gizmo also showed me a small cabin village built up surrounding me too.
Fine! Great! I checked and compared gizmo with my camping magazine, a lot… okay, everything had changed. BUT, yes there was one thing gizmo had missed. There was a path leading through the woods to a lake not far away. That path was there in the magazine and in real too. HA, that path gizmo had missed. Otherwise gizmo drew up a map for me also showing a small center with some small stores, a restaurant, a gas station and more cabins. I checked my booking and it confirmed the place with name and an order number attached that could be used for more information about the place on the internet. Okay, I hadn’t done that, checking up I mean, it all was in my magazine, remember. So now I used gizmo to get that so called more information and first displayed was a big picture of a cabin, the same cabin I was standing in-front of and looking at right now. It turned out that I had rented a fully equipped cabin for my out in the wilderness camping excursion. No wonder it cost so much. These online bookings… Oh God.
Oh no, don’t even think it, I don’t give up that easy. I had bought myself a tent and a lot of other camping gear needed to make myself manage on my own, like leaving civilization behind for a while, and that was exactly what I was going to do. I was not even going to get the key to the cabin as it was not needed. So, out of my rucksack I pulled out a tight cylindrical package labeled tent; those other letters XS, CLB-Pro, etc. I didn’t bother that much about. The important thing was that it was a tent. There was a sort of garden surrounding the cabin and I found a good spot to put my tent up and this I had done many times before in my youth so this would be a piece of cake.
Right! Okay! Out of the tent package came some mass with sticks, pins and a role of cloth I had never seen before. The sticks were obviously going to fit into each other, but how many, how long was this or a stick going to be, or how many sticks was there in the end supposed to be? And that unwrapped role of cloth I supposed was to be a tent but it was looking more like a sack, what was upside down or inside out? After a while I had to give up my prehistoric idea of how a tent should look like and check the manual. Where is the manual? There was no manual! There was only this little brochure that stated the type of tent I had bought and it was full with quality, approvals and warning marks, all with some small unreadable text under them, but at the end, last page, there was this line saying “Online manual http://www… something, an extremely long line of characters making no sense to me. Back to gizmo again that I had put away at the bottom of my handbag, like it was not needed anymore. I can swear it looked as if it was laughing at me when I picked it up.
As I’m a well balanced person I ignored that grin and fed gizmo the online code and yes, gizmo responded. That stupid… damn… manual; it took me ages to read and figure out. But as I’m also a very technical person, those ten minutes the manual stated it would take to set the tent up, took me one and a half hours just to figure that… manual out. Then it took me another half hour to get that… tent up. Hmm… tent, or whatever it was supposed to be? I mean TENT, that stupid high tech manual explained it all afterwards: CLB-Pro meant, For Climbing Professionals, it was for
In a calm manner I put my things inside the tent, got hold of my camping magazine, gizmo and my handbag. Old knows best was my motto. So, my old magazine showed that there was a path leading to the lake and gizmo didn’t show any path at all. The path was clearly there, I could see it and it was not far away from my cabin, sorry TENT, so now there was something to prove. Who will have the last laugh, gizmo or me?
I went over to the entrance of the path and gizmo was with me that far, but as I started to walk the path, gizmo flipped out displaying an error message “No signal! No map available”. Ha, I thought, modern technology, rubbish. My magazine pictures were showing the path being right on the spot and exactly as it looked like today, like if nothing had happened during the years that had passed. No problem, it was a wide path and it only took me ten minutes to get down to the lake. It was beautiful and peaceful all around, just as the magazine described it should be. There was a small dock sticking out in the lake ending the path, with a camping chair, a soft drink bottle and a book lay down beside. But no one was sitting there and there was no one in sight.
I didn’t go out on the dock, I just stayed there at the water front for a while enjoying nature. It was all so still, no noisy boats and you could hear the water making small sounds when meeting land. I liked this, this was what I was looking for; this was camping to me. I looked at gizmo, which was looking kind of sad with its error message displayed all over. In a way I felt pity for it. I don’t know if gizmo was a he or a she or whatever, but it was obviously not experiencing this.
It had gone late with all my struggling setting the tent up and all, so with a peaceful mind and air in my lungs, I turned to get back to my camping adventure at the tent. Dinner Yes, and I had bought myself a small brand new camping kitchen including all. When it comes to food, I only want the best and no way I was going to screw my dinner up. Or…?
