To feel free, we escape and try to flee like a dog attached to reality.
Tuesday July 21st 2009: Camping, I guess it’s something we do for fun and not for convenience. If there’s a formula for doing both, I most certainly could have use for that. Me not having been out camping for years, getting old and so, I think convenience outweighs fun somehow. But then again, why bother to go camping if not for fun? So what does mankind do? Technology is the universal solution of course and as a download from heaven we are blessed with all kinds of apparati and data making life easier. Download?… Dump-ode?… KO’d?… Well whatever comes from above, what’s the difference? So I’ll get on with the story!
…Walking the path back from the lake was no big deal and as I left the path, gizmo turned on again getting connected, updating its location from its previous being lost malfunctioning status. With a repeating buzz, like an angry bee and some idiotic happy “TA-DA” melody I deliberately had suppressed and forever forgotten, gizmo now announced it had arisen from the dead. “What now” I thought when picking gizmo up from the bottom of my handbag. AH… fine, perfect, just what I needed. Gizmo pointed out the tent for me about hundred feet away, fully visible and in the direction I was walking.
“Is there a turn off menu on this thing” was my first desperate thought after having been brought to a halt by gizmo disturbing the peace.
I pressed and squeezed the display all over, but somehow gizmo seemed to enjoy my maneuvering even more, like tickling, and happily it zoomed in on my tent with arrows and eager pointers I’d never seen before to show me the way. I just had to give it up… So with gizmo buzzing in my hand and constantly repeating that silly tune, I walked the few steps I had left to my tent and then right there, gizmo announced by its silence that it was happy with me getting there.
Food! Cooking! That was my most primary goal now and as said before, everything was prepared for, nothing could go wrong now. So happily I unpacked everything. First there was this compact, light weight, camping kitchen… self explained and easy assembly in every detail of-course… of-course; and after forty-five minutes and with gizmo assisting me some, everything about the kitchen was up and running. Rather neat I would say. It was a one burner gas kitchen, high effective, adjustable in every way and environment approved for all conditions of-course. Right… Okay…
Then I shifted my attention to “Opening the food boxes”… why on earth… how difficult can it be? Those very best safeguarding plastic boxes containing exclusive expensive camping food were for sure protective. Unbreakable I would say. On top of each box there was a big label spelling out in bold “Patent Safety Seal, Air Proof, Impact Resistant…” How about telling me how to open the damn thing? The website (barely visible) at the bottom of the label only brought me information about everything INSIDE the box. Page up and page down gizmo displayed me nutrition data, vitamins by the alphabet and all I didn’t want to know. Not even gizmo was able to give me a clue how to open those… XXX boxes this time.
So, as the engineer I am, creative inventor, self-going, managing on my own, I got an idea. Yes! It worked! With an old fashioned all-in-one can opener I was able to open up all the food boxes bottoms. Clever me, and I felt very pleased with myself having outwitted those stupid high tech safe-deposit boxes with an ancient simple Stone Age tool.
Right… let’s see now. Hmm… what’s this? Nice looking pictures on the labels surrounding the boxes, but what’s this on the inside? Okay, glasses on, there was some small text under one of those pictures; maybe that would give me a clue? …to be heated in a microwave oven at… Right! That does it!
I shut down my light-weight camping kitchen in a good manner and neatly put away all my things back in the tent again. I grabbed my handbag, picked gizmo up and in style I typed in ten very bold capital letters and rounded everything up with pressing a very clear and distinct button displaying the word “Search”.
Somehow I felt gizmo feeling sorry for me this time and he… Yes, I think it’s a he …guided me gently to the nearest restaurant not far away. It was not the fanciest restaurant I had been to, but that didn’t matter now. During those minutes it took to get there I think gizmo and I reconciled. I got my pizza with everything on and I choose a table where there was an outlet near by. So while I ate my pizza in peace and quiet (not many people there) and had a couple of beers (tasted good), I recharged gizmo much to his satisfaction.
When I paid for my well deserved meal, I also asked the waiter where I should go to pick up the key for my cabin. I was told where to go and gizmo happily guided me to the next-door building. I got my key, no problems, and was told that it was a fully equipped cabin I had rented and that all the food and drinks installed fresh in the fridge and larder this morning before I arrived were free for me to use at no extra charge. Gizmo buzzed a bit in my hand, I’m sure of it, but he was not laughing. So after being told that, I hung up my handbag over my right shoulder, grabbed my cabin key and let gizmo take me home.
