Campers are the worst pile of ass ever.

All your camp belong to us.

Everyone knows about campers, right? They are the lowest of the low. Lower than pig shit. And now, I is one.

A camper is, of course, someone who finds a safe spot to hide and gibs poor little innocent players who stray into his line of fire. (Eat my pineapple!) Back in the early days of Quake, campers were considered scurrilous maggoty scum. Unfortunately, camping was often the only way I could kill my old buddy Raiko, who had me seriously outclassed and …

Wait one.

I think I’m talking about the wrong kind of camping here. Please never mind all of the above.

Let’s Go Camping

Three out of the last four years my wife and I have gone camping. Yes, that camping. Out in the woods. No internet. No bed. No electricity. Sleeping on the ground. Mosquitoes up the ass. My wife thought camping would destroy me. I guess we were both surprised when I manned-up and turned into a completely different guy. I go all wild and shit. I collect and break wood. I start fires. Me Tarzan. I think it still shocks the shit out of her.

The plan was a three-day weekend. We both took Friday off. Thursday after work we jumped right in the car we’d already packed and headed out of town. We had to pick up firewood then go back to our house because I forgot my coat. I didn’t think I’d need the coat but the wife made me do it. So we finally got on our way about an hour late.

We were about five minutes from the house when our first disaster struck.

BOOM!!!

We were driving on a two-lane road and, just when a pickup truck passed us, something hit our car. Loud. Simultaneously we both shouted, “Motherfucker!” as I pulled the car to the side of the road. I jumped out and watched the truck driving away. He wasn’t stopping.

“That son of a bitch,” I hissed. “He either deliberately threw something at us or kicked something up onto our car.” My money was on the deliberate throwing.

Our adrenaline flowing, we inspected the car, expecting to find something like a smoldering crater of devastation.

“Ah, here we go,” I said. A lounge chair had been tied to the rack on top of the car. That lounge chair had a flap that blocked the sun. That flap had been blown up by the wind and smacked down on our own car.

Yeah, that’s the way we roll. That’s how we started our expedition to the woods. I took it as a good omen. “This portends well for us,” I said wisely.

This was the last sign of civilization we saw on our way to the camp site. Then I heard dueling banjos.

Without further incident, we finally arrived at the campgrounds. The same one where we camped the last two times. The same spot was still open, too. “Let’s take that one again,” I said. Yeah, I’m not big on change.

My wife wanted to keep looking. There’s a spot she’s always wanted to try. It was taken. But she did find another spot that looked promising. “How about this one?” she asked.

“I’m down for whatever.” But inside, I was thinking, “Old spot, old spot, old spot.”

“OK, this one then.”

Dammit!

Thus began the unpacking of the car ritual. We had to get the tent set up and we were already an hour behind and it was getting quite dark. We made quick work of the task and soon I had a fire going. I plopped down in a Coleman chair. It was time to relax.

My wife grabbed a flashlight. “I can’t find the water. I’m going to go look.” And just like that, I was all alone, in the dark, surrounded by scary animals. And probably a grue.

She came back and shared the bad news. “We got no water here.”

Apparently the campgrounds were divided into two areas. The older original sites all had water. The new sites (like the one she had chosen) didn’t. No water. I quickly calculated the odds of surviving on nothing but Jack Daniels. I thought they were pretty food.

Thus began the weekend of me carrying shitloads of water to our camp.

To be concluded in a post entitled “The Fire Incident” coming soon…