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Posts Tagged ‘camping’

The Coastal Cleanup weekend was a riot. Well, as riotous as camping and picking up other peoples’ garbage can really get.

I tell you, there is nothing more humbling than digging someone’s discarded baby diapers out of a muddy creek bottom. Or better yet, finding someone’s outdoor “toilet” as you’re tromping through seagrass looking for recyclables. And thank you, California, for deciding that beaches, bushes, and forests are the best place possible for storing your dirty and disintegrating shoes, socks, and underwear (ladies: an extra thank-you for leaving your “mark” on the latter).

I had to fight hard to remember that not everyone on this planet is a disgusting piece of shit. I’m better now, but at the time, being covered in my own dripping sweat and several unidentified substances that had leaked out of various bottles/cans/boots/plastic bags, it was difficult to maintain perspective. One positive…I got to watch a group of young’uns from the CA Conservation Corps dig out a car at Blues Beach. Just in time for some kind redneck gentleman with no shoes to hook his tow chain to it and haul it out and around the beach like some big rusted trophy. Followed by a grunt session not unlike Tim Allen’s Home Improvement “I am man, hear me roar” noises.

The absolute highlight of the entire weekend was the rapid depletion of wearable pants in my already-limited wardrobe. I started the weekend out wearing one of my favorite pairs of board shorts because it was hot as all get-out when we left here on Friday. Getting ready to leave my parents’ house, I was tasked with keeping Glen from escaping while mom closed the front door. That wily little bastard slipped out anyway and I made a desperate, deep lunge to grab him. At which point I heard a distinct RRRRRIIIIIP! and found myself with a sudden and unexpected ventilation system in my trousers. (Caught the damn cat, though) The hole wasn’t so big that it was in need of immediate changing, so I decided to just stick with it and toss them when we got to the campground. I had two pairs of jeans packed, so it was all good.

The next morning I threw on the older of the two pairs of jeans and headed off to clean those beaches. I squatted down to pick cigarette butts out of a pile of rocks at the base of a cliff, and heard that distinct and now familiar RRRRIIIIIIP! Ah, there’s that ventilation again. It wasn’t so bad that I couldn’t stick it out for the rest of the morning, but now I was definitely down to just one pair of jeans.

That night, mom and I decided to throw my now unusable jeans and a pair of her old ripped underwear in the campfire. I changed into my last unmarred pair of jeans, chucked my old ones on the fire, and joked about how well they burned and it’s good fortune that I never stood too close to an open flame in them. I poured myself a glass of tempranillo, sat down in one of the canvas camp chairs, and propped my glass in the cupholder while I attempted to light a cigar for mom and I to share.

That’s when I felt something wet and cold hit my leg, run down through my crotch, and soak straight into my jeans.

Did I mention that I’d just filled my glass? It was a pretty big glass too. And it was pretty full. And yeah, I”m aware that the cupholders in those chairs aren’t made for wine glasses, but I thought I had it propped up pretty good. SHUT UP, lemme finish my story.

I stood up to halt the absorption process (the canvas chairs are waterproof, so all that wine just pooled on the seat and wicked its way into my denim. Mom got out her flashlight to survey the damage.

My ass was thirsty.No, it's OK. I'll just go pantless.

No, it's OK. I'll just go pantless.

Yeah. Denim is really really absorbent. Really.

It’s a good thing that it was 9pm and we weren’t going anywhere for the rest of the night, because I don’t know that I can rock the flannel-pajama-bottoms-in-public look as well as most folks. That was all I had left for bottoms. So a desperate attempt was made to dry my jeans in front of the campfire. We even stoked it up and threw a bunch of extra logs on it right before we crawled into the tent, hoping that maybe…just maybe…the Dry Jeans Fairy would pay me a visit and cure all my pants woes.

Because yeah, it makes sense that jeans would end up bone dry after sitting out all night on the Northern California coast. I’m betting it comes as no surprise to you that my jeans weren’t dry the next morning. On a positive note, the sun was shining when we got up, so into the one patch of sunlight in our campsite the jeans went. Within an hour, they were dry enough to wear, and the wine stain barely showed. I would have my dignity yet!

Apparently karma decided that I’d had enough, because I stayed dry, clean, and all in one piece for the remainder of the trip. As soon as I got home, I pulled out every pair of pants I own and inspected them inside and out. I think I’m safe. And I won’t be packing less than six pairs of any pants type next time I travel. By god, I’ll never be without proper pants again!

Did I mention that those wine glasses were large?

OK ok ok. I’ve done it again. Gone a few weeks without new posts. And guess what? There are half-finished posts littering the crap outta my Drafts folder. I think you’d be disappointed in me if that weren’t the case. Admit it…you like my consistency.

I’d like to take a moment to apologize for my new template. It’s not really that great, but I’m too lazy to tinker with it and get it closer to what I’d like. At any rate, I wanted something that had a touch of autumn to it. So. There you go. Be thankful that everything wraps correctly on this one. The original autumn-inspired template I tried on kept blowing out my column containing the FriendFeed widget. Yes, my life wouldn’t be the same if it weren’t riddled with chaos and messy html.

As the temperatures rise back up to inhuman levels this weekend, I find myself escaping to the coast with my mom to participate in the annual California Coastal Cleanup Day. More specifically, we’ll be joining the Mendocino Land Trust volunteers to hit any one of the many spots they’ve designated as needing to be cleaned tomorrow. We’re aiming for either Seaside Beach or one of the two Big River cleanup sites, as one is a favorite of ours and the other is low in volunteer headcount. I think I’d like to take the low headcount location simply because it sounds like it needs more help than the other. We’ll see when we get there. Mom can get quite particular about her beach locations.

Our family who live in Fort Bragg as well as others we’ve talked to about this weekend seemed to assume that we’d be taking up residence in a hotel or with family. To which we replied “Are you cracked?!” and reserved a campsite at MacKerricher. One of the lucky state parks here in the grand land of California that isn’t being unceremoniously shut down by our cruddy state government. (Someday I’m going to take a week of vacation and head up to the capital to show those jackoffs how to balance a checkbook. Swear to god.) I wish I could go camping more often. While my back is no longer a fan of sleeping on the hard ground, I myself am still a fan of fresh air and the outdoors. Oh, and trees. And there’s nothing like crawling out of your tent at 7am to crack into a pot of coffee and campfire toast. I feel like a poser this year, as I finally had to spring for an air mattress so that I wouldn’t wake up five times a night with back cramps. I’m pretty sure my back issues are due to me being fat and not because of me being old (OY! 34 OMG) but for now, it was forty bucks well spent. I’ll donate it to charity when I stop being fat.

You may or may not see some tweets roll through from me over the weekend. My severe iPhone addiction means that I will actually use it while in the woods in a tent. The sickness knows no bounds.

Ready for Learnin’

In anticipation of the upcoming fall term, I’ve been stalking my school’s online classroom, waiting for my classes to appear on the list so I can start downloading and printing and organizing and pre-reading. Fuckin’ a, I’m broken. I know good and well that typically the classes don’t load until a week before term (which starts on the 28th) but I can’t help myself. I’m doing it unconsciously even. I’ll go to type in Google and instead type in the blackboard URL and there I am…logging in for the fifth time that day.

To alleviate some of these freakish symptoms, I spent part of my Wednesday planning out my graduation road trip. Dad is adamant that we drive up even though the school will actually pay for me to fly in (in exchange for an interview, face-time with the faculty and administration, and some photo ops), and you know me and road trips…I’m a whore on four wheels. So there wasn’t much resistance on my part. I found hotels to stay at on the way up and back (Dad refuses to push all the way through, even though it’s only about 8 hours each way), and then garnered a groovy suite at the Hilton that happens to be built right on the school campus. Right across the street from the stadium where the graduation ceremony is held, even. And then I started reading restaurant menus and selected the location of my post-grad dinner. And then I called up Mike’s Amazing Cakes, which is where I’ve wanted to get my cake from since I started this academic endeavour two years ago, and made an inquiry about lead times and consultation appointments (I’ll be up in Washington in February…excellent). You gotta love any bakery that uses the Goonies theme as their website music.

So my graduation is taken care of. And I still have nine months to go. What I’m going to do with all this apparently nervous energy in that span of time is beyond me. Maybe I’ll take up Zoomba?

At the very least, I need to figure out where I’m going to apply to for grad school. OSU is a given, even though I don’t like any of their grad degree options. University of Idaho has a distance program for the exact degree I want…but I don’t know that I want to be a Vandal. I kinda like being a Beaver. No, wait. I LOVE being a Beaver. And I’m frustrated that my options to remain there are limited. CSU Humboldt also has an amazing grad degree program that is exactly what I want and then some. But then it would be goodbye employment, hello starving grad student. No way. I didn’t bust my ass 15 years for the same company to have it come down to that. I’m still going to apply there because I like the gratification of knowing I could attend there if I wanted to. I’m egotistical like that. Work with me here.

More than likely, I will end up at UofI, because that will get me to where I need to be with the least amount of compromises.

But I’m still going to rock my beloved OSU colors like a motherfucking hurricane. That’s for sure.