The orange, the boda bag and the tent flap.

I’m back! I know, I know… You’ve been counting the days… Well, never let it be said that I don’t finish a story. Maybe I’ll leave ya hangin’ for a bit, but I’ll eventually finish the stupid thing… And anyway, I need get this bad boy wrapped up before the NEXT camping trip…

OKAY – so where were we? Ah yes, the unfortunate boda bag incident…

So, I had brought along some fabulous Maker’s Mark to enjoy under the stars. I had put part of it in my handy, leopard print flask and it was quite lovely. However, as all of it wouldn’t fit in the flask, I put the remainder in my boda bag. I have used this boda bag many times in the past. Again, for the record, I’ve never put anything weird in the boda bag. Maybe a little whiskey, perhaps some rum and *gasp* maybe a little water… I make this statement as regardless of this fact, SOMETHING in the boda bag caused the Maker’s to taste like chemically-tainted ASS. It wasn’t noticeable at first, but after a day or so in the boda bag, it started to taste awful. At first, we were able to get past it. However, by the second night, it was pretty hard to ignore.

As I mentioned earlier, I had brought along some oranges. I had been chilling it in the ‘refrigerator’ and it gave me an idea. I thought I’d whip up some fresh squeezed OJ and mix it with the whiskey, thereby disguising the chemical, ASSY taste. Yeah, and I was hoping to redeem myself after the pasta debacle… Whatever. This is not what happened.

I squeezed the oranges, added in some water and a bit of the chemical assiness. I was aiming for some sort of fruity, whiskey goodness, but was instead greeted with what could probably take the paint off of walls. I even added in some snow to try and make it into a fruity-whiskey-slushy, but that didn’t work, either. Sigh… Yeah, so we tried to drink a bit of the concoction, but it just wasn’t worth it. I do think, however, that I ended up with a weird buzz from whatever chemical compound had formed in the boda bag. Great. So much for my day of cooking/drink-making prowess…

After resigning myself to the reality of failure, I joined Pauly around the ‘campfire’ to enjoy some tunes. (Our ‘campfire’ was a candle lantern, by the way… No fires allowed in the area…But it was perfect…) I have to say that after never really ever catching up with my sleep, hiking that afternoon, getting a sunburn and ingesting something that should’ve probably had a Mr. Yuk sticker on it, I was fading pretty quickly. We also couldn’t really turn the music up too loudly due to our new neighbors, so things felt pretty mellow around the campfire. We hung out for a while and it started to get vaguely cold, so I decided to put on some warmer clothes.

So yeah, I climbed into the tent and found some warmer items to don. My plan was to come back OUT of the tent upon completion of said task, but that’s not what happened. As I was moving stuff around in the tent, I inadvertently laid down for a second. OH, SWEET HEAVEN – I’m never getting up again! It was at that precise moment I realized just how tired I actually was. It was at that precise moment I made what I now acknowledge as a full commitment to stay in the tent for the rest of the night. Granted, had you asked me at the time if I was coming back out of the tent, I would’ve said, “Ohhhh, sure – I’ll be out in a minute! I’ll help clean up the campsite! I’ll help hang the food in the trees! I’m a helper! I like to help!!”

And honestly, I really believed in that plan. I really believed I was going to indeed get out of the tent and hang out for a while. However, the longer I lay down, the more my back relaxed. The longer my back relaxed, the harder it grew to rationalize getting up OFF of my back. The longer I contemplated the fact that I kept contemplating this fact, the louder the devil on my shoulder grew. “Don’t get up Dayna – why would you wanna get up?! All the cool people are hangin’ out in the tent! What are you thinking – It’s so comfortable in here! You don’t have a tricked-out seating arrangement like Pauly does – you should just stay here and be comfortable! Anyone would understand…”

And then the angel, floating effortlessly above the OTHER shoulder while strumming a lute kicked in with, “Hey – Get up and get out of the tent – It’s beautiful out! Go track some satellites! Go check out the faces in the mountains! Sure you’re tired, but who cares?! You’re in the perfect spot – GET UP!!! And don’t make Paul clean up the campsite by himself – what kind of an ass ARE you!?” (Okay – maybe the angel didn’t say ‘ass,’ but whatever…He should’ve – I was being one…)

Sigh… I would LOVE to be able to tell you that I listened to the cute, little angel and got up out of the tent. Come on - he played a mean lute! Yeah, I’d love to be able to tell you that… But then I’d be a big, fat LIAR. When is it ever a good idea to listen to the devil? Especially a little one that’s perched on your shoulder… I mean, that’s kind of weird – who ‘perches’ on a shoulder?! Anyway – yeah, I listened to the perching, mini-devil. I listened to his shifty logic and stayed comfortably tucked away in the tent. What an ass.

However, I did muster up enough energy to pull myself up to the front of the tent flap. I figured, okay – so I’m not getting up. Maybe if I get close enough to the tent entrance, it’ll SEEM like I’m present and accounted for… This ruse could work! However, as the bugs seemed to have FINALLY caught onto the fact that there was human flesh to prey upon in the area, I kept the netting part of the tent flap closed.

After doing all of that back-breaking work to pull myself up to the front of the tent flap, I started to feel a bit peckish. And maybe it was the general lack of sleep or the earlier ingestion of Mr. Yuk juice, but I was feeling a bit delirious as well. I thought to myself that maybe Paul would pity me and hand me some chips or something…

As luck would have it, Paul actually had some chips on hand. Furthermore, he was actually willing to humor my pathetic tent pilgrimage and bring me over the bag. Now, any normally functioning person would open up the tent flap and gratefully accept the carby goodness. However, as I was not feeling completely normal, it made perfect sense to me to try and pull the bag of chips though the small section of the tent flap that was still open. This slot was about 6 or so inches wide. For the record, this was not a big enough whole in which to squeeze through a bag of chips. Whatever. I tried anyway. It was at this time that Paul noticed what I was trying to accomplish. When I look back on the situation now, I understand his confusion and perplexed amusement. At the time, however, I didn’t understand why it was such a big deal that I was bustin’ up the chips while trying to pull them through the slot. “The bag won’t fit through the slot!” I complained bitterly to the Great Northwest – to Paul – to anything or anyone that might be listening.

“Well, If you really just can’t manage opening the flap, why don’t you just leave the bag on the outside of the tent and pull a HANDFULL of chips through rather than the whole bag?!” Paul said as I continued to wrestle with the chip/tent flap puzzle.

“Uhhhh, yeah. Hmmm… Yeah, I GUESS I could. I mean, that’s one solution. When you think about it, there are several options. There are many combinations of chip finagling that would work. But if you think your plan will work, who am I to say otherwise!? You think you’re sooo smart!”

Okay – The aforementioned conversation is probably not a completely faithful representation of what was actually said, but it’s pretty close. I did actually complain that I couldn’t get the chips through the slot and Paul did indeed come up with a very timely and logical solution to my problem. And I was appropriately dumbfounded at how DUMB I was actually being. It’s all unfortunately true. Paraphrased, but true.

What’s even more unfortunate was that I never did get out of the tent. I was able to enjoy the chips, but I never did get out of the tent. Therefore, I didn’t help clean up the campsite and I didn’t help stow the food in the trees. I am lame. Yes, you can put it on a nametag and send it to me, LAMEY LAMERSON. That’s me. Pauly, however, did a fabulous job of getting things taken care of and all was well with the world. Lucky for me, someone was around that wasn’t lame.

I fell asleep that night listening to the iPod again – ahhhh… Fabulous… The next thing I knew, it was morning. I had actually slept and I actually sort of felt normal! I then remembered a bit of the night before and then I just felt like an ass. Ahhh, assy goodness… Hey – I guess you gotta have a shtick. The next time I go camping – I swear that I will clean up the campsite and stow the food EVERY night to make up for the tent flap fiasco. I super swear.

That morning, we just kind of hung out for a while and mused over the idea that we had to leave that day. It was a beautiful morning and I honestly could’ve stayed in that spot for another week. Maybe we didn’t have food for that many days, but whatever… I woulda given it a go…We did, however, have enough food to throw together some kick ass tuna-fish quesadillas… Man – those things were awesome! Paul had a leftover sandwich chillin’ in the fridge, so he salvaged the veggies and then used the bread as a sort of binding for the tuna. We mixed together the veggies, tuna, bread and seasonings and it turned into a sort of makeshift fishcake setup. Throw that in with some cheese, chipotle Tabasco and a couple of tortillas and it was quite a tasty brunch. After food, coffee, etc. we resigned ourselves to the fact that we had to tear down the camp and get back on the trail. Sigh… Time to leave the perfect spot.

We got the camp all packed up and we were ready to go. Crap. I had to put the pack back on… Granted, I had actually slept at this point, so it wasn’t as bad, but I did have a strategically placed sunburn, so it wasn’t helping matters. Oh well – time to suck it up and hike back down the mountain. I put my gators on this time, so it wasn’t going to be so bad going back through the brush. Good plan. At least I had ONE good plan…

The hike back down was pretty nice. Since the weather had been SO beautiful over the weekend, part of the trail that hadn’t been visible on the way up had melted out and was now exposed. That was really nice as it meant that we didn’t have to traipse straight down the mountain. It is my opinion that switchbacks are a GOOD thing when one has a 50 lb pack on their back and there is snow on the ground. I’m just sayin’… Anyway – we had a pretty mellow trip down the mountain and the weather was absolutely amazing. I gotta say, however, that I was pretty glad to see the truck when we got back to the trailhead. Yes, I could’ve stayed up there a few more days easy, but the allure of a shower and clean clothing was ALSO quite appealing.

On the way back home, we realized we hadn’t had a pub crawl that month! ACK! To explain, we started a monthly ‘Neighborood Pub Crawl’ scheme back in December and we’ve been featuring a different Seattle neighborhood ever since. It’s all very official. We have a board of directors, we make score cards, we have a giant foamy beer mug hat for the hosts – It’s alllll very official. But CRAP – we had forgotten to set one up for this month. It had been a very busy month and I guess the time just got away from us. WHAT should we do?!? Well, since Paul and I kind of jointly hatched the idea in the first place, we decided to make an executive call and have a pub crawl on the way home! We can make this decision – we’re the creators of the crawl! Who’s gonna stop us?! WOO!

Now, don’t get me wrong – we weren’t planning on crackin’ one open in the truck. No. Don’t drink and drive!!! No – we decided to consider our campsite as the first stop on the crawl and then we’d stop on the way home and get some food and a beer. Granted, it's not a neighborhood that’s going to rate high on ‘accessibility’, but whatever. We made an executive call. By the way, and appropriately so, our campsite received the first ever ‘perfect score.’ Again – an executive call.

There’s a nice pub in Mt. Vernon called ‘The Skagit River Brewing Company.’ We stopped in on the way home and had some beer and pizza. It was awesome. Not only did we have a nice pint of beer – and from a can that I couldn’t pop open and ruin – but they had bathrooms with real toilets! SCORE! Yeah, I’d give ‘em a high score just for the toilets alone!

We usually have very professional scorecards as provided by our fellow pub crawl board member and graphic designer, Jane. However, as it was just the two of us – we made do with a ball point pen and a napkin. Yeah – give it up! I made some lovely trees on our makeshift napkin scorecard. Come on! Anyway – we ate our food, enjoyed our beer, I noted in the bathroom mirror just HOW red my sunburned face actually was and then we were on our way. Next stop: Seattle.

We got home that evening and decided we needed to probably visit at least two more pubs to make the crawl official. So, we headed over to the Tangletown Pub by my place and then moved onto Taqueria Guaymas over off of Greenlake. Had some more beer… A little more food… Ahhh… It was a good thing. Not only did we find a perfect spot, but we were able to squeak in an official pub crawl at the last second. Never let it be said that we can’t represent. It was a very perfect way to end a very perfect weekend.

Well – there you have it. The camping story is FINISHED. This one, anyway… There are many more perfect spots out there to be found. And many more dorky commentaries to create… Worry not – I will return! Ciao!!