One of my most disliked chores in getting ready is to practice setting up the tents, which I have not used in two years. I usually forget all of the shortcuts and cautions honed over my long trips in the space of a year. The worst thing on a trip is to get into the first camp site late at night or in the rain or both, as has happened, and not having practiced setting up the tent beforehand. It took two hours today to set up and break down the two tents in the park across from me, which isn’t that far off my best times. But it is literally backbreaking work, and no machines at my gym prepare me for this.
One of the cautions in setting up the tent is to make sure to tie Donner up away from the tent being set up since he has this pesky habit of wanting to try out the tent in whatever form of readiness it is. I forgot to take his long leash for the first tent, but brought it down when I went to set up the second one. As soon as I set up the small tent, I let him off the leash and here is where he quickly ended up, “Just like old times,” my guess is he was saying.
While we were setting up the tents, a few dogs walked by and Donner made it known in his own special way that he wanted to play with them. But the owners quicly got out of there, probably thinking I was some hapless homeless guy getting ready to camp out in the park.
My To-do list shrank today. The page on the left (below) is what is left, besides the final checkout page on the right, 10 “Desk” items, three “Do” items, and five (out of 30) containers to pack. The page on the right is my check-out list.
Depending upon now much time the desk work takes me tomorrow, I may be all set to go on Tuesday. However, with rain forecast here and at my first planned camp, I may wait till Wednesday.
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