Let's Go Camping!!

Well these are words that I don’t think Melodie will ever answer positively to again. We’ve done plenty of camping over the years but our last trip might have been the trip to end it all. Let me explain.

This trip occurred over Memorial weekend 2008. It was sort of a last minute idea to hook our tent trailer to the pickup, put our road bikes in the back of the pickup and take ourselves up to the Skagit Valley; a lush, fertile valley about an hour and a half north of Seattle. The area is abundant with flat country roads perfect for cycling. When we weren’t riding we’d stay around camp and read and such. It was a perfect plan.

The first challenge we has was to find a location. Since we had waited until just a week before the holiday we felt lucky to find a space at a KOA near Burlington. I’ve always thought of camping as fairly cheap, but campsites were $35 per night. Kind of pricey but that did include wireless internet near our site and since I was on call that weekend, that was an added bonus.

As we were packing to leave on Friday morning I noticed my lawn was looking pretty shabby and since there was no time to get it done while camping I found a lawn maintenance company driving by that would give it a quick trim for just $40. Next we had to buy food and gas for the trip. Groceries came to about $100 and to fill the pickup was $55.

We checked the weather and it looked like it might be cooler and wetter than we liked and might end up spending the weekend in the trailer. Rather than cancel the trip I went to Costco and bought a portable DVD player. That would be our plan if the weather was bad.

We arrived at our site Friday afternoon and it wasn’t long before we were so cold that we needed to buy firewood from the KOA store. Each bundle was about $20.

The first night was miserable. We couldn’t get our heater to work in the trailer and after waking discovered that the much needed, yet 5-year old battery, had died. Into town we went to buy the replacement battery. Oh, and it’s really too late to go back to camp and make breakfast so we decided to eat out in town.

The rain was relentless. Alessandra and I tried to sit outside next to the fire, reading and playing cribbage, proving we were troopers, while Melodie stayed inside watching DVDs and reading. Over the weekend we continued to run back to the KOA store to pickup bundles of firewood. The weather never did get nice enough to even take the bikes out of the back of the pickup. Finally on Monday we took our wet selves back to home and took warm showers as they were much needed.

On our trip home we did some quick calculations.

3 nights stay at the KOA @ $35 = $ 115
Lawn service = $ 40
Food for weekend = $ 100
Gas for pickup = $ 55
New battery = $ 60
Breakfast out = $ 45
DVD player = $ 100
5 bundles of firewood @ $20 = $ 100
Saturday evening ice cream social = $ 15

Total for the cheap camping weekend $ 630

After totaling this Melodie was a bit frustrated as she wasn’t 100% behind this camping weekend anyway. I was more optimistic about the weather, she was more realistic. But she looked at me and said that this may be her last camping trip. Her exact words were “For the money we spent we could have had 2 nights stay at the Four Seasons Olympic in downtown Seattle.” This might have been a better weekend.

She was correct. I had no argument.

Anyone want a tent trailer? It's a great way to have a cheap weekend away!!

The Comeback in the nick of time!

You know those situations where you have an encounter, you don’t know what to say and then you mumble some lame, nonsensical comment, only to think of the perfect comeback hours later? Well me too, except for yesterday.

I was standing at the Membership counter at Costco, waiting for the employee to finish with the current customer. Rather than standing right at the counter where I might make the employee uncomfortable, I stayed back about 3 or 4 feet from the counter. There was an older man, 75ish, in line behind me and just as the guy was finishing up with the first customer, the man walked past me and went up to the counter.

The Costco employee finishes and then walks to where the old guy is and says “can I help you?” I’m waiting for him to point my way and reply, “no, he was first”. That didn’t happen and I was pretty hot about it. I didn’t say a thing, just simply stepped closer to the counter, making the employee nervous as previously avoided. He looks up and says “do you need something”, to which I reply “I was just waiting for you to help me.”

The man who stepped past me looks my way, winks at me and then says, “I didn’t mean to cut in front of you.” This was the defining moment. I paused for a few seconds, looked directly at him and said, very clearly, “Actually, I think you did. You knew I was in line ahead of you, but you just decided that your time was more valuable than mine.” I think he was surprised that I didn’t just roll over. No further words were exchanged; no victory was obtained. But I felt a lot better for having given him my perspective, rather than simply raising my hand and saying, “no problem”. What do you think?