Men Gone Wild
So what happens when 20+ guys go out into the country to let the beer and testosterone run freely? They have a blast (quite literally, actually, what with all the guns and skeet). And a blast is what was had this weekend when a bunch of the men from church went camping a few miles west of Bryan at Oelze Meadows. Rather than giving you a run-down of the weekend, though, I'll offer you some of my personal mental snapshots as highlights...
Muchas gracias, Dairy Queen
A few days before the weekend, I went to Dairy Queen to pick up dinner. I went inside. I ordered. 15 (fifteen) - I say, fif-freakin'-teen minutes later, my steak finger basket is ready. I should also mention that hitherto they had utterly ignored my non-subtle looks of extreme displeasure. Seriously, I was steamed, or worse yet, fried. (Which is all they had to do, right? Pull the stuff out of the freezer and throw it in a basket of boiling grease. How hard is that?) So in my quest to find justice, I did what any fair-minded person would do in my situation: I walked right over to the beverage/condiment/miscellaneous-customer-self-service area and loaded up on the only thing I could physically take with me without some kind of container - napkins. I took a huge fistful of them and walked right out.
Okay - fast-forward to Friday night, the first night of the campout. Late in the afternoon I'm putting up the disc golf course so people can play it early the next day, while my friend Eric helps put up my tent. Later on I get back to the campsite and see that no one seems to have rain-flys on their tents because it's perfectly clear and the forecast is 0% chance of rain. So I decide not to put mine on. A useful detail at this point of the story is that I have a small backpacking tent, 1-2 person, which is barely big enough for 2 people, but still not big enough for me to sit up straight in. Those of you who understand the physics of weather can already see where this is going, which of course is in sharp contrast to me, who doesn't yet understand something important about the physics of weather, which of course provides the tension that keeps this plot building.
So it gets dark. We knew the weather would be getting into the 40's that night, and it was becoming very cold (later I would venture a guess that the overnight low was somewhere in the mid-to-low 30's - not ideal camping weather!). I walk over to my tent at about 10:00 and see it covered in moisture. Beads of water. Things that are not quotable in print began to be said by me. I unzip (the tent) and go inside to see the water situation from there. Not good. If I touch the top of the tent, drops of water shower onto me and my pillow. Were it 90 degree weather outside, this might have been a welcome revelation of physics to me. Being as it was 40 degrees or less, this sudden emergence of grim reality was about as welcome as cold water on your face when it's near-freezing outside.
What an unfortunate situation this was quickly becoming. Just as I was teetering on the verge of despair in the cold darkness, the epiphanous light of a great idea hit me like the celestial smell of fried goodness: Dairy Queen! The napkins of justice! Yes, I thought, it just might work. Obviously, I couldn't just put the rain fly on as-is, but what I could do would be to wipe it all down, from the outside-in, and then put up the rain fly (side plug: gotta love Eddie Bauer tents, the rain flys are quite simple to put on, even in the dark!). So I got to work. After about 10-15 minutes of wiping (which I'm assuming was an unfortunate sound-spectacle for the other campers already in their tents), the moisture problem had been sufficiently managed, and the stage was set for the rain fly. This also proved to work out to my advantage in that it was really cold outside, and the fly probably decreased the wind chill in the tent. Or so I'd like to think.
Spamwich!
Moving on, another highlight of the weekend for me was my first Spamwich in probably more than 10 years. (For those of you just now joining my blog-cast, so far all I've really talked about is how I dried off my tent with a bunch of napkins from Dairy Queen. Back to the story...) Here's what you have to understand about me and my relationship to Spam (which, by the way, is a private relationship, so who are you to tell me anything about it? It's just between me and Spam. But anyways...) - Spam was the family treat in my house growing up (one of the knock-off brands, Treet, is therefore pretty aptly named, in my book). You may wonder how my parents managed it, and I basically have no earthly idea, but my sister and I always loved it when it was Spam night. Now, at this point I feel it necessary to expose a completely unfounded prejudice against a particular class of meat: "Miscellaneous". Why blame Spam for being what it is? Did the meat say, "I think I'm going to be composed of a variety of parts from a variety of different animals"? Not any more than you said, "I think I'm going to come from this woman and that man." Neither is the resemblance argument valid: Spam isn't any more responsible for resembling "real" meat than you are for resembling your parents or Creator. So back up offa Spam.
Anyways, for those of you "meat purists" out there, rest assured that the opposite end of the spectrum was represented through processing a chicken for dinner. We also had some chicken tenders that were store-bought, which ended up tasting much better than the fresher chicken, oddly enough to me (it was a little on the chewy side). So now you understand the context for the Spam - it was to stretch the limits of the experiential spectrum of meat-eating for the weekend. And it was all done in the spirit of knowing where your food comes from. Yes, indeed, I am quite aware now of where my meat comes from - even Spam (more or less, of course, which is part of the beautiful mystery of Spam).
Menergy
This is supposed to rhyme with synergy: that's important for understanding what you're about to need to understand. The coolest things happen when men find the time and space to collectively let their active imaginations run free and find full expressions. Here's the clearest way for you to get your head around the magnificent truth of this: even though I set up a disc golf course out there and played three rounds in one day (if you know me well or even just on the level of facial-recognition, you understand that disc golf is to me as something really nifty is to someone who really likes really nifty things), that wasn't at all for me the zenith of exuberant masculine awesomeness-attain-atization. But this was: skeet knock-out, soccer-baseball (even though I sucked, still cool), "who-can-launch-a-tennis-ball-the-farthest" (again, couldn't avoid the thing veering off into the woods, but who doesn't love a challenge?), "can-you-split-a-log-with-an-axe-in-one-stroke" (and yes, I most certainly can), and finally, one of my own ideas, "betcha-I-can-bury-this-hatchet-in-that-tree-over-there" (sadly, we all ran out of time on this one, but in this instance you just felt more manly and ninja-like for trying). Oh, almost forgot that we tried walking around at night to find some feral hogs that had been terrorizing the domesticated animals in the area. Not to brag or anything, but while the other guys all carried guns, the only thing I carried other than my flashlight and my formidable backbone was my hatchet. And guess what: we didn't see any hogs that night. I'll let you do the math. (Of course, be sure to leave out of the equation the fact that I went back to camp once I stepped in some water and my feet started freezing. Fact is, if I'd come upon any hogs by myself on my way back to camp, I would have fought and hatcheted them all single-handedly and been all the more a man for it.)
Beating up the skeptics
Perhaps some of you are off-put or doubtful concerning my perception or anyone's potential perception towards such expressions of masculinity as positive in any way. You might suggest that boys shouldn't belch and that men should stick to safer pursuits like bowling and ping-pong (which is a totally empty argument, that such a person would have known if they'd seen Balls of Fury). You might even go so far as to say something like, "Aren't there better ways for men to be men without being so (insert derogatory adjective)?" To which I could only respond with a shrug. Oh, and then I would pummel you with my freshly inspired virility.
Muchas gracias, Dairy Queen
A few days before the weekend, I went to Dairy Queen to pick up dinner. I went inside. I ordered. 15 (fifteen) - I say, fif-freakin'-teen minutes later, my steak finger basket is ready. I should also mention that hitherto they had utterly ignored my non-subtle looks of extreme displeasure. Seriously, I was steamed, or worse yet, fried. (Which is all they had to do, right? Pull the stuff out of the freezer and throw it in a basket of boiling grease. How hard is that?) So in my quest to find justice, I did what any fair-minded person would do in my situation: I walked right over to the beverage/condiment/miscellaneous-customer-self-service area and loaded up on the only thing I could physically take with me without some kind of container - napkins. I took a huge fistful of them and walked right out.
Okay - fast-forward to Friday night, the first night of the campout. Late in the afternoon I'm putting up the disc golf course so people can play it early the next day, while my friend Eric helps put up my tent. Later on I get back to the campsite and see that no one seems to have rain-flys on their tents because it's perfectly clear and the forecast is 0% chance of rain. So I decide not to put mine on. A useful detail at this point of the story is that I have a small backpacking tent, 1-2 person, which is barely big enough for 2 people, but still not big enough for me to sit up straight in. Those of you who understand the physics of weather can already see where this is going, which of course is in sharp contrast to me, who doesn't yet understand something important about the physics of weather, which of course provides the tension that keeps this plot building.
So it gets dark. We knew the weather would be getting into the 40's that night, and it was becoming very cold (later I would venture a guess that the overnight low was somewhere in the mid-to-low 30's - not ideal camping weather!). I walk over to my tent at about 10:00 and see it covered in moisture. Beads of water. Things that are not quotable in print began to be said by me. I unzip (the tent) and go inside to see the water situation from there. Not good. If I touch the top of the tent, drops of water shower onto me and my pillow. Were it 90 degree weather outside, this might have been a welcome revelation of physics to me. Being as it was 40 degrees or less, this sudden emergence of grim reality was about as welcome as cold water on your face when it's near-freezing outside.
What an unfortunate situation this was quickly becoming. Just as I was teetering on the verge of despair in the cold darkness, the epiphanous light of a great idea hit me like the celestial smell of fried goodness: Dairy Queen! The napkins of justice! Yes, I thought, it just might work. Obviously, I couldn't just put the rain fly on as-is, but what I could do would be to wipe it all down, from the outside-in, and then put up the rain fly (side plug: gotta love Eddie Bauer tents, the rain flys are quite simple to put on, even in the dark!). So I got to work. After about 10-15 minutes of wiping (which I'm assuming was an unfortunate sound-spectacle for the other campers already in their tents), the moisture problem had been sufficiently managed, and the stage was set for the rain fly. This also proved to work out to my advantage in that it was really cold outside, and the fly probably decreased the wind chill in the tent. Or so I'd like to think.
Spamwich!
Moving on, another highlight of the weekend for me was my first Spamwich in probably more than 10 years. (For those of you just now joining my blog-cast, so far all I've really talked about is how I dried off my tent with a bunch of napkins from Dairy Queen. Back to the story...) Here's what you have to understand about me and my relationship to Spam (which, by the way, is a private relationship, so who are you to tell me anything about it? It's just between me and Spam. But anyways...) - Spam was the family treat in my house growing up (one of the knock-off brands, Treet, is therefore pretty aptly named, in my book). You may wonder how my parents managed it, and I basically have no earthly idea, but my sister and I always loved it when it was Spam night. Now, at this point I feel it necessary to expose a completely unfounded prejudice against a particular class of meat: "Miscellaneous". Why blame Spam for being what it is? Did the meat say, "I think I'm going to be composed of a variety of parts from a variety of different animals"? Not any more than you said, "I think I'm going to come from this woman and that man." Neither is the resemblance argument valid: Spam isn't any more responsible for resembling "real" meat than you are for resembling your parents or Creator. So back up offa Spam.
Anyways, for those of you "meat purists" out there, rest assured that the opposite end of the spectrum was represented through processing a chicken for dinner. We also had some chicken tenders that were store-bought, which ended up tasting much better than the fresher chicken, oddly enough to me (it was a little on the chewy side). So now you understand the context for the Spam - it was to stretch the limits of the experiential spectrum of meat-eating for the weekend. And it was all done in the spirit of knowing where your food comes from. Yes, indeed, I am quite aware now of where my meat comes from - even Spam (more or less, of course, which is part of the beautiful mystery of Spam).
Menergy
This is supposed to rhyme with synergy: that's important for understanding what you're about to need to understand. The coolest things happen when men find the time and space to collectively let their active imaginations run free and find full expressions. Here's the clearest way for you to get your head around the magnificent truth of this: even though I set up a disc golf course out there and played three rounds in one day (if you know me well or even just on the level of facial-recognition, you understand that disc golf is to me as something really nifty is to someone who really likes really nifty things), that wasn't at all for me the zenith of exuberant masculine awesomeness-attain-atization. But this was: skeet knock-out, soccer-baseball (even though I sucked, still cool), "who-can-launch-a-tennis-ball-the-farthest" (again, couldn't avoid the thing veering off into the woods, but who doesn't love a challenge?), "can-you-split-a-log-with-an-axe-in-one-stroke" (and yes, I most certainly can), and finally, one of my own ideas, "betcha-I-can-bury-this-hatchet-in-that-tree-over-there" (sadly, we all ran out of time on this one, but in this instance you just felt more manly and ninja-like for trying). Oh, almost forgot that we tried walking around at night to find some feral hogs that had been terrorizing the domesticated animals in the area. Not to brag or anything, but while the other guys all carried guns, the only thing I carried other than my flashlight and my formidable backbone was my hatchet. And guess what: we didn't see any hogs that night. I'll let you do the math. (Of course, be sure to leave out of the equation the fact that I went back to camp once I stepped in some water and my feet started freezing. Fact is, if I'd come upon any hogs by myself on my way back to camp, I would have fought and hatcheted them all single-handedly and been all the more a man for it.)
Beating up the skeptics
Perhaps some of you are off-put or doubtful concerning my perception or anyone's potential perception towards such expressions of masculinity as positive in any way. You might suggest that boys shouldn't belch and that men should stick to safer pursuits like bowling and ping-pong (which is a totally empty argument, that such a person would have known if they'd seen Balls of Fury). You might even go so far as to say something like, "Aren't there better ways for men to be men without being so (insert derogatory adjective)?" To which I could only respond with a shrug. Oh, and then I would pummel you with my freshly inspired virility.
Labels: backstory, occasional wit, tids'n'tads
posted by joe.peebles at 9:53 PM
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