Camping

A couple of my friends from the trip I just returned from were driving through town this week.  That was added to a large group of people from a few summers ago who were in town for a few days.  It was a lot of people to hang out with!  We were eating the first night at a large table at a local restaurant and I was sitting next to one of the guys I live with.  He was on the phone with people from NY who were in town and saying we should all get together on Thursday night for dinner.  I could plainly hear him say, “That sounds like a great idea, I’ll have the guy sitting next to me plan it.”  He was talking about me.  I was volunteered to organize a dinner for 18 at a local restaurant one day before it was supposed to happen.  It’s not easy to get reservations on the water when you don’t have a least two days lead time.

We managed to make it happen.  Dinner was great and we went down to a pub a couple doors over after we were done to have some drinks and talk for a while.  I’m glad it all worked out and everyone seemed to enjoy themselves!

A while before I got back into town from my trip West, the group I hang out with decided they wanted to go camping when I got back.  We put it together and this past weekend we headed out to the beach with nine people.  We found out a couple interesting things while we were out there:

1.  Mosquitoes love our Asian friends.  They both got chewed to pieces while the rest of us were sitting there with no issues whatsoever.  It was kind of bizarre.

2.  Salt water and sand do not mix with glasses really well.  All the visually impaired just wore our contacts the entire time because otherwise you were trying to clean your glasses every ten minutes which gets real old real fast.

3.  Enormous amount of shore breeze and lighting fires do not mix.  We had a couple incidents with the paper we were using to light the fire flying away in the breeze (we were using paper because matches and lighters would immediately be extinguished once they were lit).  Copious amounts of lighter fluid were our friend in this endeavor.

4.  People who didn’t like camping with us last time still don’t really enjoy camping no matter how good a time the rest of us are having.  It seems camping really isn’t for everyone.

5.  Camping can be a relative term.  The place we stayed was basically a large parking lot where a lot of people parked and plugged in their RVs or campers.  We were the only group out there with tents.