"Ha ha," I think I wrote in an email last winter. "There's an X-Files movie coming out this summer. I should fly out west to see the movie with you."
The friend agreed. We tossed around dates and ideas, and suddenly it turned into a camping trip. In Jasper. ("You'll be eaten by a grizzly bear" my mother said, worried.)
Don't get me wrong - I'm excited! Well, actually, I'm excited to do anything beside sit at a desk, inside a building with a forty year old air conditioning system that moves the air from a room full of sick, explosive-diarrhea cats to my cubicle. I could be spending three weeks at the hospital having my limbs removed and I'd be excited about it. But no, really, I'm looking forward to this trip.
Tonight I thought I had better check out my tent. I bought it eight years ago on the occasion of a friends' wedding. Brilliant idea they had: let's have it outside! In a cow field! Late at night! In August! It's dry and hot in August! What could go wrong?
The day, of course, was wet and cold. The catered meal was late, and served cold. I decided to warm myself up by finishing off the mostly empty bottles of wine left on tables -- after all, no one would want good wine (read: home brewed by a friend's odd relative) to go to waste.
Halfway through the first campfire song I had to pee. After stumbling through the dark to a port-a-potty located at the opposite end of the cow field, I realized I needed to pass out. I restumbled my path, vaguely aiming for my tent. Oops, that wasn't my tent. Nor was the next one, nor the one after that. Ah, there we go. I passed out on top of my sleeping bag.
A worried Nik came looking for me about an hour later. "Shhhhit," he slurred. He had helped me finish off the wine. "I thought you were losssst." I pushed him aside, grabbed the nearby fence, and puked. And puked some more.
"Hey, look up!" Nik grabbed my arm, pointing to the heavens. A break in the clouds showed a sky heavily peppered with stars. "A sshhhhoooting star! A ssshoooting star!" I puked again.
Good times. I used the tent a couple of years later on another adventure (which, coincidentally, involved me drinking too much wine). Since then it's been neatly folded up, waiting to be used.
Tonight I had the great idea of setting it up in the dining room. My first mistake? Forgetting how much space this tent can take up, without it being big enough for comfort. The second? Not knowing that Enkidu really wants to go camping.
My third mistake was to drag the entire thing out onto the balcony to try setting it up there. Thirty seconds later the sky opened up, sprinkling me and the tent with rain. Sigh. Back inside we went, and I gave up on the notion of a trial set-up.
A warning to my friend: setting up the tent will be a grumpy affair. And please -- PLEASE FOR THE LOVE OF SPAGHETTI! -- don't bring any wine!
