Thank God I Bought That Shirt At Walmart (and other stories from camping this weekend)

Where to start with the tales from this weekend? Friday night, I worked at the bar and was sober, given the antibiotics coursing through my system. I was set to head home early, so that I could get a good night's sleep and get up early for camping. Around 2 AM, my friend called. She and her boyfriend were in a car accident. They were okay (thank god), but needed a ride home. I enlisted my friend Mike to drive me and off to Schaumburg we went. When it was all said and done, I was crawling into bed at 6 AM. I would do it again in a heartbeat though. Not to sound like Dionne Warwick, but that is what friends are for.

Anyway, when my phone rang at 8:54 AM, I was less than thrilled. (When it rang at 9:09, I was even crabbier...9:20 was when I really thought that my friends liked torturing me). I did manage to pull myself together, pack some things and head out the door at a mostly reasonable hour. (My only casualties were my legs. They suffered from a pretty bad job with a razor...mental note to self: don't shave on less than 3 hours sleep).

I jumped into a cab with Jen (she was supposed to be on a bus, but the cat was running in the hallway or something). As I am climbing in, she is telling me that the Carpenters are on the radio. I am sorry to say that there was singing in the cab until we got to my car. We get out of the car, looking like the cast of Sex in the City, and load up my car for our road trip. Off we went! We drove a few miles until we stopped for coffee (for me) and Wendy's (for her).

The rest of the drive would be too hard to describe. It was simply hilarious. It was raining. Dead animal parts flew up at my car. We stopped in Janesville, WI, which has a Target, Walmart, Big Kmart and shopping mall all on top of one another. We hit the Walmart. I bought a cute top, exercise pants, some cheesy CDs, a card game, some yarn, knitting needles and some snacks. Don’t ask me why I thought I needed any of that stuff. An hour later, we were back on the road, listening to the 80s Pop CD I had bought. Hits included Jesse’s Girl, Waiting for a Star to Fall, 9 to 5, Nothing’s Gonna Stop Us Now and You Should Hear How She Talks About You. It was a little silly to say the least.

We made it to the campgrounds without too much trouble. The rest of Saturday was just a lot of fun--great conversation, company and food. (Little painful when I realized that one of the people we were camping with knew my classmate from high school, because she was his teacher, but what can you do?) It was nice to get away from all the craziness of the city. Late that night, it began to rain and we all retreated to our tents. I was watching the fire, to make sure that it would burn out like it should. After watching the fire a bit, I shouted to Tony (in the next tent) that he probably wanted to stomp the board, since it was going to fall out of the fire. He told me that it was going to fall into the fire. (Apparently, I was crazy). A few minutes later, I hear a crash and Tony saying, “Well, that didn’t work out as planned.” I unzipped my tent to watch him stand corrected, as he moved the burning board back into the fire.

It had rained through the night and never really felt the need to let up. We quickly broke camp and headed to a diner for breakfast. While the drive home in the rain (which I am pretty sure followed us home) sucked, it was a fun weekend. Shout out to Tony for putting it all together. Shout out to God for getting me out of the 4.52-mile hike Jen was going to make me go on – I love a rainy night...and day.