Breaking Camp

Let me preface this entire thing with a picture that says a thousand words:

Why yes, that is my previously organized car interior after a single night of unloading, tent camping, and reloading the car. 1. No, Piper won't eat them. 2. Yes, they are just like glitter.

I'm writing this many days after the actual experience, because if I'm perfectly honest, I was just repeating the mantra that practice makes progress, and for a first outing alone, I was comparatively killing it.* 

How it happened was that Piper is actually a delightful camping companion. The temperature dipped down into the 30's (Fahrenheit is the only standard measurement I repeatedly resort to despite scientific training) which made Piper sleeping in the toe box of my our sleeping bag uncomfortable, but cozy.

The weather was supposed to be clear, so I made a full breakfast of bacon and eggs for the both of us (bonus: seasons the cast iron) and started packing away the cookware. Then, it was time for a department meeting, where I peacefully sipped tea, not a care in the world. Afterwards, I decided to give myself some time to break camp and started by putting away the sleeping bag.

I will not show you a picture of said sleeping bag, except, suffice it to say, it did NOT return itself to the stuff sack from whence it came. I logged into my advisory class after a solid 15 minutes of wrestling left at least 20% of the bag outside of the cinch sack. I was sweaty, gross, realized I had not taken a shower, and my braids had gotten stuck on the tent zipper at least three times. Of course, I put on my "I can do anything" face, tried to hide the chunks of hair flying away from my head, and did a lesson.

During class change, I tried to deflate the sleeping pad and discovered one of at least three reasons it had not self-inflated the night before (hint: one was Piper and two were operator error). Over the course of the morning, I managed to use my entire body - spread out like a Goofy imprint in the snow - to compress the mattress back into its carrying case. At least this one fit.

Lunch brought a new level of Dante's hell, collapsing the tents. I should say that they are both pop-up, one is for sleeping and the other is like a phone booth for changing, outdoor showering, or a private-ish bathroom stall near the tent. The sleeping tent was away in about ten minutes with only a minor curse word. The smaller, stall-size tent, well, I used some unforgiveable curses on that sucker in addition to the incredibly adult tactic of throwing it onto the ground and yelling at it. I swear, I did practice putting the tents away, but the first time it went away so easily I was unprepared for the insanity of trying to get it to fold down.

Around this time, it started to rain. I checked my app to make sure the location was appropriately set, but it had my exact location and said "0% chance". While my phone was getting rained on. It was like Mean Girls, except wrong. I'm not proud to admit that after getting the computer safely into the car and starting study hall with my co-teachers, I absolutely tried to make use of every break in the rain to get everything back in the car. 

Piper was a champ next to a tumble of things.

I did not load the car with the dog in it the first time. My sleeping bag took up 20% less space when it was first loaded. My perfect Tetris was not created in the rain, while I listened for the chime that said a student needed help, and simultaneously tried to get everything into the roof rack. 

A kind bystander (who witnessed my full-body mattress wrangle when he left for his hike) took pity on me and offered to come and help hold one side of the cargo carrier closed while I used a strap to force the clamshell into a closed-submission. 

Luckily, the whole day got better after we managed to leave the campground by checkout time, having only been awake for seven hours and working on loading the car back up for 927,542,000 hours. For more on how this day got miraculously better, you'll have to keep coming back.

*I have absolutely zero frame of reference, so just making this generalization based on the limited number of people sharing their experience who also have full-time, synchronous remote jobs, a highly energetic dog, and a penchant for a scientifically-interesting nomadic lifestyle.