I have an image burned into my mind, from the movie "Seeking A Friend For the End Of The World", where everyone on the planet knows they are going to die very soon from an Extinction Event, and you are looking out a bedroom window at a guy mowing his lawn....for some reason that stuck with me more than anything else in the film, and sometimes, I think am that guy.
As the number of people with the virus creeps up higher than we could ever imagine and people in Italy shake their heads in pity at the poor people in Florida....I'm out camping. I mean, I really was mowing the yard two days ago, but camping while the wheels are coming off the world sounded like a good idea to me. Now I'm back in the adventure zone and hoping to land a nice snook from my paddleboard before I come home to zombies shambling down the street.
We had almost everything we needed already: Megavan and Bambi, the mini Airstream camper, in the driveway, just sitting there. Bicycles, fishing tackle, paddleboards, suntan lotion, and it would all fit inside the van..
Our extremely large shiny black Nissan van, dubbed "Megavan" (or the church bus depending on who you ask) had to have a name. In this modern age, once one buys something significant, one must join the correct Facebook forums to learn more about the people that also thought buying something like that was a good idea. In this case I joined the Nissan Families group, which is composed of large families that needed something that could transport 12 people...and they all have named their vans...or at least their kids have. Megavan is beautiful, but was really meant for work and right now it had no work to do. In one awesome pivot, Megavan became the ultimate tow vehicle for Bambi, that and it also can hold a lot of toys inside.
With the world gone crazy, no more Farmer's Markets for us to work (or not any that we felt safe in working) we were left at home, like everyone else...mowing the yard.
In early March, my big problem was figuring out how we could take off for a camping trip when we were always either working a Market or getting ready for the next one...suddenly, we have all the time in the world, but the parks were closed..then opened and everybody else in the world seemed to have the same idea, "Let's Go Camping!"...that is except my wife. It's too hot, it's too cold, it's too crowded. She was getting into reading every book in the library and then discovered that she didn't really need me to get books from Amazon after all...I finally lost my tech edge and she was shopping more than me.
But...the idea kept boiling back up and one of the constants in my life was my son, prodding me to get out and have a good time with Mom. Soon I was surfing the web for something to do someday in the future when the weather was bright and clear, and the water was warm and crystal blue. My wife poked her head in my studio and reminded me that I was actually talking out loud and she could hear me...she said to include the ability to go to nice restaurants without worrying about getting sick and slowly dying in a hospital at great expense, to the wishlist.
On a really strange turn, I was looking at Fort DeSoto park in St. Petersburg, Florida, a bucketlist kind of place. Since I was a kid, I've only been there about 3 times and hoped to camp there but could never figure out how. It used to be that you had to reserve a site in person..and I live 2 1/2 hours away. I didn't even know that they had moved to reserving sites online, but once I discovered that, I also discovered that everybody in the world already knew this and it was booked solid for the next 6 months....except for 2 days that were coming up quick.
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