My idea of camping is a Marriott. Or a Holiday Inn. I grew up on the streets of New York City so I’m not into experiencing nature in the raw. Besides, why would I sleep in a tent since I’m not a homeless resident of Pinellas Hope?
I recently attended an RV show in Tampa. On display was everything from pup tents to expensive motor homes. One did catch my attention. If I had to sleep in the woods with the squirrels and bears then that super deluxe model would help ease the pain.
It was a $2.1 million ... you read it right ... motor home complete with a king size bed, carpeted floors, a sauna and a fireplace. An electric one, but a fireplace nonetheless. It boasted every convenience known to man. That is my idea of roughing it.
“It’s not camping,” said my wife, Patricia, who did a lot of that stuff while growing up in Michigan with her two sisters and brother. “Camping is a tent and fixing meals over an open fire.”
Camping is also being gored by a rhinoceros. Or being chased up a tree by a ravenous Everglades alligator.
“That’s camping,” I argued, pointing to the glistening black and chrome 48-foot motor home. “It’s outdoors. It’s not sleeping at home or in a Holiday Inn.”
“A $2.1 million motor home is not camping,” she said.
Must I sleep on rocks and leaves and ant hills and be harpooned by giant helicopter-size mosquitos to be camping? I again pointed to the $2.1 million motor home.
“That’s not camping.”
Why would I eat outdoors? I think some people eat gila monster lizard omelets and box turtle casseroles to prove their grit. I don’t like hunting. I think it’s cruel and unusual punishment if you don’t read Bambi its Miranda Warning before opening fire with a rifle that is powerful enough to take down a Boeing 747.
I slept outdoors as a child when I was sent to summer camp. As an adult I made it through the first of a three-night camping weekend at a New Jersey lake. The noises outside the tent bothered me. So did the hard ground and the rustling sounds of animals. I camped while in the service, too. In the Texas desert, but I had a semi-automatic rifle with a bayonet to protect me from those giant ants that grow to enormous cocker spaniel-size proportions because of radiation testing during the 1950s.
I made a deal with wifie. I would scrape together the money to buy that $2.1 million motor home by selling my Lowry Park Zoo strange and indecent animal picture collection. Then I would prove to her that I wasn’t a wus. I would don my Davy Crockett coonskin hat, get behind the wheel of that gargantuan palace on wheels and spend a night in the wild.
She just looked at me and repeated again, “That isn’t camping.”
Until next time ...
Thomas Michalski is the editor of the Pinellas Park Beacon.
