wooly mammaries
after carrying heavy backpack 20 minutes through south london, 3 subway cars, 4 hour train to north england lake district, hiking a couple miles uphill to campsite with packs, a very cold night in a too small tent on very hard ground, 6 mile wandering walk through mountains to town to buy bigger tent camping stove camp chairs ground mat air mattress foot pump food and carrying it all back on back three miles to camp, and a second night on the ground in the cold, i walk like i’ve 2 badly designed wooden legs that don’t work right.
lady’s making dinner - vegetable tikki masala - on our 1 butane burner camping stove with our 1 pan we bought in morocco and carried here to the mountains. she’s cooking inside our new 2 room tent because the wind’s so high it blows the flame out. our cold water spicket is a 3 minute walk down the grass meadow. the toilet and showers are another 2 minutes past that past the burbling brook and baa-ing sheep. hot water another minute further on.
this tent design blows me away. we snapped pre-strung bars together into 3 bendable rods, pushed it through nothes on the nylon, pegged them into the ground and - voila - we have a tent. we hang the inner two rooms inside that so we’ve inner and outer walls with air flow thru which solves the breatrh condensation problem and insulates us from the worst of the sun. we sit in our camp chairs in our outer room, drink coffee while looking out at the mountains which surround us. our original hal person tent is now our storage tool tent.
our camping purchases yesterday came to $280. toss in the $56 we spent originally for small tent 2 sleeping bags and mats and the $155 to train up here and the $20 a night it costs to sleep here on the ground and it comes to $775 for 2 weeks camping. we chose this because it’d save us money, yet it’s costing us $56 a night to sleep in the dirt.
and guess what - it’s worth it. we’re in the mountains surrounded by more mountains and the incessant sounds of sheep, goats, cows, chickens, horses, birds, and wind. my life’s about refining my thinking analyzing judgment process, which is why i frequently say Why Not to something new - and camping is adding new joys and tools to my data system.
1st night here lady sadly says ‘this isn’t working out for you is it?’ i say too early to tell - give me a good night’s sleep and some food fuel and we’ll see. no good night sleep yet, but it’s definitely working out.
plus for a guy it’s paradise because every tree and bush is a urination station.
we’re leaving all our camping gear here cuz too heavy to carry and it’d cost us more to fly it to france and then the u.s. thanb it’s worth - plus we can’t carry it all. rule number one - you gotta really want something to carry it on your back wherever you go.
so far our 11.5 month travel around the world has averaged $75 a day. way more than we expected. but besides being ripped off for rich tourist rents here and there and being naive, most of the cost comes from constantly moving. train plane bus taxi subway tickets cost as well as the cost inherent in each new place while you learn the ropes. essarouira was supposed to cost us $200 a month rent - it was $500 due to their annual music festival, etc. we’ve moved 36 times so far in 13 months. it adds up.
but what fun and adventure we’ve had. we’ve written tosands of pages of blogs, 10 short stories, poems, fotos, filled our memory banks for later creative withdrawals, have 250 pages done on my bad boy memoir titled CRIMINAL - this is our work we’re doing, this traveling around. we’re betting all we have on what we will be.
last night lady started undressing for bed and as soon as her breast was bare my hand was on it - she said what’s this, are your hands nipple magnets? this morning as she put a wool sweater over her breasts i grabbed them and said ohhh, wool boobies. she said no, wooly mammaries. she wins that round.
saw a drinker’s t-shirt in town - it said The Liver Is Evil And Must Be Punished.
SUBSCRIBE