Day 1 Part 2 – The Big Kahuna (August 11)

Unlike RAGBRAI, even though we were finished with the paddling, the work wasn’t over yet. First came the tents. Charlie had lent us a special one, so naturally he took his time demonstrating the intricacies of its specialized poles. Lionel still had enough energy to talk a mile a minute, so I put his lungs to good use inflating our mattresses. Charlie would be sleeping in a nifty bug-proof hammock that he later setup while Lionel and I hunted for firewood.

Dinner was freeze-dried pad thai with sticky rice, and after 15.5 grueling miles it tasted like it was prepared by a Michelin star chef. The packets were portioned for two grown adults, but since there were three of us, they gave us double packs, enough to feed four. As hungry as we were, even Charlie, who many have nicknamed the “human garbage disposal,” struggled to finish. We were stuffed, but the feeding hour was just beginning… as the bugs came out.

Back at camp, Charlie and I still had the onerous task of hanging our 50-pound food pack twelve feet up in a tree. We were given two fifty-foot ropes, each about the width of a shoelace, along with written instructions for the task:

Step one: Find a sturdy tree branch at least twelve feet in the air. This turned out to be nearly impossible, as the campsite trees weren’t very tall and their branches were anything but sturdy. Eventually, we settled on what we generously called “the best option” (picture a slightly taller version of Charlie Brown’s Christmas tree.)

Step two: Take the rope with the carabiner on one end, attach it to a half-full water bottle, and hurl it over the chosen branch.

Step three: Detach the bottle, run the second rope through the carabiner, and in theory, create a pulley system to be able to lift the pack without shredding the bark.

Step four: Hoist the whole thing skyward and tie it off to another tree.

It is here that I will openly admit Charlie’s and my greatest weakness on the trip: tying knots. Growing up, I’m pretty sure I wore Velcro shoes well into middle school, and as a full-grown adult I still slip my shoes on from the back. Back in Boy Scouts, despite hours of lessons, I never mastered a single knot. It’s completely accurate to say I’m awful at tying knots, yet somehow, I’m still better than Charlie. (For reference, Charlie is finally getting married this October after eight years of dating.) The knots we tied to keep the food pack aloft were almost always for naught. Granted, we never repeated the same mistake twice, but only because we had no idea what we were doing in the first place. Think of someone mashing buttons on a video game controller, hoping something works, that was us.

Inside the tent, I read Lionel a chapter from The Haunted Library and kissed him goodnight before slipping out to try and enjoy a little adult time with Charlie. Usually, when we go camping, Lionel is out like a light, but this time he really struggled as he had no bear to snuggle and the relentless sound of bugs all around.

I knew the swarm was bad; I could hear their bodies pelting the netting over our faces like kamikazes. The mesh kept them from touching us, but the sound alone made it feel like they were drilling into our eardrums. For the next hour and a half, Lionel kept calling me back to kill the mosquitoes “inside” the tent. I tried to explain they were outside, but he insisted, “I can hear them right in my ear.”

I offered him lines like “mind over matter” and “this is Spartan training,” but they didn’t do much good. Meanwhile, Charlie and I had hauled a five-liter bag of Pinot Gris fifteen miles, and it was time to enjoy the fruit of our labor. Still, as much as I wanted to sit by the fire, Lionel had some valid complaints. So I popped into the tent, clapped my hands ten times at random and declared victory. “All gone.” A few minutes later, Lionel was out cold, finally asleep for the night.