Out With The Old, Annoyed With The New

I’ve been writing a lot about vacations lately. The reason for this is twofold.

First, I have a vacation coming up here quickly, so it’s been on my mind.

Second, and probably more important, not many amusing things have happened to me in the recent past, which severely limits potential new material. (Seriously, why can’t I get elbowed in the face again and get a huge black-eye? Something like that practically writes itself!)

Anyway, for my next vacation I’ll be using a new camera. My old camera, after many years of loyal service taking grainy pictures anytime the lighting wasn’t absolutely ideal, finally conked out. It was a steady companion that always gave its all, but now it’s time for it to go to the camera retirement home, where it’ll lounge around in a stress-free environment, always seemingly low on battery, its zoom failing, its memory card malfunctioning, constantly bragging to the other retired cameras about all of its wacky adventures, each of which grows in scope and duration every time it's told.

You’d think that getting a new camera would be a happy event for me. However, I find it more annoying than anything else, mainly because I now have to figure out how it works. I mean, you’d think I’d purchased a fully functional nuclear reactor or a time machine, based solely on the number of buttons, levers, dials, and screens I now have to deal with. I fully believe that the designers purposely made everything way more complicated than it had to be. Heck, after I’d finally figured out just how to attach the strap to it, I had to lie down for a while to recuperate, as it had been a totally emotionally exhausting experience.

As you might expect, the camera came with a manual about three inches thick. It includes many complicated diagrams and utterly ridiculous paragraphs that were obviously placed there just for fun, in order to see if anybody actually reads it. Here is an example: “Divide the slave units into groups A and B, and change the flash ratio to obtain the desired lighting effect. Refer to your Speedlite’s instruction manual to set one slave unit’s slave ID to A (Group A) and the other slave unit’s ID to B (Group B) and position them as shown in the illustration.”

Ha ha! Right! That makes perfect sense!

To top it off, honest to goodness, the illustration referred to in the above paragraph includes, of all things, a cartoon penguin.

I guess I just don’t get photography.

Now, you may think that I’d be smart about this and take the time to test the camera extensively before I go on vacation. This would include taking a wide variety of pictures in all of the different modes until I figured out what worked and what didn’t.

You’d be wrong.

I don’t test well. I prefer to move right on the real thing and just wing it. Now, I fully realize that means I may mess everything up and come back from vacation with a memory card full of pictures that makes it seem that I spent the whole time inside of a running washing machine, but that’s a risk I’m willing to take.

For you software developers out there, this pretty much sums up my attitude on the matter:

Basically, I’m resigned to the fact that I’m going to be the guy who’s constantly fumbling with his camera, obviously with no idea as to what he’s doing, but much too proud to admit it for fear of feeling like less of a man. I could be holding the camera upside-down and backwards when I accidently hit the self-destruct button, which I’m sure it has since it has a feature for seeming everything, and after it explodes, leaving behind a smoking crater in the ground and consuming my eyebrows, I’ll look around and confidently say, “Yup, just what I thought!”

But none of that really concerns me. If I look foolish, then that’s just the way it’s going to be. People should just mind their own business, anyway. Plus, maybe I like washing machine pictures. And not having eyebrows.

We're Going Up There!

Vacations are all a matter of preference.

Some like to explore the big cities, rubbing elbows with the masses, which is another way of saying mingling with thousands of unknown people with unknown motives, in what I can only guess is an attempt to break the record for total number of times a single person can be mugged.

Some like to lie on a white-sand ocean beach, barely exhibiting a pulse, listening to the waves as they gently lap in on the shore, hoping not to be pinched by a passing crab or stung by a washed-up jellyfish.

Some like to stand in line at an amusement park for hours on end, wondering if the people in front of and behind them have ever heard of deodorant, just so they can go on a ride that makes them puke.

And me? I like to wander in the wilderness for extended periods of time with a limited supply of food and water, hoping that I’m not the slowest person in my group in case of hungry bears, all just to climb to the top of some giant chunk of rock so I can admire the view for about three-tenths of a second before climbing back down to find something good to eat for dinner.

When my friend Lurch and I wind up on vacation together, our activities seem to always include elevation changes. We’ll find some mountain stretching up into the sky, ringed with clouds, where you can’t even see the tip and where the mountain goats are wearing rappelling gear and helmets. There will be a narrow hiking trail up it, consisting of enough switchbacks to make you dizzy, not to mention a sign that says something like: It’s Never Too Late To Find Religion But You’re Cutting It Pretty Dang Close. Ignoring all of this, we’ll smile, look up the mountain, and say, “We’re going up there!” Many hours later, we’ll stumble back down, exhausted, hungry, but happy. Then we’ll look back up to the mountain and say, “We were up there!” At that point we’ll go find the unhealthiest burger joint around to celebrate our continued existence.

I exaggerate, of course. I’m no mountain climber, but when I’m on vacation, I do tend to often find myself on long hikes with a decent amount of elevation change. When this all goes well, it can be a rewarding experience. There’s the fresh air, the lack of annoying people around you, the beautiful scenery, and the feeling of accomplishment you get when you finish.

When you bite off more than you can chew, however, you end up on a Death March.

I realize that Death March is most likely a politically incorrect term, but I’ve been using it for quite some time now, and it’s too late to change. Anyway, a Death March, at least by my definition, is when you start crapping out on a long hike well before you reach its end, most likely because you never took the time to learn how to correctly interpret a topographic map and chose a hike with enough elevation change that you should have been at least somewhat concerned with getting the bends.

Once you hit the Death March portion of a hike, you no longer pay attention to the scenery around you, no matter how visually alluring it may be. You could pass a tree sprouting twenty-dollar bills, the Swedish Bikini Team, or Santa Claus, and it wouldn’t phase you in the least. Instead, you just trudge along, concentrating only on your next step, longing for the end of the trail, your eyes glazed over as you exhibit no signs of intelligence whatsoever, much like if you’d just watched one of the recent Transformer movies.

The best example of a Death March for me is when Lurch and I decided to hike the Peralta Trail in Arizona. We were feeling quite ambitious at the time and decided that going out to Weaver’s Needle and back would be too short. So, we decided to hook up with another nearby trail to extend the hike a bit. I don’t remember the exact distance it was going to be in total, but I believe it was in excess of ten miles, by no means a guaranteed Death March.

The problem was that the connecting trail was drawn on the map with a dotted line. What I didn’t know at the time is that a dotted line doesn’t mean there’s actually a trail there, but that, in theory, a trail could be placed there if enough government stimulus money was provided and enough bureaucrats sighed off on it. This dotted line also so happened to go over a giant ridge, which I probably would have noticed if I’d have ever taken the time to learn to read topographic maps correctly.

Needless to say, the last three or four miles of that hike were not fun. By that time the mountains were no longer fun to look at, my feet were threatening to go on strike, and I’d lost all interest in cacti, even when two of them were growing next to each other and their appendages made it look like they were engaged in a desperate fist fight. By the time we finished the hike, I was numb and useless, much like I’d watched all three Transformers movies in a row.

There is a upside to Death Marches however, and that is that they’re fun to talk about in retrospect:

“Remember that time we tried to hike way too far and almost died?”
"Yes.”
“That was great! Ha ha!”
“You’re right! Ha ha!”

I mean, nobody remembers the little hikes where nothing happened. You need to attempt interesting hikes to keep it fun, and if it winds up in a Death March, then so be it. It’s just part of the game.

Plus, it’s still better than being stung by a jellyfish.

Fool Loan Turkey And Hay

I’m usually not a big fan of gyms, and don’t really foresee myself ever getting a membership at one. This is mainly because I fear I’d crumble under the pressure of working out in public where everybody could see me and laugh, and I picture myself being thrown across the room by the treadmill or pinned helplessly underneath the weight bar. (Just the bar, mind you, without any weight added to it yet.)

Now, before you say anything, I know that I’m being a bit silly about this. I mean, I realize that I could just show up, stretch a little, sip some Gatorade, and pretend to be waiting for some of the various machines to open up, but that seems like a waste of money just to be able to hang around and be too afraid to talk to any of the girls there.

So, at least for the time being, gyms are out for me.

There is one new gym, however, that I’m ecstatic about. This is because it’s made my life a whole lot easier, even though I’ve never once walked through its doors. It’s located in a strip mall right next to my local Subway. This is advantageous because all of the people working out at the gym fill up the parking lot, which makes it look like Subway is full, and so all of the potential Subway customers turn around and leave because they don’t want to be stuck in what they think must be a ridiculously long line, which most likely contains that one guy ordering eighteen sandwiches, the details of which he wrote down on his arm in pen but which have since smeared terribly, leaving him scratching his head and asking for a “Fool loan turkey and hay on Montgomery chipper?”

The result of this is that once I realized that Subway was never actually filled up, even though it looked like it was, I figured out I could just park way across the lot somewhere, hike over, and pretty much have the entire restaurant all to myself, where I could get in and out in only a couple of minutes.

Pretty good setup, huh?

So, way to go America in your battle against obesity! It’s allowed me even faster access to a wide array of highly caloric foods, especially if I break down and get the cookies! (Mmmmm, M&M cookies…) What a great country!

On a side note, I want to give a shout-out, if that’s still the appropriate “hip” terminology one should be using, to one of the rare customers who was actually in Subway with me recently. It was a lady accompanied by three young boys. They were ahead of me in line, and I was picturing a twenty-minute wait as the boys yelled, punched, kicked, spit, and generally did everything that boys do when they get together, which typically doesn't include ordering a sandwich. The lady, however, graciously told me that I could go in front of her in line, which I greatly appreciated. The boys didn’t seem to mind. They were too busy yelling, punching, kicking, and spitting.

So whoever you were, thanks ma’am! You were as helpful as the gym next door!