The Last Adventurer

On Friday, it rained because even climate change has its moments of weakness. I was happy, because I was sure that the clouds would obscure any meteor viewings. Saturday rolled around, and it was cloudy right up until mid-afternoon. At that point, the sky appeared in its cleanest bluest shine. Around seven, we were relaxing on the couch after a full day of running those errands that keep life mundane. As the last rays of the sun shone through the gigantic building a block away from our apartment, we pondered how we were going to our evening. We had nothing to do. We were supposed to be camping. It looked like we would be lounging on the couch, and watching whatever offerings we had received from Blockbuster.

“What do you want to do?” Pink asked.

“I want to see the meteors” I said, “because we said we were going camping this weekend.”

“Is that what you want to do?”

I hesitated. “Of course. It’s what I want to do because it’s what we wanted to do. But now we’re here – the day’s over – I feel lazy; you feel blah; it’s tough to move.”

“I’m fine going if you want to go.” She said.

We stared at each other for a second. My body was at a complete stop on the couch. It would have been supremely easy not to move again for several hours.

“Let’s go.” I said as I leapt off of the couch to start hastily assembling what we needed.

We decided quickly that since it was already past seven, we weren’t going to Joshua Tree – too much driving, with a high likelihood of not finding a legal place to camp. Instead, we would head out to the Anza-Borrego Desert. We weren’t going to fool around by taking a tent, because we didn’t want to hassle with stakes and poles late at night. We weren’t going to bivy-sack it, because we also didn’t want to deal with a horde of spring tarantulas free climbing our prone bodies while we stargazed. We decided to be glamorous, and sleep in the car.

There was only one problem about car-camping. The problem was that the back seats of the car would have to be carried up to our third-floor porch, because our apartment only had a car-port, and not a garage. For four out of the last five years, we’ve lived on third floors of buildings without elevators. And, at this point in my life, I’m tired of stairs. Sure, taking the stairs burns calories. I’ve found that taking the stairs burns calories, because you have to make an abnormally high number of trips to get things to your residence.

Think about it: if you live on the ground floor, you take your groceries from point A – the car – to Point B – your kitchen over mostly flat terrain. With stairs, I have to take my groceries from Point A – the Car – up Point B – the First Flight of stairs – further up Point C – the second flight of stairs – and even further up Point D – the next flight of stairs – to Point E – the apartment door, where I fumble for my keys – to then Point F – my kitchen. The good news is, I’m burning calories and prolonging my life. The bad news is that the annoyance from having to climb this convoluted route every time I want something is causing a teeny amount of stress, which shortens my life, and we’re not even talking about the collateral effects of so much stair climbing on my knees and back from acting like a pack mule of commercial goods.

Despite my absolute loathing for the vertical ascent and descent, I trudged down to the car, released the catches, and carried the seats upstairs without managing to smash my fingers on the stairwell railing, or crush my toes by losing my grip on the oddly shaped and quite heavy pieces of foam, fabric, and metal. With the chore done, I gingerly opened the front door to see what I had expected: the front room completely covered with a pile of assorted camping equipment. I leapt into the fray, and helped my wife throw together the remaining items we thought we would need, and again, without a complaint, carried it all back down the thirty or so vertical feet.

At this point, we had all of our gear, so all we needed was gas. Once we had our gas, we merged onto the freeway with all of the other smog producing machines and headed East. It had only taken us one hour to go from decision to freeway. I was impressed. Even though it was possible that we had left important things behind, and we didn’t know exactly where we were going, the important thing was that we were on the move. We were on the move to see meteors, because unlike most Saturdays, today, we were being proactive.