Camping...You mean OUTSIDE???

Yeah, for the third time in my adult life I slept outside and for the third time it was a miserable experience.

The first two times I slept outside were part of the "Invisible Children" experience, and it was almost suppose to suck, so I was a bit more tolerable of the aches and pains and cold and inability to sleep. At least during those times it was designed to create empathy for the terrible suffering of men, women, and children who are refugees due to the terrible civil war in Uganda. And believe me, I was empathetic and my experience was not even 1/10th as miserable as it is for the people of Uganda affected daily by the war in their country.

However this third time I was camping at Clinton Lake outside of Lawrence, KS and it started raining at around 3:30am. It was just lightning at first and sprinkling. Eventually though lightning's BFF thunder came and that's when it got unpleasant. Not to mention the unfortunate fact that the storm was now directly over the campsite. I've heard that you can count the seconds between a flash of lightining and the crack of thunder and tell how many miles away the storm is, but there was not time between these "flash-crack" combo's, it was an instantaneous assault. So as soon as you saw the blinding lightning, I mean the brightest I'd ever encountered in my life, the crackling thunder deafened your ears and shook the rest of your body. I just happened to be having a cold, so I was up due to the inability to sleep, so I was terrified the whole time. I was not allowed the luxury of being awakened by a crack of thunder or the blessing of being lulled to sleep by a wondrous thunderstorm. Oh no, when your shelter is a bedsheet thin tent, there is no "wondrous thunderstorm sleep". There is pandemonium-inducing panic. I seriously thought that I could die with every flash of lightning I saw. I couldn't get flat enough to the crown and I am a skinny man. I wanted to curl up in the fetal position (my favorite sleeping position), but I was afraid to out of a fear that I needed to remain as flat as I could.

So this inner struggle of fear goes on as the realities of my situation got worse and worse. My tent had a hole in it, because the owner burned it somehow. So water was slowly accumulating where, if I had been asleep, my head was once at in a corner of the tent. It was spreading to my friend Nick's pillow. A little levity of humor came when I woke him up to tell him to move out of the corner. The thing you gotta know about Nick Robertson is he's a heavy sleeper, and when awaken from slumber is known to be quite comedic. So I told him it was storming and to move his pillow before the hole lead to it getting wet.

Me: Nick, you have to move your pillow or it's gonna get wet, because there's a hole in the tent.
Nick: (very sluggishly) Oh man. (Moves his pillow about three inches and goes back to sleep.)
Me: (shakes head in defeat because Nick's movement is not gonna save his pillow)

So after this I just go lay at the other end of the tent a little curled up like a fetus, but maintaining flatness. Doing this I learned the underneath of our tent was becoming a waterbed. (I didn't like that one bit either.) Watching every flash of lightning, wondering how long it will take before one strikes me dead, and being really thankful that I hadn't passed up my friends tent and been sleeping outside when this downpouring happened. There was a terrible crack of thunder that spread across the sky, so LOUD and so LONG, that I thought cardiac arrest was imminent. And I thought that it was impossible for Nick to be asleep after that. A little while later he woke up and I asked him about it. He said he wished that I had not woken him up because he would've slept through it all. And he kept saying the storm was awesome. I told him, no way, and that the novelty had worn off after 5 minutes. It seriously was so frightening to me. I can't reiterate that enough.

Then Nick and I were talking and hypothesizing and something led Nick to pretend he was scared, so he did a pretend scream. And we both laughed. Two minutes later, his older brother Adam came over in earnest to check on him.
Ad: (concerned) Nick are you alright?
Nick: Yeah.
Me: (shocked and scared for Adam) Adam, what are you doing out of your tent?!?
Ad: I heard Nick scream and came to check on him. (leaves)
Nick: Man it's awesome that this storm is going on.
Me: (laughing) I thought you were gonna say it was awesome that your brother would brave this weather to come see if you were okay.
Nick: (laughing) No, but man that was awesome too.

Then Nick and I were plotting out how long we'd have to lay in this miserable existence, because by this time it was about 4:15am and the storm had been going like this for a half hour. Then Adam comes over and tells us we're leaving and going to Perkins to eat and wait out the storm. So Nick and I scurry out of the tent to the car. Already in the car are Lisa and Jessica, Ad, and John (the only remaining friends at the campsite). So us four guys crammed in the back and rode to Perkins.

I could barely eat because I don't usually have an appettite at 5:30am (imagine that) and so wasted half of my meal (which I hate wasting food, but totally thought I could eat it, that's why I ordered it). Jessica, Lisa, John, and Ad went back to the campsite to tear down and pack up and Nick and I stayed behind (for comfort's sake) at Perkins. Our waiter put us in a corner booth, but Nick had heartburn so we walked to the Kwik Stop across the street for some antacid relief, and then came back and went to sleep in our booth.

I was lightly sleeping, and so heard these two funny unrelated comments about Nick and I:
Old Woman: Looks like this is a hotel now.
Young Woman: These guys are waiting for a ride. That's why they're here.

And also a guy threw a honey packet at my crotch. I woke up and saw him walking away, glancing over his shoulder smiling. Jackass. (Funny factoid: The same guy had harassed me in the bathroom about spitting mucous into the toilet. It sounded like I had just barfed so he was hesitant to go in if there was barf all over the place, but I assured him it was fine, and he laughed and apologized for harassing me, and I laughed and said it was fine. I actually thought it was funny. But not the honey packet to the crotch...okay, a little funny, but I was trying to sleep.)

Then whilst sleeping we got kicked out by the manager, and spent the rest of our time at a Dunn Bros. across the street checking our e-mail on the free internet.

Needless to say, I will NEVER sleep outside again, except for children's sake. If my kids want to ever go camping I'll make them sleep out in the backyard as a trial, and if they like that, then I will consider camping somewhere. But hopefully they will realize that sleeping outside is overrated and while nature is to be enjoyed, obviously nature was not made to be slept in. I mean HELLO: bugs, hard ground, cold, rain, bears, wolves, cougars, cold, hard ground, etc...

I mean maybe the human desire to camp is a product of the Fall of Man.

Ever consider THAT?