Wednesday, March 31, 2010

Blogging In The Rain

So I promised to make an update on the weekend camping in the rain, but I never did. I also promised to make an update on my epic struggle with Home Depot, and I never did this either. Events and circumstances conspired against me in fulfilling these promises. The event was an offer tendered to buy our house which has been on the market for over two years. This was something of a distraction. The circumstances were that I occasionally undergo bouts of adult attention deficit disorder, and am also somewhat indolent by inclination. I get to these things when it amuses me to tend to them.

So about that camping trip; it was a blast as I might have expected. I am pleased to report that the rain was mostly intermittent during the weekend, mostly at night after I had taken shelter snuggled in my fifteen degree sleeping bag and reclining in my new Hennessey Hammock. The weekend was a fitting out experience of sorts; both the bag and the hammock were new gear that I was using in the woods for the first time. I found that setting up the hammock for the very first time under a drizzling sky in the middle of the night was probably not the best informed decision I have ever made, but I managed nonetheless. However, I have a confession to make. This camping trip was actually a training session for Leave No Trace (I am now a certified Leave No Trace Trainer, Huzzah!). But during that first night, as the midnight hour drew near and I was fumbling in the dark with the lines on my hammock, I inadvertently set it up directly over a thorny vine (we call these ‘saw briars’ here in the southern heartland). My dilemma involved moving the hammock to yet another set of trees in the darkness (this was my second site) or leaving a trace by cutting the briar. I will leave it to your imagination which choice I made.

The extra-warm sleeping bag I was using for the first time offered its own challenges. Ordinarily I would use a mat underneath a sleeping bag for insulation purposes. Since this was the first time I slept in the hammock, I had not taken the precaution of bringing a sleeping pad on this trip. This was a mistake. For all those campers who plan on sleeping in a hammock in cold weather, if you do not have an insulating pad, you will get cold eventually (even if your bag is rated for 15 degrees). The first night I got cold about 2:00 in the morning and slept fitfully afterwards. The second night I was lucky in that I did not get cold until 4:00 in the morning and slept fitfully afterwards. Fortunately, the rain fly over the hammock functioned like a dream and I stayed nice and dry inside my digs in spite of the overnight showers.

I was also trying out a new rain suit on this trip. The suit was ‘FroggToggs’ and shed the rain quite nicely thank you. I wore a pair of rubber boot all weekend long which was handy since I spent much of the weekend standing about in mud and water above the ankles. They were not insulated, so eventually my feet got cold as the wool socks I was wearing began to get damp with perspiration and condensation. But what would the fun of camping be if not for a few adverse moments?

So what did I learn about leaving no trace? Lots of stuff; more things than I can reasonably relate in a single blog; perhaps I will devote more time to the details in smaller doses as time progresses. The most important lesson from my perspective was a reinforcement of a set of values that I already had. My personal sense of spirituality derives in large part from my love of the outdoors and the environment. Spending a weekend considering the means of preserving that environment unspoiled was a devotional moment; the cold and rain and mud and comradeship of likeminded fellow travelers were nothing less than unique facets on a rough diamond.

But enough of my amystical post neo-pagan views (I have long resolved to keep my religion to myself because I consider spirituality similar to sexuality; personal and not generally a topic for public discussion). I promised an epilog of the door drama, and the epilog you shall have. When last I wrote about my struggles with Home Depot, I was negotiating with the store manager for an alternative installation date. During the middle of this negotiation process, the offer to buy the house arrived and changed our plans somewhat. Originally our family planned to travel to Hometown to visit the Grandparents on the weekend of the 27th, but since the home inspection was now scheduled for that date I asked for the installation to occur at the same time. I could kill two proverbial birds with one metaphorical stone.

It is important in my view always to accentuate the positive when there is opportunity, so I will say that the contractor retained to install the door arrived on time. Also, the door is now fully installed and looks good.

So now that I have said good things about this experience, I feel at more at liberty to give voice to some bitterness I harbor over the installation process. I have two major objections in mind. First, the contractor arrived with the correct size door, but without any of the hardware that goes with a door such as door knob, lock, etc. His strategy was to remove the hardware from the old door that was to be removed, and this would have worked fine had not the original door been kicked in during a burglary. The kick unfortunately damaged the bolt for the doorknob, and in the process of trying to repair it, the contractor lost one of the pieces. He scratched his head and advised me in a down-home folksy sort of way that I would need to make sure the replacement part I purchased at my earliest convenience should be manufactured by Schlage so that it would match the undamaged parts that he had cannibalized and was condescending to install in the new door. Since by this time it was mid afternoon, and I had a ravenous eleven-year old boy with me who was in desperate need of feeding, I let the opportunity for one of my famously caustic replies pass with merely a grim smile. Next, the contractor chatted with me cheerfully about how the manufacturer had sent the wrong sized door on the previous occasion, and how annoying that must have been to drive all the way from Lexington, all the while assembling on my basement floor a large pile of dust, debris, broken glass and scrap wood with bent and rusted nails jutting menacingly all around. It dawned on me fairly quickly that the friendly contractor with such sensitivity to that which is irksome in the customer service process had every intention of leaving this pile behind for me to deal with. To quote Hamlet, “Oh my prophetic soul!” The contractor smiled and waved as he drove away. I didn’t bother returning the compliment; I only gave him another grim smile.

That afternoon I returned to Lexington after feeding Primo at the Old Country Store. The next day I returned to Northern Kentucky (my third trip for this one door installation) to purchase and install the door bolt on the new door, and to clean up the mess left by the Happy Contractor.

Did I mention that I would never do business with Home Depot again?

2 comments:

  1. And here's a little bit of irony that I hope you will find on the amusing side. On a couple of occasions when I have visited one of the Home Depot stores in my area, I have noticed that some of the employees display on their vests badges indicating that are knowledgeable and/or proficient in certain departments of the store.

    Said badges are made of embroidered cloth, and are roughly the same size as Boy Scout merit badges.

    ReplyDelete
  2. And no, I promise you, this is not an April Fools Day joke.

    ReplyDelete