Slackin’ on the updates again.  Actually I kind of took last week off.  Off from web site updates, off from the diet, off from the gym… just “off”.  I should have rounded things out by taking off from work, but I didn’t want to get too carried away.  Not that the site has been truly idle; I upgraded the webserver to 256 Meg of RAM, and have been giving a rather half-hearted effort at installing PHP.  The RAM works great… the PHP… not so great.  Not really sure what I’d do with it anyway.

Well, as briefly alluded to on the message board, about the most interesting thing we’ve done in the last few weeks was a camping trip to Smithville over the holiday weekend.  Not much of a “trip”, sure, but camping all the same.  We pulled into the campground on July 4th, got a good spot, and pitched the tent.  The tent, see, was kind of pivotal to the whole trip; Doni was getting a bit upset that we’ve had this super-duper tent for three years now and she’s never even seen it.  It’s primary function is Float Trip, it’s not meant for such banal trips as 45 minutes north of the house.  Given that, and the fact that it is the middle of summer, I wasn’t really too concerned when Doni INSISTED on not putting on the rainfly.  “It will make it cooler inside” she says.  Being something of a veteran outdoorsman, I gave her the “always be prepared” speech, and a short lecture on the unpredictability of nature.  But oh, no, she was adamant.  “At least let me put a few stakes in the ground,” I pleaded, but she would not be swayed.  So, with grave misgivings, I left it in it’s half-complete state and we headed out for a day of sun and fun on the S.S. Schmartin.  (The popular moniker for the fine vessel co-owned by Schmidt and Martin.)  It was a great day on the lake, and after watching a rather spectacular fireworks display over the dam, the Martins took us back and dropped us at the camp.  It was rather early morning hours at this point, but still I took a moment to plead with the Martins and Doni; “C’mon, help me put on this rain fly and put out some of the guy lines.  It’ll only take a second and I’d feel a lot safer.”  But ohhhhh no, nobody would listen to ol’ Phil.  At exactly 3:00 a.m. I was awakened by a few gentle sprays of very cold water on my face.  “Rats,” I thought, “Left the windows down.  Well, no problem, the Alaskan Guide can easily withstand this little sprinkle.”  By this time the water had awoken Doni too.  We were zipping up the windows, and I took a moment to point out “See, I told you we shoulda put on the…”  WHAM!!!!  We get hit from nowhere with a wall of water that looked like something out of a sci-fi movie.  Then the deafening thunder kicked in, and the wind kicked up like nothing I’d ever been in.  The tent instantly was completely flattened on the west side, and we were taking water like a swamped boat.  Doni toughed it out for about 8 seconds, then bailed for the Civic.  I could hear her screaming from the car, “C’MON, LET’S GET OUT OF HERE!!!”  Through the freezing cold rain, blinding lightning, gale-force winds and deafening thunder, (and quite possibly hail… it sure hurt but it might have just been big raindrops) I managed to gasp out “No… you go… I gotta… save… the tent.”  The last I saw her, she was driving off through the wreckage of flat tents and tumbling lawn chairs, heading off to bunk at the Martin’s house while I hunkered down in an ever-deepening pool of water.  Well, to sum it up, the tent didn’t fare too well.  While it survived better than any other tent in the immediate vicinity, it was in less-than-ideal condition to say the least.  Several of the poles came apart, and the shape of it was quite sad.  And the water… ohhhhhh, the water.  I don’t know how it all got in the tent, but it wasn’t coming back out so easily.  All-in-all though, there was no permanent damage.  Nothing a few hours in the sun couldn’t fix.  Doni came back to get my battered carcass in the morning, and the rest was history.  Moral of the story?  Always, always, always, put on the rain fly, and at least a few obligitory stakes and guy lines.

**DISCLAIMER:  The author of the above may have taken liberty with a few details of the story in order to 1) protect his or her already-shaky reputation as a camper and 2) make for more interesting literature.  It is up to the discretion of the reader to determine which parts may or may not have been contrived.