FAWET
 

I love camping.

I go camping about once a month, sometimes more often. I usually go camping with our Boy Scout troop, but sometimes not. I’ve been a camper all my life and I really enjoy it. I like being outdoors and I like being away from the hustle and bustle of the big city. I like the company of a few friends and I like the solitude. I like the gear and I like using it. I like the physical effort and I like being self sufficient.

I don’t like packing.

I have plenty of gear (not *too much*, you can always use more gear) and I’m not afraid of modifying it. I regard a lot of what I get from the store as a kit anyway. I used to think that packing was a problem—I hated it. I regularly took *all* the time available to me right up until the night before getting my gear ready. I’m a notorious overpacker. I am a pack rat by nature, I have a really big backpack, and I feel compelled to “Be Prepared” for whatever might happen, and that leads naturally to: Too. Much. Stuff.

But on a recent trip to Vancouver Island, I learned that there’s an actual name for my dallying about trying to perfectly fill my backpack. We were finishing up breakfast one day and getting ready to hit the trail for the next leg of the hike. Naturally, someone’s got to be the last to be ready. But surprise, surprise, it’s not me (anymore). Actually, once I’m out of the house and all my belongings are in the pack I can get ready very quickly. Getting under my pack and on my feet can take a little longer sometimes. Anyhow, while everyone was finishing their meal and getting ready to go, I complained that it was taking a really long time to get ready today. Then I learned this term: FAWET. M, who was already ready, said, “Ah, yes. FAWET.” Huh? F-A-W-E-T, Fucking Around With Equipment Time.

Perfect!

I don’t hate packing, I just love FAWET.

I’ll include in later posts some of the equipment mods I’ve found useful. Tips and tricks of the trail. I’d love to hear about your camping experiences and gear stories. Success and failures alike (failure, when not fatal, can be instructive). What kind of camping do you like? What kind of gear do you use? How do you pack, how do you prepare? How do you eat and sleep? What do you like to do in the woods (besides that)? Let’s hear about your camping trips.

I've done almost exclusively car camping, but did a TON of it in my youth. Hotels were for rich people. Packing is important there too, but less so, because you can take almost everything. Last time we went camping, we took an old tent with a broken zipper to use as a "shed" to hold all our junk like chairs, cook stoves, fire wood, etc. so we wouldn't have to keep moving it around from sleeping tent to car trunk. When not in use, throw the stuff into the broken tent where it will stay dry. Nice.

I've only been backpack camping on maybe three or four occasions, and there you just fill the backpack up with the food, water, clothes, tent, sleeping bags, and maybe equipment if it will fit after all the other stuff.

Best camping memory I ever had was when we parked our VW camper on the dirt road and hiked a mile into the woods to a campsite on a lake in Northern Maine. Because it was such a short hike, we carried the beds from the camper with us. Very comfortable night way out in the middle of nowhere. Didn't even set up the tent as it was a clear night and there were no bugs. First time I saw the Northern Lights. Amazing. Then in the morning walked back to the camper for a hot breakfast.

They really know how to do it in New Zealand. I hiked the Milford Track, which is like 4 days long, but there are huts each night where they feed you and give you hot showers and a bunk bed. Breakfast the next morning and a packed lunch and snack. All you need to carry is clothes, a camera, and that day's lunch. Oh, and they have heated drying rooms where you can hang your wet clothes up for the night if it's been raining.

I LOVE backpacking. Only been once; went to the Colorado Rocky Mountains. I want to go again. But FAWET lasted almost the entire two weeks BEFORE I even left! That's what I get for letting my Dad... a rabid outdoorsman... anywhere NEAR my backpack. He did more fucking around with my equipment than -I- did. :-) Good times... good times.

I've only ever been car camping. And that rarely.

But I certainly do understand FAWET. Playing an instrument, photography, computers, even house projects - anything that requires equipment allows for a good deal of fawet.

I went camping with some friends a few years ago, some state park getting real close to the Upper Peninsula. It was not candy camping; what you took in you took out.

The guy friend (he and his wife were cow orkers of mine) was explaining the principles of packing a backpack...all that stuff that was involved with watching the weight and where you bear the weight etc.

What did I care about? Get my bottle of wine in there, dammit. The second day, I carried my empty wine bottle the couple miles back to the truck and carried in my bottle of wine for that night. It was pretty funny!

I enjoyed it, though. The bear mace was in the middle of camp, but I am pretty fearless about nature stuff and figured at night when I had to go find the hole in the ground you were supposed to use for the bathroom that if a bear wanted to mess with a 40-something bitter newly-divorced woman, well that bear better be damn well prepared. :D

edit: duh...I was late 30s at the time...it was about 5 years ago.

Here's my backpack. It's an REI Wonderland. I chose it first because it fit me well. That's most important. No amount of gear badly carried is worth it. Fit first. Next I chose it because it's HUGE, almost 5000 cubic inches. If I fill it, I can't lift it. The next time, I won't worry about capacity. I also deliberately chose an external frame pack. They're a little heavier empty, but I can shift the weight around more comfortably with the external frame. The pack body rides on the frame and the frame then connects to my hips and shoulders through the hip belt and shoulder straps. An internal frame pack has those same pieces, sure, but the pack is hugging your back. I don't want or need that. I like to have it *off* my back as much as possible. It's cooler that way, and I don't need the more centralized center of gravity. I have a nice North Face internal frame at home--never use it.

The purple straps on the bottom are my own addition. I threaded some one inch nylon straps with fastex buckles through a couple of ladderlocks on one of the crossbars on the frame and snugged them down real tight. Now I have a "trunk". I installed the straps so that the female part of the buckle is on the top, which lets me pull downward on the free part of the strap to tighten. I'll probably have a picture here eventually with something installed in the "trunk".

On the picture I've labeled the main pockets and the regular stuff that goes there. Consistency in packing is rewarded with being able to find stuff easily. Or by feel. I often reach into my pack without getting out of my sleeping bag, and knowing where it was when I put it there is a big help.

Let's see. I went camping once when I was about 5. And then there was that peyote trip in the hills of Mexico in 1973 . . and then there was . . . no, not then . . .

hell, I'm camping now. I'm sleeping on the futon downstairs because my mattress is FUBARd. Another lovely acronym there, BTW!

I bought "Camping for Dummies" 'cause I was thinking I wanted to . . . but it's stayed lonely on my shelf.

Pete and I used to camp and hike a lot... time to check my retirement fund to see if we can drop out early and get back to it. Gah!.. at this rate I should retire quick before it's all gone.

I like camping in my camper, with a toilet, microwave, fridge, running water, and fold-out bed. :D

But DH and I did a lot of "real" camping before we had kids. We'd go down to Red River Gorge in KY and pack in everything, about 3 hours hike uphill and camp on the peak.

Before that I did quite a bit of camping with the Explorers (now called Venturing - it's co-ed Boy Scouts.) And of course Girl Scout camp as a kid.

It amazed me how hard it can be to get the current crop of girls to go camping with the scouts. There might be BUGS! Yikes. But we go with the Cub Scouts twice a year, as a family, in the tent. This is my son's last year as a Cub. (sniffle)

If we did go primitive camping again, we'd need some new equipment!

then there's "summer camp." Ugh. Don't get me started!

I would actually like to learn how/go camping. But I'm such a sissy . . . and I don't have anyone to go with.

I would love to have a camper, which would probably be a good solution for me, but not sure it's feasible.

Sorry, Big V. Don't think this follows your point.

This is how we roll
 

Junie's Camper, vintage 1978:

http://www.wayswriter.com/pam/camp1.jpg

On the inside. I made new curtains to replace the old ones, which were violently orange.

http://www.wayswriter.com/pam/rv-curtains.jpg

Kitchen, with old curtains.

http://www.wayswriter.com/pam/rv-kitchen.jpg

All the comforts of home, very useful for ladies who like to enjoy a few brewskies, and children who have to "go" at 2 a.m.

http://www.wayswriter.com/pam/rv-bath.jpg

Juni, that rig has more space than my appartment in Japan had!
But those orange curtains ... owwch. WTF were people thinking in those days?

It looks in excellent condition for its age. I had a '77 pop-top hiace campervan from '96 to about '99, and it had about half of its stuff broken and had rust holes from one end to another. If I can dig up some scannable pics I'll make a thread about that old beastie. Total piece of crap but I had a lot of good times with it.

We camped for our holidays for years when I was a child. I look back on it and wonder how on earth it was a holiday for Mum! But then things we had to be nagged to do at home, we fell over ourselves to do when camping.

We always camped on sites, so it was hardly rugged outdoor stuff, but we had to fetch water from the standpipes and shower in the camp blocks, so it felt exciting to us as kids. We had a camping stove, and plastic bowls and plates, so everything tasted different too.

It would invariably rain (British summer) so it was just as well we had a big family tent, where we could all sit in folding chairs and read or do word puzzles or whatever the fad was at the time.

As we got older, Mum & Dad could afford more expensive campsites with things like gift shops, amusement arcades (slot machines) a swimming pool and a laundry. For us though, it was still about sleeping under canvas, wearing thermal pyjamas and hearing the rain drum on the tent roof.

We also have a 1984 pop-up that we used for a couple of years, but I need to sew up the top in a few spots, and this is nicer. :)

Here's a closeup of the attachments of the straps to the crossbars of the frame of the pack. Notice I made a connection on two bars so I could secure the load to the pack rather than just having it dangle from a single point. It would be bad to have a big load like that swinging from the bottom of the pack.

pic01 -- top connection

pic02 -- bottom connection