For the most part I live a life where Shirley lets me do as I please.  On top of that my job provides me the flexibility to engage in my hobbies while Shirley is at work and has no idea what I am doing. Fortunately her job keeps her busy enough that she rarely utilizes the find my friends app during the day, because if she did there could be problems were she to discover I am at MVP sportsplex and the Thornapple River more than I am at my office.  Regardless, I still realize that it is special when my entire family leaves for an extended period of time, I would imagine it’s similar to how my life was when I was single, unfortunately that was so long ago I can’t generate any useful memories to help me appreciate how awesome life was without kids.  So, instead I have to base it upon a couple weeks back when Shirley left for the UP with the kids on a Tuesday night.  The next day I played 28 holes of golf with my buddy at Pilgrim’s run, lost $160 to him, broke my 4 and 7 iron, and told him on the way home I was never golfing again.   It was a great day.  (The following Monday before golf league I went to Dick’s sporting goods and picked up a new set of irons, they were half off and the guy asked me if I had tried them out some where else, my response was no should I have?  If you new my wife you would understand where my compulsive purchasing comes from)

On top of the golf I also went skiing the Tuesday night they left to celebrate their departure and make sure I got the most of their absence.  On that Thursday I went up to my buddies cottage and went wake boarding.  On top of all the activities I engaged in, I also slept like a baby, there is something to be said about sleeping in a house alone and I was deeply saddened when it all came to an end, and boy did it.

The reason I couldn’t join them for their trip to the UP was due to a hearing I had on a rape case out of Kalamazoo that Friday.  The case involves three guys allegedly raping a female student in her dorm in 2008, it’s complete bullshit and the alleged victim was a whore according to multiple sources (unfortunately that probably won’t get in at trial).  But that’s not the point of this all, the point is I had to head from Kalamazoo to Drummond Island to meet up with the fam.  We were staying at my buddies place on an Island just off Drummond and I arrived up there around 8pm.  I was immediately accosted by a 10 year old named Reece who for some reason took  a liking to me.  I had met Reece once before when I went for dinner at his parents house, I don’t remember him paying much attention to me that night but for some reason he couldn’t stop asking me question after question.

A common theme of his questioning was regarding my bro top.  One of his first questions was why I wear tank tops, at the time I didn’t respond but it seems fairly obvious, they are as comfortable as a bubble bath and they accentuate my chest hair.  That being said, I don’t particularly care for other people’s kids, to be honest I rarely care for adults and often times have trouble paying attention to what they say, kids have nothing worthwhile to say and as hard as it is for me to fein interest in adults, I don’t even bother trying with kids.  On top of that, I typically give off a vibe that is the opposite of welcoming, but this kid wasn’t getting it and he continued to hound me all weekend with his questions.  One of the highlights was when his parents and I were discussing Universal Studios and how much it suck.   The topic turned to Disney and how they have gone all in on Star Wars.  I said “who cares about Star Wars anymore?  My kids don’t, no one is interested in Star Wars”. Well my buddy Reese was donning a Star Wars swim shirt and standing 18 inches away from me when I made that statement.  Needless to say he went all Chewbacca on my ass, unfortunately it wasn’t enough to deter him from thinking I was the greatest person on the island that weekend.

The problem I have in going on these types of trips is that I am weird, my wiring is a little off and I always have to be doing something (I think my mom is to blame for this, thanks Ardis!). The place we went was set up for sitting around and relaxing, to get to it you had to take a boat from Drummond Island and there were no roads or trails, just a place to dock your boat.  Needless to say I felt trapped, where was I going to go for a run?  Eventually the writing on the wall became clear, I wasn’t going for a run and I was going to have to try and relax and enjoy the nothingness.  This may have been possible had there not been 6 boys on the Island ranging from 18 months to 10 years (Reese).  It was three families and one family (our host) had two boys, 18 months and another one two years older.  None of the older kids wanted to play with the 3 year old because he was a raging ass hole.  He would hit the kids and harass them and then he would flip out because they wouldn’t’ want to play with him.  One of the kids called him a jerk and he started singing “I’m a jerk, I’m a jerk” hopefully his self awareness improves with age.

Now, typically I am all about terrible parenting, but that is only when it makes me feel superior to other parents and has no impact on my actual life.  My buddies parenting style was putting a serious crimp on things.  It was so bad that when we were eating breakfast Aiden said to the entire table “you know what I hate about Sha….” I cut him off before he could reveal it to the entire table.  His brother I nicknamed Rooster because every morning the little fucker would wake up at 7 and start screaming at the top of his lungs waking everyone in the cabin up, what a dick.  One morning Parker started yelling at him to shut up, it told Parker it was pointless the kid is too little to understand that you hate him for what he is doing and it won’t deter his actions.

Having drove up by myself I could leave on Sunday as soon as someone was willing to ferry me over to Drummond Island, everyone could see I was quite antsy to get the hell out of there so my buddy brought me to Drummond fairly early. The original plan was for the kids to ride with Shirley and me to fly solo, however Aiden confided in me that he couldn’t wait to get off the Island either and was eager to return home to his electronics and newly purchased lizard named Oscar (that’s probably another blog).  So, we hit the road about three hours ahead of everyone else.  FREEDOM!

I have blogged more than once about how I despise camping, unfortunately my wife romanticizes her childhood camping experiences and thinks our kids, while being miserable during the actual camping experience, will look back fondly upon it when they are adults just like she does.  That being said, I decided to take one for the team and plan a camping trip to end the summer.  However, this camping trip was going to be on a lake with a slalom course and I was going to bring my boat, it had all the ingredients for  a successful camping trip?

We ended up getting to the campground on Wednesday night.  My father in law pulled the fifth wheel Shirley’s grandparents bought in 1998 with Shirley and the kids.  I drove separately because I was towing my boat and I managed to beat everyone to the campground.  The particular campground we were at was run by Muskegon County so my expectations were tempered to say the least, however it was the only campground right on the lake.  When I arrived I was pleasantly surprised to see the campground was sparsely populated.  There were tents at one end of the campground (the slums) and there were a few campers and fifth wheels at the other end.  However, there was no one in the office and I didn’t remember which lot we were on so we decided to just pick the best one and hope for the best.  (turns out we picked the wrong lot but they let us stay on it anyway)

The weather wasn’t great that night so we didn’t have a campfire but we were able to get set up.  However, Big Al (my father in law) didn’t get one of the front jacks all the way down so anytime I moved around when I was sleeping it felt like the fifth wheel was going to roll over on it’s side.  (Obviously sex was out of the question for a number of reasons but that was one of them). I woke up at 3 am and couldn’t get back to sleep for at least two hours, I was beginning to deeply regret the decision to camp.  The next day the we got up and cooked breakfast and the kids camping acquaintance, who would later go by the nickname Benjamin Button, rolled in to our campsite (he was quite portly) and the kids within minutes of hanging out with him told them he wasn’t their friend and they didn’t like him.  My kids aren’t very discerning so for them not to like someone usually means they are incredibly annoying (I don’t even think Shirley liked him and she likes everyone), and this kid was.  While I was happy that the campground was 40% full the downside was that other kids were not readily available to play with my kids meaning I had to entertain them.

There was a playground that consisted of a slide, a set of monkey bars, and a volleyball court with a net that was 4 and a half feet high (exactly what you would expect from a campground run by muskegon county).  The kids and I along with Benjamin Button took a stab at volleyball ( I bought a volleyball at Walmarts that morning because Parker wanted to play it, or so he said).  The volleyball scrimmage lasted roughly 3 minutes and then it was on to the monkey bars.  Parker was all over them climbing up and down with no problems, Aiden on the other hand has the upper body strength of Manatee and needed my help getting on the monkey bars, the same could be said for Benjamin Button.  He asked me to help him on the bars and there were two things that popped into my head: 1. he’s really fat and looks heavy 2. he’s not my kid.  In a moment of complete lack of foresight I lifted him on to the monkey bars and it was like trying to hoist a bag of concrete over my head.

Benjamin Button would go on to ride his scooter shirtless and shoeless and crash right by our campsite rendering him completely incapacitated but still able to follow us around and bug the shit out of us.  However, the crash would happen after he  stalked our campsite as we were leaving for Silver Lake sand dunes and proceed to hang out by our trailer as we left instead of going back to the slums.    Fortunately he wasn’t there when we got back from silver lake and his family was set to head back to Ohio the next day.  Ultimately I ended up heading back home for the night so I could get a decent nights sleep and retrieve some of the things we needed from home.  I didn’t wake up once during the night and was completely refreshed by the time I returned to the campground. We goofed around a bit more and ended up going fishing with Benjamin Button bothering us the entire time up until his departure back to the Buckeye state.  He actually asked both Parker and Aiden as well as myself  to go back to his tent and get his fishing pole for him because he was too injured to retrieve his rod.  We just ignored him.

With Benjamin Button out of our hair we decided to launch my boat and take advantage of the all sports lake we were camping on.  The weather wasn’t great but that didn’t stop the Jansma’s from tearing it up on the lake.  We first took the kids tubing but they grew  dissatisfied with the tubes in less than ten minutes.  However we also had a wakeboard and knee board on the boat and Aiden was the first one to take a crack at the wakeboard, managing to get up for an extended period of time after three tries.  Parker was next and instantly began to negotiate some type of reward for trying to wakeboard. Being exemplary parents we immediately told him we had a deal and that he could get a toy if he tried.  After three pretty weak attempts he was back in the boat crying about how hard it was.  We decided to bring the boat in and hang out at the campsite hoping that Parker could get a nap in before we hit the Getty 4 (drive in theatre in Muskegon).

Eventually he fell asleep and was down for a couple hours sleeping so long that we ate hobo pies made on the campfire without him.  Ultimately he woke up just as were finishing dinner.  While he was eating the song “Old Town Road” came up for some reason.  I asked Parker how he knew about that song and he said his friend Greyson likes it.  I had never fully listened to the song but thought that one of the lyrics was “going to take my horse to the old hotel, going to ride it until I can’t ride anymore”  due to the fact that I think about sex 99% of the time I figured it was in reference to the singer banging a prostitute at a hotel.  Boy was I off on that one.  On our way to the drive in we attempted to pull it up on youtube and play it on my blue tooth in the car, the lyrics are much more innocuous than I had originally thought and the video is quite solid.  Shirley watched it once an Parker watched it twice.

(The next morning I woke up with Old Town Road in my head and couldn’t get it out, the song is good but not Jonas brothers “sucker for you” good)

The Getty 4 if you haven’t been is like being put into a time capsule, if felt like the late 80’s possibly early 90’s, it was great.  The only problem is they don’t start the movie until it is as dark as your closet with the door shut and lights off, so 9:45 ish this time of year.  This meant that the movie didn’t get done until 11:15, all the movies are double features so we could have gone from Angry birds to Toy Story 4 but instead we went back to the campground quite exhausted, so exhausted that I had a decent nights sleep in the camper.  (on the day of the year with the most sunlight I am guessing the final movie is wrapping up right around dawn)

It was already Saturday (I don’t usually say already about anything when I am camping, it’s usually “it’s finally”) and time was flying by a bit too fast.  I had arranged to ski the slalom course with a guy I knew from the lake and when I got back there was a guy at the beach of the campground who asked if I was out there skiing.  I told him I was just as Shirley rolled up, I asked her if she could pull me bare footing (She had almost killed me once when she pulled me before we were married  so obviously I was desperate for a driver).  She hesitated a bit and the complete stranger piped in saying “I can pull you”.  I responded “sure”.  (you are only going 40mph on water with no skis, what could go wrong?  A lot of things have in the almost 30 years I have been bare footing).  I showed the guy where  the driver’s seat was and we were off, well that’s how I was going to do it, but he suggested he take the boat for a brief spin before he actually pulled me bare footing.  I was hesitant because I didn’t want him creating waves but I decided a test drive was probably in my best interest.  He passed the test drive portion of the exam and ended up pulling me bare footing without any problems.

 

After returning from the barefoot run we made breakfast and then we did what good parents do when kids are disenchanted with something they already have, we bought them something to replace it with.  The tubes were just not working for Aiden and Parker, they were single adult tubes and the kids (and Shirley) wanted the flat two person tubes.  Shirley located an online coupon for one that could be utilized at the Dunham’s in Fremont.  I took the kids with me so that Shirley could tidy up the campsite.  Unfortunately, the Dunhams in Fremont did not have the two person tubes but I was not going to let that stand in the way of my kid’s happiness, I bought a four person flat tube. Game On!  After stopping at Meijers for alcohol, supplies, and Starbucks we headed back to the campground for a delightful afternoon, the kids tubed for six minutes, Aiden wakeboarded, and Parker tried to kneeboard, only this time we didn’t incentivize it so he gave up even quicker than when he tried to wakeboard.  While trailering my boat back to GR in a monsoon the following day wasn’t much fun, the trip was a success, by no means will I agree to buy a camper (that doesn’t mean I won’t come home someday to find one parked in our driveway) but camping once a summer is right up my alley.