Category Archives: Work Camping

Jul14

Clusterf*%k

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When I arrived for work at the parking lot at 11am on the Saturday before Independence Day Weekend, it was already a clusterfuck.

All of the front parking spots were taken. There was a crowd of people milling around my co-worker. Some of the people in the crowd were standing in the roadway and wouldn’t move so I could drive the van through. I had to honk my horn to get them out of the road.

As I slowly drove around the parking lot loop, I didn’t see a single empty parking space. I did, however, see a tent set up in one of the picnic areas. As I tried to decide if I should stop the van in the roadway to talk to the person I could see standing in the tent, an unattended dog trailing its leash trotted across the street in front of me. I decided I did need to find the dog’s person, so I put the van in park and left it right where it was as I went after the dog.

The dog trotted toward the tent, and I called out Is this your dog?

A voice behind me said it was his dog and apologized for letting it get away from him.

As he reached for the dog’s leash, I took the opportunity to call out to the woman in the tent, Camping is not allowed here.

She screeched, We’re leaving! We’re leaving! We didn’t know!

The man behind me echoed her, telling me they didn’t know they couldn’t camp there. That’s when I realized the man and the dog belonged to the woman and the tent.

If the couple had bothered to read the signs near the self-pay station (which I suspect they had conveniently overlooked), they’d have seen the one which reads, “No overnight camping.”

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This is the board near the entrance with the informational signs, including “No overnight camping.”

IMG_3210I got back in my van and continued to look for a parking place. There was nothing. Some people had parked on the edge of the road, just barely leaving space for me to drive the van through. When I tried to tell them it wasn’t such a great idea to park there, they haughtily told me there was plenty of space for other vehicles to pass. I shrugged and hoped they wouldn’t come crying to me if their car was scraped or crunched by a giant truck or massive RV. No one did come crying to me, so everything must have turned out OK.

As I slowly made my way back to the beginning of the loop, I heard a loud cracking noise. I thought someone was shooting off fireworks or maybe firing a gun. I didn’t even try to find out what was going on, but my co-worker did. He told me later he’d heard the noise too and also thought it was fireworks or a gun. He went looking and found a man standing on one of the big boulders in the parking lot, repeatedly cracking a bullwhip. I didn’t think there were any rules against such an activity, but our supervisor told us later it’s considered a projectile and there is a rule against it.

When I got tot he front of the parking lot, I jumped out of my van and told my co-worker there was no place for me to park. I told him I’d put the van in the overflow parking at the nearby campground, then walk back to the main parking lot. He was preternaturally calm in the face of the chaos.

Turns out there was no room in the overflow parking at the campground, and I had to leave my van in the second overflow parking area.

When I got back to the main parking area, my co-worker and I started warning people who drove in that the parking lot probably couldn’t accommodate them, but they could pay us the $5 parking fee on their way to the trail  if they did find a spot. I also warned people not to park anywhere “stupid.”

I found out my co-worker saw the people in the tent when he got to work and had already told them they couldn’t camp there. One thing I still don’t understand is why the tent was up when I arrived at 11am if my co-worker told them no camping when he arrived at 8am. Even if he didn’t talk to them until 9am, it shouldn’t take two hours to take down a tent and pack up a campsite that had been occupied for less than 24 hours.

It seemed like I’d been at work for a long time–talking to people in cars, writing day passes, and collecting fees from people who had found spots to park–when an older lady told me there was a smoking, smouldering campfire near one of the picnic tables. Can you guess which picnic area the campfire was in? Yep, the one where there had earlier been a tent.

I told my co-worker what the woman had told me and said if he’d go check on the fire, I’d take care of the front.

He briskly walked away and quickly returned. The illegitimate campers had gathered rocks and used them to construct a fire ring to contain their illegal fire. However, in their haste to leave, they’d left what remained of their fire smouldering. I don’t think there were any flames, but there was smoke, and presumably embers, which could have been blown away and started a wildfire.

My co-worker grabbed his large Gatorade bottle filled with his beverage of choice and took it to put out the fire. He said when he poured the liquid onto the remains of the fire, there was hissing and more smoke, and the water boiled and bubbled.

He decided to hop on his dirt bike and ride down to the campground to get water out of their tank. He wanted to be sure the fire was “dead out” (as the Forest Service signs say).

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While he went to get more water, cars continued to enter the parking lot.

While I was trying to collect fees and write day passes, a woman approached me and asked where she could go hiking.

I am not a hiker. I enjoy walking on flat ground for about a mile, but the thought of a long, strenuous hike does not excite me. (Once in Utah, friends convinced me to go on a “little hike” with them. We ended up temporarily lost and very hot, and I had a head cold. When one of the friends commented, oh well, none of us are miserable, I raised my hand and declared that indeed, I was miserable.) Because I don’t like to hike, I haven’t really made it a priority to find out where to hike. I figure people who like to hike should do their research before they come out here or get information at a ranger station or buy a mp or find someone who likes to hike to talk to.

I made two hike suggestions to the woman; she’d already done both of them. Since that was the entirety of my hiking information, I hoped the woman would go away, but she did not.  Since I hadn’t  been able to answer her questions, I pulled out a topographical map of the area for her to look at. Of course, she couldn’t just look at the map and make some decisions for herself. She had to ask me if the little tree on the map was a symbol for a sequoia  grove. (After consulting the map key, I said it was.) Then she wanted to know how far it was from this place to that place. (I told her she should find the map’s distance key and consult it.) In between her questions (to which she could have found her own answers), I was hustling back and forth from cars to her. I’m all for helping tourists, but I don’t feel I’m responsible for reading a map for them and telling them which hikes are best when I’ve never been on any of the hikes. (You can bet I wanted to tell the woman to take a hike, but that would have been really rude.)

While I was still trying to satisfy the woman so she’d leave me alone, my co-worker zoomed back into the parking area and went to finish quenching the fire. It occurred to me that while we were working quite literally to put out a fire and keep things in the parking area running smoothly,this woman was insisting I give her information I didn’t even know. I was relieved when she was finally satisfied enough to walk away.

Jul11

Restroom Confusion

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I’ve been promoted to driving the company truck and picking up trash at the nearby group campground and at the parking lot on the days off of the co-worker who is normally responsible for trash detail.

The other day I was getting the trash from the two cans near the restrooms in the parking lot. A man and a woman approached the doors to the restrooms. The man had on a ball cap and a t-shirt and pants of some kind. He was nondescript. The woman I can best describe as citified. If she wasn’t from L.A., she wanted to be. She was one of those women who’s worked so hard to look like Western society’s ideal of a woman that she looks like a drag queen. Or maybe she was a drag queen.

The restrooms in the parking lot do not segregate genders. There’s not a women’s restroom and a men’s restroom. There are two restrooms, both accessible for folks with disabilities and both available to men or women or any other gender variety. The signs have those humanoid figures representing males and females one finds on restrooms. Each restroom displays both the “male” and the “female” humanoid symbols.

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This is the type of sign on the restrooms in the parking lot. (Photo by me.)

The citified woman stood in front of the restrooms and repeated I don’t understand. I don’t understand.

She said something else (that I now don’t remember) which made me realize she didn’t understand the signs and therefore didn’t know which restroom to use.

I piped up helpfully, They’re unisex.

“Unisex” did not seem to be in her vocabulary.

Then the man reached out and tried the handle on the restroom door nearest to him. It did not open.

It’s locked, he told the woman, seemingly perplexed.

That’s probably because someone is in there, I said, still trying to be helpful. You should knock to find out if someone is in there.

Both of them seemed to be ignoring me.

Then the woman tentatively tried to open the other door.

You should knock, I told her before giving up on trying to be helpful.

The woman managed to open the door. She went into the restroom, and the door closed behind her. She immediately came back outside, shaking her head. She said something quietly to the man, and I could tell she was disgusted, but whether by the bad smell or the fact that the toilet was vault style and not a flusher, I don’t know.

At that point I’d collected the trash, so I got in the truck and drove away.

Sometimes I wonder if what appears to be humans acting strangely aren’t actually space aliens confused by our human ways. How  could a human someone not directly arrived from a developing nation have never encountered a unisex restroom? Target stores have unisex restrooms. Even Wal-Marts have unisex restrooms. And why didn’t the man know to knock on the door in order to find out if it was locked because it was in use? Doesn’t everyone know to knock on a locked restroom door?

Space aliens I tell you.

Jul10

Water

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There’s no running water in my campground. There’s no water at the trail head parking lot. There’s no running water at the campground next to the parking lot or at the campground twenty miles up the road. There’s not water on this mountain.

I buy my own drinking water when I go to civilization; I pay thirty cents a gallon from a dispenser in front of a grocery store. There’s a big tank of water on my campsite. The company I work for trucks in that water from campgrounds along the river. It’s safe to drink and I am allowed to drink it, but I don’t like the taste, so I only use it for cleaning and putting out campfires.

Tourists are often shocked when I say there’s no water on the mountain.

Many campers aren’t too surprised that there is no water at the campground. It’s not so uncommon for a remote campground to have no potable water. However, almost everyone who visits or stays at my campground wants to know about the tank.What’s in it? I tell them it’s water for cleaning toilets and putting out fires. Then they want to know if they can use some, even just to wash their hands. I have to tell them no. It’s a complicated legal situation when water is provided to the general public, so I’m not allowed to share. Besides, if I let one group have a little to wash their hands, another group will want some to wash their dishes, and pretty soon I’d have none for cleaning toilets and putting out fires.

People at the trail head often seem flabbergasted when we can’t provide them with water.

One day in the parking lot, a woman and her adult daughter were standing a few feet from me. I overheard part of their conversation.

The mother said to the daughter, something something restroom?

The daughter said, not unless something something.

The mother said, well, I’m sure something something.

The mother looked over at me and asked if we had a water faucet. I said, no ma’am.

She said they just needed to wash their hands.

I said, No ma’am. There’s no water here. There’s no water at the campgrounds in the area.

She looked at me with a confused, pained expression on her face. She clearly did not understand how we could not provide for her liquid needs. She looked at me as if I were speaking in a foreign language. Or lying. Or lying in a foreign language.

One day as I was coming out of the parking lot restroom, a man asked me where the water fountain was. I said we didn’t have one, that there was no water. He asked if there was a faucet where he could fill his water bottle. I told him no, repeated that we had no water in the parking lot. He asked if he could get water at the campground next door. I told him the campground had no water. I told him there was no water on the mountain. He said, interesting, but he didn’t seem to believe me. I think he thought I was lying just to be rude.

My co-worker told me on a recent weekend morning a woman rode up to the parking lot on a bicycle. He said she looked tired, hot, and thirsty. She asked him for water. He told her there was not water available in the area. She went from car to car asking people for water. Someone finally gave her two bottles.

Sometimes when people ask me where they can get water, I tell them they can drive fifteen miles to the nearest general store and buy drinking water there. The way folks look at me, I know they’re thinking, you’ve got to be kidding.

I get it. Until I started living in the rural Southwest, it never occurred to me that Americans in the 21st century lived without running water. I thought everyone got their water right from the tap. Turns out it doesn’t always work that way. Lots of people have to haul water for drinking and bathing and washing dishes.

Sometimes when tourists ask about water here, I tell them how once there was water on the mountain, but now there’s not. Weird, isn’t it, I ask them, that one day there could be water and the next day nothing?

It’s a concept city people really should think on.

Jul8

He Was Just…Odd

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The other morning a family came off the trail. I believe they were a father, a mother, and a young adult daughter. I have no recollection of what the man looked like. Both women were average size; both were pale and freckled; and both had bangs and long, straight hair down nearly to their waists. On second thought, they could have been sisters, but I feel confident they were related.

They approached me and had some questions I couldn’t answer, things like which tree on the trail was the tallest and which one was the biggest around. That information is not included in the brochure we give visitors, so I sure as hell don’t know.

As their questioning ended, my co-worker returned from whatever he’d been doing, and the older woman said, I just wanted to let you know…We saw a man on the trail, and he was just…odd.

My co-worker and I looked at her with great interest. An odd man on the trail? Such a situation could add some excitement to our day.

I told him good morning…,she trailed off, not telling us if he had responded by ignoring her or telling her to go fuck her mother or in some way between the two extremes.

My co-worker and I waited for her to describe some odd behavior.

He had grey hair in a ponytail and a beard, and he was wearing a white shirt, she went on (un)helpfully.

Maybe he had come from the campground and was just out for a morning walk, she speculated, still not explaining what she found so odd about the guy.

Then the man (husband? father? brother-in-law?) with the women said that as the guy walked over the bridge, he had hit on the railings.

This behavior did not strike me as odd. Unusual perhaps, but not really odd. There was no report that the man was talking to himself or invisible others. They didn’t say he was fighting invisible monsters/mobsters/dragons/aliens. They didn’t complain that the man was exposing his genitals. What was so odd about him?

We just wanted to let you know…He was just…odd.

Had these people never been to a city, never seen any real oddness?

They certainly didn’t realize that my co-worker and I are probably two of the oddest characters they’ve ever met. We’ve just learned to hide it pretty well during short, public encounters.

I spent the rest of the day hoping the odd man would emerge from the trees so I could meet him, but I never noticed anyone fitting his description.

Jul7

Bill Clinton, Rude Lesbians, and a Hypocrite

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Surprisingly, my time at the parking lot ended as it started, with some guy trying to talk to me about Bill Clinton.

The first guy was waiting for the rest of his party to meet him at the front of the parking area when he started telling me that in his opinion Bill Clinton had included too much land in the national monument, protected too many trees from logging. While I’m not fan of Bill Clinton (or any other President, politician, or pork barrel so-and-so), I am a big fan of trees, and I didn’t give a rat’s ass about why this guy thought folks should be allowed to cut down more of them. Luckily, a car pulled in, and I jumped up to help them, effectively truncating the guy’s impending rant.

At the end of the day, a group walked up to the front to pay their parking fee. (When they’d pulled in, I didn’t know if they’d have space to park, so I told them to pay after they’d found a place for their giant truck.) I’d already packed my chair and my backpack into the van, so I showed them the self pay envelopes and where to drop theirs once they’d put the money in.

The old man with the group looked at me and said, Were you here 18 or 20 years ago when Bill Clinton….

I interrupted him and said, Nope. I wasn’t here. I’m not from California. I’d never even been to California twenty years ago.

My rambling left the guy momentarily speechless, and I jumped into my van and made my escape.

I. Do. Not. Want. To. Discuss. Bill. Clinton.

In between the two Bill Clinton guys, I had two cars of rude lesbians. No, I did not witness these women engaged in any sapphic activities. However, I’ve spent enough of my life drinking at lesbian bars (RIP Charlene’s), going to lesbian potlucks, reading lesbian literature, and hanging out with lesbians searching for some sapphic activity to have a pretty good idea of what side of the fence these women were on.

The passenger in the first car interrupted my information spiel to ask if I could renew their campground car pass. I said no, that their camp host would have to do it. She told me in a snotty little tone that their campground didn’t have a host. I said she’d have to wait for a patrol person so do it because I couldn’t renew it.

When I tried to resume my information spiel, the driver said in an angry voice, I know all that! I’ve been here many times!

Ok, great, I said, handing her the day pass and trail guide and walking off.

Seems like if she’d been there many times, she wouldn’t have had to holler at me halfway across the parking lot five minutes later, asking if there were restrooms on the trail.

I said no, that the only restrooms were in the little house in the middle of the parking lot.

She yelled back, saying she knew about those restrooms, but wondered if there were any on the trail.

I just said no ma’am, and left it at that.

The women in the second lesbian car were not verbally rude, but they tried to zip around another car whose driver was paying the parking fee. Such attempted zipping around seems like an act of aggression to me. Even if they didn’t know I was collecting a fee (and plenty of people figure it out by stopping long enough to read the sign which states the fee), even if they thought I was just shooting the shit with the people in the car ahead of them, they should have waited for me to wave them on if I had no business to conduct with them.

The hypocrite was in one of the last vehicles I collected a fee from. He was driving a big truck, and between him and the passenger, I saw a tall piece of clear plastic which looked to me like the pitcher of a blender. I thought it was some sort of trucker blender one could plug into the cigarette lighter and use to blend on the road.

Are y’all making margaritas in here? I teased.

The driver and the passenger both seemed confused.

Is that a blender? I asked.

Turns out it was a lantern, hence the tall piece of clear plastic. The lantern’s battery had run out the night before, so it was plugged into the cigarette lighter (at least I’d gotten that much right), charging.

Oh, I thought y’all were making margaritas in here, I joked again.

We don’t drink, he said, and I thought oh great, I’ve stuck my foot in my big ol’ mouth again. Then he added, We’re Christians, the implication being (I guess) that real Christians don’t drink alcohol.

As all this talking was going on, he’d handed me a $10 bill, and I was trying to hand him back a five. When I pulled out the five, three more came halfway out with it, making it look like I might hand him $20 in exchange for his $10 bill. I said oops! and shoved the extra fives back into my little accordion file.

That’s when the man showed his true colors and said something about how he’d keep those extra fives if I handed them to him.

I said, No you wouldn’t because you’re a Christian. If I gave you too much change, you would return it to me.

The he tried to say he meant he would keep the extra money if I gave it to him freely. (I didn’t think in the moment to tell him that the money wasn’t mine to give away, so if I gave it to him, it would still be stealing.)

Give me an honest drunk over a Christian with selective morals any day.

To read more about the parking lot, go here: http://www.rubbertrampartist.com/2015/06/09/parking/ and here: http://www.rubbertrampartist.com/2015/06/13/wackadoodles-in-the-parking-lot/.

Jul5

Some People Are Just Idiots

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IMG_3178Today I gave two of the restrooms in my campground a scrub down cleaning.

I was at it at a little after six in the morning. The first thing I did in each restroom was use a big garbage bag to cover the toilet paper so it wouldn’t get soggy. Next I used soapy water and my brand new scrub brush to thoroughly clean the toilet (lid, seat, risers), the floors, the walls. The insides of the toilets were still pretty clean after the scrubbing I gave them a few days before, but I swished the toilet brush around inside and made sure everything looked really good. Then I hauled a bucket of water for each restroom, sloshed the toilet, floors, and walls to rinse away the suds from the Micro-Muscle cleaner.

I swept out the water as best I could, but the floors were still wet and slippery. I left the restroom doors open to help with the drying process, but set my bucket in one of the doorways and propped my broom diagonally to block the other.

IMG_3176If you were staying in a campground and walked up on a restroom with an obstacle in the doorway, a wet floor, and black plastic covering the toilet paper, what might you think? Might you think you should use the restroom on the other side of the campground? And if you didn’t know the location of another restroom might you ask the camp host–who was outside puttering around on her own campsite–where you might find another restroom?

Not my campers. Oh no.

Four of the seven people staying on the side of the campground with the toilets I’d scrubbed not only bypassed the obstacles in the doorways, but moved them completely in order to close the door. Four people also moved the black plastic over the toilet paper. Not a single one asked me if there was another restroom to use.

The only conclusion I can draw is that these people are idiots.

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(These are one set of restrooms in my campground. I took these photos.)

 

Jul4

Wet Dog

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This incident took place several weeks ago, before I moved to my campground, when I was still filling in at the larger campground.

I made it back to the campground on the afternoon of my second day off ten minutes before the snow started. Twenty minutes after the snow started falling, there was a dusting on the ground and on the branches of the trees. After that, the eerie fog rolled in. I turned on my little propane heater and read for a while before going to sleep.

In the morning, the sky stayed grey, and the fog clung to the tops of the tall trees. The air was cold even after the snow melted, and I did my paperwork while sitting close to the heater.

Around three o’clock, I felt like a pretzel with cabin fever after spending hours curled up on myself in the van. I put my jacket on over my uniform (which was on over my long underwear) and went to sweep restrooms.

I was working on the four-plex of vault toilets near the front of the campground. I’d done the two women’s toilets  and had just walked around to the other side to do the men’s. I looked across the small concrete porch to the other side of the building and saw a…creature…looking at me.

The fog had me on edge already, and I didn’t think there were any campers in the campground, so my brain didn’t immediately register the grey, fluffy-headed, pointed-eared creature as “dog.” My brain sort of thought “bear” and sort of though”Ewok,” but mostly thought “SURPRISE!” I yelled, not a full-on blood-curdling scream, but a yell loud enough to alert the dog’s person.

The woman came over. I blamed my edginess on the fog, which was true. I also told her I didn’t realize anyone was in the campground. She said they’d only been there about ten minutes. I complemented her on their tent assembling skill, because their tent was already up.

The woman told me she was there with her husband. They only lived about twenty-five miles away, but it was their anniversary, and they’d decided to go camping to celebrate.

People are different, and thank goodness for that. (One of my dad’s right-on little nuggets of wisdom is If everybody liked the same thing, there wouldn’t be enough to go around.) But if I were having an anniversary, I would not want to spend it in a tent in a wet, muddy, cold, foggy campground. (I’m more the comfy warm bed type.)

I asked her about the dog’s parentage. He was mostly husky, she said, but his father had been part timber wolf. He was a big, grey, handsome, friendly dog. He was running around the otherwise deserted campground, and it was beautiful to see. He was one of those dogs that is just a natural athlete.

He particularly enjoyed running alongside the golf cart as I drove. He ran with me when I went to the group site area to sweep the restrooms there. I could see how wet he was from running through the soggy meadow and moving through the misty air.

I wondered how those people were going to have anniversary sex with a big, wet dog in the tent with them. For the sake of their marriage, I hope he spent the night in the truck.

The fog had me on edge...(This photo by me.)

The fog had me on edge…(This photo by me.)

Jun30

Grow Up

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I went to clean the fire ring on site #6 after the campers left.

In addition to a fire ring, each campsite has a sort of raised grill made from concrete and heavy bars of metal.

On the concrete of the grill on site #6, someone had used a bit of burnt, blackened wood to draw a penis (complete with testicles). I was so mad!

The campers who’d just stayed there were in their late teens or early 20s, but drawing male genitalia in a public space is very immature behavior.

And now I had to clean it up.

Actually, cleaning it wasn’t all that difficult. I sprayed toilet cleaner on it three times (ok, that might have been overkill), then splashed on some water, and the unwanted penis melted away.

Later my co-worker came over to get some information on these very same campers. I’d been on my day off when the campers arrived, so my co-worker had checked them in. She’d forgotten to put some information on the permit and wanted to get it from my reservation sheet.

I told her what they’d done, and we shared some can you believe these people commiseration.

Then I saw on the permit that she’d written the street address of the person who’d made the reservation.

I should write them a letter, I fumed. Ultimately, I decided I’d probably get in trouble for writing them a letter. It’s probably not in my job description to chastise campers for leaving easily washed off graffiti.

But if I had written a letter, this is what I’d have said:

Dear Campers of Site #6,

I found the penis drawing you left on your campsite. Ha. Ha. It was so not funny. What are you, eleven years old? You all appeared to be adults, but at least one of you has the mentality of a naughty child.

Did you think you were going to shock me? You know, I’ve seen drawings of penises before. I’ve seen photographs too. I’ve even seen penises in real life! I was not shocked.

But I was mad! Didn’t you think someone would have to clean off your drawing? Even if I didn’t care about a penis drawn on a campsite (and honestly, I’m not even scandalized), my boss wouldn’t let me leave it there. So even though it wasn’t difficult for me to clean, you were childish to leave a mess you know someone else would have to deal with.

Did you come to the woods to draw penis graffiti? Couldn’t you have done that in the city and saved yourselves some time and gasoline?

I’ve got two words for you, site #6 campers. Grow. Up.

Sincerely,

Your Camp Host

(My biggest regret is that I didn’t take a photo of that penis drawing before I washed it away.)

Jun28

Working Conditions

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These are two signs hanging in my campground:

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How’s that for workplace safety awareness?

My favorite part of the plague warning sign is #1 below.

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How exactly should I avoid animal fleas (other than by not camping, resting, or sleeping near animal burrow)? Should I buy a human size flea collar and fasten it around my neck? Perhaps a better idea would be two large flea collars, one fastened around each ankle. More importantly, is contracting the plague a work-related accident? Will workers’ comp cover that? How about being mauled by a bear? Will workers’ comp cover that?

If I had a shop steward to turn to, you can bet I would be asking these questions.

Jun22

Guess What I Did…

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Guess what I did this morning before breakfast.

Go on, guess.

Ok, I’ll tell you.

This morning before breakfast, I cleaned human feces off restroom walls.

Unless you are extremely squeamish, go ahead and keep reading. I won’t get too graphic, and there are no photos. It’s really not that big of a deal, except it was my first time, and you know, the first time’s always special.

It was before 6:30 this morning when I went to clean the restrooms. It should have just been a sweep and hang (the “hang” referring to adding full rolls of toilet paper to the holder), but when I lifted the lid of the first toilet, I found evidence that someone had experienced some gastrointestinal distress in the night. Bummer. I was going to have to do a little more work than I’d expected, but no huge big deal.

So I swept the floor and put out a new roll of toilet paper. Then I collected cleaners and hauled a bucket of water from the tank on my campsite. I cleaned everything up and moved on.

One might think a camper would have only one bout of explosive diarrhea in one night. One might think that if a camper had more than one bout of explosive diarrhea in one night, the camper would try to keep the mess contained and stick to using one toilet. One would be wrong.

Wrong. Wrong. Wrong. Wrong.

When I went into the second restroom, I found signs of gastrointestinal distress on the floor, on the outside of the toilet, on the two walls closest to the toilet. Gag!

But I did my job and cleaned everything all spic and span.

If the person was sick last night, I have sincere sympathy and hope s/he gets better soon.

If the person was drunk, I hope s/he has a hell of a hangover.

Of course, this situation could be karmic retribution for something I (or someone in my party) left behind in a restroom for a camp host to clean up.

My co-worker says I’ve been initiated, and I’m a real camp host now.

(Written June 21, 2015)