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

An area with almost unlimited fawet potential is cooking. I'm camping this weekend and I've volunteered to cook for our patrol. I'll be making seven meals for six to twelve people (for some meals we'll have guests).

Here's the menu:

Friday lunch (9): Chicken curry salad sandwiches, dried fruit, coffee, juice.

Friday dinner (12): Tomato soup, sourdough bread, green salad, baked silver salmon with cherry tomatoes, coffee and vanilla instant ice cream, coffee, juice

Saturday breakfast (9): Breakfast burritos with scrambled eggs, sausage, green onions and sweet onions, yellow and orange bell peppers, coffee, juice.

Saturday lunch (9): Pilot bread, cheese, hard salami, vegetable tray, coffee, juice.

Saturday dinner (6): Vegetable soup, crusty bread, shepherd's pie, fudge brownies, coffee, juice.

Sunday Breakfast (6): Oatmeal with nuts, cranberries, honey, brown sugar, butter, sausage, coffee, juice.

Sunday Lunch (9): Cold cut wraps, ham and turkey with pesto or cream cheese, dried fruit, coffee, juice.

I'll pre-prepare as much of the ingredients as I can. The chicken curry salad will be made at home and transported in a big ziploc bag and stored on ice in a cooler for assembly at lunch. I'll do this same thing with the dinner salad (bagged salad), the wraps (all prepackaged, more assembly than cooking). The dinners will be cooked though. I'm a little anxious about that prospect. I'll be baking in dutch ovens, but no charcoal, only monster propane stoves (car camping scale gear). And I have a very short timeframe to get the food ready. That's why the lunches for example are fix eat and go. The coffee will probably take the longest.

So, gear fawet... I'll need (for example, working through a meal)

a big stove for the main courses -- salmon two dutch ovens, two burners on the big stove

a campstove for coffee
and a ten tin

a campstove for soup -- can I use them sequentially? No, I'll want coffee with my dinner.
and a pot for the soup

two one gallon jugs for the juice -- wait, divide the juice mix so I can get away with only one one gal jug. good. divide and ziploc.

teflon wok for ice cream -- don't forget secret ingredient from Central Welding Supply, and gloves and goggles/safety glasses

big bowl to serve salad

cutting board to cut bread, prepare sandwiches. what about using the top of the coolers, covered with .. with.. foil / paper towels

ok, paper towels, foil, serving spoons, tongs, TRASH BAGS, could use a handful of ten tins for water carrying, salad serving, soup prep / serving... bring nesting pots and pot lids pot grabbers...

I think this will be enough for me to organize the mountain of food in the kitchen.

Wow. I want to go camping with you.

Count me in too! :D

I enjyoy cooking myself, but in my kitchen - and usually for one or two persons.
Respect for your enterprise, BigV & good luck.

Here's my indispensable tea brewing equipment when I'm on holidays, usually up some hill or mountain,
sometimes in the city parks and once in a telephone booth during a heavy downpour.

We have not used it much -which did not keep the tent stakes from disappearing- but we have a big White Stag canvas tent. It encourages one to explore the outdoors because it gets so stifling inside and I suppose that's good. We have little other equipment left but can't seem to give up our tent. Reading the posts make me want to to camp again. Guess it's time to cure that by re-reading Bryson's A Walk in the Woods. ;)

Always buy combination tools, so if you lose one, you've lost it all. :lol2:

Nice timing on the topic! Going camping this next weekend. Three days/nights. No backpacking, traveling by car. 7 people - two adults, 1 20yr old, 3 12yr olds, one three yr old and one dog. We'll be staying here and tubing down the Ichetucknee River on Saturday. Playing in the headspring and hiking the nature trail on Sunday. It's my version of a birthday party for my D12 and my partner (both have birthdays in the next 10 days).

I lost custody of all my camping gear in my divorce 8 years ago, so I've had to replace it all in order to do this trip. Ok, some I borrowed...Bought two Coleman tents on Ebay, camp chairs, fire grate, sleeping bags and borrowed the Coleman stove and some lamps. Went to a thrift store and bought throw-away pots and pans and a tea kettle.

The plan is to put up the two tents facing each other, placing a tarp over the opening between them, then putting the chairs under that. We'll do a combination of campfire and stove cooking. The dog will be staked out nearby with just enough rope that he can reach us but not drag down the tents or get into the fire (he's hyper and stupid).

I'm not obsessive about camping - ie: doing everything correctly or a certain way. I want to have fun mostly, away from tv's, computers, phones, and routine work.

We'll see how it goes this time...

I love camping. I learned a lot of survival stuff in my years in the military. We "camped", if you can call it that.

My wife and I tent camped when we first met. And I camped by myself before that. Later in life we got a great poptop coleman camper for the family and took the kids camping often in their earlier years. Later I did more survival style camping with the Army and learned an appreciation for backwoods arts and how to do with nothing or less. But on that note I still overpack when I go to the woods by myself now.

When we camped also ate lot of soup. Packet soup, but it was the 70s and people thought additives were a good thing. At home we never had starters (entrees?) but on holiday it was always a bowl of soup and a couple slices of bread before dinner.

We were active kids at home, but swarming over a campsite playground or running shrieking up and down a beach or just for cover when it next rained (and even walking to the toilet block numerous times a day) were things that needed extra fuel in our bellies.

We used to have a big bag for water. When my sis and I went to the standpipe we'd do our best to fill it with as much as we could, and struggle gamely back to the tent. Dads would always fill it to the top on his late evening water collection, sigh - daddies are so strong. It had a tap on it, which we all delighted in turning, making things like cleaning teeth exciting.

My backpacking days are pretty much beind me, but in the 80's, we did quite a lot of it. My best trip was with my then-wife, my best pal Dan (jarfmon), and my friend Glenn and his then-wife. We did five days in the Sawtooth Wilderness, departing from the Powerplant Campground in Atlanta, Idaho, and working our way up to Leggit Lake.



It was probably a good one day hike, about eight miles and about 3,000 feet uphill...the last quarter mile to the lake itself rising 650' over broken rock. We could have made better time, I think, but it started raining as soon as we got out of the cars, and it poured like mad. We made the first decent elevation change, but it was slogging all the way, and by the time we got to the first good camping area, we were sodden to the core. We pitched camp halfassed and slept, then spent the next day drying everything out around the fire, and started over. Its a decent story, one I should write, I guess.

We also did a lot of Missouri backpacking the Mark Twain National Forest back in the day. My normal camping experience was car camping for years and years, but age and hard ground persuaded us to buy a popup camper ten years ago.

Still love the outdoors, though. Probably the biggest reason Paganism makes so much sense to me, in fact.

Posted without explanation:

Annotated:

I was gonna comment on the thread since I have spent over two years of my life in total camping, canoe, bike, hike, car, all the permutations.
I used to love it and now it fills me with dread.

We went last weekend and I had an epiphany:

For the last decade all my work either carpentry, photography, or gaffing has involved FAWET to an order of magnitude greater than any camping trip I've ever been on. Now on my time off I want to sit in a place like Scriveyn's photo and have someone hand me a cup of tea and then take the empty cup away.

The sad part is that I used to LOVE FAWET and I am an inveterte gear head. I
m just tired. I
m sure I'll like it again someday.

Experienced camper--check.
Recent camping experience--check.
Tea drinker--check.
Sublime sense of humor--check.

Friend, we need to go camping. I'll FAWET enough for the both of us. I have to say at the outset that the first pot of water is for COFFEE, but your tea/cocoa water will be following immediately. I'm a fine cook, on the trail and in town. I think I can manage a cup of tea.

As promised, some gear tips.

I have a stand alone tent. That means the tent can be erected without staking it down, relying instead on the tension of the tent fabric resisting the springy bent tent poles trying to become straight again.

In almost all these designs, the end of the straight pole is poked into a pocket or a grommet, bent in some way, and the other end similarly secured. Then the top part of the tent is clipped to the pole, or the pole is slid through a sleeve along the top part, then clipped into the ends. In any event, it's tough to get all the things that connect to the pole ends to be exactly at the same tension, meaning something sags or falls off.

I have had a recurring problem with my little REI Chrysalis, but the problem can affect all tents that have a footprint (the flat waterproof fabric sheet that acts as a groundcloth for the tent), a tent body, and a rainfly. I would clip the poles to the corner of the tent body (and the wall clips too), then attach the footprint, then the rainfly. All these elements stack onto the end of the poles, and in that order. But I would have trouble when I was moving or using the tent without the rainfly. The footprint would fall off the pole ends since it wasn't quite as taut as the tent body. Grrrr.

But I learned a new way to do things. Assemble the tent as before, but when it comes to clipping the pole ends into the grommets, just put the looser footprint on the pole end first, *then* put the taut tent body on the pole. Now the footprint can't fall off, because it's held on by the tent body tab/grommet.

I learned this trick by observing RG, who was putting up his new tent, and he did this to the corner tabs on his tent. I thought he did it wrong, accidentally, and so I brought it up to him. He explained that it was I who was mistaken, that he had done so on purpose, didn't everyone? Huh? Yeah, it keeps the footprint from falling off. Who says old dogs can't learn new tricks?

I can see I haven't consumed my thousand words yet, so here are a couple pictures to illustrate.

Makes a great parasail.;)

The poles on my stand alone tent split and are now being held together with duct tape. Good ol' duct tape - I didn't see that in your supplies! How can you function without it? ;)

I don't like fiberglass poles for this reason, plus the fact that they're heavier than the same amount of aluminum pole. Maybe someday I'll get carbon fiber poles... "someday". Until then I'll still pack my duct tape, although I generally use Gorilla Tape these days. You can be forgiven for not seeing it in the picture above, despite the fact that it's there in plain sight.

Look for the gray sections near the tops of my trekking poles. Each one has a strip of tape wrapped around the pole. Also, I have a small section wrapped around a cardboard square in my ten essentials bag too.

Here's a close up for easier identification.

If I have an aluminum pole split, or kink or break, I have a splint for it. I would likely use it conjunction with the tape. I only take one though, so for a second break, I'd need to improvise. It's a tube with an inside diameter just greater than the outside diameter of the poles. Slide it over the owie, tape it into place, back in business.

OK you're on. Like Mc Arthur I will return. (to the specific NW. I'm actually a coffee drinker before 3:00pm, at which point I switch to tea.

Coffee is a "sled dog" drug and tea is a "philosopher" drug. Also a trail gourmet cook, we'll have some fine meals.

Suh-weet! I can hardly wait. :)

In the meantime another gear tip.

The pole splint pictured above rarely sees daylight, though it is in the picture of my regular gear turnout. It lives in my tent stake bag (where I keep my "parasail inhibitors") which lives in my tent bag, which you *can* easily see.

The thing is, the fabric is dark gray. In my opinion, this a poor design choice. And it's common for the small stake bag to be on the ground, in the dark. Where did it go? Same for the pole bag. I got tired of having to kick through the leaves to see which one is bag shaped. So I got a can of bright orange paint, the kind they use to make surveyor's marks on the road and I striped the bags. The unusual pattern is because I painted it while it was rolled up. It's now much easier to see.

I don't have a picture to go with a gear tip today, but soon.

I do have a picture to go with my post though. I am preparing for a major trip this summer, we're going to hike the Chilkoot Trail in Alaska. The trip will justify its own thread, but for now, just a peek at a recent acquisition in anticipation of the big trip.

I'm a big guy, and I carry a lot of gear, so footgear is crucial. I have a few pairs of boots, but, having wrecked my favorite pair, I needed to get a replacement pair in time to become acquainted before we hit the trail. I love gear and especially like used gear and I shop at a local outfitter here called Second Ascent. I bought a pair of La Sportiva Makalu boots. The link is to a list of reviews, and it seems to be a very polarizing boot. Love it or Hate it, no one was neutral about it. I bought a used pair, and naturally I tried them on before I did so. After reading the negative comments in the reviews, I think I'm going to be fine. My feet are not wider than normal, and since I got them used, they've been broken in some. Not to my feet, of course, which is why I've been wearing them everywhere since I got them. I really like them.

They're a full leather boots, like my old Tecnicas I murdered, and unlike the Asolos I am trading up from. I need the support, and I don't mind the extra weight. Also, I don't care how much snow seal you use, mesh/goretex/fabric panels in the boot will let the water in. And the first third of the Chilkoot trip will be wet. Rainforest wet. I am not hiking with wet feet dammit. So along with the boots, I bought a tube of Nikwax, and cleaned them up with a stiff brush and saturated the leather with the Nikwax. As you can see from the pictures, they cleaned up real nice.

Before and after:

Jesus H Christ. What in the name of all that's holy is that?

Not sure myself.

You do realise this thread now warrants an epilepsy warning? lol

HIMEOBS always warrants an epilepsy warning.

Even for non-epileptics.

That's a statue at Vigeland Park in Oslo, Norway.

oh wow. thanks for that bruce. What an amazing statue!

After two and a half years of mild irritation, I finally found the sodding picture.

I'll see your FAWET and raise you OCD:

Attachment 32046

here it is again with the explanatory notes. IIRC this was for a complex hike in late 2007, where the plan was to hike one trail, bus to another, and hike that, with a total of 8 days supplies. The food adds to about 24,000 calories, about 3,000 per day. This was in Japan so water is never a problem.

Attachment 32047

ETA there are a couple of lighters in there at the bottom too.

There's 24000 calories worth of food there?

I called it lunch :o

24,000 calories indeed. Maybe half is in the trail mix which I mix myself. I don't use chocolate - too melty - but as a benchmark it has about 5 calories per gram. Dried fruit has about the same, and nuts have more. Macadamias are about 8.5 calories per gram. That's good value.
The protein bars and rice meals are very energy dense, too.

Zen...will you make me trail mix? I'll come pick it up

Need a P-mate for camping...

Jeebus?!!

here too?

One man's gear:

Maybe this experience was extreme, but bad things do happen.

We've always been involved in "family" backpacking,
and the kids' backpacks start out almost empty until
the day warms up, and coats, sweaters, etc...
We also put in a few snacks in baggies, etc. in line with their age.

BUT, one life-saving-essential-necessity is always in each pack
... at least one large garbage bag.

We learned this on a summer back-country trip in the mountains of Alberta,
when we were caught in a wind/rain/snow storm and there were no trees or shelters.
The wind-chill was bad and our 3 girls were getting in trouble with hypothermia.
There was just no place to hide.

We cut holes for arms and head, and put the bags on over their coats.
Just that much was protection against cold wind-and-rain until we got down to warmer elevations.
... and we believe those bags may well have saved us from a disaster.

He didn't have garbage bags, did he? They weigh nothing and are so useful.

Edit: Oh, and since the 20:50 mark, I've had Van Halen going through my head. It was hard to place that song from 32 years ago, but I found it. Cathedral, an instrumental by Eddie Van Halen. Sounds like a keyboard but is an electric guitar.