True happiness

My friend Sue arrived Thursday afternoon and we filled in the gaps of our online friendship, getting to know each other in real life. We have more in common than I expected.

For instance, we both love camping–although Sue got started a lot sooner than I did. She once spent nearly a year living and traveling the U.S. in a car. Unlike me, however, she has no qualms about peeing in the bushes. Despite a couple of “no-choice” incidents, I’m not ready for that yet.

But camping is what this is all about for me

You may think of me as a vandweller, or even a homeless person, but I’m really just a happy camper

Twenty-two years ago, I signed up for a monumental bike ride for AIDS — nearly 500 miles from Minneapolis to Chicago. I was overweight and completely out of shape except for a few weeks of weekend training rides and riding to work and back every day.

Once the AIDS Ride got underway, the endorphins of riding sixty to a hundred miles a day with two thousand other riders must have kicked in because I was never so happy.

For nearly a week, we rode by day and camped in tents by night.

Every morning, we waited in long lines to use one of the dozens of Porta-Potty’s that stank to high heaven.

Then, we carbo-loaded breakfast in the huge mess tent with pancakes, eggs, bacon, sausage, home fries, orange juice, and toast.

On the road, I wore strong sunscreen but didn’t think to cover every exposed inch, and wound up with blistered, peeling ears.

In the evening, cold showers cooled overheated bodies and brains.

The freedom of not having to do anything but ride a bike all day, enjoying the scenery and laughing with other riders, felt like nothing I’d ever experienced. The camaraderie filled my soul.

I remember wishing I could do this full-time

When it was over, I went home, quit my job, let the bank take over my house and, on my 50th birthday, left for California.

You could say it was a bit of an overreaction but when you realize how unhappy you are, and what truly makes you happy, sometimes you take extreme measures.

Even so, it was many more years before I realized I actually could do something like that bike ride — only in a van — full-time. It took even longer to make the connection between what I loved about that experience and what I’m doing now: it’s camping — sometimes with friends, sometimes alone.

Either way, camping makes me happy

Looking out my windshield over a verdant meadow studded with yellow balsamroot wildflowers to a thick stand of aspen, I wonder why it took so long to understand this about myself.

We are so busy trying to fulfill some preconceived notion of what we should be, trying to pay the bills and have the life we think we should have, that we forget to find out what it is that makes us truly happy.