Vegas Camping Party Dads’ Las Weekend Bachelor Mid-week
Confused? Mentally exhausted? Good. Me too. Let me see if I can build a computing cluster out of my 5 remaining brain cells to explain things a bit.
I am the “Best Man” for one of my oldest and dearest friends (Kirk) so I had the job of putting together a Bachelor Party with myself and some of his closest friends. Since Kirk is a firefighter you might guess that most of his friends are the same (if you guessed otherwise, you’re wrong). We scheduled his party for the middle of the week and in Las Vegas. We checked in Wednesday afternoon and checked out Friday morning. Whatever happened in Vegas is staying in Vegas, except for the wire transfers that had to come out of California. Whatever… keep up with me here and take note of the timeline.
We returned home on Friday, early afternoon, just in time for me to pack up and take my kids on the annual Dad’s Camping Weekend (I bet the title of this post is coming together for you right now). A couple of things happened and I got stuck at home, missing the first night of the camping trip. And, No!, it was not due to an excessive hangover. I should note here that Kerri *totally* dialed me and shopped for the food, packed up the kids’ things, camping gear, etc. Without her I’d simply rot away. Thanks Baby!
We got out fairly early Saturday morning and made our way to Leo Carillo State Beach to get caught up with the other campers. Apparently missing Friday was missing a lot. They all seemed to have had a good time and were tired on Saturday while I was feeling fresh as a Summer Breeze. No bigs… my kids were ready to get dirty and get wet down at the beach.
If you haven’t been to Leo Carillo with kids and live close to Southern California, I highly recommend it. They have some insanely populous tide pools with nearly every rock hiding a cool sea creature. One could spend the entire day just flipping over rocks or checking the pools for starfish, octopus, crab, fish (and jellyfish!) and so many other animals.
I consider myself to be a “fair” camper, mostly because of the Master Campers (Darin, Matt, Alex and Kent) that tend to lead the group. I like to participate in the community aspect of things by picking up the slack, helping put up and tear down tents, cleaning up, trash detail, etc. The main gurus are cooking, have killer camping toys and have forgotten nothing. It tends to work out well but this year I didn’t pull my fair share of the weight. I’m part of the “core group” of this trip so it can be easily noticed when I’m missing. If you ask the core group they’d likely say that I wasn’t missed at all but I know they really need me. 
This is the first year that I brought both kids and while I maintained my own campsite (barely!) I did a very poor job of pitching in on the community level. I did pitch in by not being present the first night because I [apparently] provided quite the little conversation piece around the campfire with trash-talkin due to the events leading to my absence. I don’t mind being food for the jackals if that’s all I have to offer at that time — Like I’ve indicated, I like to do my part.
Sunday was pretty busy and I was already wanting to go home but I knew I had cheated the kids out of Friday so we took off to the beach and played, looking for sea shells by the sea shore, skipping stones, getting wet and just having a good time. I was fortunate that my brother John left his daughter with me so he could hit an appointment. She’s a little older than my kids so they gravitate to her and that made things a ton easier.
When I got home Kerri helped me unpack (thanks again Sweetheart!) and watched the kids so I could check email after 5 days of tripping elsewhere. I crashed fairly early last night so I could be somewhat useful at work. By this time I’ve learned to type again and am putting thoughts together from the scattered in my brain that are still capable of holding and transferring data.
Just as the title and body of this post, so goes my brain… fragmented and put together by someone with the skills of a 2 year old. If you have kids you can likely figure out what I mean by the words I’ve tried to put together.
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