Author's note: This is the first in a series of entries about last weekend's camping trip to Chain O' Lakes State Park.
Part One: Jason Strikes... Twice
With any organized occasion, one can usually expect that 30-60% of those invited will fail to come. This was one of the reasons I started planning the trip three weeks in advance; I wanted to give people a chance to clear their schedules as well as leave some time open to recruit replacements if they couldn't. At first, this plan seemed to work. When Eric's girlfriend Mel found out that she had a summer school final the Friday of the trip, I still had a chance to invite Doug to fill her spot. Things continued as expected from there up until the Tuesday three days before the trip was set to begin.
I IMed Jason that evening to converse a bit and confirm the plans I had set up through the handful of emails I had sent out to all the campers.
“uhh… I don’t think I can go,” he typed.
“Jason… I already made the reservations at the park,” I tactfully replied, slightly perturbed.
“well, I’m getting a car.”
And so it was. Jason, despite three weeks notice and numerous reminders, had decided to back out of the trip a mere three days before it began.
Uncool, to say the least.
The next day, the rest of us, save Doug, met at the grocery store to buy food for the trip. There, I told everyone the news. If you thought we were surprised that Jason wasn’t going, well… then you don’t know Jason. Even with his absence, we felt the trip would still work out well. Five people rather than six simply meant that we’d have a little bit more room in one of the three tents.
Two days later, we were ready to depart. Michael would pick up Tasha in his cavernous Buick, and I would pick up Eric and Doug in my Dad’s SUV. From there, the two drivers would meet in a parking lot near the highway and begin the trip.
That was the plan, at least.
I picked up Eric without any problem, but when we arrived at Doug’s house, he was nowhere to be found. We rang the doorbell a few dozen times; we called his phone; we even called Michael’s cell phone to see if Doug had driven over to the parking lot for some reason. No luck. Finally, we decided to try the doorknob on the front door. To our surprise, it opened, and I quickly searched the dark house. Again, no Doug. Needless to say, it was a little spooky to find an open, empty house when I knew Doug should have been expecting us.
By then, Eric and I had been waiting for about 45 minutes, so we decided to head over to the parking lot to meet Michael and Tasha. The four of us discussed the situation and decided some sort of emergency had befallen Doug. Because there was no way we could find out for sure, and because we were already an hour later than expected, we decided to begin the trip without him.
“What could have happened to Doug?” we asked ourselves. “Was it a family crisis? A UFO abduction?”
Jason?
Ah yes. You see, I got a call on my cell phone about an hour down the road. It was Doug apologizing for being late and wondering where we were. He told us that he had taken a ride in Jason’s new car—the very car that had superceded a camping weekend—and that it had broken down leaving both him and Jason stranded on a deserted country road. Relieved that nothing bad had happened, I told him we had already left and that he could still drive up himself. He declined, and the remaining four campers, Michael, Tasha, Eric, and myself, arrived at the park around 10:30 and began our camping weekend.
To be continued tomorrow with Part Two: Pancakes of Death