OFFICIAL Kings Canyon Camp Swank Thread

[innerSpaceman]

With all due admiration for €uro's astute and hysterial synopsis of the competing camp styles, I have to point out that it's some of the biggest purported Laissez-faire proponents who have established the need for anal-retentive planning ... namely the TEAM STRUCTURE that's the most frelling anal-retentive camping thing I've ever come across in my life.

That's not to say it isn't successful. I'm a planner and I appreciate it. But nothing comes closer to €uro's satire, and I find it pleasantly ironic.

How about we drop the "edict" of who camps where and with whom, and furthermore forego the anal-retentive planning of meal team members and what they will be cooking?



What's that you say? It allows for much more leisure time on the camping trip? Why, so it does. That's what advance planning accomplishes.





If we're going to build Medieval Pavilions, btw ... that's gonna require a lot of planning.

Will there be jousting??

[Kevy Baby]

Originally Posted by Morrigoon

Wow, yeah, that'd be a bit much for a short weekend. (the set up and tear down, I mean)

We join them (and get one of the two rounds) at the Potrero (SCA) War over Memorial Day weekend and Imperial War over Labor Day weekend. Set it up on Friday and tear down on Monday.

We also set up a communal kitchen/pantry used by three families. The photos are too large to post here, but you can see pix here (the kitchen and pantry photos are the last five).

[innerSpaceman]

So, um, how come you can't set up Thursday and tear down Monday? It's not like you wouldn't have plenty of help.


It would be so damn cool.

[Morrigoon]

I could spend days on some of those medieval pavilion pages. Wow.

[Cadaverous Pallor]

I'm reading a book called Here Comes Everybody, about how the Internet's social groupings have changed how groups work.

He details how hard it is to get people together to accomplish things, as we're well aware.

In one part he talks about how easy it is for 2 people to go see a movie, and how it gets harder the more people you add into the mix, due to the exponential math involved.

By the time you want to go to a movie in a group of ten, waiting for forty-five separate agreements is pretty much a lost cause. You could sit around discussing the possible choices all day, with no guarantee you'll get to an agreement at all, much less in time for the movie. Instead you'll vote or draw straws, or someone will just decide to go to a particular movie and invite everyone else along, without trying to take all possible preferences into account. These difficulties have nothing to do with friendship or movie-going specificially; they are responses to the grim logic of group complexity.

Hence, groups designate leaders, or committees, or a hierarchical structure, or something to make these sorts of things work. (The point of the book is that a lot of these problems disappear in Internet groups. It's when we venture into the real world that we get in trouble, isn't it?)

My point? Eh, don't really have one, was just reading and realized it fit in with this thread. The transactional rules are there. Either you obey them or you have nervous breakdown.

[Kevy Baby]

Originally Posted by innerSpaceman

So, um, how come you can't set up Thursday and tear down Monday? It's not like you wouldn't have plenty of help.


It would be so damn cool.

The foot print is about 18' x 40'. I have very serious concerns about finding a spot large enough to place it on.

Also, it is a complicated set up. I would be very worried about trying it without the owner of the tent being there (it is not mine in case I didn't make that clear - it belongs to some friends of ours).

[Kevy Baby]

Originally Posted by Morrigoon

I could spend days on some of those medieval pavilion pages. Wow.

Going to an SCA (or Adria) War is an amazing site. Literally hundreds of pavilion style encampments. It is not only the tents, but all the extras (furniture, etc) too.

[Alex]

My last camping trip I just bought random food on my way at 7-11 and showed up for two days. Ate cold food and shared whatever stray food other people had and slept under my car (I didn't have a tent with me so slept outside, least rocky area was by the parking area, didn't want to get run over by rangers stopping for some reason so slept under the car).

Least planning, most leisure. Still plenty fun (the camping trip before that I slept on the bench of the sites picnic table, waking up every time I was about to fall off).

So I'd be in the "Fully Laissez Faire Camp" and risk going hungry or realizing I forgot my camp stove.

[Gemini Cricket]

I guess you'd just have to make sure your car doesn't leak. Nothing like waking up in the morning with car oil in your teeth...

[Alex]

Well, my car isn't high enough to really sleep under it (especially at my size). More like I was crammed under the driver's side as far as I could get without leaving a permanent crease.