Sometimes, I fear I am becoming my father. Now, I know what you think that means—that I do stuff like yell about the lights being on, get upset if people are wasting leftovers, or fill my gas tank when it gets down to half empty (It is not half full). Oh, I do all those things. Hey, I even tell my family that they do not have to turn the water off so abruptly, causing water hammer in the plumbing system, just like my dad would complain. No, I am talking about a much different way that I am becoming like dad. I just realized it recently. Well, in the last couple months.
I realized that social distancing has not been a hardship on me, at least in terms of my personal life. When I was a kid, I used to say that my father didn’t seem to have friends, at least not ones that he “hung out” with on a regular basis. “He is either at work, or he is with his family,” I said.
“Everyone has a best friend,” my buddy said.
“I don’t think he does. And the friends he has are just guys from the beagle club.”
“No one pops by the house?”
“Yeah,” I said, “But only if they need something. Other than relatives. Now that I think about it, the relatives often only stop when they need something too.”
“Okay, well he must get phone calls. Whoever calls him the most often is his best friend,”
“You are probably right,” I chuckled.
“What is so funny?”
“Overtime. His most frequent call is overtime from the factory.”
All these years later, I think that I am in the same boat. I do not miss restaurants. Even before all this coronavirus stuff, I usually packed a lunch. I never know what my day will bring in terms of hospital visits. I save money, and eat in my truck. A thermos of soup in cold weather, or a sandwich in a cooler during the warmer months is my standard choice. I never really went to stores that much anyway, that has always been my wife’s forte. My dad never signed his paycheck or deposited it once, my mom always did that. I may deposit my own checks, but I do that with my phone now. Sometimes, I will give my debit card to my wife, Renee, when she goes to the store, but she makes more dough at the university than I make! She does have trouble not being around people. Renee is working from home, and I hear some of it.
“I am tired about hearing you talk about Zoom and all the other web pages you can go to for online meetings,” I said to her as she closed her laptop, ending a meeting.”
“They are platforms, not pages,” she looked over her glasses, in that bossy sort of way.
“Whatever,” I said, “But every conversation you have with every co-worker is the same.”
“They are colleagues.”
“Okay.”
“Do you even know what I do at the university?” she pushed her glasses up and looked through the lenses, trying to bait me into an answer.
“Not really,” I said. And I don’t, other than it is all online, and that is true even when she is in the office and her “colleagues” are all meeting in the same physical place.
My work has been altered—I can not do hospital or nursing home visits. Heck, I can’t do any visits. I have substituted phone calls in place of driving to hospitals. It goes pretty well, though, as you can imagine, it is tough on people who are older and suffering from hearing loss. Hah, my hearing isn’t the best anymore either, so some pastoral care calls are just me and an older guy yelling at each other on the phone. But a couple weeks into this whole mess, and I realized that I have to be at church on Sunday mornings, for our livestream church service, but otherwise, I could be anywhere during the week, so long as I could make cell phone calls to patients and tend to work stuff from afar. Also, I could wear anything! I ain’t talking about pajamas, I mean bibs and brush pants.
Social distancing? How could I possibly avoid people any more than if I went into the woods, and just stayed there? I can just run some dogs, have some cookouts, and give my wife a break from the barking house dogs while she is having her online meetings. I will go afield for a couple days at a time, and as long as I can get a cell phone signal at the top of a hill, I am able to stay there. I take the dogs and might run them as a pack one day, and take turns soloing them the next. It makes for good time alone to think, and work on a weekly homily and provides a great place to work on any writing that I have to complete. Over the years, I have been staying in the field with hounds more and more, but in recent weeks I have really been training hounds. I thought I would share some things that make staying afield with dogs enjoyable, rather than uncomfortable.
Rooftop tents are pretty commonly found with an internet search. They vary in style and price. I like a fiberglass top, which is why I have a Maggiolina. You can mount it to the rooftop of a car or SUV. With my pickup, which has a dog box in the bed, I use a ladder rack. I like the fiberglass top because I have never gotten wet, no matter how hard it has rained upon me. The tent bolts on the ladder rack, and I can drive anywhere with it—80 mph on the interstate, or an off-road crawl (it is only 130 pounds) into hunting spots. In one minute, the tent can be raised, a ladder extended, and I can climb in and sleep on the mattress that is built into the tent itself. The tent has paid for itself in the money it has saved me by not sleeping in hotels while on long road trips. In fact, I sleep in this tent so much that it feels like home, and I now get to field trials the night before rather than waking up in the middle of the night to drive.
Comfort goes beyond the tent. In all those cowboy movies, the guys sleep on the ground, using a saddle for a pillow, and just a blanket. Then, they wake up and move cattle all day. Even when I am training dogs for a few days, I seldom let them run rabbits the entire day, but rather a few hours in the morning and a few hours in the evening is more typical. What about the rest of the day? It is good to have a comfy chair, some shade, and a place to sit and work in the rain. They sell all kind of awnings for your 4x4. I have a Foxwing that provides lots of shade for sitting under and also a place for the dogs to cool down. It takes a few more minutes to deploy than the tent, but not much more. It can be attached to a roof rack, or any other customized options, as I did for mine. It can handle highway speeds when not deployed.
My tent is comfortable, don’t get me wrong. However, my best sleep of the day comes after I put some miles on the dogs at dawn, eat a late breakfast, and then take a nap before afternoon work, phone calls, and writing. I own a camping hammock. You can’t find a more comfortable “chair” if you try. When I do camp remotely, I no longer carry a tent. I use my hammock and use a tarp. No need to worry about roots or rocks. Just find two trees, and set it up. Shoot, If I am camping from the truck I can often get by with one tree, and attach the other side to my truck’s ladder rack.
I kept my eye on a product, waiting for a good deal, because it isn’t typically cheap. It is a tent that zips right onto the awning, called an Oztent. Why did I want it? It is perfect for two things—a screenhouse on those evenings when the mosquitoes (big enough to outdo any murder hornet in an aerial dogfight) are biting, and a dry place in a driving, windy, rain that would typically be catastrophic on my awning. The tent anchors the awning fast to the ground in higher winds. I like to run dogs until dark, and return to camp. I can either rest in my hammock, or sit in a folding chair in the ground tent. Weather is usually the determining factor.
Storage is vital. I have a bumper with swingout storage boxes that lets me pack a lot of gear. I can fit a lot of clothing and a pillow in compression sacks. I also use the storage boxes for tie out stakes, water bowls, and flashlights—I hate searching for all these necessities. Hammer, tin shears, and a hatchet are there too. I use those boxes for anything that I know I will need and do not want to find in the perpetual pile of “stuff” in the back-seat row of my truck. The bumper and boxes are light weight aluminum. Aluminess is the company that makes them, and you can locate them online.
My cargo hauler, inserted into the truck’s receiving hitch, is a beast. It is made by Let’s Go Aero. I can haul an array of comforts there—coolers, cooking gear, you name it. Best thing? It slides out. Yep, I can slide the cargo basket back, allowing me to drop the tailgate no matter how full the hauler is. This is key when you need to get to your dogs on a long trip to give them water, and alos let them water the local shrubbery. I can then close the tailgate, push the cargo basket back into place, lock it down, and drive away. It really is a game changer for long trips. I also have a roof rack, and they all work well when used properly.
Lastly, is power. Goal Zero makes lots of battery and solar panel options. I have a Yeti 400, that I charge at home before I leave the house. It makes small work of charging GPS tracking collars for the dogs. Heck, in the interest of saving power, I have installed Microsoft Word on my cell phone, and use a battery powered keyboard that synchs up to my phone via Bluetooth. That previous sentence just strained the limits of my tech language, but I can do a lot of writing on the power carried by that Yeti 400 when I am only charging a cell phone rather than a laptop.
Just last week, I was out in the field and got a phone call from my wife. “Hello?” I answered.
“Where have you been?”
“Running dogs,” I said in a matter of fact fashion.
“Your phone went right to voicemail,” Renee said, “I just got done on a Zoom meeting, but you wouldn’t know about Zoom.
“I know plenty about Zoom,” I said.
“What do you know?”
“I just got great video of my 10 ½” tall beagle soloing a cottontail in really poor scent. And she was zooming!”
“Well,” Renee said, “Your phone was turned off, I have been trying to call you.”
“My phone was on, I was using it.”
“No, you were not talking. It went straight to voicemail. You could not have silenced it that fast,” Renee sighed.
“I was recording video of the zooming,” I said, “I had the phone on airplane mode so no one could interrupt me.”
“You figured out airplane mode?” she asked,
“I was born for social distancing. I am already at work, so overtime ain’t gonna call me,” I said.
“What are you talking about? You coming home soon? You have been gone for days.”
“Yeah, but only because it is not hunting season. Or I might just stay out here….”
Zoom video at https://youtu.be/GfQ_b9g1ZG4
I realized that social distancing has not been a hardship on me, at least in terms of my personal life. When I was a kid, I used to say that my father didn’t seem to have friends, at least not ones that he “hung out” with on a regular basis. “He is either at work, or he is with his family,” I said.
“Everyone has a best friend,” my buddy said.
“I don’t think he does. And the friends he has are just guys from the beagle club.”
“No one pops by the house?”
“Yeah,” I said, “But only if they need something. Other than relatives. Now that I think about it, the relatives often only stop when they need something too.”
“Okay, well he must get phone calls. Whoever calls him the most often is his best friend,”
“You are probably right,” I chuckled.
“What is so funny?”
“Overtime. His most frequent call is overtime from the factory.”
All these years later, I think that I am in the same boat. I do not miss restaurants. Even before all this coronavirus stuff, I usually packed a lunch. I never know what my day will bring in terms of hospital visits. I save money, and eat in my truck. A thermos of soup in cold weather, or a sandwich in a cooler during the warmer months is my standard choice. I never really went to stores that much anyway, that has always been my wife’s forte. My dad never signed his paycheck or deposited it once, my mom always did that. I may deposit my own checks, but I do that with my phone now. Sometimes, I will give my debit card to my wife, Renee, when she goes to the store, but she makes more dough at the university than I make! She does have trouble not being around people. Renee is working from home, and I hear some of it.
“I am tired about hearing you talk about Zoom and all the other web pages you can go to for online meetings,” I said to her as she closed her laptop, ending a meeting.”
“They are platforms, not pages,” she looked over her glasses, in that bossy sort of way.
“Whatever,” I said, “But every conversation you have with every co-worker is the same.”
“They are colleagues.”
“Okay.”
“Do you even know what I do at the university?” she pushed her glasses up and looked through the lenses, trying to bait me into an answer.
“Not really,” I said. And I don’t, other than it is all online, and that is true even when she is in the office and her “colleagues” are all meeting in the same physical place.
My work has been altered—I can not do hospital or nursing home visits. Heck, I can’t do any visits. I have substituted phone calls in place of driving to hospitals. It goes pretty well, though, as you can imagine, it is tough on people who are older and suffering from hearing loss. Hah, my hearing isn’t the best anymore either, so some pastoral care calls are just me and an older guy yelling at each other on the phone. But a couple weeks into this whole mess, and I realized that I have to be at church on Sunday mornings, for our livestream church service, but otherwise, I could be anywhere during the week, so long as I could make cell phone calls to patients and tend to work stuff from afar. Also, I could wear anything! I ain’t talking about pajamas, I mean bibs and brush pants.
Social distancing? How could I possibly avoid people any more than if I went into the woods, and just stayed there? I can just run some dogs, have some cookouts, and give my wife a break from the barking house dogs while she is having her online meetings. I will go afield for a couple days at a time, and as long as I can get a cell phone signal at the top of a hill, I am able to stay there. I take the dogs and might run them as a pack one day, and take turns soloing them the next. It makes for good time alone to think, and work on a weekly homily and provides a great place to work on any writing that I have to complete. Over the years, I have been staying in the field with hounds more and more, but in recent weeks I have really been training hounds. I thought I would share some things that make staying afield with dogs enjoyable, rather than uncomfortable.
Rooftop tents are pretty commonly found with an internet search. They vary in style and price. I like a fiberglass top, which is why I have a Maggiolina. You can mount it to the rooftop of a car or SUV. With my pickup, which has a dog box in the bed, I use a ladder rack. I like the fiberglass top because I have never gotten wet, no matter how hard it has rained upon me. The tent bolts on the ladder rack, and I can drive anywhere with it—80 mph on the interstate, or an off-road crawl (it is only 130 pounds) into hunting spots. In one minute, the tent can be raised, a ladder extended, and I can climb in and sleep on the mattress that is built into the tent itself. The tent has paid for itself in the money it has saved me by not sleeping in hotels while on long road trips. In fact, I sleep in this tent so much that it feels like home, and I now get to field trials the night before rather than waking up in the middle of the night to drive.
Comfort goes beyond the tent. In all those cowboy movies, the guys sleep on the ground, using a saddle for a pillow, and just a blanket. Then, they wake up and move cattle all day. Even when I am training dogs for a few days, I seldom let them run rabbits the entire day, but rather a few hours in the morning and a few hours in the evening is more typical. What about the rest of the day? It is good to have a comfy chair, some shade, and a place to sit and work in the rain. They sell all kind of awnings for your 4x4. I have a Foxwing that provides lots of shade for sitting under and also a place for the dogs to cool down. It takes a few more minutes to deploy than the tent, but not much more. It can be attached to a roof rack, or any other customized options, as I did for mine. It can handle highway speeds when not deployed.
My tent is comfortable, don’t get me wrong. However, my best sleep of the day comes after I put some miles on the dogs at dawn, eat a late breakfast, and then take a nap before afternoon work, phone calls, and writing. I own a camping hammock. You can’t find a more comfortable “chair” if you try. When I do camp remotely, I no longer carry a tent. I use my hammock and use a tarp. No need to worry about roots or rocks. Just find two trees, and set it up. Shoot, If I am camping from the truck I can often get by with one tree, and attach the other side to my truck’s ladder rack.
I kept my eye on a product, waiting for a good deal, because it isn’t typically cheap. It is a tent that zips right onto the awning, called an Oztent. Why did I want it? It is perfect for two things—a screenhouse on those evenings when the mosquitoes (big enough to outdo any murder hornet in an aerial dogfight) are biting, and a dry place in a driving, windy, rain that would typically be catastrophic on my awning. The tent anchors the awning fast to the ground in higher winds. I like to run dogs until dark, and return to camp. I can either rest in my hammock, or sit in a folding chair in the ground tent. Weather is usually the determining factor.
Storage is vital. I have a bumper with swingout storage boxes that lets me pack a lot of gear. I can fit a lot of clothing and a pillow in compression sacks. I also use the storage boxes for tie out stakes, water bowls, and flashlights—I hate searching for all these necessities. Hammer, tin shears, and a hatchet are there too. I use those boxes for anything that I know I will need and do not want to find in the perpetual pile of “stuff” in the back-seat row of my truck. The bumper and boxes are light weight aluminum. Aluminess is the company that makes them, and you can locate them online.
My cargo hauler, inserted into the truck’s receiving hitch, is a beast. It is made by Let’s Go Aero. I can haul an array of comforts there—coolers, cooking gear, you name it. Best thing? It slides out. Yep, I can slide the cargo basket back, allowing me to drop the tailgate no matter how full the hauler is. This is key when you need to get to your dogs on a long trip to give them water, and alos let them water the local shrubbery. I can then close the tailgate, push the cargo basket back into place, lock it down, and drive away. It really is a game changer for long trips. I also have a roof rack, and they all work well when used properly.
Lastly, is power. Goal Zero makes lots of battery and solar panel options. I have a Yeti 400, that I charge at home before I leave the house. It makes small work of charging GPS tracking collars for the dogs. Heck, in the interest of saving power, I have installed Microsoft Word on my cell phone, and use a battery powered keyboard that synchs up to my phone via Bluetooth. That previous sentence just strained the limits of my tech language, but I can do a lot of writing on the power carried by that Yeti 400 when I am only charging a cell phone rather than a laptop.
Just last week, I was out in the field and got a phone call from my wife. “Hello?” I answered.
“Where have you been?”
“Running dogs,” I said in a matter of fact fashion.
“Your phone went right to voicemail,” Renee said, “I just got done on a Zoom meeting, but you wouldn’t know about Zoom.
“I know plenty about Zoom,” I said.
“What do you know?”
“I just got great video of my 10 ½” tall beagle soloing a cottontail in really poor scent. And she was zooming!”
“Well,” Renee said, “Your phone was turned off, I have been trying to call you.”
“My phone was on, I was using it.”
“No, you were not talking. It went straight to voicemail. You could not have silenced it that fast,” Renee sighed.
“I was recording video of the zooming,” I said, “I had the phone on airplane mode so no one could interrupt me.”
“You figured out airplane mode?” she asked,
“I was born for social distancing. I am already at work, so overtime ain’t gonna call me,” I said.
“What are you talking about? You coming home soon? You have been gone for days.”
“Yeah, but only because it is not hunting season. Or I might just stay out here….”
Zoom video at https://youtu.be/GfQ_b9g1ZG4
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