The Strowd goes camping...

At times, I've been accused of "piling on" with regards to my friend, The Strowd. Yes, I've been quite merciless in my Razor coverage of him in the past, but I have a 2 part excuse for my behavior. First, it's standard Razor policy to ridicule those we love most (save politicians, their ridicule is based on scorn), and more importantly, he's one of the nicest guys in the whole world, and so not likely to fight back...

With the disclaimer out of the way, I'll now relate to you a detailed and slightly romanticized account of the activities of Friday night. To help you form the various mental pictures that will enhance your enjoyment of this post, The Strowd looks like this:


Heading into the weekend, we assumed that the Auburn Tigers would thrash Utah State so severely that our 4th string running back would most likely win SEC player of the week. To increase the degree of difficulty, our crew decided to lodge in the most inconvenient possible way, camping. Adding even further difficulty, we decided to open up the weekend to children and pets.

Around dusk, Christena, Taylor and I arrived at the campground on Westpoint Lake, to find the Strowd's, with their 95 pound bull mastiff Chloe, in the process of setting up camp. Micheal and Kellie are experienced in the ways of "hammock camping", that is they sleep individually in one-man tents that are suspended off the ground, tied between two trees. I tried Micheal's out a few months ago and found it quite comfortable.

Not long after dark, I had our tent up, they had their hammocks secured, and we had a nice little bonfire going. We had a delicious supper, shot the breeze for a while, and decided that since we had to get up pretty early, we'd turn in early. Micheal and Kelli had tied their hammocks right next to each other, and placed Chloe in her kennel, on the ground between them. Nice little happy family...

I wasn't particularly tired yet, so I laid in my tent playing games on my cell phone. Over the course of the next hour, I grew quite amused because every time I heard Micheal begin to snore, Chloe would bark and wake him up, he would say "shut up Chloe", drift back to sleep, and so on, and so on. Finally, I heard him get our of his hammock-tent, and I knew he was quite exasperated. Being a good friend, I offered to let him put the dog in my tent, to see if the relative enclosure would encourage Chloe to sleep.

I have a big tent. We had two air mattresses in it which only took up about half the floor space. The rest was essentially wide-open. I figured the extra leg room might make Chloe feel more comfortable. Didn't happen. I'm not sure if it was the nighttime-outdoor sounds, or some unknown factor, but the dog was restless. She spent about 20 minutes pacing the floor, laid down for a little while, and then resumed pacing, and just like before, whenever she heard Michael snoring, she'd start barking. After about an hour of this, I was actually ready to abort this attempt and was quite thankful when I heard Micheal get out of his tent.

We agreed that while it was a noble gesture on my part, offering my tent for the dog to sleep in wasn't really helping. I unzipped my tent and stepped out into the night to return Chloe to Michael's care. I was unprepared for the sight of Michael in his pajamas, which weren't pajamas at all. Rather, all he was wearing was a flashlight that was strapped to his head coal-miner style and a pair of speedo-underwear that were barely large enough to do their job.

I mumbled something about it being too late at night for him to unveil something like that without warning me, but what is seen, cannot be unseen, so I fought the urge to dive back into my tent. I asked Strowd if he had any ideas short of euthanasia for his dog, and he said, I'm gonna load her into the hammock with me.

Please Lord let this happen.

So I have a front row seat as he picks up Chloe and puts her into his hammock and then crawls in behind her. As he reaches to zip up his tent, I hear what I mistook for the load-bearing trees groaning under the strain of 350 pounds of man and his best friend. Actually, the sound I heard, which was quite loud, was either the fabric of his tent giving out a final gasp before depositing them, violently, on the ground beneath the tent, or Micheal's dignity being snatched away, never to return.

I've created a few analogies, to help you understand exactly what I saw with my own eyes: Micheal, wearing his undies and forehead flashlight, and Chloe shoot out the bottom of the tent, bounce off the ground, and roll around in some combination of bewilderment and embarrassing misery. You are invited to choose your favorite:

• It appeared to me that the Fed's raided the Western Georgia Man-Dog Love Association's Midnight Orgy, and the participants were making a hasty departure.


• Kujo and Chris Farley mated, and I was the OBGYN tasked with delivering the beast at around 250 feet per second.


• A Sumo-Wrestling Coal Miner won a dog riding contest, first prize was a ruined hammock tent and an extra-large portion of humiliation.


• A plus-sized male underwear model was hired as a free-lance dog jockey, gamblers wagering on the trifecta of bumps, bruises, and hilarity can redeem their ticket at the counter.

The remainder of the weekend unfolded pretty much as planned. Auburn destroyed Utah State, our campfire meals were not burned, and we all got along really well operating on only 3-4 hours sleep.

Until next time...