ROUGHING IT

Everyone has their own concept of roughing it. For me it is not camping in the middle of nowhere with the bugs and beasts. No thank you for that choice.

That might work for those loonies who are nature lovers. They are entitled to their opinions. And always in my view as long as they keep their opinion to themselves, I'm happy.

I can't speak for anyone else naturally in that regard, but I have never seen the appeal in all this back to nature stuff anyway. The way I look at man worked so hard to get to the point where he could be fat and lazy without starving, why mess it up?

Which is probably why I will always wonder about the benefit people thing they are gaining from such outings? They are welcome to them from my view.

For myself roughing it is having to spend time with my family. Now that is really enduring hardship for a guy like me.

I do it for the sake of maintaining my public image as a servant of the people and also you know to tolerate the need for being regarded as a loving family man. Now I am a family man. So if you don't insert the loving part it works for me.

Only I can't tell the voters that part. So there are times when I get stuck having to tolerate doing things with them.

We do what we can to avoid making it too long. Basically we pick somewhere that gives us a photo opportunity. Like some special event.

The tricky part is timing. We have to be sure we can all show up at the same time. Normally we can't stand each other enough to ride together so we have to be sure we arrive at the same time, but out of sight so we can walk in together.

Then we stay long enough to get our picture taken together. Afterwards we make it look like we care about each other. That always costs me you understand. At least I can figure a way to suck the city coffers dry to pay for that bribe. After all I wouldn't even have to do it if I didn't have to keep this darn image in the first place.

What I have learned is to not try to take these opportunities to a point where we have some kind of restaurant option. For being stuck together for a whole meal can be very terrible. That is roughing it big time.

Plus there is too much risk that my wife or I will run into one of our motel pals. That can be so difficult to have a decent conversation in such situations. You know you can't discuss things like your next outing in such situations.

So dinner is one option we avoid. Yep, lots of rules for us in that regard. Which is all part of the roughing thing.