Tuesday, June 12, 2007

Take a load (slightly) off


It's getting to be that season where you just want to sit down and take it all in. Stop doing and start being. In other words, it's getting damned hot outside. Yesterday, we were stuck at hyperborean speed, even though the heat and humidity called for a more equatorial gearing. It just about killed us.

Short of drinking mint juleps on the screen poch, how can we northerners act more like our southerner cousins, without losing our self-righteous abolitionist identity? Why, by hitting the lakes with a cooler and a lawnchair. But if it's just too hot to lug lawn furniture, we've found that the simplest camp chairs work beautifully--you know, the Crazy Creek chair that looks like some sort of lumbar truss, which is what it is, in fact.

Buy one to keep in the trunk of your car or the back of your bike trailer, and you'll never want for humankind's simplest support. People say that what separates humans from most other animals is our ability to speak, or our large brains, or our opposable thumbs. No, it's that we're much more comfortable if we're sitting in a chair.

Crazy Creek Chairs, available at Midwest Mountaineering for around $50-75, depending on the model, http://www.midwestmtn.com/