In a couple days, I will reach that half-century mark. My biggest accomplishments have been my three beautiful and intelligent children, my excellent friends and recently finding the love of a beautiful woman and her children. Actually, they aren’t accomplishments. I’m just the lucky recipient of their love. Aside from that and not being homeless or imprisoned, I’m hard-pressed to find other achievements for celebrating a second 25 years. As for being a millionaire, my now former spouse ended up spending two dollars for every dollar that I made. It took me a couple of decades to realize that there is a fine line between being a gentleman and being a doormat. Which means, if nothing else, I now have 25 additional years worth of experiences on how not to live life.

At my 25th birthday, I was excited about living the next quarter-century because of what I’ve accomplished in the first. On the eve of my 50th birthday, I find myself disillusioned and unenthusiastic about the next quarter-century of my life because of past years filled with regrets, stupid decisions and reprehensible mistakes. I’m pretty sure there won’t be a national holiday filled with parades and half-priced sales in my honor.

In the past, I was saddened if friends or family would accidentally overlook my birthday. This year, I will be very content if the entire world forgets that I’ve circled the sun 50 times without dying. Actually, I’m not 50. More like $39.95 with lots of shipping and handling involved …

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I had traveled to Georgia to see my children who are in their late teens and early 20s. They live out in the county in a cramped single wide trailer. Just before I began my trip to see them, I discovered that they had recently lost electricity to one side of the trailer. Even though my children are renting the trailer from my ex brother-in-law, he has been “too busy” to fix anything at the moment. So to keep cool at night, my children had been sleeping in the living room with a fan in a window. Once I learned about this, I had hoped to get nice, air-conditioned motel rooms for us all. Unfortunately, all the rooms within a 50 mile radius were booked due to some local must-see tractor pull and buggy race. (Apparently it doesn’t take much to amuse Georgians in that neck of the woods.) But I wasn’t about to put off my trip because there was no room at the inns or in the trailer. Besides, I had my children’s birthday presents so I know they wanted me to show up.

My solution was easy. At night, I would transform my car into a camper. That’s right! Faster than you can say “Optimus Prime”, my 2001 Hyundai Tiburon sports car would become a luxury camper. You might think that this would be an impossible feat. But most people in Georgia speak slow enough that I could convert my car before they even get to saying “… Prime.” As for the vehicle conversion itself, well, it might be difficult for some. But not for A.A.I man(adapt, adopt and improve)!

The first issue is to keep cool while sleeping in a warm summer night. No problem. I just rolled down both windows, opened the hatch back and let nature’s night breeze become my air conditioning. Problem solved … almost. It’s funny how one solution will create another set of problems. In this case, there was the issue of mosquitoes, other flying insects and creepy crawly critters of the night. Again, the easy solution was to find mosquito netting. When all I could find was netting designed to fit over a cot, I simply bought two packages. One fit over the hatchback and draped to form a good seal along the body of the car. The second netting went over the roof of the car and covered the window openings. Lucky for me, it was wide enough to trap it using both the passenger and driver doors. So far so good. A third unexpected issue were the millions of biting ants that swarmed on the parched ground in the yard looking for water and flesh to nibble on. I bought a can of ant insecticide, sprayed the 12×15 foot patch of ground, covered that with a tarp, sprayed the tarp and then parked my car on top of it.

Now that I’ve taken care of the unwelcome guests, what about the most important guest — me? How comfortable could I sleep in a bucket seat? Not very well, I can assure you. I had a foam camping mat but how was it going to into the car? Hmmmm… When I laid the backs of the rear seats down, I had a platform that was only a little more than 5 feet from the back of the car to the front. I could let my feet dangle. Nah. There had to be a better way. All I needed was an extension. A little looking and I realized that I could put my 14 inch wide suitcase behind the passenger side seat. The camping mat then covered from the back of a car and laid with the front end over my suitcase. With inches to spare on my bed, I added a pillow and a blanket and hotel Ron was in business. Some room service would have been nice but my accommodations worked well. There’s nothing like laying there, looking up through the hatch back window and the netting and seeing millions of stars as a cool breeze soothes you gently to sleep … while the bellowing of untipped cows, the spastic barking of over-anxious dogs, and the sporadic crowing from an insomniac rooster all worked to have you enjoy the night with them. No doubt they were all paid by the motel industry to discourage the joys of camping. No problem though. I brought ear plugs.

There’s more to this little adventure but I think I’ve told you enough for now. Here’s a picture that my daughter snapped with her phone. I promise you that it is much more comfortable than her camera made it look like.

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