The Man Trip (10 Steps)

Thanks to my HTC Hero and WordPress for Android, I decided to use the 5+ hour drive to Bull Shoals Buffalo River Nat’l River to blog about it.

I’ll be making on-going updates as the trip goes on to try to encompass the essence of… The Man Trip.

1. Plan to start traveling to destination at an ungodly hour (ie 4am)
   • Don’t get to bed til 2am the night before
   • Sleep past “scheduled” start time by hours (reasons: see above)
2. Discuss and compare new gear bought for the trip focusing especially on masculine items such as knives and hatchets
3. Try to have a ratio of one GPS device per person. This is mainly for effect though
   • 4 GPS devices between two cars and we still found a way to get separated and add a couple hours to the trip by missing turns
4. Once at destination, take a hike and talk with knowledge about things you don’t actually know how to do
   • identify and “track” animals by their paw prints
   • identify and comment on the type of wood in the area and it use for fire or camp set up
5. Grow out facial hair… whatever you’ve got
6. Do simple man-activities 
   • Throw or skip rocks
   • Throw or skip very large rocks
   • Throw knives and hatchets at anything they’ll stick in
   • Build fire (see #7)
   • Build excessively large fire
7. Build Fire
   • If this were a ranked list by importance, this would be #1 followed by growing out facial hair.
   • If nothing else is done on the trip… this MUST be done
8. Discuss how well you and your buddies could survive back in “The Olden Days”
   • Near the end of the trip as you begin to feel very comfortable and accomplished with your camping abilities
9. Drink Beer
   • Even if you’re not a beer drinker.
   • Other booze will do as a substitute.
   • Extra points if you drink the booze out of a rustic looking flask.
10. Bring only enough food so that you believe you’ll actually have to kill something
    • Be sure to have a few extra granola bars or cans of beans to survive on when you, inevitably, do not kill anything