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So there we were, me and a tent, face-to-face. Or actually sweaty face to multilingual instructions, which assumed that I knew things like how to identify the door of a folded tent and knew the meanings of words like "grommet."
How hard could it be? I've seen kids put the things up in nothing flat. I've seen people who have had too much to drink do it in the dark.
It turned out to be fairly easy, but it was the defining moment in actually carrying out my decision to become a camper again.
I plan to spend a substantial part of my retirement traveling, and I didn't need to be a mathematical genius to realize that motel rates and airfares were going to be a little on the pricey side for me.
I've been around campers and people who practically live in RVs for years because of my involvement with Florida folk music and knew I was going to have to break the promise I made to myself one rainy, muddy, leech-infested morning in Vietnam.
Never again, I had promised, would I be more than 500 feet from foam rubber, air conditioning, ice cubes and hot and cold running water.
It turns out I can pretty much do that as a camper. Things have changed since the days when kids could find a patch of woods, build a lean-to, heat a can of pork and beans in the fire and jump 2 feet at every noise sure that we were being visited by an (even then) extremely rare Florida panther.
Thinking back, a lot of those trips for me were probably on private property, but Florida land values and insurance and liability concerns back then weren't what they are now, and nobody much cared if you camped in their woods, as long as you cleaned up after yourself and didn't burn them down.
Now we live in a world of no-trespassing signs, laws that make it illegal to be in an orange grove uninvited (I have no idea where Central Florida teenagers go to park and make out these days) and people who just don't want you to be on their land.
There are, I note gratefully, still a host of state, national and even county parks where you can camp at reasonable rates although fire regulations frequently prevent you from building a campfire.
And then there are the commercial campgrounds, some of which have swimming pools, game rooms, computer hookups, ice machines and even small stores.
I stayed at one in Key West in late March, Boyd's Campground, that also had a private beach. I'll admit to a little sticker-shock about the price, $50 per night for an inland tent site, $60 for one on the water, but I found out the price is not out of line, and if you see what hotel rooms go for in Key West, you're still ahead of the game pitching a tent.
I also learned a few things about the rhythm of camping. Everything from a trip to the bathroom to making a pot of coffee involves, generally speaking, a lot more effort than it does at home, so it tends to make me think through things a little more before doing them.
Sometimes it is more practical for me to sleep in what the people who customized my minivan optimistically called a bed than it is to put up a tent. Sometimes a can of Ensure is more attractive then setting up a propane stove, cooking bacon and eggs and then washing dishes.
The big plus there is that I do less snacking and lose weight when I camp. I learned that five or six before bed is a bad idea for middle-aged or post-middle-aged men who don't want to spend a considerable part of the night, especially if it is cold, getting in and out of whatever they are sleeping in, looking for their shoes and then trudging to the nearest bathroom.
I definitely learned that zipping tent flaps securely and closing vehicle doors when they do not absolutely need to be open limits the number of other creatures, especially winged ones with irritating buzzes, with whom one will share his environment for the entire night.
But I loved it.
There is a freedom about camping, about feeling like a turtle carrying his home on his back, and about being able to change your environs from day to day that, even if you are only saving a few dollars, makes it worthwhile.
I also learned not to be envious of people who drive motor homes that cost three or four times my net worth. I know my limitations as a driver, and I shouldn't be driving one of those behemoths. I know what kind of gas mileage they get - and I wouldn't be able to afford to drive one from Dade City to Zephyrhills - and I know that winning the lottery or becoming a major rock star in a very few months are the only ways I would ever be able to afford one.
Still, to all of my critics who said I would run screaming to the nearest Holiday Inn at the mere thought of being exposed to the outdoors, you are, at least so far, wrong.
I may still go for a super-small camper, the kind that sits on a minitruck chassis for convenience sake.
I said I learned how to put up the tent.
I didn't say I liked it.