You Know You're a Backpacker When...








Your front and back lawn has returned to its natural state.

The Office of Homeland Security is investigating the delivery of all those brown packages by UPS & FEDEX.

Your friends come over to dinner and you have to explain how to use a Spork.

Your kitchen two burner stove both are marked Coleman Exponent.

You drink all your beverages out of a bladder.

Your forehead is permanently creased from your headlamp.

Your living room furniture consists of various sized and shaped logs.

Your wallpaper pattern is TOPO MAP.

You have a room in your house just for your gear.

You spend all winter looking at topos.

You look forward to getting a dividend every year, and not because you invest in stocks or because you live in Alaska.

You wear your Tevas to work.

You own a food dehydrator.

You are on a "first name" basis with the cashiers at your local outdoor store.

Your dog excessively drools when you dust off his/her pack.
 
You are expert in the 41 ways to use a bandana.
 
You've turned into a pack-rat... saving everything imaginable that could "someday" be utilized on the trail: For example:
- Mountains of old outdoor magazines...
- Various sizes of rope, twine, velcro, zip ties, etc.
- Various sized plastic bags by the truckload

You absolutely refuse to throw away a pair of hiking boots cause of the memories it reflects everytime you glance at them.

Your family knows the gifts you want: Gift Certificates to REI, Patagonia, Mountain Hardwear, EMS.

Each and every time you go to the grocery store, you find some new dried soup, rice, noodles, meat in a foil package, etc. and exclaim "Oooh, that would be good for backpacking."

You hold everything you buy (even non-BP stuff) in your hand and wonder about its weight.

You think it's perfectly normal to get all of your rain gear on (jacket, pants, boots, and gaiters) and stand in the shower to test the set-up.

The guy at the camera store says he enjoyed your trip while printing your photos.

You spend your entire afternoon off wandering an outdoors store.

Other customers at the store ask you for advice on purchases.

You can very easily rationalize spending hundreds on a raincoat.

Your REI member number has only six digits.

Your basement looks like an REI garage sale.

Owning five sleeping bags, three tents, ten stoves, and cubic yards of doo-dads makes perfect sense.

You consider things like REI, Campmor, and STP catalogs "porn".

You shut off all of the heat in your house and open all the windows in the dead of winter to test the temperature rating on your bag.

You like power outages because you can play with your headlamp.

Everything you own smells like a campfire.


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