Member-only story
I was on vacation and discovered, much to my horror, that the pair of pants I was wearing was the only pair I packed. Do not ask me how I did that. I needed to find a way to wash them or drive three hours back home for the rest of my clothes or drive an hour to the nearest mall to find another pair. That means a two-hour ride round trip just to get some pants. Granted it is better than the six-hour drive round trip to home but still too long.
Having lived rudimentarily occasionally over the years, I learned to do my laundry by hand both when I was in rural Colimes, Ecuador and when I lived as a hermit in the high US deserts. In both cases usually ubiquitous laundromats were nowhere to be found. So, I easily was able to wash my clothes and they dried efficiently in the hot weather. I was, however, on Cape Cod in January.
Still, washing my clothes by hand was not the problem; drying them presented the challenge. This task is far easier in the desert or the tropics but not in the middle of winter in New England.
OK, you may say, since I, obviously, was in civilized territory I would have access to a coin-operated laundry. Yes, but what pants was I going to wear to wash the only pair I had.
