tent for Pennsic
I bought (ordered) a new tent today. anniemal's not going to Pennsic this year; I'm going without her. The tent we bought 3(?) years ago is absurdly large for one person (It's absurdly large for two.), so I took a look at our 5 (yes) other tents. The other new tent is a 5'x7' (1.5m x 2.1m) freebie that came along with the monster. It's a fun size for kids, but it doesn't have a "bathtub" floor, so it's not going to keep stuff dry in the kind of rain Pennsic has had every year I've been there. The other tents - Annie and I each had 2 old tents when we met. My newer old tent went to Pennsic (and Baitcon) our first couple of years, but it's simply aged to the point that the fabric is dying. My older tent, (dating back to my NYRF days, before I moved to VA, so it's probably 25+) has got a small rip and things held together with tape, and it predates the bathtub floors; it's not going to keep things dry without a tarp over it. It's not a bad size though, 9'x9' (2.74m x 2.74m). It worked well for RenFest weekend camping; marginal for Pennsic. Annie's tents are smaller than mine, and wouldn't have sufficient space for all the stuff one takes to Pennsic. (And I take far less than she.) Taking 2 smaller tents is always a possibility (and it's what we did the first couple of years), but her other tent isn't going to keep things dry either.
I played with trying to rig a tarp in the yard Sunday. Guy lines are going to take a lot more space than I should use in the campsite, and it would be a real chore to set up. So I bought another tent. 9'x12' (2.74m x 3.6m) - although probably smaller than it sounds because of it's non-rectangular shape. It should both keep things dry and have good ventilation. My purchase was more rushed than I'd like because there was cheap shipping until midnight, but I can't count on getting home from work in time to order, and they can be draconian about non-work web use here. (There were major news stories about some higher-ups here surfing porn, so it's a sensitive topic. They do monitor things now. (Geez, I can't even search for the news stories because they've got me locked into "SafeSearch" and "porn" is filtered out as a search term!)) The tent is also on sale, and it's one cent below the shipping-discount threshold, so I had to find something else cheap to add to order. I'm a sucker for multitools. (Also on sale.) I avoid anything that uses button-cell batteries, but it could be useful (flashlight in the multitool).
A tent is the sort of purchase I might have discussed first with Anniemal, but she hasn't been home much.
I wonder whether she's going to get the van fixed in time for me to drive it to Pennsic, or am I going to leave her without a car for 9 days?Fri Jul 22 12:03:13 EDT 2011
The new tent and the multitool arrived this morning.
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