Rally decompression and random thoughts

My rally clothes are in the washer, my gloves are drying, and my rainsuit is dry, but my camping gear remains in the big black-and-yellow BMW duffle until the day warms a bit and the humidity drops enough to make drying plausible.

And I’m back at Hastings, having dropped off the DVD of “I Love You, Man” that we watched last night.

My tent is a special edition Eureka made for the now-defunct Galyan’s sporting good and outfitter chain. I use it because it can accommodate me and my stuff in tolerable comfort, it packs down to a rather small package thanks to its 12”-long pole segments, and it has door zippers that don’t jam when you enter and exit – just a nice smooth semi-circular one-handed swoop and the door is zipped or unzipped. It’s the only tent I’ve ever had that’s so easy to zip and unzip.

You see a huge range of camping styles at a BMW rally. Our Indy group included two of the Big Agnes tents that you can stand up and walk around in and have huge vestibules that really constitute an extra room. They’re enormous and their distinctive yellow color makes they easy to spot in a campground.

At the other end of the spectrum were a guy in a bivouac bag and another using a hammock strung between two trees and sheltered by a tarp. The guy in the bivvy bag said the worst thing about it is that it’s hard to get in and out of. It looks claustrophobic to me and I’d worry about being so inconspicuous that someone would run over me in the middle of the night.

Mister Hammock arrived on Friday, missing Thursday night’s rain, so I have no idea how well his system works in bad weather.

Bob Bender had the tallest Eureka A-frame style tent I’ve ever seen.  It’s identical in design to a one-man model I used for several years until a storm killed it in Missoula, Mont. in July, 1998, but big enough to accommodate three or four people and tall enough to stand up in.

I’d love to have a bigger tent, but I am loathe to give up even an extra cubic inch of space in my duffle because I really like being able to stuff air mattress, sleeping bag, tent and pillow into a single package that can be secured to my luggage rack with a pair of ROK Straps