New year, new tent

Since I’m going to turn 70 this year *shudder* I decided to treat myself to a tent I can stand up in.

The Eureka Special Galyan’s Edition Timberline two-man tent I’ve used at motorcycle rallies since the 2005 BMW MOA in Lima, Ohio is showing its age. I noticed water wicking into the bottom of the tent at the BMW MOA rally last summer in St. Paul, Minn., and again when it rained at the Falling Leaf Rally in October in Potosi, Mo.

It’s been a great tent that packs down to the smallest package of any tent I’ve owned and kept me safe and dry through many a torrential rain, but the ceiling is low – I still have to crouch when I’m on my knees – and I didn’t relish climbing the learning curve of re-sealing the floor seams, a fix that might or might not work.

I started perusing the Eureka web site a month or two ago, shopping for something that would give me more headroom and space to spread out a bit more than the two-man Timberline afforded.

I finally settled on the 5-person Tetragon 5. It has a 6-foot ceiling and a 9x9-foot floor (81 square feet of floor space, for the math impaired). That seems kind of extravagant, but I figure after nearly 70 years on planet Earth and 40 years of occasional tent camping, I deserve it.

So with the generous help of my son Steve and my wife Maria, I pulled the trigger on a Tetragon 5 yesterday on Amazon.com.

Now I have to revisit my packing strategy to accommodate a 28-inch-long tent package on the luggage rack of my K1200GT.