New Tent: REI QuarterDome T2 Plus

I normally carry a sil-nylon tarp on my overnight adventures. Tarps have many advantages over tents. You get way more room, way better ventilation, and they weigh nothing. Well, mine weighs 13 ounces – not counting stakes, poles and guylines. The tarp works great on backpacking and kayaking trips into the wilderness. You can set up the tarp with either your trekking poles, or your canoe paddles, or sticks you find lying around.

Tarp

It’s less ideal on bicycling trips, unless you bring along some sort of poles to set it up. On my last S24O, we stayed at a crowded State Park campground. I didn’t have very much luck finding good sticks to set it up with, and I ended up having the whole thing crash on me in the wee hours of the morning, dumping water all over me. I also had mosquitoes buzzing around my head all night.

Less than ideal.

The tarp is also less than ideal you want to change out of your bike shorts without provoking lust in every woman in the campground. You don’t get much privacy under a tarp. Not an issue on a backpacking trip to the middle of nowhere, but not so good in a campground.

Tarp setup for an s240

So, I decided I needed a lightweight tent for biking trips in civilized areas during bug season. The problem is that I’m 6’5″ and most tents are too short, and either my feet stick out, or I have to sleep in a fetal position. Not fun.

After some Internet research, I discovered that the REI half-dome and quarter-dome series tents are available in a “plus” size, that’s 10 inches longer than a standard tent.

So, the question came down to half-dome or quarter-dome. The half dome is $100 cheaper than the quarter-dome, but weighs a pound more, and comes in unsightly “apricot” color.

_{The REI half-dome T2 plus}

The Quarter-dome weighs a pound less, costs a hundred bucks more, and comes in a nice green / gray color.

_{REI Quarter-Dome T2 Plus}

This was a tough call to make based on only Internet pictures, so I drove all 104 miles to the REI in Conshohoken to see them both.

I was able to hold one in each hand, and the half-dome felt noticeably heavier. A pound doesn’t make that much of a difference on a bike, but there’s always the off-chance I might carry this thing on a hike where weight really does matter. So, I sprang for the quarter-dome. (Plus, I really disliked the half-dome’s colors.)

I got it home, disassembled it, and weighed all the parts on the gf’s baking scale.

tent body	25.5 ounces
rain fly	25.625 ounces
Poles (in their sack)	18.125 ounces
stakes (in their sack)	2.125 ounces
stuff sack	2.75 ounces
Total:	~ 4.63 pounds

I think I can live with a sub – 5 pound tent that I can actually fit into. It was after dark by the time I got home, so no pictures of the real deal yet. Hopefully I’ll be able to set it up ad snap some sometime tomorrow morning.

Now I need to find time for an s240 to see how it works in the real world.

Bald Eagle Ramble

For the past two years, The Sloth and I have undertaken overnight bicycle camping trips in the fall. We did the Pine Creek Rail Trail in 2008 and 2009. This year, we decided to mix things up a bit, and did our ride on the gravel forestry roads in the Bald Eagle State Forest.

I grew up a few miles from where we were riding, so I was already pretty familiar with the area. We planned a 20-ish mile loop Saturday, and a shorter loop for Sunday, with R. B. Winter State Park as our base camp.

We got kind of a late start on Saturday. It was probably around 1:00 before we started up the first climb out of the park.

It was about a 3 mile climb to the top of the first mountain. Even with my 17 inch low gear, I ended up walking some of it. At the top of the climb, there was a gorgeous view of the mountains all dressed up for fall.

I forgot to bring my camera, and I shot these with my cell phone, so that’s why they kind of suck.

After catching our breath at this overlook, we had about 5 miles of mostly downhill riding through the Spruce Run valley. A wild turkey ran across the road in front of us, but that was the only notable wildlife sighting.

Rolling down to Spruce Run

Then we had to slog our way up Running Gap, where I stopped to refill a water bottle out of the stream. No filtration needed. It’s nice that there’s at least one place on Earth where you can drink the water straight from the stream.

After the long ~~ride~~ walk through the gap, it was a long, mostly gradual uphill back to the park.

About a mile from the end, we stopped off at another overlook to take some pictures.

Overlook At R. B. Winter State Park

We rolled into the campsite just before dark, where Klinutus and my evil sister were waiting for us. They brought us some cupcakes, of which we were in dire need.

After we finished off the cupcakes, we decided that our freeze dried camping food didn’t seem very appetizing, so we drove into town and got a pizza.

By the time we got back to camp, it had gotten really cold out, and we had no firewood. So, I lit my candle lantern, so we’d at least have some light, and we sat around the picnic table and drank coffee and talked a load of bollocks until late in the evening.

The next morning it was freezing cold. Sloth emerged from his tent and discovered he had forgotten to bring anything for breakfast.

Calamity!

So, we packed up our stuff and drove into town for the manly farmer’s breakfast buffet at Ard’s farm market.

The breakfast at Ard’s is delightful, but it’s composed almost entirely of grease. With a gut full of grease, we decided to bag the 15 mile loop we had planned for the day, and drove back to Harrisburg with all due haste, before gastro-intestinal misfortune could strike us unawares.

So, only 20 miles for the weekend, but they were good, hard miles. Probably worth at least 50 rail trail miles.

Sloth has a few more pictures on his Picasa.

(For those of you reading this on the OpenStreetMap Blog aggregator, I traced the whole thing, and added the campground we stayed in to the map.)

Klinutus’ Bachelor Party

See this shady character? This is Klinutus.

Klinutus is a shady fucker

You see, Klinutus asked my evil sister to marry him a while back. As it turns out, my evil sister has highly questionable taste in men, and so she said yes.

Since there’s going to be a wedding, there has to be a bachelor party.

My evil sister forbade employment of the traditional bachelor party accouterments, like strippers and whatnot, so we had to make other arrangements.

It was decided that we would undertake an overnight whitewater canoe / camping adventure instead. So, we loaded up our canoes, tents, moonshine, etc. and headed to the north end of the Pine Creek Gorge.

I was still hopeful that someone had secretly arranged for strippers to meet us someplace along the water, so I wore my sexiest outfit.

My sexiest outfit

I was traveling light, since I was in a kayak, but the other six fellows had canoes loaded to the gunwales with camping gear and booze. I sat patiently waiting for them to get everything loaded before we hit the water.

Waiting to get started

By my estimate, about half of the participants were already thoroughly intoxicated by the time we got underway. The first rapid swamped two of the three canoes.

Dumping water out of a swamped canoe

As the day went on, the paddlers got drunker, and more canoes filled with water. At one point, Klinutus even had to throw a rescue line to retrieve a reveler from a watery tomb.

At long last, we arrived at our campsite for the evening. I was feeling quite smug by this point, because I had managed not to fall out of my boat all day. I waited by the shore for the others to unload their canoes. Then, I popped my skirt, and got out of my kayak, only to find myself swimming in water well over my head. Evidently I was not as close to shore as I thought.

Soggy and cold, we made camp, rigging our tarps with canoe paddles.

Klinutus' rig

We stayed at the Hoffman camping area, which was quite lovely, as it’s only accessible by canoe or bicycle. It’s a nice open field, and we had the whole thing to ourselves.

Hoffman Camping Area

There’s very little light pollution in this part of the state, and it was a clear night in an open field, so the stars were out in full force. Everyone seemed to enjoy the view.

Drunken stargazers

That is, when they weren’t busy tending to the campfire.

Campfire

There was much deep and insightful conversation about various and sundry topics around the campfire before everyone went to bed.

The following morning, it took people an astoundingly long time to get back underway. We didn’t launch the boats until almost 11:00.

The water wasn’t nearly as choppy in this section, and we were able to float along and enjoy the scenery for another 10 miles until we got to the take-out.

Floating along Pine Creek

It was quite a lovely time, even without strippers. Amazingly, nobody drowned, and everyone seemed to enjoy themselves.

There are a bazillion more pictures here and here, if you want to see more.

Codorus s24o

I went on another s24o with doc and sloth this weekend. We met up at Doc’s house and threw our bikes and camping supplies in the back of his truck for the ride down to the YHRT trailhead.

Around this time I remembered that I had forgotten my tarp poles. Not really a big deal, I assumed I could find a few sticks in the campsite to set up my tarp with.

So, we rode down the YHRT, stopping at Serenity Station for some lunch.

Me riding my bike

After lunch, we had a few more miles of rail trail before turning off into the real world. I was a little nervous about this part, because I was the one who mapped out the route to the campground, and I did so without any real knowledge of the area. I just looked up the topography view on gmaps, and tried to steer us around any big hills, while simultaneously keeping us off busy roads. Luckily, I was pretty successful. We had a few hills, but nothing horrible. Traffic was also pretty minimal until we got close to the campsite.

A few miles before the campsite, we had some weather. It rained on us for maybe the last 2 miles of the ride, but once we got to our site in the “Timberdoodle Roughin’ It Area” of the campground, it had mostly stopped.

We decided to pitch our shelters before making dinner, in case it started back up again.

As I had forgotten my tarp poles, I had to make a little expedition into the woods to look for some sticks. The only sticks I could find were a little on the thin side, and a wee bit rotten, but they only had to hold a few pounds of tension, so I guessed they would serve.

After dinner, sloth poured a small vial of olive oil into his little cook pot. He lit up a second Esbit tablet when I asked him what he was up to. “popcorn!” He said. He was going to try to make popcorn over an Esbit tablet. It was the wackiest thing I had heard all day, and I was not optimistic about the odds of successful popcorn popping.

I was wrong. It did work, and the popcorn was pretty good. Luckily, Doc snapped a photo of the popcorn with the still-burning Esbit stove to document this achievement, as nobody would have believed it otherwise.

After dinner, we had some festive beverages, and a bit of conversation before turning in for the night.

About an hour after bedtime, it started raining. Hard. It rained pretty much all night long, which was kind of nice, because it chased the bugs away, and I was having some insect issues in my open tarp.

Just before dawn, I had to get up the answer the call of nature. I noticed that my tarp was much closer to my face than it was when I went to sleep. Nylon stretches when it gets wet, so the whole tarp had lost a good bit of tension and there was water pooling in some of the low spots.

As I was walking back from my trip to the potty, I briefly considered tightening things back up, but I figured we would be getting up for breakfast soon anyhow. Then, calamity struck! I tripped over one of the guylines, and one of my rotten little sticks snapped in two! The whole tarp came crashing down, dumping water all over my camping gear.

I therefore decided it was time to get up. I got my breakfast sorted out, and my camping compatriots were stirring soon thereafter. We were underway in a stiff drizzle by 8:00 or so.

We returned to Serenity Station for a second breakfast, and made the final push up the rail trail towards York.

At around the 50 mile mark, I was feeling pretty tired and lightheaded. Then I beheld a truly amazing spectacle. A penguin had waddled out onto the trail maybe 100 feet in front of us. This was very disconcerting, because penguins are not indigenous to this part of Pennsylvania. I asked my companions what manner of animal that was up ahead. They reported that it was a cat. It still looked like a penguin to me, but in a few seconds, it changed direction, and then I could see that it was, in fact, feline. A black and white feline, but a feline to be sure. I don’t know if I was just really tired, or if maybe Serenity Station puts hallucinogens in their breakfast omelets.

At any rate, we were soon back in downtown York, covering a total distance of 55 miles for the weekend.

Despite the rain, the tarp failure, and the hallucinatory penguins, it was a lovely time. I can’t wait to do it again.

Gifford Pinchot S24O

Last weekend, I did an S24O with Doc, and The Sloth, some of Sloth’s neighbors.

When I arrived at the Sloth residence, it seemed to have turned into a bike shop of sorts.

Turns out he was putting a bike together so some of his neighbors could come along. Once all the bikes were packed and ready, we headed out through New Cumberland, and into the hills.

Oh, the hills. They were steep, and evil and ugly. And I walked up more than a few. After several miles of misery, we came upon a small country store, and got some gator-aid. I also bought some oatmeal-cream pies, because Kent Peterson is my nutritional role model, whether he likes it or not.

At any rate, the hills smoothed out (slightly), and we ran into Doc near the entrance to the camping area. This is Doc’s Trucker, all loaded up.

Our campsite was nice and scenic, but there really weren’t very many good places to put tents. State Park campgrounds are notorious for their hard, compacted ground. I only brought a RidgeRest to sleep on, and it wasn’t very comfy on the hard ground.

I was testing out some new gear on this trip. I had a Jacks-R-Better Stealth Quilt. It’s a cool piece of kit, because you can use it as a sleeping bag, and as a Serape to keep you warm while you futz around in the campsite. Dual-use items save pannier space and weight. It got down to around 37°F That night, but I was mostly warm, even though the stealth is supposed to be a summer-weight quilt.

I wore the stealth as a serape in the morning, while making breakfast and whatnot, and it was very cozy, if somewhat unfashionable.

At any rate, after a somewhat sleepless night on the hard ground, we rode back the way we came. Pausing several times to catch our breaths on the tops of hills.

At the end of the ride, we found that all the exertion had given us a hankering for burritos, so we made our way out to Neato Burrito to recharge our batteries.

All in all, it was a fun trip. I think I’m going to get one of those fancy new Therm-a-rest NeoAir mattresses for next time. My hips and shoulders were sore the next day from sleeping on the hard ground. Guess I’m getting old.

Doc and Sloth have both written up trip reports, so go and read them for some more insightful commentary on our adventure. Sloth is already hatching plans and schemes for another S24O sometime next month.

Pine Creek Trip

A few months ago, the Sloth and I decided to recreate last year’s PCRT camp out. Various scheduling conflicts pushed the trip back a few weeks this year, and we missed the fall leaves this time.

Mrs. Sloth kindly agreed to shuttle us up to the north end of the trail. After fiddling with our panniers for a few minutes, we were under way by about 11:00.

After a few miles, we encountered a momma bear with two cubs crossing the trail. We stopped our bikes to exchange pleasantries, but she was in rather a hurry with pre-hibernation errands to run. She led her cubs off the trail before we even had time to get our cameras out.

We spent the rest of the day rolling along, taking in the sights, shooting the breeze about various things, and taking numerous snack breaks.

Before long, it became obvious that darkness would find us before we found out camp site. We did not figure into our calculations that last year’s ride occurred before the daylight saving time change. Not that it was anything to be concerned about, since we were both rocking dynohubs. Along the way, the Sloth’s headlight cable got tangled in his spokes, which rendered his headlight unusable. We were able to find our way into camp by the light from my headlight without incident.

After we set up camp, we sat down to some fine Esbit-warmed cuisine.

With full bellies and many hours of darkness to while away before bedtime, we scavenged about for some firewood. The area around the camp site was picked pretty clean by previous campers, but we found enough to keep a small fire going until about 9:00. When the fire went out, we went to bed.

The morning sunlight revealed a huge pile of firewood in an unoccupied camp site a few yards from ours. We muttered curses under our breaths and made some breakfast and coffee. I made a pot from some Java Juice packets I brought along in an effort to save weight.

The Sloth is thankfully a bit more picky about his caffeine than I am, and produced from his panniers a french press and some freshly ground fancy-pants coffee from India. It put my java juice to shame.

We got rolling again, and passed a lot more cyclists than we had the day before. We passed a fellow heading the opposite direction, and a few seconds later, came across what appeared to be a blowdown.

Closer inspection revealed the truth. We were under attack by crazed beavers.

We moved the tree off the trail, and continued on our way.

Near the end of the trail, I was starting to have some problems with my hands and my butt. I looked down at the GPS on my handlebars (I was getting a trace for OpenStreetMap), and noticed that our moving average speed was somewhere around 10mph. It occurred to me that maybe drop-handebar touring bicycles are not the optimal equipment for a leisurely ride like this. Maybe there is a better piece of equipment for this.

I have long been of the opinion that bicycle technology was essentially perfected in the late 1970’s. I’m now hypothesising that it may, in fact, have been perfected fifty years earlier.

I’ll find out shortly.

Home-made Bivy

I made my very own camouflage bivy-sack for sneaky camping trips.

The top is 1.9 osy uncoated ripstop nylon. The bottom is 1.3 osy sil-nylon. I used a modified version of this pattern I found online.

The whole shebang weighs 12 ounces.

I made the top camouflage so I can hide from rangers, game wardens, crazy rednecks, etc, when I’m camping in places I’m not supposed to. Even when I’m camping legally, the camouflage should be fun. I can pretend like I’m G.I. Joe hiding out from the Cobra Commander or whatever. I think this will make my camp-outs more exciting.

2nd Annual Pine Creek Ramble

Hear Ye, Hear Ye!

The Sloth and I are planning to re-enact last year’s PCRT trip. If anyone wants to come along, come along.

It goes like this:

We ride about 35 miles, stop to camp, then ride another 35 miles or so the next day. We ride slowly. We stop frequently to take pictures / tell stories / goof around.

Then, there’s the traditional ice cream / Root Beer stop at the Cedar Run General Store.

Cedar Run General Store

You will not have a problem keeping up with us.

We’re looking at either the weekend of Oct. 17 or Nov 14th. Drop a comment if you’re interested.

Grandma: 1927-2009

My Grandma passed away last week. We had her funeral today. After the service, the ladies from the Lutheran Church had sandwiches and casserole dishes of macaroni-&-cheese and crock pots full of baked beans for everyone.

It was a very Lake Wobegone kind of scene, and it made me homesick.

Grandma was a very nice lady, and it’s sad to see her go. I will do my best to honor her memory by continuing to enjoy some of the things that she enjoyed:

Nature
Moonshine

Grandma the Nature Girl

Grandma drinking moonshine

Bye, Grandma!

Books: Hammock Camping

Inspired by the delightful goofiness of a certain youtube personality, I’ve been spending some time reading about hammock camping over on hammockforums.net, and I decided to get the definitive book on the subject.

It’s pretty much a straight, to the point, screed on the hows and whys of hammock camping.

The idea is that you sleep in a hammock instead of on the ground. The benefits are:

camp anywhere – you don’t need to find a flat, level 6’x3′ piece of ground without roots, rocks, etc
Put your feet up and lounge in luxuriant splendor, even in the midst of inhospitable wilderness
Sleep up above all the bugs, snakes, mud, and creepy crawly things

It is a convincing argument, though I haven’t yet tried to sleep in one. I have found online instructions for constructing a hammock of my very own, but I have not yet sourced all the requisite materials for this project.

I think this strategy would work very nicely for stealth camping on s240s, because the number of possible campsites increases dramatically when all you need are 2 trees to tie up to.

I am eagerly awaiting warmer weather, so I can ride out into the hinterlands with a hammock, a few books, and perhaps a flask of spirits to conduct my leisure in style and comfort.

I give Hammock Camping 3 jihadis out of 5.

3 Jihadis out of 5

Adam's Blatherings

A never-ending brouhaha of nonsense and crap

Camping