Still at base camp

Still at base camp teaching a semester in the classroom at our local college and waiting to take off for parts yet unknown.  Fortunately this has given me the time to learn to live in a tent.  Residing in a tent is much different than just going camping for a weekend.  So far I hope that my concerns about the longevity of the nylon fabric have proven to be overblown.

A beautiful day today.  I have now lived in Matilda since May and am just beginning to get the idea of what living in this associated collection of home-made tools is going to be like.  In one word: comfortable.  The bed (90% of Matilda) is the best bed in which I have ever slept. 

 

The side walls have been a really good idea for this tent.  Below is how the side panels look when they are down (usually when I first get up in the morning or in the event of a storm), and then reefed.

My kitchen has not had that much use since I have been at home base much of the time, but all I have, and all I need is a simple camp range.  The table is from Gander and has a folding aluminum slat top with a cloth storage unit that includes four zip bags, at least two of them are insulated.  I just keep my cookware, eating implements as well as canned goods and dried products in this item.  The problem is that you really don't want it to get wet, so I just pull it inside the tent at night or during inclement weather.

Next week Matilda may be heading to this marina where a lot of elbow grease is going to be needed in order to make Woodchuck's new sailboat look livable...because he plans to live on it and be a nautical nomad.

Sewing and Equipping Your Tent

Sewing your own tent takes some technical sewing skills that you need to learn, but that involves no more than the ability to design and cut-out patterns and also use the sewing machine itself (thanks to Mother for oddly supposing that someday this skill would come in handy for a man).  I wanted a very large tent so that my whole camper would fit comfortably inside, so I worked out a 14 foot by 14 foot tent supported by three expandable poles in the center and five expandable poles along each side. There is no tent frame, and the tent is supported by the tensile strength of the nylon fabric. In this post I wanted to add some images of odds and ends that really help make the tent a more efficient place to live.

SNAPS:  These suckers are a bit expensive if you need hundreds of them as they sell for about a dollar a snap set.  Snaps come in a four-part set and some packages include a cheap tool to crush the parts together.  Recommend you spend the ($10-$24) pliers unless you have more than two arms.  I am going to use the snaps to snug-up the tent panels and to 'button-up' the tent in colder weather.

D-RINGS AND GROMMETS:  D-rings are everywhere and so are pretty cheap.  These are not mountain-climbing quality so don't even think of risking your life hanging from one of these, but they are really useful for  hanging-up panels, for making a friction-free sliding panel or for just hanging up various tools and toys from posts and cables.  Grommets are a really useful item but you have to pound them together so you should really do this step before you get your tent up.  Grommets are pretty cheap and you can get them at places like Harbor Freight, Michael's, Walmart, Lowe's ext.. You cut out the hole then use a hammer and pound the two sides of the grommet together.  Recommend you reinforce the fabric around the grommets.

Cord fasteners: This one is a large heavy-duty fastener and is extremely useful.  I bought them as a bag of 100 from usalanyards.com for 30$ and shipping.   I am using them to snug-up the lines that tighten the nylon side panels to the poles.  When I raise the tent sides for a seven foot elevation from a four foot height, all I have to do is loosen these tighteners and just raise the cloth, then tighten again.  This is fast and efficient.

CLEATS:  Well, I guess not for the tent itself, but these are so darned useful that I wanted to give them a shout.  You can use cleats to anchor rope of course, but you can also use them for many other purposes.

You can buy less expensive cleats at home improvement stores.  Marine stores will carry high quality cleats but if you are not risking your camper on the high seas then the lesser quality cleats will do just fine.

COOL STUFF:  I got this neat gadget from a dollar-type store.  This particular object connects a bottle to a D-ring so that you can hang up your beer or cider.  Angry Orchard cider is one of my favorites, and I am doing great in my ambition to be like President John Adams and begin my day with a cold cider.  Adams drank a whole quart for breakfast, but I find one of these to be quite efficacious.

PEGS:  Kind of mundane as a subject, but when the rain falls for four days and the ground turns to soup, you really want a decent tent peg to keep your lines from collapsing.  Many places sell these larger, more heavy-duty pegs and I really recommend spending a few dollars and upgrading those little wire hooks.

FIGURE NINE ROPE TIGHTENER:  These are really the cat's fuzzy buttocks.  Tightening ropes becomes fast and efficient, and these things really hang on to the ropes even in a good stiff wind storm.

And if you need to get out there in the middle of a tropical downpour to adjust your lines, these will get you back inside the tent much, much faster.

S-RINGS:  These things are useful for connecting two objects like ropes, or whatever will fit through the rings.  I have used them for entry connectors because they are easy to open and close.  

Now that I have all those things done, I can just lay back in my camper and ponder at all the 'improvements' in my neighborhood as we pave over more of paradise to turn it into a parking lot.  Is there a more sustainable way to live besides having to endlessly swim forward with development of all the remaining spaces just to avoid economic death?  Our 'shark economy' can only survive if it is growing.  That is uncomfortably reminiscent of cancer.  We need an economic model that is more like an organ and less like a disease.  And can any sustainable system be built in a world of uncontrolled population growth such that the 'tragedy of the commons' might be avoided?

An unexpected tropical downpour and thunderstorm

The plan was to know when inclement weather was coming and then lower the sides of the tent to make a steeper roof pitch for more efficient shedding of water and to keep the wind from getting under the tent.  But late yesterday afternoon a huge convective storm popped up with high wind and an enormous amount of water.  The tent was configured with the sides up and the sidewalls reefed.  But after taking a real beating by Mother Nature, the tent was still standing after the rainstorm ended.  

Some recent improvements that I learned really help a lot: 1. Changed over to figure-nine rope tighteners because they allow a much, much faster response to the need to tighten up the tent lines and raise and lower the tent itself.  2. Changing over to those little black plastic cylinder string snugger-uppers that you have on jackets, to keep snug my side-wall panels.  Having to tie and untie knots gets old. 3. Changed to s-style clips to link my entry panels.  They are fast and easy to manage.  

Although the  roof sheds water like it is doing in the picture, it still manages to get a bit misty inside the tent when the water is coming down in buckets.  But mostly the nylon fabric breathes well and sheds all the water you really need it to.  My concern is that the fabric will  fade in the sun too quickly and lose tensile strength.  But at least for now, the tent has really outdone itself in terms of expectations.  It provides privacy, a place to meet people, weather protection and a place to live outdoors, outside of Matilda.  

Windy, The House of Orange

So this is Windy (The House of Orange) the tent that goes together with Matilda to make up my system for living.  It is made of a heavy-duty sports nylon and is strung between adjustable tent poles.  The structure is able to convert its roof angle depending on the weather and the need.  It is only a fifteen minute set-up and tear-down, and only one person is required.  I plan to use it as a rain shelter and patio with one side at seven feet and the other pitched low at four feet.  Matilda fits comfortably inside.  On the other hand, I could park Matilda outside and host a family reunion in this small circus tent.

Gentle and tough

Brian Nichuals with an uncooked lamb named Magoo

Magoo probably won his freedom from the skillet due to his insanely cool sheeponality,

Putting together a tent system

Stormy weather in Lyons, New York:

Windy, the tent, getting a fitting during the sewing-up job.  So far the big top and one side panel are completed with the rest yet to be invented as we go along.  It is sort of built on an old but practical military style.  The nylon fabric is heavy but experience will tell if I will be sewing up some new tent next year.  I chose the color orange because of Syracuse University (of course) and also because my son the Danimal below is a land surveyor.  It is by far the most honest profession, but also seems to be one that requires spraying day-glo orange on yourself a lot.  

Fourth of July Jelly making

 

On the Fourth of July I might have had other plans, but the black currents decided all on their own that today was their day to be picked.  So I spent hours stripping these inedible black berries from just two bushes for a total of twenty pounds of berries.  Not sure how much jelly that will make because after the berries are processed one also adds a lethal dose of sugar equal to the weight of the berries themselves.   All those berries are simmering away on the stove until they reach just the right consistency and then they get put in jars for long keeping.  As horrible as a fresh black current tastes, black current jam/jelly is the best-tasting preserve you could imagine.

I found this  rock 'tool' not twenty feet from my campsite.  I am not sure if it is a flaked tool or if it's shape was the result of natural non-human causes.  If it is indeed a tool, then it is of great age. It looks like it may have been used as a scraper and it fits perfectly in the hand for that function.  However it does appear to have a shaft of sorts and that would suggest maybe that the intent was to tie it onto a stick.  But since the tip is broken, maybe the project was abandoned.  I am posting pictures here in the hope that someone might see it and have a more informed opinion.

Why do I call my camper 'Matilda'

People have wondered why I chose to call my little peripatetic home 'Matilda'.  I took the name from that great Aussie song 'Waltzing Matilda', where Matilda was what the swagman called his 'swag' in the song. That famous swag was his bundled-up bedding roll that would swing back and forth as he walked, and since he was alone, he called his swag 'Matilda'.  I grokked the parallel. My camper waltzes along behind my car just like the swagman's bundle, and I have pretty much the same relationship with my waltzing bundle on wheels as that swagman had with his Matilda.  The song also strongly captures that sense of determined individual freedom that we Americans and Australians seek to enjoy and makes a fine anthem for a life on the road.

More of my world

The reigning clan matriarch in her command module at 92.  Name withheld because she gets too many crazy calls already and we need to keep the old men away from her for their own protection.  Her pioneer grandfather was a Civil War veteran who died while fetching water from a well. Her dad 'Bert' was born in the back of a Conestoga wagon in Red Cloud, Nebraska.  It took me thirty years to write the genealogy that lists all the ingredients for making this heroic mammal that tough.

This retired racing nag has won numerous races (stay with me, I'm talking about the horse). But now he lives a golden but gelded life in full retirement.  His big concern is the sanctity of his pasture and food supply.  He does not like me very much, probably because I am neither fenced-in nor gelded.  If my car breaks down, we can go full Amish together and if he bumps me aggressively again to show me that being gelded means nothing after retirement, well, there is the 'Alpo Solution'.

Still waiting for Godot

Unfortunately, due to commitments, my North American round-robin tour will not begin until mid December, then will likely stay and celebrate Festiva with the family.  So if you want to ride shotgun with me for a leg of the trip or if you just want me to drop in and visit, then now is the time to make reservations (e-mail me, or comment below).  I plan to head to the southern states on the way west and spend much of the winter looking at Native American sites and natural monuments before heading up the west coast as far as Vancouver.  Then a long trek across Canada to Nova Scotia for the summer, and back to New York for the fall season. Since I can only take one passenger at a time it will be important to plan ahead.

Home Base Camp

Often at dawn a doe will quietly make her way up the creek bed.  Other visitors such as raccoon, skunk, squirrels, chipmunk, and feral cats also visit from time to time. The feral cats have taken on the mission of ridding me of songbirds and small rodents but risk being controlled themselves by my equally quiet and deadly blowgun.  Fortunately I don't eat cat.

  

The new home-owner studying for his Bar Exam 

One of Matilda's young family friends planning sabotage

Something you don't run into every day

In the spirit of posting interesting/amusing/bizarre/educational
things that I run into in my travels...this is 'all of the above'.

This 'stuffed' gentleman's job is to guard the hen house.

A little 'bling'

So today I painted a design on both sides of Matilda and also cut out and mounted two boomerangs cut from diamond plate.  I think it looks like a cross between Malibu and Sydney and no one has yet to say the dreaded:"That looks sooo gay Dad."

Learning how to live with a lot less

The first attempt at sewing up an awning of sorts looked a bit goofy, so back to design on that one. (below)

The rest of the pictures show how my 'office' works, and with the hatchback lifted up, how the back bench becomes usable for a number of functions.  

Learning the meaning of 'trickle-charge'

Matilda used up all the battery power two days ago after her extension cord became unpluged.  So with a new voltage gauge installed I hope to at least monitor my available power resources.  Looking forward to putting in an effective solar panel soon to take advantage of the free power.  Apparently trickle chargers are well-named.  It has taken two days just to get the battery up to 10 volts with what looks like a couple of days left to go to get to a respectable 12.  At least the roof does not leak and I can get wifi where I am situated.

Matilda's back in port

Matilda's back in port for a couple of days getting a rain fly and sun shade sewn-up.  She also needs a battery gauge and a little 'bling'.  So far all the design ideas I have come up with have been referred to as "so seventies" (actually, sixties if you want to know).  But I'm still searching for a winning design so your ideas are welcome. Was thinking of boomerangs...

First camping trip to Cedar Point State Park, Cape Vincent, NY, May/June 2012

First real campsite tested Matilda with two days of rain.  Matilda leaked a little inside from a roof seam, but also was drenched from a window left open.  My good friend Scott Mason (below) from Cape Vincent, was my first guest.