April 6, 2008
First, a note to explain the title: in Argentinean Spanish, called castellano, the word for tent is carpa. This is in contrast to the word found in a small, used visual dictionary we picked up in Buenos Aires, which provides the español word: tienda. Not to be too simple, tienda is also, apparently, the word for a ¨shop¨ in español and castellano. How many words must be different before a dialect becomes a new language? Discovering a more (presently) useful word for tent has considerably smoothed communication.
But, this post isn´t really about words or dialects. It´s about our (I want to write ¨long suffering¨ here) tent. After a hard year, in too many environments to think about at one time, the tent is nearing the end of its days. Its been exposed to freezing cold, intense heat and torrents of rain, sometimes on the same day--viva, New Zealand! It´s been rammed by the snout of a wild pig in Malaysia (a very strange vision in the middle of the night), stepped on by at least one horse and ¨attacked¨ by a happy dog in Madagascar. In fact, the first signs of wear showed up in Madagascar, when the rainfly tore, and we discovered, despite the little checkered pattern, the material is not actually made of a rip-stop material.
Continued sun exposure thinned the rainfly and damaged the waterproof seams. I tried to reapply seam sealer, and it worked for a while. As the trip rolled on, the fly accumulated tears, the poles bent, the mesh snagged and the floor was punctured. Since then, the tent has received a steady stream of repairs, using super glue, dark blue duct tape and shoe-goo. (I want to note here that, in general, shoe-goo doesn´t work very well. Stunningly, it failed within the first couple of days when we tried to repair our boot soles! If you want to repairs boots, super glue works wonderfully.) All this attention culminated near the end of our time in New Zealand, when, after the mesh door zipper quit for good, Leah hand-stitched six feet of Velcro around the door as a substitute. Since then, each opening of the door includes a horrible ripping noise. At first this noise was almost pleasing since it enhanced the daydream of ripping the tent in to tiny pieces out of frustration. Now, the noise just seems sad, and possibly annoying to neighboring campers.
I took stock of the tent this morning. It lists. The body of the tent is covered in patches. The tie-downs are attached by threads, and the duct-tape and shoe-goo have almost completely pealed off. The fly is paper thin, almost transparent and tears easily, especially when damp. While the Velcro replaced the zipper on the mesh, the rainfly zipper is now starting to malfunction. In fact, to zip the fly, we must zip the lower zipper ¨closed¨ (the ends separate when the lower zipper is used in either direction), then zip the upper zipper open, and then zip the upper zipper back to close the material. In other words, three times the zipping each time we close the tent.
There is good news. Through all this the tent still works--it continues to keep us warm and dry. And over the past few months, Leah and I have had several interesting conversations about how to design a better tent. Most importantly, without the the tent, we would have been unable to camp in some amazing and beautiful places.
Not that I won´t be happy to, the moment the trip is over, seize the tent and tear it into tiny pieces.
