Well, here's the sad truth. Getting ready to get out of Detroit took all of my attention and time. What will it take for us to get out for 6 months if it took intense concentration and two full weeks to get out for 6 weeks.
......
here's another sad truth. It is today, November 9, 2011. It has been five months since my last post. When we were in Wyoming, we has no regular access to the internet. We did some work towards getting ready for the big trip, though.
For one, we purchased a bike ready tent....or so we thought. This little, light weight tent, purchased from Cabela's at the mother store, in Nebraska. It weighs less than 5 pounds, even with a rain fly.
Yay!, we thought. We know from previous experience, that we want to travel as light as possible. Our previous tent weighed more than 9 lbs. It had an enormous rainfly, where we could store panniers, wet shoes, and more...
So, here comes the big test of the new streamlined, super lightweight tent. We were at an utterly amazing event which takes place yearly in the far reaches of the Snowy Range. Under a completely moon lees sky, at nt nearly ninne thousand feet in elevations, people come from all over the country, bring the huge and often hand made telescopes to look deep into to time and space. Wes and I were the absolute neophytes, asking very stupid questions like "is that blurry thing a nebula?" The 17th Annual Wyoming Under the Stars (find em on Facebook) had about 300 amateur and professional astronomers, who were so pleased to show their 60" telescopes. These kind people let us peer through their prized devices (10 feet long, carried on trailers behind their cars to this mountain meadow up near Fox Park, Wyoming), then answered our newby questions in the pitch black. It was quite curious to have conversations with people whose faces could not be seen. No flashlights or other illumination was allowed in the camp.
We wobbled our way back to our tiny tent, past the many RV's and big tents. Our minds were full of the gigantic reach of the universe, or the vast and glorious spray of the Milky Way we could see with our naked eyes above our head.
Images of immensity disappeared immediately. First of all, only one of us could move at a time. Wes crawled in, then I wangled myself in. First, hard and cold reality. When we laid side to side, we were touching the tent walls. Even laying on our sides, we had but a few scant inches to the walls. This is a very bad omen.
In the event of rain, you NEVER want to touch a tent wall, unless you want to transport water to the inside of the tent. Clearly, this tent was not going to work for a long bike ride, where it is certain that there will be some wet and miserable nights.
Second hard and cold truth: In such a confined tent, we could not move. We couldn't roll over, adjust our pillow, fix our covers, etc without wakng the other person up. Which of course meant that we woke each other up all night.
Fourth hard and cold truth: Our bodies are far less forgiving of sleeping/not sleeping on the hard and cold ground. In the past few years since our last bicycle tour, we have car camped. Car camping allows all sorts of luxuries like extra pads and extra blankets and big roomy tents. We woke up the next day sore and miserable and worried.
The rotten little tent (RLT) we could replace. What about our creaky, cranky backs and muscles? Further investigation was in order. A few weeks later, we tried campy in the RLT again. This time we were in the beautiful back country of Little Granite Canyon in the southern part of the Gros Ventre Mountains.
After a wonderful swim in the hot springs, a fantastic sunset over the twisted spires of the hoo-doos of that mountain, and a long campfire in the dark, we crawled into the still too small RLT. This time, we had an extra Thermarest pad and an extra foamcore pad. We also had a better down comforter that required less shifting. (we no longer use sleeping bags, finding it warmer and more intimate to share a down comforter and a ground cover than wrestle inside individual bags. Purists are probably aghast at this.)
Result: the RLT was still too damn small, but we were not sore from the cold hard ground.
So here is what we learned. We are going to have to face the reality of carrying a bigger tent, better or more padding, and a better comforter. Already, we can see our future as the "Beverly Hillibillies on Bikes" re-surfacing. Oh well, we always were slow and comfortable on the bike. I guess we still will be..only more so.
