That’s the sound of me backing up a few months.  I was just now surprised to find out I didn’t start keeping a good day to day calendar until January, so I am backing up to approximately November 4^th. Could be November 5th.

From previous, and more timely, blog posts, you might remember that I had left San Diego in a rather maudlin state of mind, but left LA a few days later feeling more exultant. I was on the road! I was on my own! I was not getting lost!

I planned to split the drive to Reno in to two days, and to camp off the 395, on the eastern side of the Sierras. I was glad I had done some internet research, as I found out that the majority of campgrounds in the area were closed for the winter, even though the weather was still in the 50’s or 60’s. So instead of finding the nearest campground to when I got tired, I had a goal of reaching Tuttle Creek campground, near Lone Pine.

The 395 is a pretty road, but I’ve been up and down it a number of times since I’ve lived in California, most recently at the end of August on the way to and from Burning Man, so I don’t have much to say about it. Tuttle Creek was about half way, but before Bishop, so I could plan to stop at Schat’s Bakery as I headed out again in the morning.

I pulled in to the nearly empty campground in the late afternoon, filled out the Forest Service envelope and dropped my payment down the requisite pole, and chose a site near the creek where I could just see my only neighbors, a toy hauler, through the trees. I called my mom to let her know I had stopped for the night. Even though she knew I was traveling alone, she was not thrilled by the actual details of that. I pulled out my gear and started to set up camp.

Ben and I had split up our camping gear just a few weeks ago, as I finished packing up all my stuff and preparing to travel. We had camped a lot together, and had car camping gear as well as more technical, lightweight gear we had used for bike touring. We had also somehow accumulated extra gear over the years, which we were happy to be able to loan out to friends if needed.

Traveling and camping had been a significant part of our life together, so I was kind of apprehensive about the divvying up process, but really, it was fine. Most items were pretty obvious to whom they belonged, like sleeping bags. For more collective use equipment, we weighed who had bought it vs. who was most likely to use it, and tried to make reasonable decisions. For example, I got the camp stove, for now. I made a case for taking the most lightweight tent (out of four), in case I were to include a bike trip in my travels. Ben felt very attached to that particular tent, as he had used on his around the world bike trip, so I went with the next best choice, a small, inexpensive tent Ben’s cousin Amanda had used when the three of us biked across Michigan. And it was also nice to think about all of the fun and amazing things we had done together.

So I pulled out this little tent, my home for this night and who knows how many nights of my travels from now on! (In retrospect, since I was headed north at the start of winter, I should have realized I would not be camping much in the near future.) I rolled it out in the flattest spot I could find and pulled the poles out of the bag. Two for the tent and one for the rain fly, a very simple set up. Except the stretchy cord inside one of the poles had snapped, and the pieces wouldn’t stay together.

Upon closer inspection, I also saw that, where the D-rings the poles hook into at the front corners of the tent were supposed to be, were just two sad bits of frayed webbing.

What the hell?!? When was the last time we used this tent? Did we back into it with a car? This is the kind of breaking one would think you would notice happening!

I called Ben. He couldn’t remember what we’d done with it or to whom we’d loaned it last either. Of course I didn’t check it before I left. We’d always taken good care of our stuff! No, I didn’t have any bungee cords, duct tape, or string. I reminded him that I had returned a small bin of bungee cords to him just a few days ago, as they had been in my trunk for years and I hadn’t used them.

Ben offered generously to rush and overnight one of the other three tents to Reno. Thanks, but hold off, I told him. I had just remembered that the Sierra Trading Post outlet store was in Reno! Maybe they would have a super lightweight backpacking tent on extra extra clearance! Besides, how would that help me tonight?

Well, he couldn’t get me out of this predicament. It was up to me. If worse came to worse, I could head up the road to Bishop and get a hotel room. Sleeping in my car was also technically possible. I’d originally hoped to pack my car in a way so that I could curl up in the back seat if needed, but it was full to the ceiling, and the passenger seat was also full, and there was not enough room for either front seat to recline. So if I wanted to sleep upright in the driver’s seat, I could. Or I could set up a broken tent.

If you can’t quite make it out, those are tie-dyed knee socks I used to tie the one good pole to the car top bike rack to hold up the top of the tent. One of the guys from the toy hauler wandered over to see if I was OK. By that time, I was set up as good as it was going to get. He seemed confused by my recounting of the tent story, and I didn’t feel like sitting around the campfire with strangers. So in my floppy little shelter, I passed a quiet night to the sounds of the gurgling creek and the flapping bugs trying to get in my lean-to.

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