Airing out my tents...

It's been a long time since I've used my tents, with no camping trips in recent memory. I put both up to see if they were still useable. No rips or tears and they went up alright.

The small blue dome tent is 25 years old, bought in either 1989 or '90, and one of the fiberglass rod sections is cracked, but maybe some strategic duck tape application will keep it from cracking any further where it seems to want to bow up near the top center of the tent where it crosses the other two sections, so there may some life left in it yet. There was a bit of rust as well on the connectors of the rods, but not enough that I feel like sanding and painting over the old chrome, although I probably should.

I bought the larger tent around 2001 or '02 and think the last time I applied some water repellant to it and the smaller tent was probably 2004 or '05, so they're past due on that as well. They've both got a lot of dust on the outside, so I'm hoping it'll rain this evening to clean 'em off a bit, and then I can spray some water repellant on them tomorrow, let that dry, and pack them both back up until if and when they're needed.  I know cheap nylon isn't going to hold back any zombies though, lol...

It rained hard last night, which did a good job of cleaning the outside of the tents, but when I opened them up to unzip the back windows and let more air flow through, I found gallons of water pooled up inside. Let me go find my swimsuit, lol...

I only have one can of water repellant right now, a leftover from using on my boots a couple of years ago and think I'd probably need at least three or four cans to do both tents and rainflys, plus some seam sealer being needed as well.  I can't all that afford right now, so will have to wait on that for another time. I got the small tent down and packed up and then it started raining, so the other tent will come down tomorrow after it dries out again and is emptied of whatever water floods the inside...

The sun came back out, shortly after the rain showers moved through, drying things out quickly, so I packed up the larger tent. I managed to break three of the plastic tent pegs while pulling them up with my tent peg mallet, and hammering the remaining stumps down into the ground since I couldn't get 'em out. Maybe some future archeologist will dig them up in a few thousand years and ponder how they got there.... Need some decent titanium, aluminum, or steel ones that are more durable, and weights not an issue since they're not backpacking type tents...

I tried several times to make a video of tying a simple trucker's hitch with a length of paracord for one of the guy lines, attaching it to a tent stake, as one of several options I was taught for that use as a Boy Scout almost 35 years ago, but could not get my camera to cooperate and focus, and it was already in the low 90's temp wise, so my shirt and shorts where getting damp with perspiration and sweat was running in my eyes.  I was also getting frustrated to the point that I gave up on it and went back in the house to sit in front of a fan to cool off.  I think I need a new camera, and a recharge on my patience.

I uploaded that video anyway, even though the quality sucks and the image detail makes it difficult to follow.  I turned off the comments and imagine the haters going nuts looking for the thumbs down button, but since the video is 'unlisted', only those that bother to read this blog will likely even see it, and current traffic for this blog is averaging a very low number of pageviews a day, meaning I'm probably just talking to myself...