Jenny and I just got home after a most delightful picnic. I am working as Sound Designer for a show over in the Riverview school district (that's in Oakmont, PA, in case you're not from these parts). There was a tech work session today, so I was busy over there for that. I was done with my part right around 15:00.

Hi!  I'm excited.  Jenny last year agreed to go camping with me.  I love to go camping.  We both used to go as kids, so it was fun to go as marriaged peoples.  I've been trying to convince her to go bicycle camping with me for a while now.  This year, she agreed.  :)  So, for my birthday, we're going to take a short "test" bicycle camping trip next weekend.  It's going to be a test trip because we'll be close enough to amenities (including the car) that we can just pack up the works and head home if something doesn't work.  My family used to do this whenever we had a new piece of gear that we were going to use--after setting it up once in the back yard, of course.  I like to do this now when we're trying out a new accessory on the bikes or something, too.

In preparation for our trip, there were only a few more things that we needed:

• More carrying accessories so that we could carry all of our stuff on the bikes.
• A backpacking stove (with appropriate fuel, of course).
• Some freeze-dried foodstuffs.
• Maybe a new, slightly larger tent.

I had a two-person backpacking tent that I bought when I was single.  It was great when I was single.  With two people, though, it gets mighty cramped.  I was looking at something like a three-person backpacking tent, and wanted this time to get a "footprint" for it (a lightweight, lined, sized and grommeted liner that sits between the tent and the ground, also known as a groundcover).  I always used to use a tarp, but those get heavy and bulky when one is trying to make things fit into small carrying apparatus.  I was also thinking of one of the one-wheel trailers for my bike and maybe a bag for Jenny's bike to help our cargo capacity.  For a stove, I've been liking the Jetboil stoves since I first read about them, so I thought we'd look at a single stove and two of the Jetboil cups that fit on top.  That, plus some food, and we should be ready. 

I've been looking at REI at some of their stuff, and I've been spending a lot of time looking at their stoves and backpacking tents.  Jenny and I woke up today and read that there was a good chance of rain and storms.  We wanted to do a picnic sometime this weekend.  With today looking potentially bad and tomorrow looking really nice, we decided to go shopping today and go picnicking tomorrow. 

So, first up, our new tent. The poles for this tent are pretty awesome.  They come pre-attached to each other with hubs, and fold up as one "clump".  They unfold easily and pretty much put themselves together.  The tent material then just clips onto the poles--no threading poles through sleeves!

The rainfly works well, too.  It has two vents with little velcro "sticks" that prop them open to provide ventilation when the fly is on.  With the fly off, almost the entire tent is mesh, so it should work really well on even warm evenings.  The tent has two doors and the fly has two doors with vestibules, so there will be no more stepping on Jonathan's head to get out of the tent in the middle of the night.  :)  It is even lighter than our two-person tent, even with the footprint in the bag.  I had to play with the poles a few times to figure out how to efficiently fold them up, but after I figured it out, it was easy.  I liked the size, and then I saw that it won the 2008 Backpacker Magazine Editor's Choice award.  I was a little nervous about how the 2/3 poles (the orange ones) worked, but they had one set up in the store.  It was really solid feeling, and I was a lot happier after I saw how everything went together.  We came home with one, as you can see by the pictures.  :) 

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Next is our new stove.  I read about the JetBoil stoves a while ago.  They also won an editor's choice award back in 2004.  The stove uses an isobutane/propane mixture fuel in small canisters.  It can boil a half-liter of water (enough to make an average single-serving freeze-dried entree) in a little over two and a half minutes, and it can do that around 22 times on a single small canister of fuel. 

We also bought a selection of entrees.  They were running a sale where if you bought 12 of them, they were 10% off.  We had already picked up six for our planned trip (including a couple of extras for a try-out run), so we figured we'd get another six to have on hand for other trips.  They will be useful for regular bike trips, too, as we can then eat easily without having to carry prepared food with us all the time.  One can cook other things in the stove cup as well, but I figured that these would be easy, no-fuss items useful for a few test trips.  I also wanted to pick up a second cup for the stove, so that I could cook Jenny's food and then cook mine.  REI was out of the extra cups, though, so we'll just have to deal with it for the moment.  Fortunately, all of the freeze-dried stuff that we picked up has the option where it can be prepared in its bag but just adding water, so we'll probably do that for these test trips. 

As for the trailer, well, they were out of stock in the store, and they were back-ordered online.  Since I figured that we could probably take everything that we need if we had just two more panniers for Jenny's bike, we bought another set of those.  They were far less expensive than the trailer, and give us a few more options for how we want to carry things on future trips.  If we ever do a longer trip, too, this gives us the flexibility to do it easily.  If we go on a longer trip, we'll eventually need the trailer.  A one-nighter (and probably even a two-nighter) can probably be done with the panniers and with stuff strapped to our racks.  The bulkiest items are the tent, two sleeping pads, and something that we can use to cover ourselves in the tent.  We'll probably take a sheet to lay on top of the sleeping pads, and a fleece cover to cover ourselves.  Our clothes will make decent pillows, and we'll be all set.  The tent and sleeping pads we'll tie to the top of the rack on Jenny's bike.  She'll take her clothes in one bag, fleece cover in the other bag, and probably a 2L water bladder.  I'll take my clothes in one bag, sheet, stove, and food in the other bag, and 4L of water, utility stuff, and snacks in my "trunk" bag.  I think that will work out to be a pretty good division of stuff, while making sure that we have enough water. 

It should be a fun little adventure.  Tomorrow, we're going to do a test-run of the stove and food on a little picnic, and we'll hit a restaurant or something on the way home for dinner.  Hooray! 

jonathan

Jenny and I took a drive today.  After Mass, we packed our stuff and went out to Twin Lakes Park, one of the many parks in the Westmoreland County Parks System.  We ate lunch there.  It was windy and a little chilly there, and I was hoping to get a chance to get a kite into the air.  We decided to leave there after lunch and take a look at the other picnic pavilions at the park to see if we could find a suitable kite-flying area.  Finding none, I proposed that we drive to Mammoth Park, which is on the opposite (Southern) side of Route 30.  Jenny agreed, so I grabbed our map to confirm the route, and we took off through the countryside.

Arriving at the park, I got out the FlowForm 16 and related gear.  Jenny got herself situated at a picnic table, and I walked over to the field.  While I was assembling things, a guy showed up with his kids, who appeared to be one girl in her early teens, another girl who was probably five or six, and a boy who was probably eight or nine.  They were starting to play a game of whiffle ball--you know, the one with the really big red bat.  This guy turned out to be a real a**, yelling at the little boy every time he didn't do something right.  He kept yelling at him, telling him he must be a wimp, taunting him, etc.  It was really pretty ridiculous.  Unfortunately for the little kid, his team (which consisted of the boy and dad) lost to the girls by two points.  There was a tirade of things like, "I can't believe you let them beat us, you little wimp," and "You'd better play better, or else I'll never play with you again," etc.  It was really silly.  Fortunately, they left shortly thereafter.  At about the time they were leaving, I got the kite airborne in a good wind, and got about 400 feet of line up in the air.  It was cool.  I haven't flown in a while. 

I pulled in about 200 feet of line, and tried to hang a spinsock.  Unfortunately, the cheap little carabiner that I used for attaching that spinsock to the line had its clip snap off while I was securing it to the line.  I didn't want to let it go up without its clip, even though it probably wouldn't fall off--I just didn't feel like chasing an errant windsock around the park if it got loose.  Lesson learned:  I have extra cheap carabiners for hanging line laundry, and I should have had one in my pocket.  Oh well.  So I let the line back out to about 400 feet again, and just enjoyed having the kite flying again. 

The wind was starting to get a little strong, and it was getting a little late in the day, so I tied-off the kite to a nearby post (I had it secured to a sling that I had around me), put a big 'biner over the line, and walked the kite down in two stages.  It was a lot of fun to fly again, and I'm glad that I had the chance today to do it.  There are a couple of kite things I'm looking at for this summer.  One of the things I want to do is get my KAP rig flying again.  I have all of the parts to do it--I just need to actually put it all together.  I might build a new Picavet and yoke out of wood, too--I'm still thinking about that one. 

After I had everything packed-up, I went back to talk to Jenny for a few minutes, then we packed up our stuff and headed home for dinner.  It's been a good day.  Now it's late and time to get ready for tomorrow. 

jonathan