More accessorising opportunities part 1: camping equipment
Modelling our Big Agnes Copper Spur 3-man tent... Photo by R M R McIver
Go on, admit it: one of the best things about finding a new passion is all that acquisition. I don’t just mean acquiring knowledge and expertise (and there’s nothing like stretching an under-used brain to make you feel alive). I’m talking about suddenly ‘needing’ to buy loads of new stuff.
Just learned to cook? You’ll spend hours in kitchen stores lovingly fingering heat-proof tongs, and justifying Le Creuset because of all the noxious gases released by non-stick pans.
Just got a pet? Even if you adopt from a shelter, like we did, you could easily find yourself spending cumulatively vast sums on vet bills, toys and all that food. Our little monsters have already cost us well over a thousand bucks, maybe even two, and we haven’t even had them a year.
Our latest passion? Camping – we just got back from a two-week, 1,300 mile road trip around Yosemite, Tahoe and the rest of Northern California. But camping is supposed to be cheap, right?
Well, it can be. But once you start researching tents, you swiftly realise that spending less is a false economy because you’re going to be living in it, and in the long run, it’s better to go for quality. So I bought a $500 tent, the Big Agnes Copper Spur 3. It’s clearly worth the money: super-light, goes up and packs down inside 5 minutes, and if it’s warm enough to not put up the fly, the inside part is largely mesh so you can see the stars from your bed, but not so exposing that you don’t have a bit of privacy. (I actually got it from Eastern Mountain Sports, who have a 20% sale on right now, so get in there sharpish.)
But it doesn’t end there. There are tons of other essentials. You need decent puncture-proof air-mattresses, sleeping bags, headlamps, cooking equipment… the list goes on. And we didn’t even have half the stuff our fellow campers had – sail shades, picnic chairs, or a proper stove for whipping up nouvelle cuisine like one set of French neighbours.
Of course, we’re already planning to upgrade. We want a double (OK, queen) air mattress because single ones just get annoying after a while. I need a warmer sleeping bag, even for Northern California in July. And that super-lightweight, super-tricked-out, super-expensive tent? It apparently needs its own accessory, a special Copper Spur footprint to protect that super-scientific fabric (don’t you think ‘footprint’ makes it sound that bit more serious than ‘ground sheet’? Like you can’t just buy a tarp and be done with it).
This is how it all starts… and it’s why that spiral of buying ever more stuff will never, ever end.
Fun, though, right?
