Due to the fact that I recently met some other travelers here on Steemit, I somehow got wistful because of the unsatisfactory amount of journeys I went through over the last one and a half years. To drive forward art and research does feel like traveling to me, and for sure some day I will write about this close interrelationship. But for now, I take this opportunity to introduce to you this portable home – my self-made tent :)
To begin with, I didn't have this tent forever. Until some years ago I used to travel without tent and felt good with that somehow. I said to myself that if I take a tent with me then I want it to be one that I built on my own. I was lucky, with only a blanket to roll into I went by bike to Spain for the first time. Another time I was walking through Greece for 6 weeks. OK, on this trip I did have a hammock – the related 'hammock problem' and its solution will also be the topic of one of my upcoming posts. Anyway, the weather was on my side most of the time.
Once I was close to using a self-made tent before – derived from a structure designed for an emergency shelter on Mars. Due to my gullibility in terms of experimentation, or, one could call it my megalomania in some terms of complexity, I materialized a much too complex, too big and too heavy construction to transport when walking around for some time. I still like its folding mechanism and later on also worked on some more minimalistic variations but I was never convinced enough to use them for habitation. I didn't get along with a structure that does require to use tent begs.
For quite some time I didn't push this plan forward – until I returned while following a different approach. I started working on those foldable cube-like structures I introduced in my last Post; I thought that it somehow should be possible to use those transformations and shapes for creating a tent structure to actually use when traveling. There was quite a big number of folding states that led to this consideration of habitation, but again none of them was really satisfying. New variations had to be developed – some of those new structures are now simply being 'used' as light installation. Then, finally, I did find a shape that would fit – a hexagonal variation of a former cube, elongated by two sides being pulled together. This hexagonal form has also quite the same foldability as a the cube.
The structure was scaled just as big as needed so that thermal losses would be minimized. The 'roof' of a tent based on this shape happens to be pretty flat so I initially thought about implementing some possibility to pull down front and back part in case of rain. Though, on the whole floorspace it would be possible to sit upright. It is meant to be a tent for 1 person, but sure, it is also possible to share this little space :)
I got a tent tarpulin for the floor and some meters of lightweight textiles in three different colors for not to be seen too easily when sleeping in the woods – you know, it's not really allowed to do that wherever you like. Cuttings were sized according the already materialized linear structure and arrangements for overlap seems were defined to not let the rain gutter between the layers. Then those pieces of textile had to be sewn together – after two days I gave up making a flatmate's sewing machine work properly and just started sewing by hand. It took me close to a week to finish this task. Initially I wanted to start my first trip with this tent some days earlier but again I have been taught a lesson.
I know that it's no big distance, but it has already become something like my own tradition to walk from Vienna to Bratislava once a year to some festival. The year before I was still on the move without tent – but this time was over now. It's a nice walk following the Danube through a national park and then – instead of taking the southern route – I like to head a little to the north crossing the March at a new bridge ('Bridge of Freedom') that can only be passed by biking or walking. Side note: there has been a bridge at the exact same spot in times of Austrian monarchy, but for more than a century there was no connection. Then – instead of directly crossing Bratislava but still heading to its very eastern end – it is possible to walk up some hills and hike through the woodlands north of the city.
Now back to the tent. It takes about three days of walking those 100 km; means two nights of testing the tent on the way plus some more at this festival – nothing to write about; good weather, not too much memory. More interest regarding the tent is being put in the first part of this week.
It is to be mentioned, that foldable support structure and covering are being packed separately. When putting up the tent, the linear structure is to be unfolded, put inside the cover and can additionally be fixed with some loops of Velcro strap – but those were only mounted on the way, I didn't know how important they would be.
The first night I settled in a small piece of forest. There are two times I remember waking up: one time it was raining outside but somehow surprisingly the inside stayed completely dry. The second situation was about noticing at least one wild boar roving around very close to the tent; it seemed to be wondering what this weird-looking thing could be. I instinctively reacted by growling and hitting my hands from the inside to the cover of the tent so the hog would know that this thing doesn't have to stay completely passive. Finally it moved away quite fast; I heard it peeing some meters apart – probably to mark its territory. Conclusion of night one: A tent secures from rain and from wild deers – this second function I didn't think of before, in cases without such habitats wild boars would probably stay away anyway.
The second night I put up the tent at the Marchfeld, very close to the boarder to Slovakia. It wasn't raining, but humidity was so high, that at about six o'clock in the morning every few seconds there was a drop of condensed water falling from the ceiling of the tent. I looked outside and there everything was completely wet. So there were three important aspects that became obvious instantly: First, I needed to impregnate the textiles – I thought about that before but due to lack of time didn't. Second, I needed to fix those additional loops to put some more tension in the upper face of the shape. And finally, how could it be that there wasn't more water falling down and that there was no rain coming inside the tent the night before?
Then I watched condensate accumulating to drops. I followed those drops and discovered an unexpected side-effect that is probably more efficient for preventing water from coming inside than this lowering of front and backside that I thought about before:
On the pictures you can see that the top cover is not completely flat but a little wavy, with 'valleys' going from triangles on one side to those on the other. Due to this always tensioned textile – remember that the structure is originally symmetrically hexagonal – it is not possible for water to join to puddles but it has to descend from the sides of the tent. I didn't expect that side-effect to happen and I was fascinated to see it. In my judgment, as every unexpected potential it increased the value of this construction significantly.
There was a lot of work to finish the following year and not much time left for traveling. Consequently I felt the need to start a more extended journey. Again, I took my foldable bike, started in Vienna & headed towards the West until finally ending up in Portugal. Only this time I already had a tent :)
I could endlessly tell you stories about this trip, but for now I just share some impressions related to the topic that is being handled in this article. Let me outline some pretty interesting spots – like this one time putting up the tent in the middle of a street in Switzerland. During the night I suddenly came to signs informing that the road would be closed. I stopped and walked ahead to look for the reason. It had been raining heavily for several days but still I was surprised to see the road in its full width fallen down the slope into the river next to it. I headed back to the bike and put up the tent right in the middle of the street in front of this landslide...
To illustrate another interesting spot; you can guess that I put up my tent under a bridge for several times, but there was also this very first time that I was sleeping on a bridge...
Sure, I didn't need to use the tent every night, but if so, it has always been something special – due to the entity of this small segregated chamber. Every night you happen to be at a different spot but still inside the same space. It's much more likely that when you wake up you have no idea where you actually are or what the surroundings look like. You can wake up with dozens of cows standing around you...
Another one. Sometimes even for me it is tricky to put the linear structure inside the covering because of all those lines and knots are constantly transforming this thing around you – quite often shape shifting it is hard to grasp. This got somehow absurd when it was pretty windy one evening in Castilla/Spain. Normally, due to gravity the textile parts are hanging down while putting in the support structure which then allocates the shape. But this day – again there were difficulties with the transformation – the wind was blowing inside the covering's opening and expanding the tent automatically so that I could constantly see the shape it should actually get. Still, I couldn't keep overview and it was exhausting and somehow silly at the same time so it did make me laugh quite a lot.
Next side note: there's an ongoing challenge between me and my structures all the time and this evening once again this became obvious. Sometimes I also see them being involved in 'discussions' with others and you can guess that I somehow do feel a little proud of them when they taunt someone who feels certain of being superior :)
There were only one or two short trips since this one, but I will not let too much time pass to start again. Next step is to make this now single layered tent also applicable for lower temperatures – maybe for heading towards Montpellier/France at the end of March or in April. Also some new approaches for building new tents are currently being worked on, but this first self-made tent will always keep and probably widen its relevance to me.
Thanks to 
..so, ..have a nice trip everyone!
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