Eureka E!nergy 9 Tent
November 26, 2008
There are few things more attractive to this Geargal than having creature comforts while in camp. Long gone are the days when I could subsist for five days in the backcountry with a tarp, a hunk of cheese, and three pounds of chocolate. Now that I’m old, I like comfy camps with lots of gourmet food; snuggly, soft beds, and these crazy things called “utilities” by which hot water and light come easily. Unfortunately, all these things are also quite heavy (especially the utilities, ever try to transport a power plant?) and as I’ve gotten older I’ve also gotten increasingly reluctant to carry heavy things. It’s one of life’s little ironies. When you’re young, you can’t be bothered to arrange a nice camp and don’t care if you forget your stove, don’t have any water, or hadn’t bothered to bring enough food; so you end up going ultralight just out of sheer thoughtlessness. When you’re old, forgetting your stove is enough to send you scurrying back to the car. Fine, it’s enough to send ME scurrying back to the car. But anyway, when you’re old enough to really want all that stuff that makes camp bearable, you are too old and decrepit to carry it. So you need to start bringing young people so they can carry all your stuff – which is the only reasonable argument I’ve ever heard for having children. I don’t have any children, so I have students instead. They must learn how to carry heavy loads, I reason, and when they see how comfortable I am in camp with all of the heavy things they’ve carried in, they will be inspired to make their own nice, comfortable camps. See, I make them carry my stuff because I CARE.
So, the next time you head to the backcountry with ten teenagers, give them this tent – and its accompanying car-battery-size power pack – to carry. They might moan and complain but it will all be worth it as you zip the door shut on their whining and kick back in your fully-powered backcountry paradise. The E!nergy 9 has three regular, normal outlets and pretty blue LED lights so that you can find the outlets even in the (shudder) dark. You can charge up your iPod to ensure that you’ll always have tunes to block out the sound of your children, students, or hapless camping partners grumbling about how you won’t let them use the blow dryer you brought along.
But seriously, I don’t know whether the power pack can handle powering a blow dryer. But it can handle some lamps, charge a camera battery, and provide power for an assortment of lower-wattage type items. I wish I had more examples of what you could use the outlets for but lamps and camera batteries are the only things I can think of that I’d want to plug into my tent. Oh, wait, I forgot! The 9′ X 9′ floor space means there is plenty of room for your inflatable mattress as well, and you can plug the air pump into the tent to avoid distasteful physical labor. There you have it, the perfect camping tent.
Be warned, it’s really heavy, even without the power pack. It’s bulky, too. So you might have to reserve this one for car camping, or for when you really do have lots of people to help carry things and you’ll be out there for long enough that electric lights and recharged camera batteries seem like manna from heaven. If you have a child or significant other who feels nervous about roughing it, break them in gently by taking them camping in the E!nergy tent. If they think that’s what camping is like, you’ll be able to convince them to try longer trips. Just don’t tell them that you won’t be able to bring along the E!nergy tent because you are not Superwoman, unless of course you are, in which case please bring me camping and carry this tent when we go.
Note: Family pictured not included with tent. I will leave it up to you to decide whether this is good news or bad news.
