Life in the Back of My Truck-

With the Internet I have excellent perspective on the weather. I saw the rains coming, and also saw that I had a nice window of not-rain in which to get set up. I purchased two tarps for the occasion. A smaller one to place inside the tent, and a large one to embrace my tent.

Set-up went fine. I got the tent up, and put on the rain fly. I always put on the rain fly, since it provides another layer of protection from the sun and is good for, uh, rain. This time I put up the awning as well. That went pretty good. I got things snug. Then the last item was the big tarp.

I had selected a tarp large enough to give excellent coverage, and some bungee chords to aid in securing the whole thing. The tarp even extended over part of the truck cab, insuring that the area between the tent and the cab was not exposed. It even extended about a foot out onto the awning, providing some added coverage of the door area.

When I went to sleep in the morning there were high clouds, but no rain. When I awoke about noon the clouds remained, but no rain. When I awoke again in the mid-afternoon I heard the patter of rain on the tarp. It got up to a pretty good roar of rain on my little Cloth Castle, but I remained dry inside.

The rain had reduced to a sporadic sprinkle as the time came for me to awake once again and go to my shower. I had finished my shower and was dressed when another officer arrived and asked if I had put down my awning. I told him I had left it up. He said the wind was strong. I went out to see to my little truck based house.

By shoving the awning poles under the truck I drew the awning down over the tent door. I then had to adjust the tie downs for the tarp. It was catching the wind and belling up. I adjusted the bungees and got it pulled down snug. Everything was ready for the rest of the storm.

The rest of the storm happened to be another hour of wind. The Cloth Castle bore that just fine. Apparently the storm was blowing away, and this was the grand finale.

Today I anticipate little rain, if any. I will put up the awning once again, to try and dry it out. I also like the little bit of extra shade. I may put it up more often.

The awning had fallen due to a tent peg rotating in the ground and dropping the guy line. I have another type of peg that should not rotate. I will try it out before buying more, but it seems to be a good design and not too costly.

On the whole life has not been too bad in the back of my little truck. Hopefully I can take this show back out on the road.

I feel the need to travel.