More Thoughts etc.,

11.55 hrs

Friday is not a good day.  To me it is neither weekday nor weekend; and I have various family duties to perform which do not improve the day.

Ok, so yesterday I started the day with a ‘Spanish’ breakfast - that would be a couple of large tomatoes thinly sliced and anointed with garlic flavoured olive oil and liberally sprinkled with hand rubbed oregano and a large mug in my case of tea, as I don’t drink coffee – washed down with a tumbler (or two) of either sour anise of Soberano brandy.  Thus fortified I face Fridays.  Somehow the morning and early afternoon pass in an ethereal sort of way!

During yesterday’s ‘relaxed’ afternoon I idly passed some time ‘fiddling’ with a 5cm strip of aluminium foil, part of a piece of ‘Super Thin Windshield’ sent by BPL Bob.  http://www.backpackinglight.co.uk/product308.asp

I have had this windshield material for a couple of weeks and am using it a lot.  When it first arrived I immediately thought that it had a different ‘feel’ to the usual MSR/Primus windshield material.  It also sounds different when handled.  It didn’t have a tinny rattle sound but something slightly more resonant.  The material certainly works and my ‘fiddling’ yesterday raised another question.  While idly bending and twisting the 5cm strip I became conscious that it was not showing any signs of wear or cracking. 

Now I know that ‘normal’ aluminium work hardens as the more it is ‘worked’ in one place the harder that area becomes until ultimately the crystalline structure becomes brittle and begins the crack.  This sample I was ill-treating did not appear to be doing that.  Certainly not for the 150+ times I bent and straightened it.  This augers well for longevity in use.  It probably illustrates how sad I can be too!!!!

I noticed in the May edition of TGO a reference to Bill Wilkins and the Ultimate Equipment Company.  The company was about in the mid ‘70’s and manufactured some fine tents.  I still have 2 Ultimate Bivi’s, one a prototype Bill sent me to test and made from a new ‘wonder’ material, namely Goretex.  The Ultimate Bivi in its original form was very prone to condensation and I have to say the prototype I found no better.

I also had the pleasure of testing an Ultimate Packer tent, a beautifully designed and crafted ‘two-man’ lightweight (for that era) double skinned unit which still resides in my loft in excellent condition even after maybe 300 uses.  So far as ‘two person’ was concerned the occupants had to be very, very close friends as my wife and I discovered.  This snugness could be advantageous as we found when camped in mid May in the middle of a thunder storm.  There was sleet and hail and rain and, immediately overhead, forked lightening and the crash of thunder.  The tent was red on the fly with a light blue inner and the lightening, thunder and downpour could have come straight from the score of Wagner’s Gotterdammerung – definitely it was twilight for the Gods.  However we were ‘snug’.

Finally from Bill I received a High Country 3 (there were three to cater for now our first son had arrived) and this was a ‘3 person’ tent; a roomy one too, but not exactly lightweight.  I still have all of these tents and they occasionally get a work-out.

What a shame Ultimate disappeared, although I seem to recall that it was resurrected under the name of ‘Phoenix’ for a period – when ‘phree’ named tents appeared.