I thought it kind of funny....

[Engineer61]

So, I get home from work...Scout is out in the backyard, trying to get his tent packed up...getting ready for Winter Camp this weekend...he'll get both cold and wet according to the forecast...meaning I won't get any sleep.

 

I guess he's on this 3rd attempt....just can't get it small enough to get in the bag.

 

So, I drop my stuff, we pull everything apart...see what's there.

 

He's added a new waterproof underlayer...but is should all still fit.

 

I remind him that he's not supposed to fold and roll the tent (according to the mfg.) but he's not buying into that... I figure, ok ... you're the one getting wet...not me....you can buy the next tent when you figure that out.

 

So we layout the orig. tarp. then the new tarp, then the tent then the fly...fold it down so the orig tarp acts like and gum wrapper, pole bag at the end...roll it tight... slides right in with room for the stakes.

 

Then I hear, "You were never a Scout...how did you know how to do that?"

 

I went in and ate dinner.

 

LOL

[Scoutfish]

LOL! I'd have said: "Nope, wasn't a scout but I still know how to read!"

[clemlaw]

I'm an Eagle Scout, but my wife is in charge of putting up and taking down our family tent.

 

Tents have gotten much more complicated since I was a Scout, and she's better at reading directions than I am.

 

If she's not around, then I use the "pup tent" that gets set up in an intuitive manner, using straight poles, rope, taut line hitches, tent stakes, and other things that I can figure out on my own.

[shortridge]

Instructions? What are those?

 

You won't get any sleep because your son is going to be cold and wet? Pshaw. If he's a good Scout, you'll be warm and dry at home, and he'll be warm and dry in the woods. No worries.

[Engineer61]

Read?

 

The only thing the tag said was "do not fold to store".

 

Size of bag vs. common sense.

[CalicoPenn]

How big was the footprint that it made that big of a difference in packing the tent? The footprints I've seen fold neatly into a rectangle the size of a folded bandana (ok, maybe two).

 

"The only thing the tag said was "do not fold to store"."

 

Yep - that's pretty common language - I interpret it to mean I can roll and fold to my hearts content if I'm packing it up for a trip and want to try to make the size smaller - as long as I'm either on the trip, or about to go on the trip. Then when I get home, after airing the tent out, I stuff it rather than roll or fold. It's really more of a problem if it's rolled and folded for the long term, rather than the short term. And folded, in this case, means a loose fold - no creases (though I still fold the footprint using the creases it first had years ago as a guideline - I figure if the footprint was sold to me folded, it's safe to store it folded).

 

I should also say, the best packers (car, coolers, trailers, suitcases, backpacks, etc.) seem to be engineers, construction folks (specifically carpenters, plumbers, electricians and, oddly enough, heavy equipment operators - painters, not so much) and artists - they seem to have a better sense of spatial relationships than other folks. So I'm not surprised that you took one look at the gear and bag and figured it out without having been a Scout.

[Engineer61]

"You won't get any sleep because your son is going to be cold and wet? "

 

Oh, it's much more than that.

 

 

[SR540Beaver]

Hmmmm, I've never bought into the stuffing thing. I understand the reasoning and concept, just don't buy into it. Our troop supplies tents and we've been using the Eureka Timberline tents since the early 80's. In fact, last year we retired some tents from 1983. They have been folded and rolled almost every month since they were new and it took 27 years to wear them out.

 

Now, all that being said, we have a tent repair box in the trailer that has parts from old retired tents. We use it to replace snapped poles, D-rings, zippers and such when needed. But the body and fly were actually that old. How do we know? We use a big Sharpie and write the year and a tent number on each piece so we can keep the tent together and track them.