Can we talk about how my $30 tarp outperformed my $200 tent in a storm last weekend?

I was camping up near Lake Tahoe and a surprise windstorm hit Friday night. My tent poles started bending like crazy, but I had this cheap blue tarp I strung up as a windbreak. It held solid all night while my buddy's fancy tent got a pole snapped. Now I'm rethinking my whole gear setup. What's a piece of cheap gear you swear by that beats expensive stuff?

2 comments

2 Comments

adam6752d ago

Man, that whole thing about plastic tarps being better than expensive tents is a weird pattern I keep seeing everywhere. Take my dad's old ratchet straps in the garage - they cost like ten bucks each and hold my kayak on the car better than some fancy rack system I tried once. Another one is those little blue disposable lighters, they work just as good as a fifty dollar windproof lighter in calm weather, and when they break you just grab another one for a dollar. It's like sometimes the simple stuff just works because there's less to go wrong in the first place. Your mileage may vary, but I've learned to pay more attention to what actually gets the job done rather than what looks like it should.

carr.james2d ago

Wait wait wait, hold up. You're telling me your dad's ten buck ratchet straps hold a KAYAK on the car better than a fancy rack system? That's insane lol. I just spent like three hundred bucks on a roof rack setup for my canoe and I'm honestly a little sick to my stomach right now thinking about it. The cheap straps always seemed sketchy to me but I guess if they're old and proven they just work. I gotta say I'm with you on the lighters though, I've had three of those fancy windproof ones break on me in the last year but my dollar Bic is still going strong after six months. It's like we're all being tricked into paying for extra features that aren't even needed most of the time.