I don't have any photos from back then, but I'll tell my "how I decided to hammock" story:

Low on cash from being out of work and sharing a car with my brother because mine had died, we were both working jobs that tended to have schedules that somehow managed to never match up with each other. One day I'd be late because of his schedule, another day he'd be late because of my schedule, and so on.

I could see the writing on the wall: one or both of us were going to get fired, and I was damned if I'd be out of work again. I decided then that I was going to start cyclo-cummuting. I'd always been a cyclist, and I wanted to eventually do some cross country touring any way... What better way to get started than commuting 26+ miles one way to work? I didn't just go for it, I built up to doing 40 mile circuits over 3 months before I attempted it.

The first time I did the commute I felt great on the way out. It was late summer time, and I got there early, did my job and left. The trip back though...I made it approximately 3/4 of the return trip and I couldn't go any more. I had to stop and sleep. I had no gear, so I pulled off the road and into the woods and buried myself in some leaves. I slept for a bit, but I started getting cold at about 3am and by 4am I knew it was hopeless as tired as I still was. So I started walking, and from where I was, there's a 3 mile climb between me and home, and it probably took me as long to get home from there as it took me to bicycle the other 3/4 of the trip.

My next trip out I was bringing a contingency...I had a North Face Cumulus tent, but without any racks or pannier, it severely put me out of balance, so I figured out how to rig a poly tarp into a makeshift triangular shelter using just one tree. That worked OK, but I was in an ultra light mindset at that point... Bare minimum... So no pad, just a sleeping bag. I used it that way maybe twice before my back remembered the paracord net hammock my father had back in the 80s, so I tried rigging the tarp like a hammock with one half over a Ridgeline like a roof in case of rain. That worked a couple of times until the grommets tore out and I found myself suddenly on the ground in the middle of the night.

It was at that point I started checking YouTube for how to make a net hammock, and one link led to another, to hammock forums and here I am.

Somewhere in that story I got a rear rack for my bike, and also was able to complete the trip, and somewhere later in the story, my whole bike got stolen with everything on it, and I had to walk home 14 miles (I used to be able to do 14 no problem, but I'd just been cycling for about a year, I was taken by surprise by how tired i was after only 14 miles... Completely different muscle set I guess).

Sometime after that, my first hammock and tarp were Wal-Mart blue ones. I've been cyclo-cummuting ever since, though mostly I don't bother going home anymore... I get a LOT more sleep by hammocking closer to work!


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