It’s been my habit—maybe as far back as Boy Scouts—to want to pitch my tent a little bit away from other tents. Depending on the size of the campground, that’s not always possible. On this trip, despite there being more than 500 tents serving more than 700 campers*, I’ve been fortunate in being able to find a nice spot on the perimeter. But sometimes the locations that seem perfect at 1:00 in the afternoon are decidedly less so when the sun goes down.
[*NB- the “camping equipment sales” definition of what constitutes a two-person tent is not tethered to reality. I’m also amazed by what passes for a one-person tent; I have watched some people climb into tents that aren’t much bigger than a XXXL t-shirt.]
On Monday night, I pitched my tent too close to a small pond. I wasn’t worried about mosquitos, but had not counted on the off-key bullfrog symphony that began when it got dark… and lasted all damn night. But that was merely noisy, not threatening. Last night was different.
We were camping in Burnet Park, the municipal park that is home to the Syracuse zoo. It’s ringed by an older neighborhood of modest, but fairly well-maintained homes… but not the kind of “elite,” historic old homes that you find around many other urban parks. I found a nice spot under a pine tree, and locked Lorelei to the tree, because we’d been warned that the less-savory elements of Syracuse society would be aware that there were 700 bikes at the park that night, and they would also know that many of those bikes have a significant resale value. The site I picked was the outer perimeter of the park, maybe 30 feet away from one of the city streets that form the park’s boundary.
Last night, shortly after dinner, I was sitting by my tent and I saw a man drive down the street holding his cell phone out his window and taking a video of the campsite. Maybe he was making a movie of “all those tents,” or maybe he was “casing the joint” and looking for bikes on the perimeter that would be easy pickings for a snatch-and-run theft. I decided to move Lorelei, but by that time, all the good spots were taken. See the photo below for my solution.
Then, about 9:30, the rumbling started. I thought at first it was a Harley, but it turned out to be just a shitty old car that was modified to make noise. The driver and passengers were driving around and through the park, yelling “Wake up!” followed by various obscenities and epithets. At that point, the park ranger or Syracuse police (or both) intervened, and I could hear them telling the kids to move along. After the punks drove away, I heard the cops on their radios telling their dispatcher what had just happened. I felt relief for about a minute, during which time the police departed and the punks returned… and parked their car across the street from where I was camped.
Sound travels better at night, and I could hear them talking without being able to make out every word. They were clearly interested in more rabble-rousing, and I had two thoughts: (1) I was really glad I had moved my bike out of their line-of-sight, and (2) I was truly nervous about the complete lack of protection afforded by a tent. If these upstanding citizens wanted to wreak havoc, they could…assuming, of course, that they had the faintest idea how a tent works.
In the end, after maybe an hour, they got bored and drove off, never to return. I rode for a good stretch of the route today with “John from Schenectady,” who had done some work with police and who said that the Syracuse police probably played it exactly right: the trick is to intervene and de-escalate without provoking a further reaction. (Although these 750 bikers are hardly a representative cohort of American society, I would wager that there are several men and maybe even a couple of women who are packing heat when they ride. Thankfully, none of them were awakened last night.)
We’re in Rome tonight, camping at Ft. Stanwix. We’ve been told that severe weather is headed our way later this afternoon. Let’s see if my tent is storm-worthy.
Rideworthy 