God just told me loud and clear that he doesn’t want me to be a hammocker.

Tonight I decided to try out the new Blackbird hammock for the night.  It has been 90+ for the last couple of days and the humidity is unbearable.  Typically I’d wait for a better day, but next week looks the same and I want to make sure I return it quickly if I decide I don’t want it.  So I hung the hammock.  Wanting to see if my Gossamer Gear SpinnTwinn would work with it, I hastily threw it up and literally tied garage rope to get it somewhat down.  I tied a couple ends to trees and only bothered to stake out three of the 8 points and even then I barely put them in the ground.  The tarp was also too long between the trees, but I didn’t care as I figured nothing would happen.  Basically, it was barely up as I figured I wouldn’t need it anyway.  I was more interested in fit as it was outfitted with guylines for the ground at only 6” long and not 6’ long to reach the ground from an elevated position over the hammock.

Sure enough about 10:45 tonight, I could see lightening in the distance.  I didn’t care much because lightening is pretty typical on these humid nights.  Besides, the sky looked clear to me.  Well, the wind picked up and thunder joined the lightening, then it started raining a bit.  My tarp flopped here and there, but I figured the storm would pass and didn’t much care.  At this point my wife came out to tell me there were warnings of tornados touching down and that I should come in.  I told her that I needed to test the hammock.  She literally started crying, reminded me of our two kids, and went back in.  I stayed in the hammock.

In the next 10 minutes I honestly thought I was going to die.  The rain started pouring so hard that I couldn’t see my house anymore which was only about 30 yards away.  The wind started flopping my tarp like a rag doll and pulled the corner out of the tree and thereby stood the tarp up like a big vertical boat sail.  The rain started filling the hammock, soaking my Western Mountaineering down bag which I have always painstakingly protected until now.  I was literally cupping my hands to throw water out and fighting to get out of the hammock as the lighting was crashing down around me as surrounding trees started bending over.  Next thing I knew, two staked out corners of the tarp flew out of the ground and were wildly throwing the guyline, with the stake attached, towards the hammock hitting me in the face twice.  At this point, the tarp was flopping so badly I figured it was going to tear and I started to hold on to it in fear that it was going to fly away (it ran me $175 plus another $50 to modify its length).  I grabbed my stuff and ran inside, turned around and took down the hammock and ran inside again (keep in mind, I don’t even know if I’m going to keep it and don’t want to screw it up if I’m returning it).  I ran back out and got my pathetic tarp.  Trying to undo the few lines and knots which remained in the storm was extraordinarily challenging.  Everything is now drying out in my basement and the storm is gone as I have since changed clothes after feeling like I’ve just been through WWIII.

The best part, I’m not sure if I could even sleep as it was too darn hot and I couldn’t decide if I was comfortable.  I was able to lay mostly flat, but because you lay at an asymmetrical angle to achieve near flatness, I felt the sides were twisting my head and shoulder to a point where it wasn’t comfortable.  I'm now so wide awake that I already know I'm not going to sleep tonight.

SHEESH!!