GEAR Review - Autohome Roof Top Tent - Columbus Variant

As our short winter is already fading here in California I can smell a whiff of the open road in the air. The last time we popped our tent was in a friends driveway, so it is clearly time to get the rig on dirt again. There are so many choices when it comes to how to camp in the wild with your vehicle, and we chose the Autohome Roof Top Tent in the Columbus Variant for a few reasons:

- Ease of set up and break down
- Sleekness on the vehicle when closed
- Ability to paint to match the car
- Compact but generous bed/cabin room

You can go from parked to set up in literally 10 seconds with this thing. The hardest part is getting the ladder out of the bag. We did end up upgrading our ladder to something more sturdy after a few trips, and it has been much appreciated by us in the early morning hours. The quick set up and break down also help if you are camped somewhere not far from town and need to use the car during the day. It doesn't feel like too much of a hassle to close the tent up for day use.

The unforseen biggest perk: the view. Parked at the top of a hill overlooking a valley, watching sunrise from inside the cocoon of the tent has proved to be magnificent beyond our wildest imaginations. Waking up in the night to see the starry sky and have a blast of fresh air in your face, these are things no trailer will give you. And being perfectly dry, high off the ground in a rainstorm is priceless.

Here are the cons:
- Can be difficult to close with bedding inside. We remove our pillows but leave the comforter inside. We have had to devise a very specific way of folding everything so that the top will close. Keep in mind that we also added a slim feather bed to the mattress which also adds to the problem. But hey, if this is your bed for a few weeks it's nice to have it be comfortable!
- Hard top will get scratched over time - on trees, low parking lots, etc.
- Not ideal for a large family. We are two and it is great. We could easily sleep with a small child, but beyond that we would need to invest in an additional trailer.
- Cost - we bought this as part of our honeymoon, so felt we could rationalize the cost (cheaper than plane tickets!). However, it is a really pricey tent and not for everyone.

Happy trails!

May 11, 2020

Mating Dance

April 1st and it is the 23rd anniversary of my mother’s death. Usually I go walk the beach, to the place where we scattered her ashes and where she spent her last years, but it’s 2020 and the beaches are closed so instead I go for a walk around the block. In my seventh month of pregnancy now and my feet have started to ache from the extra weight, so the walk starts out slowly, gingerly. I conjure her here, in step beside me - Suzanne Segal, born on Friday the 13th and died on April Fool’s Day. Was that her ridiculous way of encouraging us to see some of the humor, the lightness of life? Those deep dimples and that shrieking laugh are with me as much today as they were decades ago.

February 20, 2020

santa fe, NM 1995

My mom and I got off the plane in Albuquerque and headed for the white Isuzu Trooper we kept parked at the airport. After our first few visits to New Mexico, when my mom had properly fallen in love with the landscape and started buying property – all sagebrush and pink dirt – she decided we needed our own car there. This one was properly beat up enough to fit in, as I learned after my eyes had adjusted from the bombastic wealth of the Bay Area to this perennially poor state. But the colors! Even on the license plates! The flamboyant yellow, red and turquoise delighted me, set as they were against the glow of the high desert. I suppose we both were in love with this new frontier.

December 15, 2019

Peeking through the Back Door

I have always felt most at home in restaurant kitchens. No matter how glossy the paint or how shiny the brass door handle on the imposing front door to the dining room, there is always a dinged up, unmarked back door that leads to the real heart of the beast. It took a few weeks into my first cooking job at The Olema Inn to get used to the complete lack of glamour of it all. Only now do I see how the paucity of it helped to form our psyches, ordained us cooks with the chips on our shoulders and the swagger in our steps. We’re here to do the real work. We don’t need no fancy door.