When the air will not stay put
We’re about to have a mutiny from one of the team members. His personal inflatable boat mattress has lost its form. No more shall he put to sea for a night of dreams; even with a last minute air transfusion, the bed is bust. We’ve tried. It spent the day out on the grass, and collapsed. We put it back in the tent, backed the van to within reach and found the missing adaptor nozzle (which required a housecleaning of row two and three in said van). It faded away to nothing useful.
Now, when the only thing that keeps you from wanting an immediate return to base is your personal bed, this is important. We don’t have a sink large enough to handle a dunk test, or a soap bubble test, or any of the other tests that we can dream up. That includes listening for an air jet, because we have too much ambient noise. The sea, the surf, the birds, the bees, the crackling of the campfire TV set. No way to hear where the air goes.
I guess we’ll have to pack up the horses and head for town, tomorrow or the next day, in search of a new mattress needing a sleeper. That is one of the hidden costs of the summer under the skies. No bed; no tolerance.
At least nothing else has ceded to the climate, and if we can get by with ONLY a new air mattress, then things are going very well indeed. Besides, I still have a lot of books to read.
