I find myself intrigued by the trend toward eschewing tents for tarps
(and I'm hoping not to spark a tarp v. tent debate here). In shopping
around online and looking at many of the tarps that are out there, it
seems that most depend on the use of trekking poles for support. This
is a pretty cool idea IF you're using trekking poles already, and
obviously makes a lot of sense of the backpacking crowd.

As a cyclist, though, I haven't found much reason to carry trekking
poles around. . .

I've been playing with the idea of using the wheels from my bike to
support the tarp, but this system is imperfect at best. I'd be
curious to hear what other bike-campers are doing for tarp-pitching.

I should probably throw in this qualifier as far as my personal use
goes: I usually camp on a Hennessey Hammock (the best thing since the
pneumatic tire, as far as my riding/camping experience goes), so I'm
only looking at the possibility of pitching a tarp as a backup in the
RARE case that I can't find any trees for the hammock. This, of
course, adds another problem to tarp use since it seems like the
default way to pitch one if you don't have poles is to tie it to trees.

mac