Wednesday, May 12, 2021

Definitions: Hoop Tent

Hoop Tent

(1) The place you are sent when you can't keep quiet.

Inside this device, you can hoop and holler all you want without bothering the chipmunks, even if outside you're just another loud jerk.

This might seem impossible from a structure made of fabric and a few bent lengths of fiberglass rod or aluminum tubing, but it turns out that the entire structure is tunable, and when you get the right number of hoops in place, with the right spacing between them, you can either amplify or hush any sounds inside the structure, and block any and all sounds from outside, which is darn amazing.

This means that the hoop tent is an especially good choice for mechanically-adept light sleepers with at least a moderately good ear (for the tuning part).

And it gets better.

This tunability extends beyond the range of hearing into the sub-quantum meta-aural bands, which allows you to bring in baseball broadcasts from the 1930s (when conditions are right), to control the local weather (but only to make it worse, unfortunately), and, to some extent, to affect the price of canned cat food (if bought in bulk).

(2) A tent of ancient design, handed down through thousands of generations within the tradition of the Hoo-Pal peoples of northeastern South Cattledonia, known for their acute sense of design, clever and nimble fingers, and ability to make entirely modern looking structures from lizard skin and giant bat ribs.

The first European explorers were dumbfounded by the sturdy but backpackable tent-like structures ("hooples") they found erected everywhere, but their favorite was named after the ancient local god, Maht (or Maht-Tha).

This was the origin of the sturdy four-season shelters we now know as "Mott-The Hooples".

These days these structured are generally called just hoop tents, and consist of one largish hemispherical swatch of fabric stretched over several flexible bent arches or hoops. Pretty cool, eh?

 


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