Weeping Camel, Hidden Wagon

Have you seen this?

Actually, if you haven't already followed the link then I'll just tell you, since the website designers obviously thought cute titles and multiple links were more important than actual facts presented in some semblance of order (hey, maybe that's how I can get a bigger hit-count on my blog! Just break everything down into lots of pages and make you click twice through every sentence...)

Anyway it's something they call The Nomad Yurt, and in case you don't know, a yurt is sort of like a teepee only shaped like a boob. They're used by nomads in Mongolia and therefore they are more portable than, say, a Craftsman bungalow but slightly less easy to set up and strike than your standard Coleman two-man.

These folks think they've found the perfect way to capitalize on this ancient tradition -- sorry, I mean found the perfect way to utilize this ancient earth-friendly practice into our modern lives. A yurt as a spare bedroom! A yurt as a new kind of camping experience! A yurt as a fun toy for the kiddies! A yurt as a place to live until the divorce is final!

With a 12' diameter and 7 1/2' ceilings, this yurt is about the size of, and only slightly short than, the actual spare bedroom in our house. So fair enough on that count. And of course it's much cheaper than building an actual second bedroom -- cheaper by almost half.

That's right, the nomad yurt runs slightly dearer than the old kind of camping experience. At $6,800, it comes in about 68 times the cost of a decent tent -- but then again a decent tent doesn't come with its own wooden floor. Then again again, though, a decent tent does come with an actual, you know, tent. You've got to pay an additional $1,300 for the cloth covering on your yurt. $1,500 if you want it water-proofed...

It's portable, though. It is portable. Only takes an hour to set up "with a little practice" (takes two people an hour and a half the first time), and fits very nicely in the back of a truck (a "light pick-up," though -- a small one). So you could take it with you anywhere. If you have a pickup, that is. And if you don't need to fit anything else in there.

Best of all, there's this: "Q: Do you offer a warranty on the Nomad Yurt? A: The Nomad Yurt is sold on an "as is" basis. We do not service the Nomad. And no fitness for a particular purpose is implied."

Hm. You might want to wait until the divorce is final, after all...