Big Blue Toe make's a very good point. I've done the same thing. While I only do weekend tours currently, I started out light and slowly added stuff for that "quality of life" feeling while camping. That's why I now take a 3 cup Moka pot, I decided I wanted hot strong espresso coffee while camping. You adjust as you go, some things you'll decide aren't worth taking and other things you'll add because you wish you had it on a previous trip.

I started out cheap to find out if I was going to like it enough to keep doing it and eventually do the across America dream of mine. Now that I decided I'm good to go with all that camping stuff I've invested in some better mostly mid level stuff as needed because camping does trash stuff. Tents take a lot of abuse, I've talked to many campers that backpack or bike in and they all said their high end tents last 5 years best, so I buy cheaper tents; and a tent expert I once read said the same thing, buy cheaper tents, not the ones under $100 though because they can leak in hard rain. There was a camper I ran into that had a cheap $60 tent and he threw a tarp over it! Cheap and water proof.

But basically you all need to know that a $400 tent is not even close to being twice as good as a $150 tent, and neither is a $300 tent. And real expensive 4 season tents weigh to much to haul around on a bike. But since most of us are not riding are bikes into the frozen tundra of Northern Canada we don't need anything close to that kind of durability.

Again, a question about tarp tents for those tarp experts. I don't pitch a tent close to a tree, because lightening can strike a tree, travel down into the roots of the tree where you have a tent pitched and suddenly you have problems. Sure if your camped in a grove of trees the odds of getting struck are less then next to a solo tree out in the open, but the odds are still there. So what precautions do you take since it sounds like you need a tree or two to rig up the tarp?