Monday, March 15, 2010

Overlooking Those Technical Details...

I have a great post all written up. Three of them, actually. I wrote them all yesterday when I went to a coffee shop with Lady Luck. She needed to study, and I needed to look cool in a coffee shop tapping away on a laptop. It all worked out pretty well.

The trick, of course, is that the laptop is a Mac. And the computer I use during the day, the one I write most of my posts on, is a PC. And I forgot to export all my brilliant writing in a compatible format.

Which is to say, my great writing is trapped in its storage medium until I can free it this evening. Whoops.

So I guess I'll have to talk about something else today. Here goes.

I went to an Army surplus store the other day to pick up various items in case of Zombie Apocalypse. I'm also planning on doing some motorcycle camping and perhaps a backpacking trip or two this year, so I wanted to see what there was in the way of gently used military gear. I was kind of disappointed to discover that a lot of the gear, such as ALICE packs, cost as much as equivalent gear at REI or Bass Pro Shops. What's up with that? I mean, I like the surplus aesthetic*, but why buy an ALICE pack if I can get an equivalent backpack that's actually comfortable for the same price?

Apart from the luggage problem, I'm also trying to figure out what to do about cooking. Almost every time I've been camping recently, there's been a "no campfire" rule in effect, which makes it hard to whip up pancakes and coffee in the morning. So I'm thinking of getting a camping stove. Right now I'm leaning towards a Coleman dual fuel backpacking stove, because white gas is cheap and easy to find relative to special isobutane canisters. Can anyone impart some wisdom?



*There is, after all, no such thing as "Too Mad Max"

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