Tag: gear

Categories
general

We took it out the back and shot it

After years of faithful service, the old Garmin eTrex Vista GPS has finally died. Bits of rubber have torn off, plastic bits have fallen off, the rubber around the edge doesn’t really stay on any longer (with an attempt at a repair similar to Vik’s) but most importantly, several buttons don’t really work too well any more. And so now we have a new, fancy and shiny replacement.

It’s the Vista HCx model, which is actually fairly similar to the old Vista C, but has a few improvements – it goes a lot quicker for one (perhaps the old one was getting senile), and is a bit sturdier in construction.

Hopefully this one manages even more years of faithful service.

Categories
general

gear saturation

Gear saturation: That mythical time, at some point in the future, when you will own everything you would ever need to do anything you would ever possibly want to do.

Gear saturation is a state that you can only ever strive towards, and that you will never actually reach. Always something pops up and is incredibly necessary. And if there’s not gear to be bought for new activities, then there’s always old gear that’s past its prime, falling apart, being superseded by technological advances, or being eaten by wombats.

Indeed, if you ever actually reached gear saturation, it would truly be a sad day. You could only wander around gear stores disconsolately, your debates about which item and brand was truly the superior for the intended purpose would have no fire, and your browsing on the internet would have no point.

Categories
canada general snow

shiny new boots

My old tele boots were a size too big, designed for touring, and I’ve been using them for four seasons now. My feet could have invited a whole other pair of feet to have a party inside them. So now I have shiny new boots that fit (and are designed for turns rather than touring). I plan to thoroughly test them as soon as possible.

Categories
general

thanks rich!

Well, after an arduous 3 hours at UPS (and don’t let me even get started on the jungle I had to hack my way through to get there, and the wild boars that were attacking, and the poisonous snakes that were hunting me down), I collected the latest in a series of parcels of gear (from US online gear stores) that people have been sending my way (the plan being that I parcel the gear together, and post it home to Australia as ‘gifts’ ). This one was special though. This one had a present for me, in return for all of my efforts. A shiny shiny Black Diamond C4.

shiny shiny C4

With the help of Vegas, I proceeded to scratch it up by placing it in the hand cracks at the climbing gym. I feel I’ve sullied an innocent cam. Will it be forever tainted? Only time will tell.