Greetings adventurers,
Hope everybody is having a wonderful May. Crazy that the year is almost halfway gone.
First up is some gear for sale. I have listed all of this gear within the facebook “SUL/XUL Gear Swap” Group, but wanted to post it here for those that do not do facebook.
If you are wanting to buy any of the below gear, please contact me.
Six Moon Designs “Fusion 65” (newest gen)
I no longer need this massive volume backpack.
It is the newest generation.
Hip Belt Size: Small
Shoulder Yoke Size: S-Curve
Color: GrayI paid $261.30 and am selling it for $180 including shipping to any USA address.
Awesome backpack. Gave it my backpack of the year award. I bought it for hiking in the desert when needing to carry lots of water. I no longer need it, so would like to get it out of my house.
Read more of my thoughts on the backpack at https://hikelighter.com/2015/09/11/six-moon-designs-2015-fusion-65-available-for-pre-order/
(removed everything that has been sold)
That is all for now. I will likely have additional gear for sale in the near future as I work to get more gear out of my house. I will remove any of the above listed items when they sale.
Cottage Updates/Ramblings:
The folks over at Ursack are continuing to get screwed over by the governmental powers that be. In an update posted on May 09 2016 they indicated that SEKI has continued to deny them – or rather the folks who use an Ursack – the legal right to use an Ursack within SEKI. An ongoing battle between a bunch of ignorant stuck in the past government employees, and a cottage company trying to help the situation the government has not been able to solve for decades.
Those of you who are members of Backpackinglight should be aware that they made a change to their Terms of Service, without notification to their members – as of the time of posting this.
If you know the backstory of this situation, well, that is unfortunate, just as this entire situation is unfortunate – it shows an utter and complete lack of understanding, but that is neither here nor there I suppose.
Here are the changes that were made, they took effect immediately and without member re-consent pursuant to their ToS clause, “These terms and conditions may change from time to time. Your use of this website, and the privileges associated with the purchase of your membership, constitute the automatic acceptance of these terms and conditions.”
I do not want to point fingers, but one has to wonder, where is the FTC disclaimer on reviews they have published? Oh, that’s right, there is none.
Or, what about the biggest name in the world of backpacking, where is his FTC disclaimer on gear reviews? Oh, that’s right, Skurka does not have that either.
Furthermore, the USA Federal Trade Commission 16 CFR, Part 255 applies to the original publication, not for secondary or tertiary (or beyond) linking of original content.
But again, as I said above, this just “shows an utter and complete lack of understanding” on the part of BPL.
You folks that are still active members of BPL, you really really should take a few minutes to read the BPL website policies. There are some rather concerning clauses in there. Clearly they are just pulling these clauses out of thin air (or somewhere else, more likely) and have not sought legal counsel for their website policies, because, well, wow.
I mention all of this, just to make those folks out there that are still BPL members aware that BPL has changed their policies, seeing how they have chosen to not notify you – but hey, that is what I am here for, it seems.
I would point you to a link/page where you can cancel/terminate your account at BPL, but they do not offer that feature. And, you could always try emailing them, but as any BPL’er knows, that results in nothing.
Ok, moving on…
I keep getting asked by folks “when is BRG going to release their synthetic beanie?” Excellent question. I have no idea. It has been delayed for what, six plus months. I am at the point where I am just waiting to hear from them, rather than continuing to bug them about it. My guess is BRG has been spending most of their time fulfilling orders from massdrop, they seem to be rather popular over there, which is great to see!
Ron, from Mountain Laurel Designs, posted a really neat video over on facebook on their 2016 Pro SilNylon.
Soylent+Greenbelly Update:
For those of you aware, I have been on a Soylent (pre-made liquid) 2.0 + Greenbelly Bars nutritional diet for close to 100 days. Why? Just for. I wanted to see if I could. No special reason.
So far it is going very well. Here soon I will be slowly adding solid meals back into my diet. Probably noodles, veggi tacos, and such. My guess at this point is that I will try to keep at least two bottles of Soylent a day for the forseeable future. If I was rich, why I am the furthest thing from, I might stick with Soylent 2.0 as a near 100% diet, but it is just a fair bit beyond my food expenses on a month to month basis. But yeah, if I could afford it, I would absolutely keep using it.
I have not had any side affects from it. I have not lost weight, and actually put on a couple of pounds. Every few days I do find myself lacking a bit in energy, so I eat a couple of extra Greenbelly bars and that boosts me back up. I think once I get back to having at least one regular type of meal a day this issue should go away all together.
Using the liquid 2.0 soylent out on the trail initially presented a problem, because of all the individual containers, but once I bought a couple of those huge 96oz Nalgene containers, that issue was solved.
I have had a lot of people asking if I had have blood work done before I started this and along the way. There would have been some real benefit in doing that, but I have not.
So I have a question or two:
MSR has two shelters, the MSR Carbon Reflex 2 and the MSR FreeLite 2. The main differences between these two shelters is that the CR2 is around 9 ounces lighter, while the FL2 offers an additional 2 inches of headroom – and these are already very short shelters at 34 and 36 inches. Yeah, there are other differences, but when it comes to use on the trail, those are the two key things I feel.
Or another example would be my ZPacks Duplex vs my SMD CF Haven+NetTent. In this case one is a single wall the other is a double wall. The weight difference between them is around five ounces IIRC.
So my question is, at what point does livable space become worth additional weight? And, a follow-up question would be, if the market has been able to get to a point where single wall and double wall shelters are so very close to each other in weight, why are more people not choosing to go with a double wall shelter? I have to admit, I am finding a lot of joy in having a double wall tent. on non-rain nights I get to see the stars while away from the bugs. if the weather does change, I just have to go out and throw up the cover. In wet conditions having the condensation on the outer wall is so nice. So yeah, just wondering why folks are not opting for the double wall shelters when the weights are so close to each other. I have to admit that I thought about it for a few years, but it was only recently that I ordered up the double wall, and it has lead me to wonder why more do not, and why I did not sooner. Would love any thoughts!