Milestones for Obsession

DOOOOOOOOOOMED, thou art.

Tadpole, you have miles to go :)

Silly boy — this is just the beginning! Mwahahaha…

Ben2World
The Gear Enabler

That's it Max, the Crack is floating through your body as I type.

I work almost full-time as a writer. That's my college loan payments, future savings, and potential gateway into a career job.

I work part-time as a police dispatch. That's for beer and backpacks. Life is good.

Good man :-)

Its a proud (or maybe sobering) moment the first time you realize you can outfit two people to be entirely self-sufficient. At the moment I can't quite get four people, I need another pack and sleeping bag for that.

Last year I completed the "Capilene cycle." (Cap 1 t-shirt, Cap 2 zip-top, Cap 3 crew, and Cap 4 full zip) Right now my goal is a "Melanzana cycle" although I've still got a ways to go on it.

I think a more serious milestone for me was getting rid of my GG G6 Murmur. Its when I realized I wanted a more even balance between comfort on the trail and comfort in camp. I wish I hadn't sold it though, it was a really cool pack.

Adam

Your first stove and pot? Have you been going no cook this entire time?

We're small Frey in a sea of whale sharks. One thing we have a lot of is sleeping pads. 7 pads for me and my girlfriend. Most of them we got from the garage sale section of the Seattle flagship REI (we get a permanent section instead of garage sale days) for bananas and repaired them.

I find great comfort in having so many children I can justify any gear grab for a demo thinking, "If I don't like it… child "X" can use it". Such skewed rationale. I love it though. And I'm starting to find even more beauty in a much loved item than in a fresh off the mill item.

Short answer, yes.

Long answer, the trips where I wasn't eating cold, we had a group stove or I grabbed a pocket rocket from my school's gear closet.

I'm not the first to say this and I won't be the last.

There is enough humor here to be a reality tv series on whatever is the geek channel.

It isn't pretty and starving countries will look upon this as evil but there is something funny about someone acquiring two of everything sold at, say, REI.

This comment should be in the Chaff Forum but someone turned the lights off – down there- (what, no censor?) so I am flitting about in the Gear Forum.

"This comment should be in the Chaff Forum but someone turned the lights off – down there- "

I've come across references like this a number of times. What exactly did BPL do? The Chaff branch is still there. Is it because I browse directly from the Forum Index (and not from Recent Posts link) that I haven't noticed any difference?

Ben,

I don't see a difference either but others said something changed.

For whatever reason there isn't much action down there.

Now look…..the Chaff vires is creeping into the other forums.

Heck Max,

I am not even UL and I am lighter than that stuff. You aren't set yet if you want to play with these guys.

Your subject title and the Chaff talk made me think of talking about your travels in the gear world as Fifty Shades of Silnylon…

"This comment should be in the Chaff Forum but someone turned the lights off – down there- "

I've come across references like this a number of times. What exactly did BPL do? The Chaff branch is still there. Is it because I browse directly from the Forum Index (and not from Recent Posts link) that I haven't noticed any difference?"

It used to be that if you clicked on "Recent Posts" (on the right) which is all I ever did, it included chaff. Recently this changed and when you click that you don't get chaff posts.

At the same time "Recent Chaff Posts" and "Recent Chaff Threads" have been added (up above) so you can get your chaff fix that way.

I never read any notice or explanation of this change, just figured it out. I assume it's because people complained about all the chaff posts, so BPL being a user friendly/oriented site, these changes were made : )

Maybe some of the comments about guns and BSA policy precipitated it? One thing unfortunate about the BSA policy, is BSA is about experiences for kids, and it's too bad to ruin that with other issues.