Canadian dollar hurts, ouch!

Yeah – it is brutal.

Some companies are offering free shipping to Canada which helps….

Yep i went crazy adding gear when we were at par so i can hunker down now and wait for the upswing.

Just checked the exchange rates – wow – C$1 = US 81 cents! Not far from the "good old days" of 72 cents!

Maybe this is the year I do my Via Rail Canada transcontinental train ride from Halifax to Vancouver?

yes, they are both in a race to extinction, and we're winning by 19 cents !

v.

Ah, but Peter, au contraire…

Two years ago, I went to Iran — just a week or two after McCain and some of the GOP calling for active intervention in Syria and Iran and Obama basically nixing the idea. Basically, peace prevailed again by the time I got there, and the Iranian money changers were laughing at me… "oh, so sorry, you should have been here a week ago when everybody was nervous and US$1 fetched 40,000 rials — but now, it's just 29,000 – haha….". So sad…

Pretty much everybody… Saudis, Sudanese, Iranians, Chinese… heck, maybe even ISIS — they all go for our US dollar whenever a crisis might threaten. Not sure how long this will last, one of these days the bubble will finally burst, but for now, it's sure nice to travel abroad.

I wanted to drive up and down the gulf coast next winter, hopefully the dollar bumps up a little then.

I haven't done a Canada trip recently

Must be time to get passport and do so

Last time I visited was pre 9/11

Actually, I crossed border back into U.S. on Sept 10, 2001, the day before. If I had waited a day, I wouldn't have been able to cross back for a while

I have a trip lined up for this summer up to Calgary and points west. We'll see how the rate looks then and just how far my "new" '03 Subaru Baja and my ADHD take me.

On the flip side, now is a great time to be selling gear. Selling a $100 item nets Canadians $125.

And to put another positive spin on it, things will get worse.

Yes I am hurting, and there is more pain to come.

I've never really bothered trying to sell gear to people in the u.s. I figure tracked shipping would add too much cost.

I did most of my big dollar purchases just as the CDN dollar began to slip. Looking at the exchange rate as of late, I'm glad that I did!

Does this mean that MEC is getting more south of the border purchases?

This dollar exchange rate makes me sad.
I will definitely be visiting the MEC website often!

I have a couple international trips coming up and they are much more expensive now. :(

"I've never really bothered trying to sell gear to people in the u.s. I figure tracked shipping would add too much cost."

Without tracking, you can ship stuff up to 1kg (2.2lbs) to the USA for $8 – $14 via Small Packet Air which is pretty quick (1-2 weeks). I just shipped a rain jacket for $8 because it was under 250g. If you want tracking you can ship it as a "Tracked Packet" for about $16. For stuff under 1kg shipping is pretty reasonable.

This is general USD strength, not specific CAD weakness. Over the last year, the CAD is stronger against the EUR (the weakest major currency at the moment), and little changed against JPY, GBP, AUD. Skiing in Switzerland, not so much, with last week's events. But otherwise, non-US international trips are broadly no more expensive for a Canadian than they were a year ago.

Also… it's really not difficult for Canadians to invest in USD or USD-denominated assets to spread currency risk. This is rather more flexible than just punting purchase & sale of Cuben Fiber tents from US cottage manufacturers. Of course, I realize that's not much help to people without savings who are just looking at what their CAD paycheck will buy in the US. On behalf of the US economy, sorry about that.

should you have the opportunity to ship to a canadian address before you come up … ill leave you these sites

http://www.thelasthunt.com/

http://www.altitude-sports.com/en/all-categories?on_sale=yes

https://www.liveoutthere.com/winter-blowout-sale-fw14?camp=20150115-winter-blowout-sale

http://www.lacordee.com/en/sales

http://www.mec.ca/shop/clearance/20142/

http://gogear.ca/

when you get dead bird in maple syrup dollahs for 40%+ off … then get an additional 15-20% (then add a 5% tax usually) … dead birds might be just be a "budget brand" !!!

;)

Dammit, I have a plastic baggie full of coins (so about $50 canadian?) that I probably bought back in the 1:1 days. Oh well.

I'll have to actually buy something from MEC next time I roll through Vancouver while dodging their new toll bridge.

Let the poutine flow!

Oh, and that $100 lift ticket for 7 hours of lift skiing might actually be worth it now.

Hmmmmmm — try moving from Canada to the US over a decade ago, when the Canadian Dollar was worth US$ 0.64, and suddenly your life savings was (almost) halved!!!!

Time to go home for a visit, maybe! Also take a look at the Euro — time to take another European trip (miam, fromages de France….)

So…for those of you knowledgeable of such things….

is the reason americans don't buy from MEC because of shipping? Is it really that bad?

The shipping is what we Canadians normally are charged via American sources so right back at ya.

; )

"is the reason americans don't buy from MEC because of shipping?"

For mainstream American buyers — there's almost no reason to buy from MEC over REI or any of the myriad of American stores. Prices are generally higher in Canada — it's a smaller market, taxes are higher, etc. — so generally a "no" — even before shipping costs are factored in.