My brother owns a green construction company, so he has some pretty cool products at his offices every now and then. He has a new water cooler in there that would be great to have, from several aspects. It is actually a dehumidifier, so it pulls in moisture from the air, filters it, then treats it using UV and turns it into potable water. It heats and cools the water as well, so you have a full featured water cooler that you don’t actually have to add water bottles or a water line to. The product literature said that it can do ~4 gallons a day, which is plenty for the average family’s drinking needs. Obviously, it will work better in more humid conditions (sorry, Arizonans).

So you have ecological benefits, self-sustaining benefits, and badass gadget benefits. If only it weren’t the cost of four car payments…

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Like many other things, I have an unnatural obsession with containers. I keep most sturdy, usable containers from products that I buy, and I will even admit to buying stuff [i]just so I can get the container it’s in[/i]. One feature I look for and rarely find is that the container is watertight. Watertight containers are usually big, bulky, and heavy, or crappy zip or press seal plastic bags. I kept on seeing these sweet little watertight containers in the food container section at WalMart, but couldn’t handle the ~$10 they were asking for three tiny little 1-2 cup containers. Enter Aldi, the quirkiest grocery store I have ever seen.

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Add these three sets to your cart:

Tinker with free Classic

Classic 3 pack

One Handed Trekker with free Classic

$10 is automatically subtracted in your cart, making it $44.39. Other combinations can be made, but this one is great if you are looking for small Christmas gifts and maybe a nice knife or two for yourself. Prices usually constantly fluctuate a few cents, so you might get something slightly different.

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I love my Fisher Space Pens. They are small, feel nice in the hand, the ink never skips, and they can write under water and upside down. I always have a pen on me, whether I am at work, out and about, or even on the trail. I like to be able to write things down if necessary, so I keep a couple of slips of paper in my wallet, and take a small Moleskine plain notebook (lined paper is the devil) on the trails. My Space Pens have been faithfully working for me for many years, but I saw the inka and was intrigued.

The version I bought was the titanium one, which runs about $23 shipped on ebay. The tube is the only titanium part, which the rest of the body being plastic and the split ring being regular stainless steel. With a large portion of it non-titanium, the part that is actually titanium seems to be just for looks, which is fine, since it does not exactly tear a whole in my pocket with its immense weight.

The problem with the pen is that, unlike the Space Pen, you do not just remove the pen portion and stick it in the cap to make a full pen. Let’s take a look at the Space Pen, apart and assembled:
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I have this insatiable appetite for building and creating, which usually manifests itself in a new project that I buy the parts for and then lose rapidly interest. Last weekend, I got the bug again, except this time I already owned all the parts, and there were only two of them. Folks, that is beginning of a success story.

I use a 3/8″ x 4″ firesteel to light most fires, since I can usually get things going more quickly with it then I can with a lighter. Probably because I spend more time preparing the tinder instead of attempting to light a piece of wet cardboard with a mini Bic, but that is beside the point. A blank firesteel is slightly awkward to hold, and since my dad has been “making” some hardwood handles for three months now, I decided to come up with my own handle. A handle that you just hold onto is boring, so I thought one that you could stuff stuff into would be wonderful. I have seen similar contraptions made before with success, so I figured I could make it work. Luckily, I happened to have a couple thousand capsules sitting around.

I drilled a hole in the bottom of the capsule with my trusty Ridgid Lithium drill, inserted the firesteel, then filled in the caps with JB Kwik. JB Kwik is actually quite quick (kwik?), so I had to make sure that the firesteel was inserted relatively straight, and then it was all done.

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I picked up an Arc’Teryx Beta LT (ignore that link if you are not familiar with the brand, or you might have a price induced heart attack) recently, finally buying into the Arc hype. The Beta LT is replacing the Theta AR that I recently sold, since the Theta was just too much for the temperatures and humidities I am exposed to in the southeast. I have several Precip-ish jackets, but wanted something that didn’t feel like Saran Wrap in the constant 100% humidity of the region. Weight was also a concern, since it needed to be a jacket that would always be in my pack, since more often than not, there is a surprise rainstorm on a hike in the southeast, especially during the summer.
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I made a video for the Sparky and got it up on youtube last night. I wanted to show the knife in better detail and show what it can do, so go listen to me ramble for a few minutes about sharp things.

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While on a quest to find some cured bacon, I came across Patak Meat Products, in Austell, GA. I have been looking for a quality meat store for a while, especially one that offered some cured and smoked meats that I could take backpacking without worries of spoilage. I have been to many meat stores over the years, and have never really found one that was all that great. I submit PMP as the best meat store ever (yes, I know they are called butcher shops), for several reasons:

UNO - Location - PMP is in the middle of nowhere in Austell, which is already in the middle of nowhere. OK, Austell is right next to Atlanta, but Austell still feels like the middle of nowhere. We passed by a Marathon facility with a hell of a lot of petroleum products silos, several trailer parks, a few sketchy neighborhoods, and a junk yard or two. Mind you, PMP is a very nice, clean, neat looking group of buildings, with several high end German vehicles sitting out front, so their choice of locations was interesting. Maybe zoning laws do not take kindly to a buttload of meat. I know it does not sound like a good location, but it is maybe 10 miles from me, which makes it a fantastic location.
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Several people have contacted me, asking that I start offering a fire kit for sale on Going Gear, so this is that kit. The kit is a refinement of several that I have made for myself and others, and is one that will cover a wide range of situations.

You have two quick and easy flame/spark sources, a bottle lighter (no fluid included) and a firesteel. You have three types of tinders: wax and sawdust, fatwood, and PJ cotton balls. You have a striker/tinder scraper with the hacksaw blade piece. You have duct tape to hold the tinder scrapings in windy conditions, or to do just about anything else, since duct tape is the most awesome thing [i]ever[/i]. You even have a badass plastic container from Target brand travel sized Q-tips. Finally, you have a ranger band to hold it all together. Of course, being a fire kit, especially from a pyro like me, you can burn the case, the ranger band, and the duct tape as well if you are really hurting to get a fire going.

Ideally, the firesteel and lighter would be used in most situations, since you can usually find natural tinder in the area to get a fire going. If you are lazy or everything is soaking wet, then you turn to the included tinders (or the case, ranger band, and duct tape).

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I finally received the firesteel knife from the knifemaker, Erik Boese, a couple of days ago. I am giddy with excitement over this thing. It is exactly what I wanted it to be, so hats off to Erik for doing a great job bringing our ideas to reality. I think I am going to go with Sparky as the name for it, since that sounds awfully appropriate for what the knife is. I wanted to wait until I had some nice shots of it before posting too much more about it, so I took care of that today:

More pictures are in the store. I have the preorder up in the store for those of you that are interested.
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