New release from Pioneer Carry is the A4U Sling I have a review sample in hand, but as I understand it this is a limited run for now. Really compact, smart layout, nice materials. I’ve not used it more than once, so I can’t say much more right now.
Since I am in a safe space here, I will openly admit that the Snow Peak Aurora Bottle was a ‘grail’ water bottle for me. There’s absolutely no justifiable reason for me to go buy a $150 water bottle, which I will use on a trail and will likely drop a few times over the life of it, when I have dozens of other water holding bottles. There’s no reason for this. And yet, if you happen to hold one of these, you’ll get why people spend the money on this.
Luckily, I didn’t spend my money on this, my wife spent our money on it, and gifted me the world’s best water bottle in the process.
One of the biggest pet peeves of mine is people proclaiming items as the best of at the start/middle of the year. You can’t know what the Best of 2025 is, when it’s *still* March of 2025. That’s why my Best Lists come out at the end of the year.
Likewise, you can’t really know what a good winter jacket is, until you’ve spent a season with that jacket. I could tell you all day long what I think might be good based on specs in September, but that could leave you with a pretty shitty jacket for the winter if you buy based on my assumptions. And I suspect most people are not as crazy as I am, and thus don’t buy this many jackets, and so it matters a lot more to get it right on the first purchase.
Technically winter is over, though my friends here in Boulder tell me we are not quite done with snow (I am pretty sure we are). But I do believe we are mostly done with the cold-cold of the winter as it’s forecasted to tickle 80°F this week.
Today, I want to run through my thoughts on the jackets I wore this winter — which stretched from late October until about now.
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Filson has topped up it’s outlet section for bags, adding a bunch of great ones:
Plenty more, some odd colors, great prices.
GORUCK has a 21L and 26L GR1 Throwback, which essentially undoes the majority of the GR1 changes over the years and takes the bag back to somewhere around 2011 or so. Most notably (I think) is changed the strap mount back to the original method.
Pretty cool.
Note: this item was provided for review.
I have a hierarchy I keep in my head for the overall difficulty for making different types of backpacks, from easiest to hardest, the categories are: military, hiking, hunting, travel, edc, office. Every time a company tries to tackle an office backpack, they run the risk of making something completely absurd, ugly, and generally useless. To couple that then with travel, well that’s asking for criticism.
So when Pioneer Carry asked if I wanted to test out their Savant Pack — which is for office and travel — I had a very low bar of expectation for this pack. It’s not often a company does this well.
With the Savant Pack, Pioneer Carry has a gem on their hands, being led by the materials, and followed by the smart simplicity of the bag. This is good stuff.
There’s no Filson product more iconic to their brand than their Mackinaw Wool Cruiser an item Filson patented in 1914. One of the bigger regrets I have was a trip to Filson back in 2013 or so. I went to the old Filson flagship in Seattle (4th Ave) to get a Filson wool jacket with my first large bonus. I walked out with a lovely charcoal ‘Wool Weekender’ made in Mackinaw wool, which I wore for years (until I lost weight and it was too large), but I always had this thought that I should have bought the Mackinaw Wool Cruiser instead.
Thankfully, this was rectified recently, and now that I can once again wear heavy wool jackets we need to talk about this icon. Because there’s a damned good reason Filson has been making this for so long: it’s beyond good.
I knew what the material would be like, but I had no idea it would be this good to wear throughout the winter and even in snow.
The Mini-Freek is a great knife to begin with, but this special edition ($300) gives you an Ultem handle, Amethyst coated blade, and CPM-M4 steel.
Oh my.
Note: These straps were provided for review.
As you might suspect, I am exceedingly picky with watch straps. I don’t even want to take a guess at how much money I’ve spent on watch straps only to later sell them for pennies on the dollar, or tossed in the garbage. I have found a couple of companies who make outstanding watch straps, and I have left my buying to only those. So when RSM reached out to offer some straps for review, I was worried.
I loathe getting a review sample that I hate and watch straps are hard to gauge from website descriptions alone, but the email was very friendly and it seemed like it was from someone who really got watches. And they offered that if I told them my favorite watches, they would pick the straps for me. I was game, a few weeks later a bunch of straps showed up, and a few hours after that I realized that this is yet another strap maker who gets it.
The title of this sequence of posts from MJ Tsai is a spot on description of the iPad. It would be easy to blame the lack of Steve Jobs, but the iPad software was even more shit under Jobs than it is now.
The honest truth is that Apple is saying Yes far too much these days to appease the stock market or the US President. Anyways, fun threading of comments to read.
This looks really good, and at $65, it’s priced right.
Unfortunately it’s sold out already, but the link is hidden on their page so posting this so you can sign up for a restock notification. I managed to get an order in, can’t wait to try it out.
