This week: busy travel resets my focus; and on the road gear research.
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AlpineSea Tiny Cove
A fantastic small bag for daily gear.
Note: this item was provided for review.
I have started carrying smaller shoulder bags more and more these days, and as such I am always on the lookout for the latest and greatest. So when I saw AlpineSea’s Tiny Cove — a small 6L banana styled shoulder bag — I knew I needed to give it a go. I don’t love most ‘sling’ designs as they always feel like a solution searching for a problem — shoulder bags always do it better..
The Tiny Cove is very tiny, but has a lot going for it.
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Himali Eclipse Sun Hoody
This is the best sun hoodie and hiking shirt out there.
Note: this item was sent for review.
When Himali asked if I wanted to review something from them, I was pretty excited. I am guessing that many of you have not heard of the brand — they are a Boulder based brand that legitimately tests their gear in very extreme alpine areas. When you walk into their Pearl Street store, you immediately start feeling warm as you look at the full body down suits they have.
The brand suggested I try the Eclipse Sun Hoodie, saying it is a staff favorite and what most of them wear daily. It is sun season, and hiking is in full swing, so I accepted and they sent it over.
I’ll skip right to the end for you: this is the best sun hoodie, and generally best warm weather hiking top, I have ever used. It feels impossible. I love it.
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Member Journal — 7/14/25
If you are not using AI without thinking about it throughout the day, then you’re behind.
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WP Standard – The Bull Messenger
One of the best leather bags I’ve ever used.
Note: this item was provided for review.
There are two truths about this Bull Messenger from WP Standard to know: I was super nervous to get this bag for review as I am not usually a leather bag guy; I’ve literally never had as many compliments on any single bag I have ever used. It’s wild how many people love the way this bag looks, including me.
My fears of this being not that useable quickly dissipated as I started to use this bag. It’s a sturdy bag which looks good, and can carry way more than I expected — and it has quickly shifted my perspective on what a good bag is for daily carry.
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Happy Patina Writing Kit
A fantastic way to carry a notebook and an iPad to go put words down on paper.
Note: this item was provided for review.
I’ve written quite a bit about patina on this site — it’s why I love things like cotton, waxed canvas, and leather. Happy Patina is a great name for a company which produces leather goods made to patina and change with you. This Writing Cover is big and the natural veg-tanned leather begs you to use it and add your own patina.
A couple of surprises I didn’t expect with this, meant it truly did become my writing kit.
(Note that this is a revised variant, sized to fit A4 notebooks. Previous variants were smaller.)
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GORUCK’s X-Mas In July 2025
Get your deals on.
Great deals on clothing, shoes, and rucks. Good time to buy.
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Member Journal — 7/7/2025
Gear nostalgia and some behind the scenes stuff about the gear I get to review.
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Mystery Ranch Front 2.0
I won’t make you read the entire thing, before I tell you this is one of the best backpacks I’ve used.
A while back, there was a post on Reddit which flew under the radar about a new Mystery Ranch Front 2.0 bag which showed up on Suburban — a website which sells bags to the Asian market, but also ships to the USA out of Hong Kong. The Front 2.0 looked like everything the market always wanted from the bag, but it was expensive, and not available in the USA directly.
Which of course means I snagged one in Foliage, a color which is quickly fading in US based Mystery Ranch inventory, as Yeti continues the take over of the storied brand.
The Front 2.0 might just be the last great bag Mystery Ranch makes — I’m a big fan of it.
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’You Didn’t Notice Anonymous Internet Browsing Was Just Killed’
Well that’s not good.
Anything a government now deems “sexual” or “harmful” may now require one to hand over their passport, biometric data or banking information. More concerning, such laws may now require this personal information to access platforms, which may only have some amount of “sexual material.”
I could quote the entire thing, really scary shit.
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Trust, Leadership, Privacy
I’ll call for people to be fired, no issues with that here.
In case you missed it because you don’t allow a Wallet app to give you push notifications, Apple sent an ad for the F1 movie through the Wallet app. That’s clearly fucked.
John Gruber follows up on that today with this:
The perception of privacy is just as important as the technical details that make something actually private. I try very seldom to call for anyone to be fired, but I think whoever authorized this movie ad through Wallet push notifications ought to be canned.
As I said a week ago, Apple has a significant leadership problem. It’s not that they don’t have leadership, it’s that they clearly are not leading Apple to be the company which made them who they are today. That’s dangerous. A lot of people have a hard time criticizing people or companies that they love, but criticizing Cook and his leadership team takes nothing away from all the amazing things they have done, but rather points out some sort of change that is not good.
2025 Apple is clearly flailing.
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High Twist — Justifying the Upgrade: Adventures in Overthinking Stuff
Going down the rabbit hole.
Bruce and Ben plunge into the irresistible world of gear rabbit holes—where the quest for “just right” quickly morphs into “way too deep.” From ultralight tent debates and cycling minimalism to high-end kitchen knives and slick blazers, they break down the obsessive, hilarious, and sometimes unnecessary lengths we go to research, buy, and justify our gear. Along the way, they dish hard-won truths: when to trust the hype, when to let go, and how to know when “good enough” really is. If you love sweating the details (or just want to know why your buddy suddenly cares about zipper pulls and moonlight modes on flashlights), this one’s for you.
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Gear Report — 6/25/25
Just because I haven’t reviewed the brands in a while, doesn’t mean they don’t hold up.
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Downward Fall of Shop Pay & App
When a product and design team makes something great for you, don’t let the sales and marketing folks take over.
Not long ago, I could be heard singing the praises of Shopify’s “Shop App” which allowed you to shop select stores, see deals, use “Shop Cash”, in addition to tracking your orders. The order tracking and history was always the magic, since the Shop Payment platform is very ubiquitous across the web you never really had to manually add tracking to monitor your packages — instead, moments after hitting order on a site, you get a little notification about the order on the app. Then it would update with tracking and deliveries as they came.
This was rather brilliant. Here you had an app which I would otherwise avoid like the plague, but which I was now incentivized to go in and look at and where I wanted the notifications turned on. It’s a marketers dream.
They had me. Shop app had me.
