I can’t imagine anything being better then steepandcheap, but the goat claims that geartrade.com just might be.  Another offshoot of backcountry.com (bless their souls), the idea behind geartrade.com is that everything returned to backcountry.com gets sold there, and basically every items price gets reduced by 1/365th every day.  After a year, every item would cost $1 if its not bought already.  Looks like a great idea if you know what you want and have some time to wait for its price to drop.  Just don’t wait too long or someone else will snatch it.  You can also buy and sell used equipment there sort of like eBay, with no listing fees.

I took this picture back in September on a backpacking trip to Linville Gorge and posted it here, but I never looked at it in high resolution until this week when I made it my wallpaper. Upon closer inspection you can see a tiny spider on the flower that is so small its legs are clear. In real life the flower is about half an inch across, so the spiders leg span can’t be more then an 8th of an inch. I certainly didn’t notice the spider when I was taking a picture, but what a perfect shot!

Simply amazing, the courage and strength of mind of both people.  “Hey honey, there is a pen in my right pocket… can you take it out and stab this mountain lion that is eating me in the eye?  Thanks so much.”

I found this blog at GetOutdoors to be very interesting. Watching the two minute history of snowboarding and seeing things like this come out, its kind of neat to see just how young snowboarding is, and its nice to see there is still room for innovation. Click on the picture below to open it up full size and check out the details of this new thinking. I would not be at all surprised if all snowboards soon adopted this thinking.

We had another habitat for humanity Saturday morning with the guys from church and enjoyed it very much. We had six people and we were able to work on several different projects. We started out doing sheet rock indoors, but there were a lot of Elon volunteers there and it was too crowded so we went outside and worked on the fascia of the house and a deck and wheel chair ramp. Here are some pics:

We were up early for some Biscuitville and I got to see the sun rise. I thought these pictures turned out really nice.

On the left is Kevin and our boss putting up the fascia and on the right is John and Karissa and James.

Kevin measuring and marking boards for the deck,

Karissa goofing off with the boards,

me cutting the boards,

and Tom assuming a management position over the board cutting process.

We were done by lunchtime and headed over the Martino’s for a bite, and then out to Mill Creek for some football with a bunch of others. Overall a Saturday very well spent.

Over at GetOutdoors they linked to Big City Mountaineers, and it looks like a really neat project.  Basically they get 5 inner city teen agers who haven’t had a chance to do anything like backpacking before, and they take them on a trip to the backcountry for 8 days.  There are 5 adults who go with the 5 kids on the trip, and this is where you get to volunteer.  Basically they have 3 volunteers on every trip whose job is to connect with the kids and help out with the trip.

Right now the trips are mostly in CA and CO, but they have done them in the east before, and hopefully they will do more here in the future.  The mountains of NC would be great for trips like this.  Volunteers bring all their own gear and pay $100 to help cover other costs, and gear is provided for all of the kids participating.  Reading their website it looks like a well organized operation, and definitely something worthy of glance.

Maybe this will come in handy. Via The Goat, via Gizmodo, via Lifehacker. Basically its a solar recharger for your nano for when you are backpacking.

I really don’t know if I would bring my iPod backpacking. It is definately lightweight, but it just doesn’t seem right to let something come between you and the outdoors. However when I am hiking, especially alone, I always get songs in my head, and it would be nice to be able to hike with a sound track. We’ll have to wait and see when the time comes. I am guessing that I bring it next time and see how much it actually gets used.

When I was younger I used to go to play it again sports, but it has been a while. I wanted to get Jillian boots and bindings, so I called around to the various stores in the area and found out that the one in Cary has tons of ski and snowboard stuff, and the others don’t have much at all. So we went down to Crossroads and stopped in and we got a nice pair of Burton boots that she tried on and fit really nicely, and some bindings that fit the boots like a glove, both used and at a great price.

I am a sucker for that kind of store because I am not all about having the newest and best. I just like something that works well and will last. They have lots of excercise equipment that is in great shape but people traded in because they don’t use it anymore, and they have equipment for all of the major sports like baseball, football, hockey, etc. They also have as much new stuff as used, so if you don’t find something used that you like then you can probably get it new. If you are thinking about going out to Dicks or another sporting goods store, give play it again sports a call first and see if they can hook you up for half the price.

The snowboarding videos are finally finished processing by Google. Here are the links:

Jillian snowboarding very early in the day, but still doing fantastically

Jillian’s little trick

Jillian around the middle of the day trying a harder slope

Jillian towards the end of the day on the harder slopes, cruising along

Check ‘em out!

Today steep and cheap is doing 100 deals in 24 hours. That means every 15 minutes or so they put a new item up there. Some of the things they have had so far (which i missed) were $130 snopwboard boots for $30 and coats and watches and sunglasses and other stuff like that discounted heavily. They also sometimes put climbing shoes, sleeping bags, tents, and lots of other outdoor equipment that you would normally buy at backcountry.com. Keep an eye on it today, and remember every 15 minutes that you don’t check steep and cheap you are missing out on some incredible bargain!