I finally bagged the Bonds, the peak-bagger’s nemesis. Since this would’ve been a 22 mile dayhike, my semper fi canine hiking bud, Ouzo, and I did this as an overnight backpacking trip. We bagged all three Bonds, Bond Cliff, Mt. Bond, and West Bond, on Thursday and camped in the shelter at Guyot […]

Word of the Day
And the Word of the Day is “mawkish.”

Return of the Samurai
He’s back, he’s black, he’s madder than Hell…he’s Samurai with a mohawk!
Ok, I didn’t really get a mohawk. I’m not overtly angry, either, just the usual inward-directed anger that makes me mildly bipolar and prone to substance abuse. And I’m only a little black. But I really am […]

Signing Off ’till Next Week…maybe
Well, this is it, compadre. My last entry for the week and possibly my last entry ever. The Fixit Boyz will all be mustering up here at Brown Compound in about an hour from now for the Third Annual Fixit Boyz Hillstomp. We’ll go through gear, make a […]

Live Help Update
Yep, I’ll be on live help tonight for as much as I can stand it. When I can’t stand it any more, I’ll be unavailable for live help but still hanging around the forum pretending to answer questions. I’ll probably go back and forth like this for a while until I […]

Gear Review: The Kelty 50th Anniversary Pack
If you’re into backpacking, you probably couldn’t avoid reading something, somewhere, about the Kelty 50th Anniversary pack. Backpacker magazine kicked off the brewhaha when they picked it as an Editor’s Choice for 2002, touting it as a breakthrough in pack engineering, combining the best features of internal […]

Live Help Update
Yesterday was a surreal succession of things going wrong while pulling my gear together for the Fixit Boyz Hillstomp this weekend. It all began when I discovered defective mission-critical stitching in my new Kelty 50th Anniversary backpack.    More about that later. Oh, you can bet your sweet double-wide bottom there’ll […]

Q. What could be more fun than a handful of leeches?

A. MORE LEECHES!

Q. What equipment do you need to hunt for leeches?
A. Just your bare hands and a specially-trained leech hunting hound.

Q. Where do you hunt for leeches?
A. The best place we’ve found is Mill Pond at Pillsbury State […]

Uploaded the rest of the photos from our family camping trip to Moose Brook State Park last month. Good times, good times.

Get notified by email when your skivvies are dry. And now your life is happy and full.
Have you seen the Navy’s new website? Dude, this site rocks! If I was 20 years younger, I’d re-enlist all over again…ok, maybe not, but it’s still a cool flash intro.

Look, I make no pretenses about being a neutral or unbiased voice in the home appliance world–I’ll tell you right now, Grasshopper: I ain’t. Nawsir, I am one cranky and opinionated cracker. But get me talking about GE appliances, and I turn into one pissed-off cracker. Why? Because despite horrendous […]