Shopping update; Ultralight; Returning to the land of the living

Since last post, I've been researching bug net shelters, tarps, and ultralight backpacking in general. I got to looking into what are the heaviest things I've been carrying, and the old bivy + sleeping bag combo are among the heaviest items (bivy: 1.4lbs, bag: 2.8lbs. I've cut the zippers out of these and have been using the bag as a quilt since the end of last summer.). Seeing advertisements of ~1lb 40-degree bags for near $100 (Kelty Pounder, I think), I got to looking into best use of money to carry less weight.

Along the way I explored websites of the ultralight community. Brawny and Rainmaker's site stands out. Dirtbagger's Deluxe I remember. & Backpacking Light. My del.icio tag shelter shows some of link trail.

Finally I returned to the Shakespeares of ultralight, Ray and Jenny Jardine.

Where I am now: I have called my Point Loma grandma about a sewing machine she had mentioned I could borrow, and I submitted the following order to Ray-Way:

Quant.	Item	Each	Amount
1	Bomber Hat Kit-L	$21.95	$21.95
1	Pkg2 (tarp book tarp kit) white	$70.90	$70.90
1	Long Option for Q1P	$12.95	$12.95
1	Quilt-kit 1P Deluxe gold	$74.95	$74.95
1	Free Siku	$0.00	$0.00
1	Thread Pro	$6.49	$6.49
Shipping	Priority		$13.62
Total			$200.86

Nearly within the $200 budget there, but I had to leave out the net-tent. All that anyway is probably enough of an intro to sewing stuff. And I expect I'll order the

• Two person mosquito net from campmoor & their GI can opener

which will add $25 to the total spent.

I forgot to add that I also ordered

• An old Frogg Togg rainsuit for $18.

This should let me leave the green jacket I have been wearing behind (comparatively heavy and no longer water-resistant) and give me some good, light, though maybe not very tough, rain, wind, & bug-resistant pants.

So that's probably it. The only remaining money-involving Internet project is to get the violin listed on ebay.

All that equipment should let me leave behind / retire: my old bag, my bivy, my blue ground tarp. The blue tarp is nice though because it's cheap and tough. My only ground cover now will probably be two trashbags I carry along. Plus I can put the mosquito mesh (and maybe the tarp) under me if I don't have it up. I haven't been using a sleeping pad, which I find to be fine if I'm out in the forest and away from packed ground.

Using a tarp instead of a bivy signals a change in style for me to focus more on the camp than the journey. The bivy was nice because I could find a spot big enough to fit in, throw it down, crawl in or sleep on top of it, and have some shelter from bugs / moisture. But I can still do that.

The difference will be that I should have decent shelter in significant rain (though maybe there will be no more rain till winter) and what shelter I do carry will weigh less.

I plan to make the two-person size of tarp. So if I have only one visitor, s/he could share bug netting & tarp if bugs or rain were an issue.

Partly because of money I decided to make the 40-degree rather than the 28-degree quilt. But that should help remind me not to linger in areas where it is getting cold--one of my main shelter strategies is to be where the climate the way it is requires less shelter.

I am planning and investing in what will be my home. These things I'll be making will be the only things I'll have and will carry. I will most likely be getting rid of my old gear.

At the same time I can't spend so much on these things that I would be devastated by their loss: my pack or gear could somehow get trashed, lost, or stolen. Different than just buying things, however, I'm taking the opportunity to devote myself to Jardine, to learn from him, to learn to sew and to make these things. So if I lost everything, it would be easier to make more or make something different.

While I haven't seen Brawny mention Jardine, she and many other ultralighters appear to be evolving in their own ways the Jardine example.

In the past I wouldn't futz with all this. I'd grab what would let me get out there: blue tarp, trashbags, old sleeping bag. But now that I'm planning to be out there long term, I have the time and reason to be truly materialistic. I'll have only a few possessions, devoting care to each one.

Example of the Originers: I value remembering Eorsch, the primitivists at Twisp, and others who do the same kind of preparation for a 5-week trek, but do it using primitive/origin materials and technologies. None of the fancy stuff I'm getting or making is really necessary. So . . . am I misleading myself? Or is this a newly helpful synthesis of origin and modern technology?

Life!

So that's it! For three + days now I've nearly ignored the place and body where I am, focused entirely on setting in motion (getting the orders in) what will let me get out of this place where I am. Once I'm gone from here I won't need to walk around suburbia for exercise. I'll walk around the forest, as I was so recently doing.

Brawny's site reminds one of the value of that kind of life!

I doubt these past few days have been all that healthy for me. Had the pools been open early I probably would have exercised more, but their hours are not as good weekends and holidays. And I'm focused on preparing for the time I no longer walk around the city (as I would have to do to get to the pool), but the woods and trails.

Peace,
Colin

The list. Exceedingly mindless

Typing in the to-do list I wrote up on Thursday:

To obtain:

1. Net-tent + other tarp tent
2. phone with more memory & perhaps a camera
3. finer, lighter line for tying up tarp
4. print net-making how-to
5. jardine style water filter?
6. new mesh bag?
7. right number of bottles, non plastic? non Nalgene?
8. bacitracin / antibiotic ointment?
   

To do:

1. In three weeks be in Los Padres National Forest
2. Sell Violin (post on ebay)
3. Ship/get rid of remaining stuff
4. Change Address, etc to Locust St, perhaps
5. ic.org posting about 'socal forest community'
6. detail gear + 2 week food list + rationale
7. Bring machete + file , loppers for trail work?
8. check SB/WYP CC work, maybe (later)
9. how best to prepare, eat dried mushrooms?
10. Arrange to spend time with LA primitivists / originers before going further north.
11. Remove Bamboo--
    

Leave behind

1. Umbrella?
2. pda KB?
3. heavy line

Books to look into (added 2008-05-26):

• Medicine for Mountaineering. Wilkerson. (from Beyond Backpacking's "Select Bibliography")
  
• Wilderness Medicine ; Beyond First Aid. Forgey. (from Beyond Backpacking's "Select Bibliography")
• Home Work: Handbuilt Shelter. Kahn. (Crow, 3rd time PCT thru-hiker, recommended the Perpetual Camping zine referenced herein)
• Mountaineering: The Freedom of the Hills. Mountaineers. (from BB)
  

I've spent most of yesterday and all of today working on #3 under obtain. I finally put, I hope, a stop to this process by spending $90 for a used Nokia E62 + $15 for the necessary Solio solar charger adapter plug. I may have done better to get a Samsung Blackjack i607 for the same amount--it has a decent camera built in, is newer, has 3G, (and can charge via USB--my existing adapter might work with it), etc. But that's already done, and I'm reasonably content with it. The drawback is I'll still be carrying around my Logitech Pocket Digital 130 (and can only post photos here once I go into the library in town or borrow someone's computer at Quail Springs), and that the E62 is on the heavier end. I will probably be leaving my Sony Clié Stowaway keyboard behind. . . so will save weight there--but I'll still carry the Clié PDA + the E62 + the camera. The E62 has a 1G memory card. It could hold all my ebooks as plain html files easily, I guess, but I don't know if I'll like reading on it-- as the screen has less resolution than the old Clié, and the Clié's monochrome is great to read in the sun or with a 1-led book light headlamp.

So that's what's going on here. But I've been laying here all day. Scratching poison oak rash on occasion, eating stuff there's no need to eat. Tomorrow I may be returning to the land of the living, aware, and caring for body, mind, awareness, etc.

It would be nice to get the finer line, net-tent, better tarp shopping taken care of now too--and it looks like these can definitely be taken care of for $200 or less.

Some rambles: On this past trip, I never used my pda keyboard - I found it more compelling to write what I can post immediately. If I wanted to do some great writing projects. . . well, if that becomes a strong need, I can get a bluetooth keyboard for the E62. But when I'm in the woods. . . there may be no rush to be writing more words faster.

The shelter--during the rain and the cold, no doubt there were a lot of uncomfortable PCT hikers out there. There often is at least one serious cold rainy storm in May, even in SoCal. One way to survive those in more comfort should be to have an expansive tarp shelter with enough overhang to reduce blown-in rain. Another issue--as I learned from this past trip, is to have some good relief from the bugs. And this will be an issue in Mexico, should I head that way.

I'm not going out there to be a super-long distance ultralight hiker (yet), but to be able to be comfortable staying still in places for a while given storms and bugs. I may be able to cut my shelter weight by leaving the old bivy I've been bringing--just carrying instead the tarp and net.

This time I should be able to do a detailed pack list by weight, so getting a better understanding of why my base pack weight is 20+ lbs and the ultralighters' is less than 10 should be easier.

Itch, itch. No more bushwhacking. Or at least turn around at first sight of poison oak, because it may just get much much worse.

I started a friendfeed, which should provide updates on all of my various online activity that might be worth sharing: photos, blog posts, links, tweets. But there seems to be a huge lag on the links!

I'm hoping that with the E62, I should be able to bootstrap myself up to fancier, newer devices when the time comes--using it to order on ebay & research if necessary. And no longer need to return to this lair to do my internet shopping/research.

In following this post's link to the Nokia product page, I see the E62 (and all Nokia products since 2001) has an Eco Declaration. Many large corporations these days have corporate social responsibility statements (Samsung, Microsoft).

That's what's going on. Peace.