A fleece that's also a windbreaker

I spend my winter days in jeans and sweatshirts, my summers in shorts and T-shirts, so I'm not the kind of guy you see drooling over the latest boutique clothing. I have trouble justifying spending Ben Franklins on clothing unless it's something that's going to last me forever.

Which brings me to this not-exactly-cheap North Face Pamir fleece. It retails just shy of $180, which is enough to buy a nice leather jacket or a wool sportcoat. So why spend that much on a fleece? Can't you get one from Land's End for 1/3 of that price?

Yes, but there are times when something is worth a bit more. In this case, it's because it does double duty. It's a fleece, yes, but it has an extra layer on the inside made of a different material and this layer is meant to block the wind. I was skeptical, but I after seeing how well it worked locally on a few blustery spring days at home, I took it to Peru to hike through the Andes. (More on that in this article.) It kept me toasty, it kept back the wind, and it was half as bulky as what some of my hiking mates were carrying. It definitely performed as advertised. I imagine this will still be in my closet in 2015. Hopefully people won't laugh if I'm still wearing it...

Check out the Pamir North Face fleece.

Indestructable Travel Shorts

OK, this blog has been very quiet for a while, but for a good reason. I was out there on the road, trying things out, instead of sitting on my rump in a desk chair.

Speaking of rumps, this entry is a review of something that covers my rump--or my bum as they say--and keeps it dry. Now I'm not one to lay out a ton of money for a pair of shorts, but the promise of a pair of indestructable ones that would not get wet, get stained, or get wrinkled was enough to get me to open up the wallet a bit. This pair of Runamuck shorts from Ex Officio went to Botswana with me and got put through the paces.

First of all, who wouldn't want to wear a pair of shorts called Runamucks? While they did have a bit of a high school gym teacher feel to them because of the sythetic fabric coated with teflon, I felt like a superhero rather than a glory days ex-athlete. Dirt brushed right off, even after days in the bush. They didn't get wrinkled even after flying from one Botswana camp to another in a little prop plane.

The crown achievement, however, was during one of the storied sundowners you enjoy at the end of an afternoon safari drive. Our Land Rover stopped, gin and tonics were poured, and we watched the sky turn yellow and red. While everyone ooohed and aaahed, I managed to pour a cocktail right in my lap. On a normal pair of shorts, this would have meant being wet the whole drive back and looking like I peed my pants. In this case, the liquid rolled right off, leaving not a drop, and nobody noticed. "One more please," I said, and said a silent prayer to the gods of apparel technology.

Nokia 770 -- Getting Closer to What We Need

I read today that the Nokia 770 web-surfing tablet has sold well online and is going to go on sale at electronics retailers soon. This is a device that sells for $359 retail and is a cool little instant-on device for doing one thing well--surfing the web at hotspots. You can't beat the price, but I can't help thinking it would get frustrating after a while. I mean, with no keyboard you can read e-mail, but sending a reply would be a royal pain. Filling out a form on a web site would be more than tedious. And from what I can tell from the features, you can open a PDF file but not a Microsoft document.

For now, you can't use it as a VoIP device either, though that is reportedly coming in the next software release. That would make it more useful, as you could then use it as your defacto phone if you have an account through Skype, Vonage, Lingo, etc.

If we could just get something portable like this, with a simple word processing program, some kind of keyboard, a USB port, and the ability to open Office docs, I'd be at the store tomorrow...

Laptop schmaptop -- Give me something little!

I typed this entry somewhere high above the African plains, on a flight from South Africa to Washington D.C. And I'm not lugging a laptop. When I travel with a laptop, it's worse than traveling with my daughter. She seems to require as much baggage as she weighs, but at least she can walk to the gate. A laptop seems to gain a pound an hour when I travel with it, even without the extra battery, and my shoulder soon feels like it's going to become permanently dislocated.

But I sometimes can't just use paper and wait for home or an internet cafe before sending in an article, which is the case on this trip. So I've found what I think is a pretty good compromise. I'm using a little NEC MobilePro 790 that I bought on an auction site for less than $150. For this kind of trip, it's awesome. Yes, it's old technology and my web surfing is limited to what will display in IE 4.0, but I can live with those drawbacks for a week or two on the road. I can still post to my blogs, send e-mail (even Outlook messages offline), and write my articles. I can save to a compact flash card or sync up everything when I get home.

It's about the size of a paperback book and not as thick. Note from the photo how easily it fits on an airplane tray. If the person in front of me leans back, no big deal. It weighs a pound and a half I think. I can just toss it in my daypack and nobody even knows it's there, which removes the other laptop problem--becoming a theft target. Not bad for something that cost me less than the price of a PDA.

Don't get me wrong, as soon as that rich uncle dies, I'll gladly fork out for one of those cool little Fujitsu notebook computers, or that even cooler OQO mini notebook that weighs less than a pound. But at close to $2,000, that will have to wait...