Clever Outdoor Gear

The best in outdoor gear, equipment, and apparel reviews.

Nick Giustina

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Holy Caballo Blanco!

Caballo Blanco, photo by Luis Escobar
Micah True, aka Caballo Blanco

Does this American distance runner’s name ring a bell? Caballo Blanco signaled a major trend in outdoor sporting adventure a few years ago. With Nike/Alberto Salazar/Russian athlete doping scandals, we should probably think about him again. Shortly after we published this 2012 review, Caballo Blanco died (pre-existing heart condition) while training, a solo run along a creek bed, New Mexico’s Gila Wilderness, April 2012. We remember him wearing his traditional, hand-made, flat sandals. His legacy: less is more, running the natural way.

COG Caballo Blanco Review (late 2012)

As usual, OR retailers are falling all over themselves for your $: now they want to put your feet into Caballo Blanco’s shoes. And yes, a mystical, value-added component attends “his” shoes. Consumers are paying for this, too. Usually we’re cynical about voodoo sales gimmicks. But we were gob-smacked when we met Caballo Blanco. Instantly, we found ourselves caught up in the minimalist’s transcendent dharma.

To Begin

We’re in Salt Lake City, Outdoor Retailer Trade Show (summer, 2012), at the Vibram booth, scarfing the best lunch nosh ever. (We never mention convention-center catering, especially while we’re eating…). “We’re taking a break, eating here,” we advise our newest COG reporter (COGger). “Just enjoy a bite.”

“What the heck are these boots?” she ignores us and points. OK, the boots are desert tan, tiny, cute, combat-style, and hip. 

“All these boots serve as booth decoration,” we old-timers aver pedantically, “Vibram puts up this booth to promote the products of (other) manufacturers who buy their rubber shoe-sole materials. Vibram’s done this for years.” Again, we’re trying to lunch, mixing with retail-shop buyers ($) as inconspicuously as possible.

“Huh? Well, what about these (FiveFinger) sock/shoe things here? Let’s ask,” insists our novice reporter, not going with the free-food thing so enthusiastically.

And we’re right back into our reporting job: Just when we were eating.

We first heard the epithet “light is right” in the 1980s while preparing to lead ski school tours at Pacific Northwest XC centers. Then, your nascent COG reporter might have asked, “for the HBRs (hot buttered rums for client lunches), should I bring regular rum or Ron Rico 151?” Our Nordic director would always reply “Light is Right; bring the 151.” (N.B., for abstemious readers: Ron Rico 151 rum carries higher alcohol content/volume than regular rum: lighter, stronger.)

Later, the Light is Right movement found its brightest advocate with ultra-lightweight, minimalist hiker (rock climber, and modern SLCD/Friend inventor) Ray Jardine (see his lightweight-gear instruction book, Trail Life, Adventure Press). Jardine articulates this most fundamental principle for any modern, outdoor adventure: Alpine style, if you’re a climber; free diving, if you’re an underwater person; free-solo for rock climbers. Barefoot running, if you’re on your feet. To quote Richard Neville in his seminal ‘60s countercultural guide, Play Power (Random House, NY, 1970), “…I show up at an international border naked, without a passport… as a citizen of the world…”

OK. COG’s not going naked.

But let’s do go back to minimalism, 1998.  Following Ray Jardine’s principles, Kim and Demetri (Coup) Coupounas founded the Go-Lite Company in Boulder, CO, and begin selling premium ultra-lightweight outdoor clothing, packs and travel accessories. Outdoor folks loved the super-lightweight gear. Businesswise, GoLite cleaned up. And they’re cool people, too. Your COG team heard “Coup” speak at a specialty outdoor store recently. His message was before him on a table: a modern backpack, fully stocked with modern gear for a weekend 3-season overnighter x 3 nights, excluding food and water, 40 pounds. OK, no problem. But, next to this load was his Go-Lite backpack with Go-Lite and other vendors’ ultra-light gear (gathered from around the store), excluding food and water, less than 20 pounds. Same function, half the pack’s weight. OK, we get that: less is more. (FYI: Your COG team’s 1980 winter, 2-day overnight pack weight, including, food, water and fuel: about 30 pounds…we weren’t avant-garde, just unhappy to trade ski mobility for comfort…we loved telemarking to snow camp. And we were cheap. And cold.)

Now this summer’s OR show at the Vibram booth:  Your COG team guys’re trying to lunch, while our COG fashionista enthuses over this boot: the MiniMil. She asks the Vibram folks the usual questions about the boot. And we notice the normally affable Vibram folks, most gracious of hosts at all times, reluctant now with detail.

We put down our sandwiches and take up our notebooks. 

We may have seen this movie before. For a couple years after the 2007 release of Vibram’s ground-breaking (!) footwear, the FiveFingers shoe, reluctance at the Vibram booth was justified. 

At that time, the Italian boot/shoe sole manufacturer (Vibram) had designed and brought to market this innovative and wildly popular product: the first minimalist footwear with independent and fully articulated toes. The FiveFinger shoe was unique. Your COG team couldn’t wait to try the grippy toes on a finger crack. The Vibram trade-show booth was euphoric with their FiveFinger “big (retail) hit”… only to have their brand immediately diluted by “off-shore” shoe counterfeiters. This seemed particularly unfair, as Vibram isn’t a shoemaker. Vibram historically supplies other manufacturers with footwear-soles. By 2010 Vibram had the counterfeiters pretty much in hand: the fake shoes wore-out fast.

But now, by 2012, Vibram has plenty of legitimate competition for its iconic FiveFingers minimalist footwear: the very best of which we think is Vibram’s own Bikila, the company’s first shoe designed specifically for running. 3mm insole; 4mm outsole. Our COG marathoner/multi-discipline endurance gal decides to take hers off only when spectators stare as she scoots towards the climbing wall.

Other quality vendors have jumped on this “barely-there-footwear” bandwagon. Merrell’s Barefoot shoes look best at specialty outdoor stores. Barefooters also can be found online and at Dick’s, while Big 5 Sporting Goods offers Fila Skele-Toes (four articulated toes, instead of Vibram’s five). Zemgear’s Terra shoe (reviewed COG, August 25); Nike’s Free Run shoe…you get the idea. Big box to specialty: Light is Right, less is more and minimalist is most.

Is the current FiveFinger competition why Vibram’s a little backed-off telling us about this MiniMil boot? Once burned….

All the Vibram folks would allow was, “5mm drop from heel to toe and a minimalist boot only available to the military this September.” Later during the OR show, the MiniMil boot vanished entirely from the Virbram booth.

So, COG had to find out more about these boots, mysteriously disappearing Sunday, Summer OR, 2012.

Starting our research on the spot: we noticed the similar (running) book displays at OR’s minimalist footwear vendors’ booths. COG googled the NY Times Bestseller List to find at #13 (paperback):

Born to Run by Christopher McDougall (Alfred A Knopf, NY, 2009). 

Likewise, The Barefoot Running Book, Jason Robillard, Barefoot Running Press, Allendale. MI. 2010. 

Besides the NT Times, we found these minimalist-running books titles on local shoe store and most newspaper/magazine/internet display ads selling performance footwear.

A book – shoe connection? What the heck? 

Caballo Blanco

COG met Caballo Blanco at OR Summer 2011, the Saucony booth, months before his passing.  He inscribed our copy of Born to Run: “Run Free, (signed) Caballo Blanco”.  For some time, we’d heard acolytes speak book-jacket copy in hushed tones: CB’s the mysterious loner “who lives among the tribe of Tarahumara Indians (Mexico’s Copper Canyons) who practice the lost art…that allow them to run hundreds of miles without rest…” New Age enthusiasm, we thought? Wiccan double talk?

Maybe not.

Noticing the Vibram FiveFingers shoes Caballo Blanco wore (at the Saucony booth, 2011), your COG reporter chatted a few minutes with CB about “heel striking.” CB explained the softer fore-foot landing-pattern and mechanics of the FiveFingers’ minimalist running style. Under the serene eye of this Zen runner, your COG reporter’s three knee surgeries melted away. Following a laying-on-of-hands, we knew the minimalist shoes would work, even for us. And they did: a shorter stride and over no great distance, but running nonetheless. A small step for Caballo Blanco’s inspiration; a breakthrough for COG.

COG also asked Caballo Blanco about the Mont Blanc Ultra Trail, ultra-marathon endurance race (103 miles, 31,168 feet vertical gain/loss, 46-hour time limit, winning time doesn’t rest). He told us the Ultra Trail was the only ultra-marathon he wouldn’t run unless someone paid him “a lot of money.” But he’d use Vibram’s FiveFingers if chance so favored him. 

Despite our minimalist digression, we have not forgotten how our COG fashionista interrupted a perfectly delightful lunch to gush over a desert-style minimalist military boot at Vibram’s booth. And Vibram’s hesitancy.

So, we telephoned the manufacturer: Belleville Tactical Research, with some slight trepidation.

No need for secrecy whatsoever.

U.S. Patriot Tactical

The boot’s available to the public now at $144.99. Men’s sizes only, but the men’s sizes go really low, so our female COGger’s already got her order in.

Patti and Nick rock climbing in Australia
COG Reporters Patti and Nick rock climbing in Australia, 2021

Product Mentioned

  1. Vibram FiveFingers Bikila shoes
  2. Merrell’s Barefoot shoes
  3. Fila Skele-Toes
  4. Zemgear’s Terra shoe (reviewed COG, August 25)
  5. Nike’s Free Run shoe
  6. Trail Life by Ray Jardine (Adventurelore Press, Casa Grande, AZ, 1996, 1999, 2009). 
  7. Born to Run by Christopher McDougall (Alfred A Knopf, NY, 2010). 
  8. The Barefoot Running Book, Jason Robillard, Barefoot Running Press, Allendale. MI. 2010. 
  9. Play Power by Richard Neville (Random House, NY, 1970)
  10. Go-Lite Company, ultra-lightweight outdoor and travel gear.
  11. Mont Blanc Ultra Trail, ultra-marathon endurance race, France
  12. Belleville Tactical Research, MiniMil, ultra-light, desert boot ($119.99)
  13. Ron Rico 151 Rum.
  14. Mont Blanc Ultra Trail, ultra-marathon endurance race (103 miles, 31,168 feet vertical gain/loss, 46-hour time limit, winning time doesn’t rest).

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Tim Winton’s “Breath” — Novel and Film

Byron Bay, Australia, May 2018

A trailer for the movie “Breath” screened earlier this year for Australia/NZ. The movie, adapted from Tim Winton’s 2008 novel Breath, stars Australian actor Simon Baker who also optioned, produced and directed the project. Baker’s known to American audiences as “The Mentalist,” a long running American TV series. The movie “Breath” premiered in Australia, May 3, 2018. Baker’s movie closely follows Winton’s novel, an acclaimed 2009 Miles Franklin Award winner (best Australian novel).

The story turns on a young boy’s coming of age around a tiny, Western Australia (WA) coastal town. The main adolescent pastime here is surfing and the movie promised better than most surfing action. Our Lennox (New South Wales) friend recalls the young, Byron Shire local Simon Baker as a precocious surfer. For this movie, Baker insisted production, crew and cast remain 75% resident to the movie’s filming location, Denmark, WA. Patti and I visited WA summer, 2014, and traveled a coastline closer to Nairobi than to Sydney. We don’t recall much beyond rock-climbing remote sea cliffs.

But we do remember this novel catching an eye at our regular Powell’s (a Portland bookstore) date-night, 2009. Here’s the cover.

Cover of "Breath" a book by Tim Winton
Breath by Tim Winton

Last February (2018), our ski buddies Don and Whitney visited us from Portland, Oregon. Before arriving at Byron Bay (NSW), Australia, they enjoyed a week’s powder skiing Japan’s very cold hinterland ski-fields. A couple days later they’d crossed the equator to surf Clarke’s Beach with Sarah’s Byron Bay surf school friends. Don then posted these photos and dates to Facebook.

Skiers with Mt. Fuji in the background
Japan, February 12, 2018

Byron Bay, February 15, 2018

Surfing in Byron Bay February 2018
Surfing in Byron Bay February 2018

Now Don and Whitney’s adventure (a 4500-mile work of adaptive spirit as well as athleticism) may not signal a cultural shift like Bruce Brown’s “Endless Summer” (1964) or ski-film pioneer Warren Miller’s1 “Around the World on Skis” (1962). But Winton’s novel takes the outré, bohemian imperative well beyond contemporary action sports.

Cover for Warren Miller book, Around the World on Skis
1962
Cover for The Endless Summer
1964 (original art)

Particularly, we see turning detail in Winton’s Breath that we’ve seen before, in an Ernest Hemingway skiing story.

Hemingway’s earliest fiction was published in 1924. Of the In Our Time stories anthologized, most overlooked is “Cross-Country Snow.” Here Hemingway recalls the Swiss/Austrian setting of ski adventures with his first wife, Hadley, during the Paris years. Despite Hemingway’s personal lifestyle troubling some readers, his groundbreaking fictional style defines our modern prose idiom.2

Tim Winton’s Breath shows similar motive detail, 2008. But where Hemingway’s code-hero Nick Adams (and Hemingway himself?) appear fixed by uncertainty, Winton’s Pike conveys equilibrium and growing sensibility. In both stories, the turning force underfoot signals life changing moments, better realized (for Pike) and less so (for Nick Adams/Hemingway).

Set in backward, small-town mining/farming communities, Winton’s protagonist, Bruce Pike, finds his life role-model: Sando, an international surfing icon, retired to that remote WA beach. Despite a dark, psychic current, Pike craves the breath [of life]: breath-held when the he’s pulled underwater by broken waves and the breath-held in flagrante with Sando’s wife, Eva, an American freestyle skiing champion with a bad knee (and worse mojo). The novel pivots on some startling, breathless surfing imagery. Not to mention accidental brain damage.

We’ll find Winton’s language, imagery, and ambivalent thematic context nascent in the earlier Hemingway story.

First, here’s Winton:

We didn’t know it yet, but we’d already imagined ourselves into a different life, another society, a state for which no raw boy had either words or experience to describe. Our minds had already gone out to meet it and we’d left the ordinary in our wake…You felt shot full and the sensation burned for hours – for days… Like you’ve exploded and all the pieces of you are reassembling themselves. You’re new. Shimmering. Alive…I was, after all ordinary…(but)…This was a woman not in the least bit ordinary…She relished opposition, yet her only real opponents had been the facts of life: gravity, fear and the limits of endurance.  She loved the snow the way I loved water – so much it hurt…(Now) I’m nearly fifty years old…But I can still maintain a bit of style. I slide down the long green walls into the bay to feel what I started out with, what I lost so quickly and for so long: the sweet momentum, the turning force underfoot, and those brief, rare moments of grace” (emphasis added).

Breath, Tim Winton (Hamish Hamilton, Australia, 2008)

Sensational prose. An early New York Times book review (June 8, 2008) allowed that this surf imagery “isn’t hokum.” Recently, American poet/critic Ron Rush described Winton as “one of the world’s great living novelists” (Sydney Morning Herald, March 10, 2018).

Cover for In Our Time by Ernest Hemingway
1924

Hemingway’s short story “Cross Country Snow” (1924) also turns on a single pivot. Like Winton’s Australian Pike, Hem’s American protagonist Nick Adams also craves a freedom lost before (he knew) he missed it. He’s on a final ski run with his buddy George. But life’s trapped Nick Adams: a war injury (“I can’t telemark3 with my knee”), geography (“the mountains [at home] … are too far away”), and his new wife’s pregnancy.

Here’s Hem:

On the white below George dipped and rose and dipped out of sight. The rush and the sudden swoop as he dropped down a steep undulation in the mountain side plucked Nick’s mind out and left him only the wonderful flying, dropping sensation in his body. He rose to a slight up-run and then the snow seemed to drop out from under him as he went down, down faster and faster in a rush down the last, long steep slope…Nick Adams came up past George, big back and blond head still faintly snowy, then his skis started slipping at the edge and swooped down, hissing in the crystalline powder snow and seemed to float up and drop down as he went up and down the billowing khuds. He held to his left and at the end, as he rushed toward the fence, keeping his knees locked tight together and turning his body like tightening a screw brought his skis sharply around to the right in a smother of snow and slowed into a loss of speed parallel to the hillside and the wire fence” (emphasis added).

Cross Country Snow,” In Our Time, Ernest Hemingway, (Three Mountains Press, Paris, 1924)

We see Hemingway’s “plucked Nick’s mind out” and Winton’s “our minds had already gone out.” The phrases suggest transcendence. But does either character realize an elevated state? (Winton: “mind” is the phrase’s subject, an active placement. Hemingway: “mind” is the phrase’s object, a more passive position.)

Hemingway’s “turning his body” and Winton’s “turning force underfoot” are realized only in Pike’s “brief, rare moments of grace.”

Here Winton identifies Hemingway’s code-hero: the “grace under pressure” ethos. Hemingway and scholars opine about Hemingway’s ideal hero paradigm. But Winton localizes the transcendent moments of grace in Pike’s experience. Hemingway’s Nick Adams abandons the turn’s “sweet momentum” that Pike “started out with (and) lost,” and then found again.

Pike is age-fifty as Winton’s Breath closes. Hemingway’s male protagonists expire earlier, if bravely.4 Nick Adams expires, metaphorically: he turns his skis and stops parallel to a fence: fenced-in. Adam’s bleak concluding words, [there’s] “no good promising” [about skiing again or his wife’s pregnancy?] contrast with Pike’s “I can still maintain a bit of style.” Adams turns on a frozen Swiss snowfield; Pike turns on warmer Indian Ocean waves. The youthful, cross-country (skiing), code-hero Adams remains ambivalent, unresolved, emotionally attenuated. Pike finds grace at sea level.

These twin turning images, divided by critical oceans, two continents, 9,000 miles and three-generations, suggest that Winton and his current notion of “toxic masculinity”5 may get better milage than Papa’s hyper-masculinity.6 

Hemingway, world-famous novelist, died by his own hand, aged 61, near the world-famous ski resort Sun Valley, Idaho. At age 57, Winton surfs remote WA. “This late life waterborne obscurity is a mercy,” Winton said this year.7

So, the newsy part of this article ends here.

However, the article might continue: a discussion of how the “dirt-bag” beginnings of surfing and skiing as sport morphed into $10 billion/year industries. Endless Summer (1964) cost $50,000 to produce; the movie earned $20 million. Interesting particularly is how words/pictures drove dynamic $ growth: music, writing, photos, movies and the advertising so developed. Corporate/economic/pop-culture monographs exist. (e.g., Belinda Wheaton, “The Cultural Politics of Lifestyle Sports,” NY: Routledge, 2013. Also, Rinehart,  Syndar,“To The Extreme,” NY: State U NY Press, 2003).

Surfer petroglyph, Australia
5000 year-old Rødøy petrogylph

BTW: At Rødøy, Norway, a petroglyph, dated to 5000 BC, shows a human figure on skis: it became Oslo’s logo for 1994 Winter Olympics. Skiing (and other action/extreme sport) athropological studies exist. To date, there’s been no definitive anthropological study of surfing history.8

FOOTNOTES

1 Warren Miller filmed, produced and personally presented 50+ annual ski films over his career. https://www.smh.com.au/sport/warren-miller-the-ski-bum-whose-films-made-him-king-of-the-slopes-dies-at-93-20180126-h0ookl.html

2 Professors argue about who developed the stripped-down American prose of the twentieth century – Hemingway? Gertrude Stein? Sherwood Anderson? Dashiell Hammett? Hemingway’s most famous, most read; his self-regarded life-style most imitated. (Nathan Ward, The Lost Detective (New York: Bloomsbury, 2015).

3 During the time of Hemingway’s Austrian/Swiss ski holidays, Hadley’s biographer Gloria Diliberto reports (2011) Hemingway unhappy with Hadley’s comparatively more skillful skiing. BTW: I wrote about Hemingway’s “telemark” ski-turn reference: “The Great Ski Saga.” Ski XC. (Backpacker Magazine ski-annual, Fairchild Publications) NY, November 1985: pages 33-36.

4 Gary Cooper’s farewell speech in the movie “For Whom the Bell Tolls” (1943) sounds like Hemingway’s unintentional parody of his own code-hero and “grace under pressure” meme. (Hemingway wrote the novel, script and chose the actors.) Cooper’s Robert Jordan dies a cool, youthful, anti-fascist fighter (while dictator Franco rules Spain for decades more). This ambivalence shading Hemingway’s code-heroes seems foreshadowed by Nick Adams’ uncertainty.

5 Michael McGirr. Tim Winton, Looking for riches in the human heart: Sydney Morning Herald, Spectrum 10-11 March 2018: pages 20-21.Tim Elliott. Plain Talk: Tim Winton has been musing on men…: Sydney Morning Herald, GoodWeekend 10-11 March 2018: pages 16-19.
Mandy Nolan. Toxic masculinity, terror and Tim Winton: Byron Shire Echo 28 March, 2018: page 32.
Tim Winton Podcast: https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/australia-books-blog/audio/2018/apr/09/tim-winton-on-men-and-writing-with-my-heart-in-my-mouth-behind-the-lines-podcast

6 Hemingway’s first female biographer (Mary V. Dearborn, Ernest Hemingway: A Biography, New York: Knopf, 2017), cites “the mustachioed and virile Hemingway of the 1930s…his exploits in the bullring, on the deep seas, and in the African bush…morphed yet again into the politically engaged reporter of the Spanish Civil War, then into the intrepid, fighting journalist of WWII and finally into ‘Papa’ …[with] an openness to fluidity in gender boundaries.” Dearborn suggests the code-hero’s world is “more vibrant, more alive, more elemental, and at the same time more romantic” (pgs. 8 & 9). Hemingway’s code-hero, constraining emotion to embrace a “grace under pressure” performance, seems at odds with the romantic, anti-rationalist trope. (For a [trans-] gender equivalency, see Hemingway’s posthumous Garden of Eden novel, 1986.)

7 “The Guardian,” Australia Edition, April 9, 2018, 2:15 AEST. (newspaper online.)

8 Aaron James, Surfing with Sartre: an aquatic inquiry into a life of meaning  (New York: Doubleday, 2017).  Also, James centrally posits “adaptive attunement”, a Zen-like state where “my experience of myself can pass in and entirely out of my flow of consciousness, and then back to my bodily technique, as the wave moment asks of me…I’m fully engaged in the speeding moments with my actions drawn up into the blurring wind rush and my sense of myself fading into the background…” (pg. 162, emphasis added).

Tim Winton in remote Australia 2018
Tim Winton in remote Australia, 2018

Sound track: “Madly, Truly, Softly,” a song by Savage Garden.

By

Basic SUP

Paddle Boarders on the Willamette River
Paddle-boarders on the Willamette River

32 inches. Upwind.

That’s all you need to know about Stand Up Paddleboards (SUP).

And from what we’ve seen all over the world, if you haven’t tried standup paddleboards, you will soon. The darned things are everywhere!

History? Well, according to COG’s research department, tow-in big wave surfer Laird Hamilton (you’ll remember him, a Kauai local, with his infant child posing shirtless for American Express magazine ads) telephoned a correspondent for SUP magazine, Ron House (SoCal surfer/board shaper):

I get a call from Laird Hamilton in 2003 and he tells me he’s been using a big board and a big paddle to catch waves standing, that he doesn’t lie down…I was trying to get my mind around it.

Evidently, House was not alone. Further, we’ve heard dispute about exactly how SUP innovation arose. Big wave “guns,” becalmed sailboarders, kite-boarders, radical Islamists…the waters are murky.

Laird Hamilton 2003
Laird Hamilton

Nor were the big SUP boards universally admired along the point-break line-up. Specifically, we’ve noticed surf locals getting notoriously territorial about sharing “their” waves: Strong words and fisticuffs. But possible conflict here was quashed in a hurry. Early SUP adopters put out word: SUP was here to stay. COG reports Hawaiian strong men (re: the photos of Hamilton) and/or industry mavens applying “gentle” persuasion.

Paddle boarder in the Grand Canyon Colorado River
Paddle-Boarders on a desert river

How gentle? Well, two years ago a dozen SUP exhibitors showed product at Salt Lake City’s summer Outdoor Retailer trade show. This (desert landscape of SLC) is not the Surf Expo in Orlando or the (now defunct) Action Sports Retailer show in San Diego. Last summer over 250 vendors showed SUP product at Salt Lake City. What the heck… that’s a 1000+% increase for vendors over two seasons. And every other vendor, that can make even tenuous connection, leapt on the runaway SUP bandwagon…tsunami?

What gives? Well, during the last year your COG correspondents stepped aboard SUPs in Byron Bay (Australia) and near the Eifel Tower, as well as at COG centers in Moab and Portland. Downtown, out-of-town, across the planet, SUP’s getting ridiculous.

So SUP gets around; lets get back to basics.

The Eiffle Tower with paddle-boarders on the adjacent river
Paddle-Boarders in Paris

Hamilton’s right; SUP’s easy. But make sure the board you step onto is at least 31+ inches wide. Water geeks (“watermen,” in the local, sexist idiom) call this measurement the board’s (or boat’s) “beam.” Narrower boards give better paddling efficiency (for racing), but demand natural “balance” you don’t have right now.

Next, start your SUP paddling adventure upwind. That means, you paddle against the wind on your outward journey from dock or shore. When ready to turn for home, the wind’s a your back and, acting like a sail, you’ll (yep, we’re grammatically correct here…your body is now a sail) cruise effortlessly along. Reverse this itinerary-order to begin with, and you’ll struggle against the wind on the homeward-leg, when you’re most tired. And when you finally beach your board, you may be too tired to drink beer: a COG anathema.

So, besides a short learning curve, why do we see so much SUP now? COG’s guess, again: it’s easy. Plus the gear’s (a little) cheaper than kayaks. Also, they’re easier to maintain, transport and store for users and (here’s the big one) resort operators. If you’ve got a business near water, you MUST have a few SUP boards around; they’re instant revenue for modest investment.

“What can I do on a SUP that I can’t do in a kayak,” complained one of a COG relation after a maiden paddle on a windy Adriatic coast. We replied: ‘Nothing.” But you can see more and better while fully upright than sitting, your legs don’t go to sleep and, let’s be fair, there’s more to admire viewing an upright figure (paddling a SUP) than one sitting in a kayak shell. (We’re eschewing sexism here.) Sorta like the difference between strolling on the beach and sitting below decks on a sailboat…or something. And yes, our OCG correspondent had started his first SUP tour downwind on a very windy Italian afternoon. COG recommends the Grappa remedy.

Paddle boarder at night
Paddle-Boarder at night

Romance and revenue aside, what really caught COG’s eye was paddle boarding at night with the NOCQUA 2000 – White LED Light System, about $350 (http://nocqua.com). Sure you can put the NOCQUA light on a kayak but the view doesn’t compare.

Now CPG’s favorite (intermediate) SUP board is the French-made, BIC, Ace-Tec Classic model, 31.5” beam, $1495.00 MSRP, just over $1000 at retail. http://shop.bicsport.com/c/sup). In business since 1979, BIC offers 35 SUP board configurations for an adventure array. The Ace-Tec SUP line employs fiberglass, EPS-core construction for higher-end boards.  Uniformly, across products lines for kayaks, sailboards, surf, SUP, paddles and small-boats, value, durability and performance predominate. Expect to see BIC SUPs as beach rentals, as well in performance quivers.

(Tech tips for entry-level SUP boards: 32” beam, flat-bottom, hard-rails yield best touring stability.)

Paddle-boarder on the ocean
Paddle-Boarder in the Ocean

By this point, as late-blooming surfers, the COG team thought we’d gained insight into the huge SUP enthusiasm: Surfing—sailboarding—kayaking—the industry needs something haoles can do more easily. Money talks.

Yet, while COG reviewed SUP boards, we noticed some tie-down toggles on the board’s deck.

“For SUP yoga and fitness classes,” the BIC sales rep told us. “It’s really popular at resorts; the guests just raft their boards together and do exercise routines.”

Huh? SUP fitness? Is this possible? What about all those yoga mats?

So disregarding SLC’s midday August heat melting the crosswalk, we hustled outside the Salt Palace to witness OR’s demo tank. The photos show more than you need to know about SUP fitness, which involves core-strengthening as we’d never imagined. COG interviewed professional SUP fitness instructors, for real. We did not get phone numbers.

OK. We’ve captured sunny SUP adventure, romantic lighting, fitness and BIC value. This pretty well defines the COG mission.

Everything else we’ve learned about the SUP craze, we can only outline: It’s not just yoga classes. Evidently, everybody’s doing everything on a SUP board. We think it’s, maybe, over the top.

Stand-Up-Paddleboard event
Stand-Up Paddle-Boarders at an event

Yep! SUP athletes are making first descents of the usual: Amazon, Ganges, Nile Rivers. First to paddle: USA East Coast, West Coast, Aleutians, UK circle, Greenland, Baja….we expect a solo circumnavigation of Australia and other large islands soon.

So naturally, SUP advocates cry out for SUP as the next big, summer Olympic Games sport. (Didn’t we hear this about ski-telemarking in the early 1980s, just before snowboarding “took off?”)

This list isn’t complete. But our SUP attention span is so done.

SUP Specific Gear for your $:

  • Reality TV star and survival expert Bear Grylis “Scout” SUP
  • SUP for Hunting & Fishing.
  • SUP for Whitewater
  • SUP World Tour
  • SUP World Series
  • SUP Rack & Rack Locks
  • SUP PFDs, Hydration packs, Accessories
  • SUP Paddles
  • SUP Waterproof Speakers
  • SUP Floating Hardware/Eyewear
  • SUP Trailers
  • SUP Sunscreen
  • SUP Paddle Holders, Tie-downs, Water-Bottle Holders
  • SUP Tandem
  • SUP Clothing
  • SUP Footwear
  • SUP Fishing
  • SUP Hunting: Blast and Cast

By

GRIPPED UP with Grip Pro

Smith Rock’s Karate Crack
Smith Rock’s Karate Crack

When COG’s most elderly correspondent reported being “gripped up,” we thought he was talking about short 5.10s he barely exited in style 40 years ago.

(For the record. Smith Rock’s Karate Crack, 60’, 5.10a and North Wales’ Cenotaph Corner, 120’, 5.10a…both routes feature tidy hand jams to the very top. Here climbers have just enough hand-strength to pass the tricky crux right: either into a pod or out of one.  Film reference: 2001 Space Odyssey, “Open the pod-bay door, Hal…”)

But no. This wasn’t nostalgia for the classic UK test-piece, Cenotaph Corner. Our pal’s orthopedist had diagnosed “trigger finger,” an arthritic condition rendering a finger-joint “permanently” fixed with a right angle bend.

Our guy rejected arthritis.

“I cooked those two knuckles lighting a gas-fired broiler on St. Martin,” averred our crook-fingered friend. He palmed a rubber-ring hand-exerciser at COG headquarters

Flexing the rubber-ring, we could clearly hear his middle-finger knuckle “lock,” slip and slide through its regular range-of-motion: no smooth movement here, just three-distinct, painful indents.

“Each morning, I can’t open this finger; it’s so locked-up. I have to pull it straight and flatten it down [with my chest in bed] for a few minutes before I get up. Otherwise, it stays crooked.”

But a few minutes with COG’s Grip Pro Trainer (we’d bought one at an industry event years ago) revealed that our elderly correspondent had lost grip-strength in his damaged fingers. A right-hander, his left-hand now over-powered his dominant hand. A lot. A rock-climbing gym regular, our guy was appalled.

Grip Pro Training Rings
Grip Pro Training Rings

So we loaned the old fellow our Grip Pro Trainer rubber-ring. Within days (using the rubber-ring for two sets of twenty-reps/day), he reported that his fingers remained flexible throughout the night. Two weeks later, our friend’s grip-strength was normal. While joint movement wasn’t silky smooth, our correspondent felt comfortable ignoring medical advice to visit a hand surgeon.

So, COG discovered a medical/orthopedic/age problem and an exercise solution. No surprise here. End of story, right?

Well, as usual with the COG team: not so fast.

You see, the Grip Pro Trainer is manufactured of black rubber. Our friend carried the Grip Pro to his car for exercising (more than patience) while stalled in rush hour traffic. Enter girlfriend. Late night dinner, maybe some dancing. Shuffling around the front seat. Dark. Grip Pro pushed to the car-floor. Hasty exit. Next morning, where’s the Grip Pro Trainer?

Missing daily grip-strength sessions means our guy’s fingers immediately “gripped up.” So, he urgently hustles over to his neighborhood REI, 10am Saturday morning. $7.95 being much cheaper than surgery…but what? No Pro Grip Trainer?

Black Diamond forearm trainer
Black Diamond Forearm Trainer

OK. Black Diamond’s Forearm Trainer looks about the same: a squeezable rubber-ring (www.blackdiamondequipment.com), $6.95, in blue. Available everywhere online, including BD. But not stocked at REI?

What if you need a grip strengthener immediately?

Is there anything on REI’s shelf?

GripMaster grip trainer
GRIPMaster Hand Strengthener

The Gripmaster Hand Strengthener, $14.95 comes to hand. Cumbersome name for a complicated-looking, spring-loaded device. Gripped at a “high” angle across the knuckles, the Gripmaster focuses isolated loading of each finger: nice for finger control. But our guy needs a more powerful, rolling action for his whole hand, fingers and forearm in order to arrest arthritic degeneration. BD’s and the Pro Grip’s rubber-rings are perfect, but where to find one, today? Not at Dick’s, not at Sports Authority, not REI, nor our local fitness equipment retailer.

Back at COG headquarters, we hand over a freebie Boreal (climbing shoe maker) had given us many seasons ago.

Now, we happen to like Boreal shoes. However, Boreal’s FS Quattro (at several years’ remove) generated negative reviews on climbing blogs. The promotional grip trainer, branded with the FS Quarttro label, worked about as well as many thought the rubber works.

[COG’s friction-shoe tests favor these resoles: 5.10’s Stealth and Vibram’s newest, XS Grip2.]

GripSaver Pro
GripSaver Plus by Metolius

So our trigger-finger guy bought a Metolius’ Grip Saver Plus, $17.95. The Metolius take on grip-training is injury prevention, an exotic concept for many. The red, palm-sized squeeze-ball is perfect for easy grappling. But the real rave’s for the ball’s finger-extension feature: nothing’s better for warming-up finger-tendon sheaths. And as everyone knows, dynamically balanced, incremental-load training is essential for avoiding repetitive motion and overuse injuries.

For the next three days, our griped-up cousin maintained his hand exercise/recovery regimen using his Metolius Grip Saver Plus (also available at REI stores), while awaiting delivery of his online orders. He judged the Melolius squeeze-extension ball a perfect pre-exercise/climb warm-up routine.

Meanwhile, COG made phone calls. We ordered another Grip Pro Trainer and chatted with Grip Pro’s Erich Esswein. Asked why we couldn’t find his product at REI, Dick’s or even our local fitness equipment retailer (dealing the premium Lifefitness Brand, among others), Esswein replied that “…big-box retailers, and even REI, have squeezed out small manufacturers…” with economies of scale. Better for the retailers, not so good for hand exercisers ready to hand.

Here’s our final tally for Black Diamond’s Forearm Trainer ring and Grip Pro’s ring: Dead-heat for quality resistance and hand-finger position variety. Order online; order early.

The Black Diamond’s Forearm Trainer offers a single resistance increment: 35 lbs.

Grip Pro’s 3-ring set delivers three resistance increments: green, 30 lbs; black, 40 lbs; red, 50 lbs. 

To which our broken-down rock-jock says: “I could stay at 35-pounds (resistance), but I may as well get stronger while I’m at it (using a 3-ring set).”

Grip Pro wins on versatility and progressive strength training.

In the spirit of gender neutrality, we’ll mention: the 30 lbs, green Grip Pro ring is perfect for small, fair hands.

Black Diamond’s Forearm Trainer, COG 5-star rating, $7.95 each/$19.95 3-pack
Black Diamond’s Forearm Trainer, rings, $6.95
Gripmaster Hand Strengthener (springs) $14.95
Metolius Grip Saver Plus (squeeze ball + extension) (most innovative), $17.95

By

Going Places: Women Only

GoGirl
GoGirl

When nature calls, your COG reporters step behind the closest tree, bush, boulder or serac … in town, absent a nearby WC, we’ll stroll between parked cars for a moment. We’re discrete, if not genteel.

Or female COG reporters, on the other hand, bridle at this behavior. When they call out, “boys are so lucky,” they’re not amused.  You can guess why.

“Standing up would be so much simpler,” our main COG gal opines. Often.

Now COG’s Patricia Crawford has taken biological “advantage” … ahem … head on. A gal with super leg-strength, Patricia’s able as any fellow taking a “natural break” outdoors; Or in Left Bank Parisian toilets with only footpads for support. But she’s been “PO”ed about this for years.

Enter GoGirl, sent along by the FemMed for COG testing.

GoGirl in package
GoGirl in the package

From the GOGirl website:

Simply put, GoGirl is the way to stand up to crowded, disgusting, distant or non-existent bathrooms. It’s a female urination device (sometimes called a FUD) that allows you to urinate while standing up. It’s neat. It’s discreet. It’s hygienic.

“FUD” is of Euro origin COG reckons.

Patricia’s first response: “I’ve tried this kinda of thing years ago. The plastic was too hard, too small and you couldn’t aim it.”

Well, twenty-plus-years’ materials-science advancement changed our GOG gal’s mind.

“Amazing,” was Patricia’s first report. “I stood in the shower, assumed the upright stance and let go. No overflow, no problems hitting the target [i.e., GoGirl’s reservoir], no problems managing at all. Using this thing with hiking-up a skirt or dress: no brainer. I can’t wait to try it with jeans.”

Conscious of our own shoes under similar circumstances, the COG guys queried, “did you have to stand with your feet apart, particularly.”

“Nope. That tube’s really flexible; you can aim wherever you want.”

Which remark had the COG guys checking their hydrodynamics textbooks for liquid flow-rates in relation to the GOGirl’s “reservoir” volume. Without going into detail here, it would seem the GoGirl’s architecture projects fluid-volume more advantageously than male’s corresponding plumbing. We’re taking our female testers word on this: COG will not perform side-by-side testing.

Very flexible, germ-resistant, class VI medical grade silicone fabrication seems key here along with catenary-cut design of the reservoir’s downward-facing inner edge. The generous, ovoid-shaped upper opening should more than accommodate any anatomy, according to COG’s tester. Apparently, the “seal” is foolproof.

Now as a sporting sort (riding, climbing, running, diving, paddle-boarding, parasailing…), Patricia’s not given to floppy trousers. So she set about how to work the GoGirl with tight jeans.

Her words:

I stood with my skinny jeans just below my hips: just enough room to get the ‘spout’ over the zipper opening. Feet [were] about the width of the toilet. I was afraid I’d ‘miss’ with my knees barely bent, but I had no trouble hitting the bowl. Standing up: no leakage whatsoever.

Recommendation:

With a GoGirl, I’ll never squat again. Anywhere. Especially those creepy Left Bank restaurants.

Now about GoGirl’s medical grade silicone, 12” extension tube. We think this is intended for use with bedridden or convalescent patients. Our COG gal mused, “I think this might work in a tent with a pee-bottle!”  COG’ll take her word on that.

GoGirl’s designed by a female oral surgeon and a medical device expert. Launched for consumers at the Minneapolis Women’s Expo on Jan. 16, 2009, GoGirl went big at retail, July 2013, Outdoor Retailer.

GoGirl by FemMed Inc. lists GoGirl’s price as $9.99 and $12.99 each; three-pack at $26.97 and $34.97. Pricing differentials might reflect initial offering and big retail release dates.

Going Places (Original French title, Les Valseuses )
A novel by Bertrand Blier, Lippincott & Co., 1972.
Film directed by Bertrand Blier, 1974.

Going Places by Bertrand Blier

$13

By

Scrubba, Washing Machine in a Bag Update

Scrubba, world's smallest washing machine
Scrubba

This past summer your peripatetic COGgers enthused at length over the Scrubba, Australian-made Washing Machine in a Bag. Five-star rating: flat-out best performing, most useful product innovation we’ve seen in years. Anyone who wants clean clothing needs a Scrubba. For back up, if nothing else. Overnighting: trail, dorm, hostel, RV, hotel, boat, trailer, back-seat of your dad’s crew-cab? Ten minutes (max): clothes fresh as any automatic washing machine could make ‘em.

But our COG team testers reserved judgment on the Scubba Bag for white fabrics. Only white fabrics. Early wash loads showed slight but noticeable color transfers from the Scrubba’s lime-green, “dry” bag, coated-nylon exterior to white tee-shirts. As we admitted, our COG tests ranged well beyond the manufacturer’s suggestions as to detergent concentration and wash-load soak times.

Further testing, however, put our initial concern to rest…without reservation!

After six-straight weeks of forced nightly washings, our COG Scrubba cleaned clothes like a possessed launderette AND left no traces of color transfer whatsoever!

What happened between our first tests and this summer’s coursing after Aeneas? (Our team spent some time sailing the Mediterranean.)

Our COG team traveled 3000+ surface miles by ship and car. Long hours and many miles afoot produced heavily “used” clothing and little time for coin-ops along the way. COG’s Scrubba bag rendered service every night: two sets of underwear/person, three times/week, each. Jeans and R1 sweaters took to the wash-bag every three days. Our reporters averred their ensembles remained fresher throughout their six-week, death-march tour than at home, using their regular washer/dryer.

Particularly as to color transfer: our team’s Scrubba bag started to “break-in.” After three weeks, the white graphics printed along the bag’s side began fading. Then the lime-green bag took on the look of a life-jacket (PFD) left a couple summers on the dock, in direct sunlight. By this time the bag’s graphics were mere shadows (of themselves); the Scubba bag’s color dyes (i.e., the Scrubba product’s actual color) had totally stabilized. COG’s team washed white cottons, polyesters and the full array of white performance fabrics with no color leaching at all. Problem solved!

That is, the Scrubba’s performance improved the longer and harder it was used!

And that white, silk, Armani blouse? Our COG gal rinsed hers repeatedly in the Scrubba with a mild, silk-oriented solution: whiter and cleaner than ever!

Now COG’s only problem with the Scrubba? Who gets to keep it in their travel kit?

$64

By

Treading Lightly: Vibram Comes Up Five-Fingers Short

Vibram Five Fingers shoes
Vibram Five Fingers

Re: COG’s extensive discussion of minimalist footwear: Holy Caballo Blanco! October 15, 2012.

The Huffington Post reports, May 12, 2014:

If you were one of the 70 million Americans who purchased a pair of those weird-looking “barefoot running” shoes, you may be entitled to some cash. Vibram, the company behind FiveFingers shoes, just settled a $3.75 million class action lawsuit over false claims that its running shoe yields health benefits, Runner’s World reports.

Our COG team member’s first response: “No one shoe or type of shoe can do it all for everyone. I still think there is some merit for the design–for some people. There’re lots of happy barefoot runners out there.”

Our COG team’s second response: “We like the Vibram folks. We cherish our few moments with the late Caballo Blanco [hero of Christopher McDougall’s inspirational Born to Run, the bible of “natural running” advocates] and we still think, “Light is right.”

However, continues Huffington’s report:

The thin-soled, flexible shoes, which cost about $100 a pair, are said to mimic the experience of running in bare feet, and thus “improve foot health” — an unsupported claim the company falsely advertised.

The lawsuit was first filed by Valerie Bezdek in March 2012. According to court filings, Bezdek claimed that Vibram deployed deceptive marketing and falsely advertised the following benefits from wearing its shoe, without basing its claims on any scientific research:

1) Strengthen muscles in the feet and lower legs

2) Improve range of motion in the ankles, feet, and toes

3) Stimulate neural function important to balance and agility

4) Eliminate heel lift to align the spine and improve posture

5) Allow the foot and body to move naturally.

But experts say barefoot running — an experience the shoes are said to mimic — may actually have a negative impact on foot health.

Language geeks will note: a couple, simple modifiers inserted within Vibram’s advertising copy would have saved the manufacturer nearly four million dollars and lots of bad press. Absent scientific research, copywriters might consider using the subjunctive mood in crafting verb-parts of written assertions. [Verb “helpers” like might and may signal the subjunctive mood…and give lawyers a foothold in fending-off class action lawsuits.]

So far as COG’s foot health is concerned, COG’s had no problems over the last two years. But our testers mostly use minimalist Vibram footwear (two testers, four-pair of Merrells, over two years) for travel and long, town-walking excursions. COG hasn’t run distances in these shoes. But, over eight, 5K road races during this period, COG has run among many elite racers using minimalist footwear. Our non-scientific, anecdotal observation: more than a few elite road-racers seem to do just fine with the thin-soled, Vibram running shoes. Many of these are devotees.

NEVERTHELESS: COG thinks the court’s word of warning is appropriate. Inspirational stories and “back to nature” affections must be subordinate to scientific scrutiny. COG carefully analyzes our own personal biomechanics before putting our thoughts into action. All consumers should apply (critical) skepticism to (advertising) words, as well.

Huffington concludes:

Class action members who purchased a pair of FiveFingers shoes after March 2009 can submit valid claim forms to receive a partial refund of up to $94 per pair, although Runner’s World says the likely payout per person will be between $20 and $50, based on similar settlements in the past.

COG still thinks, “Light is right…” But, should we take the money anyway?

By

Scrubba, World’s Smallest Washing Machine

Scrubba, world's smallest washing machine
Scrubba, the world’s smallest washing machine

Rubba dub dub,
three men in a tub,
and the cow jumped over the moon…

Scrubba, World’s Smallest Washing Machine.

COG offers several obvious leads here. But check out the pics: this story’s clear as this simple photo sequence.

  1. First: Australian vernacular idiomatic speech: the non-rhotic accent in Australian English renders “scrubber” as “Scrubba.” This non-rhotic accent among certain English–speakers marks presumed social ascendancy.
  2. Second: What are those men from the nursery rhyme doing in that tub; what kind of tub is it? A washtub.
  3. Third: Beta-testing hand-washing device available for a year in Australia, the Scrubba made the rounds of travel reviewers, April 2013. 

However, reviewers love the Scrubba for the wrong reasons.

COG’s over the moon for the Scrubba Wash Bag. Maximum star rating.

And we read the six American gear reviews we found online: Capable reports, correct and mildly enthusiastic. But what the heck? Those early Scrubba reviews miss two salient features. (And if you’re washing whites, please check our suggestion at the end of this review.)

Even Scrubba president, Ash Newland, an outdoorsman, intellectual property attorney and great admirer of Sea-to-Summit owner, fellow-Australian Tim Macartney-Snape, seemed slightly reserved re our COG analysis. We spoke at the Scrubba booth, OR Summer 2013.

Scrubba, world's smallest washing machine
Scrubba

So, first things first. As every RV-er knows, anyone can fill a five-gallon bucket with warm water, throw-in detergent, add a proportional volume of dirty clothes and drive down the highway for a few hours. Rinse and voila! Clean clothes. If you’re driving a rougher road less traveled, thereby increasing agitation (of clothes, if not passengers), your (auto!) wash-cycle will be shorter.

A dry-bag of water, soap and clothes on the rental car’s rear-window shelf or a zip–lock, similarly outfitted atop a backpack, renders some measure of the RV-er’s trick.

Which is to say, this Scrubba idea is not so brand new. But Scrubba’s iteration certainly merits intellectual property protection. Scrubba’s great! And here’s why: it’s cool, clever and works better and differently than any reviewer to date has noticed. Marketing department may also take note.

To wit: hands and sink plugs.

If you’re like our COG testers, traveling for months by foot, auto, boat and beast, usually remote from your favorite launderette, you hand-wash a clothing-set every night (naturally we travel with only two clothing sets, saving space/weight for dive mask, climbing shoes, organic coffee, et. al.). If you get our COG-style, get a Scrubba for your travels; you may end up using this hand-washing marvel at home as well. Your $2100.00 German Miele automatic clothes washer can’t get normally soiled clothes cleaner than a Scrubba. (The Australian manufacturer can produce a major university’s comparative, double-blind study as proof.)

If you’re wondering what our COG super-lightweight, elite-traveler attitude is about, we’re sorry. Hand-washing in a sink is fine! The COG team’s done this for thirty years. First we stop-up the wash basin (if we can find one), add clothing and warm water. Next we lather-up our hand soap, scrub, soak and rinse. Or we use soap liquid or powder specially designed for hand washing.

So far so good. Except now, we run out of hand-washing soap. So we clever COG guys substitute shampoo. OK, but now our undies aren’t getting the washing they deserve/need. So we start using packets of regular machine-washing detergent. Bingo! In slightly more time than brushing our teeth, your COG team can sport perfectly fresh clothing every morning. Soak times being crucial here.

However, all cleaning soaps feature surfactants as their most active ingredient. Laundry detergents max-out these “surface-active-agents” (“surfactants”) with a chemical structure that grabs dirt and grease with a hydrophobic molecule-end while an opposite, hydrophilic molecule-end, draws the grime into the wash water and keeps it there. Agitation rounds the surfactant molecules into tiny balls that wash cleanly down the drain. Does this double-ended, hydrophilic-hydrophobic molecule sound familiar? (Think of the push-pull, capillary-action moisture management of today’s performance undergarments.)

Scrubba, world's smallest washing machine
Scrubba

But this is exactly what the less-traveled reviewers and PR folks have missed: hand washing clothing for extended periods with any detergent designed for maximum soil, dirt and grime removal will dry your hands quicker than Joshua Tree (NP) in July.

Our clothes may be super-clean but our palms are bleeding. Milder hand-soaps might leave our natural skin elasticity more lovely, but our socks not so clean.

(COG’s tested hand washing soaps and detergents for clothes extensively: our fair-skinned, Scandinavian tester split her fingernails after three weeks of nightly hand laundry washings; our olive-skinned, Mediterranean type cracked his finger skin after five weeks. Over time, the cleaner our hand washing laundry, the more wrecked our hands. Don’t try this at home: leave the gritty stuff to COG.)

Now if bleeding palms don’t annoy you enough while scrubbing your nightly wash-up, what about your hotel’s washbasin? According to our pragmatic studies of hundreds of hotels, motels, hostels, caravan parks, huts, refuges and communal shelters, the stoppers provided with basin or tub work at thirty-five percent efficiency. For the rest of your hand wash jobs, the water’ll leave the washbasin within minutes. As detergents (or greener products) work better with longer soak times, lousy or absent stoppers will leave your clothing “greener” than your traveling companions may tolerate. COG travels with several basin stoppers. And, unlike our Black Diamond Stoppers, often we can’t find a good placement in even the swankiest hotel sink.

Bleeding hands and leaky sinks for soaking dirty clothes? COG guarantees that if you travel fast, light and long, you’ll find the Scrubba more useful than a Eurail pass when you’re dead-broke.

Instead of hassling with sieved sinks or chapped hands, toss water, detergent and clothing into a Scrubba bag, bleed-off excess air trapped in the bag (there’s a handy, built-in vent for this), agitate (we roll ours around on the floor with bare feet), let soak and rinse. Pictograms printed on the side of the bag prompt memories challenged by late nights.

But naturally, our COG testers ignored the printed instructions.  Where Scrubba recommends a maximum-load of two tee-shirts, two-pairs socks and shorts, we jammed-in a well-used pair of jeans (four days, August, SLC): way overloading the compact, hand-washing system. Two minutes’ agitation and a ten-minute soak: perfectly fresh jeans.

Cleaner clothes than hand washing. Less active time required than hand washing. Ease of use. No sink or tub hassles. No bleeding fingers. 5.6 ounces.

What’s not to love? We also see a clear window along the bag’s cylindrical side-panel for monitoring those surfactants darkening the wash water (as clothing gives up dirt and grime) and a pebbled “wash board” on the interior, facing side-panel: the Srubba may be the most useful product introduction we’ve seen in years.

COG’s only reservation is this: no matter how carefully the user folds down the Scrubba’s  (dry-bag) top and bleeds extra trapped air through the neat, one-way value, a small amount of wash water may escape the bag. No problem…

Except, with our new bag, the wash water (with regular, automatic washing machine detergent) turned very pale green and carried the color of the Scrubba Wash Bag onto a white cotton bath mat. Normal machine washing removed the transferred color immediately.

We contacted Scrubba and note that they don’t recommend harsh detergents or long soak times for white clothes. Good advice.

COG says: wash that white, $300 Armani blouse as usual, in a clean sink. Wash everything else in a Srubba. Bring your BD Stoppers but leave the sink stoppers and bleeding-hands balms at home.

$64

By

G-Form iPad / Notebook / Laptop Extreme Sleeve Computer Cases

G-Form Case
G-Form Extreme Sleeve Case

A year ago, COG reviewed the Pelican HardBack Laptop case. We thought the HardBack’s most bombproof available. See COG’s index.

Then last summer a Verizon tech rep stopped us along Outdoor Retailer’s Salt Palace’s far aisle. He handed us a Verizon smart phone streaming cool video. No protective case for this phone, we noticed.

“Drop the phone… no! Not on the carpet, on the bare concrete!” So from chest height, we drop the smart phone. After years of trying specifically not to do this, dropping a phone onto the floor is harder than you’d think.

The Verizon labeled smartphone bounces hard, edgewise off the bare floor. And the video’s still running.

Next, Verizon’s rep grabs the phone off the floor and tosses it into a fish tank…full of water. The phone’s twelve inches underwater now: And we can plainly see the phone still streaming video.

“So, how long have you been dropping and dunking this phone today,” we ask.

“This is my third trade show on this phone.”

COG should have seen that one coming. But we’re too stunned even to test phone performance. Check with Verizon: it’s too much for us and maybe too good to be true. Other reviews are “mixed.” Casio G’zOne Commando 4G LTE from Verizon.

But…not so fast!

The most extreme demo for hand-held, electronic-device impact protection we’ve ever heard about couldn’t be found on the main OR Show floor.

As usual, the COG team had to hunt up OR’s greatest gear at the new vendor’s pavilion. Outside. Around the corner.

This is the “back 40 (acres)” at OR: this outer circle of hell, a cyclical limbo where vendors new to OR await their turn for booth space on the main show floor: “Main Street,” the Salt Palace’s central selling-floor where we find retailer traffic most intense; retailer buying (“writing paper” in vendor parlance) fever pitched if not out-right frantic.

(A long digression here on “tent city”: So we fight our way out of the Salt Palace Convention Center, through downtown SLC traffic, across the street to the tent city sheltering the new vendors. We notice: why has the traditional, OR bouldering “wall” moved from the foot of OR’s Main Street, the Summer OR industry’s very heart, to the lifeless pavement outside the new vendor’s pavilion? Yes, we can see the bouldering area’s now cheek-by-jowl with the fly-casting tank and the SUP/Kayak tank. Clearly, management wants $ revenue from the casting tank, SUP tank and climbing wall floor space, formerly sited on the main floor…However, since “OR” first “demo-ed” itself as the SportsExpo, back hall of Vegas’ annual Ski Industries of America (SIA) show (early 1980s), the bouldering area’s “demos” have allowed gear makers and retail shop folks common ground. And, no! A demo day prior to the trade show doesn’t fill the same function. Authenticity is verified when SUP/Kayak tank, casting tank and bouldering wall physically “back” manufacturer sales folks on the sales floor: immediately adjacent to product display booths and “writing rooms” where those products actually “move” towards you, the end user. Shutting the “demo” gear/function out onto the sidewalk makes the trade show more profitable for show owners, no question. But the attendant reduced conviviality (let’s call that “fun factor”) on the trade show’s sales floor will function as a false economy: all parties will realize less $ over time. New OR Show owners…are you listening?)

Nevertheless, we’re wandering the new vendor’s pavilion wondering what could be cooler than the Pelican HardBack iPad Case. Maybe a smartphone too tough for a case?

 We’re stopped dead in our tracks: some guys are dropping a 15-pound bowling ball four feet straight-down onto a concrete block. Between the bowling ball and the concrete block: the G-Form guys have placed an iPad streaming a movie. We couldn’t help but wince at the impact: hand-crushing blows.

But the iPad’s movie doesn’t skip a frame. The bowling ball just bounces “dead” against the iPad’s protective G-Form Extreme Sleeve.

G-Form Case
G-Form Extreme Sleeve Computer Cases

What the…?Bystanders wanted to stop the madness, but the bowling ball drops time and again. After each drop, the iPad streams faultlessly inside the G-Form Extreme Sleeve.

G-Form also makes pads for moto-cross clothing, extreme cyclists, roller derby. OK, maybe not roller derby. But these pads really deaden impact.

How much?

The Extreme Sleeve booth display continues on-screen, cinema-verite style. Outside; helipad; chopper waiting in the background. The iPad’s tips toward the camera, a movie streams (“Chinatown”) as the iPad slides into a G-Form case, then lands in the helicopter. The helicopter lifts away from the camera, straight-up, 500 feet.

You guessed it! The G-Form case falls free of the helicopter, 500 feet, back down to the tarmac. Without cutting away, the camera closes-in on the downed G-Form case. Hands reach from off-screen, pull the iPad from the sleeve: “Chinatown” is still streaming.

Or you could read G-Form’s tech blurb:

“Our athletic and consumer electronic products utilize RPT™ – Reactive Protection Technology. RPT™ is a combination of PORON®XRD™ material and proprietary G-Form technology that instantly stiffens upon impact and absorbs over 90% of the energy, offering state-of-the-art impact protection in a lightweight, flexible form.”

COG likes this better: 15-pound bowling balls and 500 foot free-falls. Your case or mine?

$70

By

Columbia Omni Freeze Zero

Hikers crossing a creek
Omni Freeze is the newest fabric from Columbia Sportswear

We never talk about our senior COG reporter’s outdoor-sports modeling career. But that’s when we saw our first Gore-Tex jacket: he sported a bright yellow number in an early Early Winters catalog. So we’ve caught him out: style over substance. But what about this early, smart outdoor fabric, Gore-Tex?

At summer (2012) OR COG found Columbia Sportswear techs touting their new Omni Freeze ZERO fabric and sounding like Gore decades ago.

Then (1976), all Gore would say is: micro-pores allow water vapor (perspiration) to pass out of the garment while keeping (liquid) rain outside: a waterproof, breathe-able fabric. Or, WPB: Dry, inside jacket; wet, outside jacket.

Now, apparently, everybody smoking ganja at Coachella knows Gore’s “secret.”

Red Rain Coat from Columbia
Red raincoat from Columbia

According to InsideOutdoor Magazine, Fall 2012, “ePTFE 2.0, WPB laminates article by Ernest Shiwanov,

Thirty-six years ago (1976), the outdoor recreation market was introduced to what would be the greatest improvement in textile technology since the invention of nylon. Early adapters such as Early Winters, Marmot Mountain Works and Banana Equipment saw the answers to their performance textile dreams and just like that, this technology spread faster than free chronic at the Coachella Music Festival…

…First introduced by W.L Gore and Associates, PTFE-based textile laminates have gone through various changes, improvements…General Electric’s eVent is one…textile laminate technology is based on Dupont’s Teflon or polytetrafluoroethylene (ePTFE or PTFE)…

(Besides Gore-Tex and eVent, Ultrex, Entrant and Permatex supply smart, WPB fabrics for today’s outdoor market. If you own a WPB jacket, you’re probably wearing one of these fabrics.)

But in 1976, no one would explain the “smart fabric” technology. The closely guarded secret was Teflon. You know, like no-stick frying pans. But no one was saying so, then.

Columbia Sportswear Omnifreeze Truck
Columbia Sportswear truck advertising Omni Freeze Zero

And now, last August at Outdoor Retailer, we got the same message from Columbia Sportswear. About their new smart fabric:  Omni Freeze ZERO. COG thought this fabric innovation worth a look because Columbia’s a major, mid-price-point brand available world-wide at specialty outdoor, department and big-box stores.

(Columbia’s Mountain Hardware specialty-brand offers premium product through more exclusive channels. This year your COG reporters have eyeballed Columbia/Mountain Hardware label in outdoor shops: Sydney, Melbourne, Paris, Chamonix, Zermatt and Grindelwald…the world beyond REI and EMS.)

So this time your COG reporters determined to question closely Columbia’s Dr. Science guys doing the fabric demos. No more secrets.

Columbia Omnifreeze fabric on an arm
Sleeve of Omni Freeze fabric

Here’s what we saw. Columbia reps met retailers, vendors and media at the entrance to SLC’s Salt Palace Convention Center. August in Salt Lake City, the mid-morning air temperature ranges 90++ degrees. A Columbia-branded, white, 9-inch lycra sleeve was offered each attendee. In direct sunlight, forearms heated up immediately under the lycra sleeve. Then the Columbia reps (err, the “reps” are actually professional fitness-models…but who’s looking?) spray-bottled the armbands with warm water. The fabric immediately cooled…and cooled far faster and far colder than the ordinary evaporative-cooling we’d all expect.

Here’s what we heard: “once the fabric gets wet, it cools and stays cool regardless of evaporation, so long as it stays wet.”

Now we can’t emphasize this enough. As you know, evaporative cooling depends on moisture evaporating, giving up energy (heat), as the water turns to vapor. (Remember our high school physics: the pan of water takes heat from the stovetop before it can boil away into vapor?) Well, Columbia’s Omni Freeze ZERO works similarly, but way faster. We felt refrigerated under the wet Omni Freeze ZERO sleeve. Really, really cool under high-summer Salt Lake City sun.

Fitness-model spritzing finished, COG beelines over to the Columbia booth and find the white-coated lab guys. We ask about the little blue circles printed over the fabric surface? We mistook these tiny blue circles for fabric decoration. The scientists corrected us: the blue circles are Columbia’s proprietary polymers. When wet, the polymers microscopically swell and release heat. This makes the fabric feel very cool, almost cold against our skin.

Fabric closeup from Columbia Omnifreeze
Closeup of Omni Freeze fabric

“How does the heat get into the polymer reaction to start with?” we ask, like we had a clue.

“An endothermic catalyst absorbs the heat,” observed the Columbia lab guys; “Evaporation plays a small part, but that’s not the main driver.”

Nice scientific answer, but we didn’t want answers. Your GOG reporters wanted the truth.

Evidently, we couldn’t handle the truth.

Columbia refused to name the (proprietary) polymer or explain further the physics/chemistry of their polymer that absorbs heat until it’s wet (like when you’re sweating) and then cools even faster than normal evaporation would allow. So as long as the fabric’s dry, it’ll help keep you warm. But when you sweat-it-up or otherwise wet the fabric, it’ll get cold fast. Our COG Omni Freeze lycra sleeves stayed very cool throughout the afternoon, so long as we sloshed them every so often with our water bottles.

We’d hope we don’t have to wait 30 years (like we waited on Gore-Tex for the tech low-down) for Columbia’s secret fabric physics to be revealed. But we do like the idea of free chronic at Coachella.