Hobie’s MirageDrive might already be a good way to cheat at the kayak race (you’ll have to wear a goofy cowboy hat or something to draw attention away from your pedaling) but if you’re cheating, you may as well really upgrade. In spring of 2007 Hobie is offering a Mirage ST Turbo Kit that replaces your pedal blades with longer blades that have a flame job. Well, it’s not really a flame job so much as lightening bolts, but you better believe it’ll make you go faster. They do it by making the MirageDrive’s blades longer, try to stay out of shallow water so you don’t conspicuously beach yourself during the race.

Available in spring 2007, Katadyn’s Vairo Microfilter to addresses backpackers’ biggest complaints. A ceramic core ensures long life while a pleated glass fiber filter keeps it easy to pump. A replaceable carbon insert allows you to make one cheap replacement to keep your water tasting fresh.

The pump action on this thing is incredibly smooth and it’s tough to argue with the Darth-Vader-looking design. The only bad news is that you have to wait until spring.

If you’re the guy that insists the waitress takes away your fork at the Chinese restaurant, you’ll want to replace your Titanium Spork with Snow Peak’s Chopsticks. The wooden top half collapses into the steel bottom making it easy to carry these things around in your suit pocket. Now you’ll be able to bring chopsticks to every restaurant and annoy your coworkers by taking twice as long to finish your BK Stacker.

Asana’s bouldering video game Gunther’s Big Day would confuse the youth of today. With its 2D graphics, simple controls, and lack of sound except for Gunther’s grunts, it’s like playing Pole Position when you’re used to Grand Theft Auto.

While I can’t recommend spending $20 of your hard earned money on Gunther’s Big Day Computer Game, I would definitely recommend wasting some time at work playing the demo.

The classic Swiss Army All-Arounder knife from Victorinox has a new upgrade with USB Flash Drive. Now you can open a bottle of wine, trim your nails, defend yourself, and store your PowerPoint presentation all with one tool. Don’t forget to check it with your luggage when you fly, hopefully you didn’t need that info on the plane. Victorinox is making the knife with JumpDrives from 64MB up to 2GB.

Pay attention—you’re about to learn the only time it’s okay to wear socks with sandals. No, it’s not at home alone or even the IT convention, it’s when you’re portaging your canoe and only brought Chacos and waterproof socks instead of water shoes.

SealSkinz waterproof socks might not make too much sense in most cases where you’d be plodding around in leather boots soaked with three pounds of water, but they’re okay with sandals (in the backcountry). Plan on your feet sweating so much that they’ll look like black and blue prunes by the end of your trip.

Replace the superpowers of a piece of tree bark with a $25 piece of metal and you get the MSR Trillium Stove Base. This 2.8 ounce wonder attaches to the bottom of your already heavy stove to, uh, to keep it…stable, I guess? Actually the folkl at MSR made this hunk of metal so that while winter camping your stove doesn’t melt into the snow—they must think that their customers who manage to maintain their incredibly complex stoves aren’t crafty enough to use practically anything else at their disposal as a stove base.

Montbell’s Hugger Sleeping Bag series tries to make it easy to choose a bag that fits your style. They make these bags with elasticized seams which let you roll around but previously also created a lot of insulation dead spots that would get cold. Their new design is supposed to eliminate dead spots, but it doesn’t guarantee you won’t wake up thinking you’re tied up back at the hospital.

I tried a ProBar a couple weeks ago just before lunch and ended up just staring at my plate of Mexican food for the next 45 minutes. These dense energy bars are packed with about 400 calories of what looks like pressurized and compacted trail mix. You probably wouldn’t want to stuff one in your bike jersey since they take 20 minutes to chew through, but they work great on the trail or as a meal replacement. Normally vegan knock offs taste like flavorless soy, so forget I mentioned the animals-not-dying thing.