I was traveling in Germany with a girlfriend a long time ago and I’ll never forget the time she held up a huge guidebook in the town square, looked at me through foggy glasses, and said, “This book shows us how to blend in like locals,” while she was wearing a massive backpack and crying in the rain. She was right; we blended right in. She might have been better off with this Pacsafe StashSafe 100 Hip Pack, which is like a nerdy, soccer mom equivalent of handcuffing a briefcase to your wrist. You can actually take the pack off and lock it to a bike rack or beach chair if you want to go for a swim and don’t have anyone to watch your gear. I supposed you could even lock it to yourself, but if you then locked the keys inside of it you’d have a really hard time getting through security on your way home. The StashSafe 100 Hip Pack costs about $40.

via Cool Tools

There’ll be plenty of room for new shanty towns in this recession with the passage of the Omnibus Public Land Management Act, which will grant protected wilderness status to two million acres across nine states. The protected land amounts to largest acreage since a few million acres of California desert were protected in 1994 before being promptly forgotten. California will get 700k acres of protected land and mostly western states (especially in Wyoming, Idaho, and Utah) make up for the rest of the acreage. A few thousand miles of Lake Superior shoreline in Michigan will be protected from developers with condo blueprints as will some creek running through New Jersey.

This is the best news I’ve gotten since finding out that the Ninja Turtles live action movie wasn’t real. At least the land’s safe until the next political go-round.

via Backpacker

If kayakers would take a break from grooming their beards to do a little material science research we could have one of these on top of every Subaru by now. The Wave Sport Project 54Cx play boat features a full carbon fiber hull that weighs about as much as a boat made from egg shells though this is slightly more durable. Carbon fiber’s been around for a long time, but the problem has been creating a cost effective way to bring it to a kayak until this Wave Sport showed up at the last Gauley River Fest. After all, in carbon fiber bikes manufacturing the molds for all the joints alone costs millions-it must be a massive project to create an entire play boat with this process. Well, it’s the first one that costs a million, and then the next several thousand are cheap.

Here’s some POV footage from Backcountry.com athlete Sage Cattabriga-Alosa’s helmet cam while in the Retallack BC during the 2009 Red Bull Cold Rush. Remember to look at the white spaces between the trees and not to stare directly into the tree wells or you’ll make him crash. At least these are nice pine trees have some low branches to slow you down if you hit them.

A New Zealander completed a global circumnavigation this week when he returned on the last of three skateboards to Christchurch, New Zealand. The 28-year-old Rob Thomson managed to spend only about $16k on his 2.5 year journey and says he’ll write a book about it now that he’s home. Let me guess: Lots of sore legs and a few odd looks from people when you told them you were going around the world on a skateboard?

Thomson was looking forward to someone breaking his record.

“It’s not something that requires much skill, just a lot of time and a bit of determination.”

Ironically, despite its huge population, Eastern China was home to his loneliest hours and in Kyrgyzstan, where he did not see a soul for six days, he never felt lonely at all.

Alpine passes provided Thomson with the greatest thrill.

“Your lungs are full of breath, your legs are alive, the surrounding environment is quiet and still with massive views. The air is thinner but you just feel alive.”

via GetOutdoors