I’ve never tried using long screws from the hardware store as tent stakes but it seems like a reasonable thing to do if you don’t mind carrying heavy things that could punch through your super lightweight backpack. I could see using the Cool Tools tent peg hack if you lost some while traveling or have a massive canvas tent to put up, but a $10 pouch of just about any of these make a much better replacement if you have the time. Still, there would be something nice about using a heavy, cheap, sharp tent stake and bashing the hell out of it with a rock without worry. I’d probably lose them all over the place and they’d end up stuck through the next person’s foot.

They could have cut about two-and-a-half minutes out of this video and it would have been just as funny and gotten their point across. It looks like the EcoGeeks leaned on Absolute for some money to help put it together.

via Wend

You think you have the doping lab wonks beat with your new CERA drug and then find out a few weeks after getting your silver medal that they’ll go back and test blood samples in the next eight months. Remember the Olympics? The six athletes who tested positive for CERA were named today. Two of them came from cycling, including the road racing silver medalist Davide Rebellin of Italy. I’m more interested in knowing how he managed to smuggle the drugs into China before the games. Seems like he should receive some kind of medal for duping such vigilant security on both ends of his plane ride.

The site Bike Friendly launched last week as an attempt to give cyclists more influence over privately provided bike parking. Basically, you can upload pictures or places where you’d lock up your bike and then rank businesses on how well they provide you a place to lock up. If it catches on businesses would be pressured to improve their facilities so that they could get more cyclists to shop. Of course, it has to catch on first, and there’s a hell of a lot of businesses across the country that you can bike to. It’s not exactly spreading as quickly as the swine flu but it’s a nice idea.

via Urban Velo

Someone better write a screenplay about these guys before I do. A board of University of Oregon peers shut down the school’s Ultimate Frisbee team due to conduct violations. Apparently they’d been forced to ask chaperones to accompany them to games to make sure they complied with the rules governing basic decency, and after a recent trip one totally uncool adult chaperone complained that they played the second half of their game nude and drunk.

Team co-captain Dusty Becker apologized to the board, but wasn’t too apologetic.

“Speeding, drinking, nudity - they’re not bad things,” he said. “They’re things a big portion of the community doesn’t think are wrong.”

While this has little nothing to do with the outdoor industry, it’s too great a story not to pass along.

via Deadspin