So you booked a trip to Italy this summer and can’t get a tourist-free photo of the Leaning Tower of Pisa? Not to worry. Snap about five photos while people mill about and then blend the photos together for a tourist-free image with the snapmaina Tourist Remover. The online tool is free with 100mb of space, though you’ll eventually pay if you love it so much you need to clean more photos.
via Boing Boing
Feed the powder jones a bit with the trailer for the 2009/10 Matchstick Productions movie In Deep. The movie looks insanely sick. I can’t even complain about the soundtrack since it’s some kind of new-age Enya-sounding crap that goes along with the skiing really well.
via Powder Magazine
Department of the Interior Secretary Ken Salazar is working to get Florida’s Everglades put back on a United Nations list of endangered sites. It would reverse the controversial move of the Bush administration, which sought to have it removed. Hopefully Obama remembers Salazar’s hard work on Secretary’s Day. Re-adding the Everglades would mean that the U.S. would have two sites if Glacier National Park is also added. Too bad adding it to the list doesn’t actually fix anything. A billion-dollar Everglades restoration project launched back in 2000 has already fallen years behind.
Inspired by the tanking economy, traffic has picked up lately on the Appalachian Trail. See? It’s not just a handy excuse. “Oh nowhere. Hiking the Appalachian Trail.” Laid-off people and recent college grads who can’t find jobs are making the trip up and down the trail. Is this really what it’s come to? The recession has spawned a new wave of hoboing.
via Backpacker [NPR]
Two adults in Florida were arrested after wildlife conservation officers caught them with several fish below the size limit. They didn’t have any ID but helpfully provided the wardens with their false names, which the minor with them corrected. Turns out both had outstanding warrants (one for failure to pay child support) and the two were booked on all their old charges plus over-the-bag limit and catching undersized fish. Come on man, you have to get the kids on board if you’re lying. What are you teaching your kids down there?
Head into the backcountry without bothering to tell anyone where you’re going or when you’ll be back–Survival Straps has your back with the Paracord Survival Belt. Second only to a personal locator beacon in survival situations, these $75 belts unwind to turn into between 125 and 200ft of paracord. Perfect for hanging laundry, making an uncomfortable hammock, and similar survival situations. The only hard part is weaving it back together after your self-rescue and return to civilization.
A young Minnesota couple sailing their vessel the “Velvet Glove Cast in Iron” disembarked on a Huck-Fin style Mississippi trip only to be foiled by engine troubles and Johnny Law about 10 miles downstream. Veruschka and Zelda Xox (made-up names, but then again, what names aren’t made up?) built a barge on their friend’s property in rural Minnesota, loaded it with 20 pounds of potatoes and some live chickens before setting off from North Minneapolis. Immediate and catastrophic engine trouble stopped their boat shortly offshore, and they pulled into a city park to fix the boat before continuing, or more specifically, starting. Local police gave them a week to fix the boat even though the city park where they’d landed forbid overnight camping. After a week they shoved off with a dead engine, and floated downstream, narrowly missing a dam, before tying up on another island. Police impounded the Velvet Glove Cast in Iron and sent their chickens to live on a farm upstate later that day.
Say what you want about the ineptitude and idealism of these 21 and 23 year olds, but I find their romantic and misguided downriver trip a bit exciting. We know they would have had a better chance making it to New Orleans in a couple kayaks or a canoe, but they wanted to take their boat so they could live in it when they arrived in The South.
There’s something oddly mesmerizing about this UIAA Mountain Equipments Testing video. Everything’s played in real time speed, but watching a carabiner leisurely yawn open and then explode like a frog stuffed with M-80s seems like it’s happening at half speed. Maybe it’s because you figure that if a piece of equipment ever broke it wouldn’t go slowly like Sly Stallone’s lead harness buckle in Cliffhanger, but so quickly you’d never know what went wrong. Either way, I’m sure it’ll never happen.
via The Snaz
Beginning July 1st Utah will do away with those stupid memberships required to get into bars. They were only about $12 per year, but you’d be surprised how limiting they were. Walking around downtown Salt Lake, where they only have one bar allowed per block, we’d almost never try new bars since one of us poor bastards would have to pony up the cash to buy a membership. Park City was slightly better because usually they’d just ask, “Do you have a membership?” and not bother actually checking. Last year Utah also approved allowing 1.5 ounces of liquor in a drink instead of the old 1 ounce, so it’s still the weakest drinking place in the world. I guess if it weren’t for the crazy laws Utah would be just as over developed as Vail, so we ought to be a bit thankful. Welcome to the rest of the country, Utah.
