The Goat

No matter how clouded your vision or lightheaded you feel, you always have to wait for someone else to say they need a break before you’ll stop. Now you can use the Heat Stress Monitor’s alerts as a handy excuse for resting on desert hikes. The tiny weather station monitors temperature, humidity, radiant heat, and wind speed to tell you when it’s too hot to do anything but complain about the heat.

via The Raw Feed

Remember the short-lived and ill-advised e-card? They were great little online alternatives to sending someone you didn’t like a greeting card. Too bad it only took a few years for them to go from cute to insulting.

But now Yakima’s doing the right thing and bringing them back with the Yakiagrams. You can send your city-dwellin’ friends invitations to spend the night in the woods from a bearded, guitar-playing cowboy. It’s a lot like Cub Scouts, except for all the gigantic, anthropomorphic animals.

If Mr. Zog’s Sex Wax doesn’t make you chuckle like it used to, it’s time to check out Wet Women Surf Wax, “Making Sure Women Stay on Tom Top.” Wet Women is a Hawaii-based company that makes nontoxic, biodegradable, and disposable wax. It’s certified as a biological nutrient under MBDC’s Cradle to Cradle program, so it’s actually good for the ocean every time you paddle out. Wet Women sell it for $3.95, and it comes in a reusable, recycled steel tin you can use for all your surfing knickknacks when it’s empty.

via Treehugger

The only kayak company that sells its wares in Sky Mall has expanded its line from the overpriced clear kayak to the wildly overpriced folding clear kayak. The Napali is a clear boat with a closed hull that’ll probably fog up the moment you begin paddling. I’m not sure why you would want the decked kayak since you wouldn’t be able to see anything once you put on a spray skirt anyway. Clear Blue Hawaii sells it for $4877 plus another $225 for shipping.

SRAM trimmed 60 grams from their Avid Juicy Ultimate Disc Brakes for 2008, bringing the package to 345 grams (12oz) or about the weight of the beer in your water bottle cage. They achieved the weight loss by using a magnesium lever body and aluminum-backed pads with the super-sexy carbon lever blades—that’s what makes it ‘juicy.’ The old ones are still selling for about $280, no price yet on the new ones.

via Khabar Bike

Sierra Designs new Tengu Tent is designed so you can pitch it in a downpour while keeping the body dry before you climb in with all your soaked gear. You basically build the fly as an external shell and then hang the body inside. The external frame makes it easy to put up, but unfortunately the price of keeping dry is 7 pounds—so you may as well just sleep in your car since you probably haven’t hiked all that far. Single-wall tents work even better in rain storms since you don’t have to deal with a fly, plus you can get them well below four pounds. Just keep your Pack Towel handy for condensation.

The company that made ear warmers for bike helmets last year is back with a summer offering—the Slipstreamz Spoiler. It’s a plastic piece that slides over your chin strap in front of your ear to disrupt airflow so you can hear better when riding.

They’re not without problems:

“…installing them requires that you either introduce a fold-over in your front straps each and every time the helmet is fitted to your head, or that you re-assemble your helmet straps. The ultimate solution is arranging for helmet manufacturers to assemble their helmets with the necessary twists built in for Spoiler compatibility, and we are currently working on this.”

Thinking you’ll convince helmet manufacturers to change the way they build chin straps to accommodate your startup ear spoiler company is optimistic to say the least.

Unless you’re one of the holdouts hiking for spring corn or dutifully making laps at the top of Snowbird, skiing is over for one more season. It’s probably been at least a month and half since most people skied or snowboarded—and though it’s still way too soon to start P-texing base gouges or looking at next year’s lift tickets, it’s not too early for some movie trailers. Snowboard Mag put together a link farm for 52 upcoming 2007/08 snowboard movies.  

Here are a few of them:

A survey conducted by the National Sporting Goods Association found that cycling participants dropped more than 13% from 2005 to 2006. The decline in biking was the biggest change among the top ten, and the VP of NSGA speculated that, “America’s youth appears to be opting for other forms of wheels—scooters, skateboards, and wheeled footwear. Even off-road mountain biking, which had been strong in recent years, declined more than five percent.”

I know it takes awhile to gather data, but this is from 2005 to 2006—what about 2006 to 2007? The rise of 29ers could get more people interested cycling, but I would bet that most people buying a 29er already have at least one bike. It looks like Shimano’s Coasting is the biggest chance for boosting cycling participation since they’re the ones trying to convert non-bikers.

via GoClipless

If you can’t afford fancy roll-top dry bags for backpacking, there’s a cheap option that works almost as well. You just line your backpack with a heavy-duty garbage bag and then pack all your food and clothes into that. If you tie off the garbage bag tightly enough, it’ll keep your stuff dry if your canoe rolls over or it rains for days. It’s super cheap, easy, and you can even use the garbage bag for all your trash when you get back to your car. Integral Designs takes the trash bag a step further by charging $20 and adding a drawstring. The Silcoat Pack Liner only weighs about 3oz, so a bit less than a garbage bag.