The Goat

I’m like, 90% sure that I could ride a bike without training wheels by the time I was 11 years old. Jordan Romero’s already topped out on Aconcagua in Argentina and now he’s bagged Denali. He’s trying to get the 7 summits as the youngest person, and would take the title from the guy who’s moved onto floating on trash barges down the Mississippi. Kind of like looking into the future, eh Jordan? I’m actually thinking about setting this record myself with a little help from Photoshop—too bad no one would believe a 10-year-old would wear neon jams and a mullet to the top of Everest.

via Gear Junkie

Those mad scientist geniuses at the Bush White House figured out how to avoid dealing with an EPA report that concludes that greenhouse gases are pollutants—they wouldn’t open the e-mail. Regardless of how you feel about the Bush Administration and its policies, I think we can all agree that this sets a pretty awesome precedent. No more will I open letters from the IRS demanding money or orders to appear for jury duty. Maybe I’m naïve but I still find it shocking that this kind of behavior operates at such high levels of government. It seems like something better suited to Alabama PTA meetings at school districts with 12 kids or Shriner conventions members too old to be active Masons. Of course, those organizations are run at a much greater efficiency than the U.S. Government. I guess I’m just surprised that this kind of policy is so openly carried out and no one seems to care.

via NY Times

You’re a modified car alternator and a few household goods away from charging your handheld electronics and throwing up a “bear siren” at the campsite. This ingenious pico generator provides a modest power supply by diverting water first into a storage tank and then through a gravity feed into a bucket. The water spins a turbine on its way back into the stream you’re borrowing. It’s a slightly more invasive and much heavier way of gathering energy than Brunton’s solar panels, but it’s also a little cheaper and more hacked-together nerdy. Make Blog shows you how to put together your own pico generator.

via Gizmodo

Why is it that whenever someone tries to develop a new backpack technology, they make their first prototype look like something early astronauts wore in high-altitude space capsule testing? Brightside Design has developed a Rucksack Harness Concept that relies on a pivot in the hips that lets the user move in an unrestricted manner through their torso and hips. It might have been a great idea 5 years ago when North Face came out with the aptly named “Pivot” backpack or Mountain Hardwear put together their backpacks that pivot on ball bearings in the hipbelt, but Brightside is a little late.

If it doesn’t look like you’re waking up after that brutal day of hiking and rainy night, then your friends can just roll you into a grave in this friendly looking coat. The Hilleberg Bivanorak is a $175 jacket that you can wear over your backpack while hiking in the rain and also use as a sleeping bag cover in a pinch. The outfit was developed as a Swedish Air Force survival kit item and weighs about 1lb 7oz. Not sure what you’re supposed to do about the open face in a rainstorm—sleep on your stomach, I guess.

via Cool Tools

I haven’t heard a good Dee’s Nuts joke in awhile—in fact, I don’t think I’ve ever heard a good Deez Nutz joke. That’s probably because they don’t exist; they’re like rude, sarcastic Canadians that way. Dznuts is a new chamois creame designed to “protect fragile perineal skin from bacterial and fungal infections.” This is a worthy cause, but it kind of freaks me out that the guy who invented it has such a creepy mustache. What’d you expect, I guess.

I had different ideas of what futuristic tracking chips would look like back in the 1980s. They lacked these big antennas and battery boxes that come on the Garmin Astro DC 30 GPS—this thing looks more like an FM radio headset from the aforementioned decade. The Astro is used to hunt your untrained dog in the style of The Most Dangerous Game remake that starred Ice Cube; I think Gary Busey was in it, too (what was that movie called?). You just plug your animal into the thing and then follow it around on your four-wheeler for the next 30 hours of battery life. It sends a signal to your handheld GPS from 7 miles out, and it costs about $200.

via Gizmodo

The only thing worse than flying around a corner in your car and seeing a bear standing in the middle of the road is doing the same thing on your road bike. And the only thing worse than that is if the bear’s on fire and holding an illegal assault rifle. The 53-year-old biker Tim Egan was cycling with his nephew, also named Tim Egan, when he slammed into a grizzly while going about 45mph.

“As I was there on the road and saw it look at me, I thought, ‘Aw, man. It’s going to come over here again,” Egan said Tuesday night after returning from Boulder Community Hospital. “But luckily it had other fish to fry.”

It was other deer, actually. While the man and bear collided, a buck wandered into the scene playing out on the road. The bear turned its attention to the animal and roared, scaring the deer off before running off itself.

I bet the Tims rode home and tore the “Keep Boulder Wild” bumper stickers off their cars. Both were uninjured except for massive emotional scars, which is lucky since Tim is scheduled to give his sister one of his kidneys in September.  So he seems like a nice guy. Why doesn’t this stuff happen to the people who deserve it?

The first print magazine dedicated solely to fixed gear bikes launched in London a few days back. So far everything still seems to be going pretty well over on this side of the Hotlantic.

It’d be easy to make fun of these people for jumping onto the trend. I mean, I’m sure there was a Tie-Dye Magazine that launched about 15 years ago. But I have to support this kind of work. For one thing it’s bringing more money and cool jobs into the bike industry, but an even better reason is that there’s no good reason to hate on these people. I can understand how someone who’s been riding a fixie for the past 30 years feels marginalized by all the guys hanging out in the park on their tricked-out Pistas. Their lifestyle and culture is being usurped to in the name of fashion and bike sales. But that’s just the thing—bike sales—it’s not like they’re using the fixie-branded rider to sell offshore oil exploration to the masses. The uprising of the bike is upon us. Crusty fixed gear riders won’t stand in the way. Good luck Fixed Magazine (I give them 3 issues before they fold).

The Sigg Spoon would be a great gift for the guy who can’t fold up his knife without nearly severing his little finger. The fork would be okay, too, as long as he put a cork over the tines. It’s hard to imagine a weapon less threatening than a jackknife-spoon, but I bet you could make a run for it while whoever you’re threatening has a nice laugh after seeing it. The Sigg Outdoor Cutlery costs about $25 for the full set on one handle.