Patagonia must have seen a picture of some snowboarders from two years ago because they have a blazer out for this winter. The Spoken Word Jacket is a $158 blazer made from organic cotton, but you’ll have to cut some fabric out of your leather jacket if you want to add elbow patches.

The only kite boarding I like to watch is when guys get dragged out of the water onto the beach with wakeboards still on their feet, or their kite pulls them and their ice skates into open water. This video is a good example of why I was wrong about kite boarding.

I’ve seen insoles with remote controlled heaters, but this is the first pair of pants I’ve found that might electrocute you. Get them for your kid who wets the bed and the li-on battery will work great for negative reinforcement. Brookstone says the pants work well for skiing, but they’re not waterproof so you might want to tuck a garbage bag into the waist for sitting on chairlifts.

via Gizmodo via Red Ferret via Sci Fi Tech

If you don’t have anything better to do this winter, and you’re kind of a freak, you might be interested in this Sick Lines “Truth in Weight” project. It’s well known that bike companies lie more about weight in ads than women do at the DMV. So the crew at Sick Lines is asking their readers to weigh their gear and send in the information so they can setup an online database.

VIA Go Clipless.

howies gives 1% of turnover or 10% of pre-tax profits to grassroots environmental and social projects so you can buy their expensive, high end gear and feel like you’re making the world a better place. The skating/cycling lifestyle company mostly makes casual clothes, but they make a handful of nice technical jackets, too. This Outback jacket is cut from Schoeller 3XDry fleece and bonded together. A merino wool liner fits your Earthy side.

VIA The Piton.

When you get tired of surfing Burton’s website but you’re not ready to start working again, take a look at their online snowboard museum. I might jigsaw myself a retro-board this year. It’s been too long since seeing someone come down the hill holding onto a rope that’s tied to the board’s nose.

Bugaboo-jacket-maker Columbia announced their win-a-free-trip Titanium Challenge. You have to submit videos of yourself and friends skiing while on fire or jumping off huge cliffs and landing on your head in deep snow. Titanium athletes Reggie and Zach Crist will pick the skier they want to ride with, and then they pick you up for a 7-day heli-skiing trip. And if you don’t win, you can always try to sue Columbia for making you skin beyond your abilities.

Paint Floyd Cycles’ low rider red and it would look like something out of Akira. The full-coverage fenders run just 3/8 inches off the ground so forget about hitting potholes—you’d have to be careful not to even turn too sharply. Really, not turning is a small price to pay for riding something that looks so unspeakably cool.

VIA bikemagic.

Condor’s website says their Wilderness Tool with Sheath can cut shooting lanes, build a shelter, make a firepit, build a campfire, and prepare meals. It escapes how this thing could be used to effectively dig a pit and then start a fire, unless it stores a lighter in the handle or something. This looks more like Condor makes their Survival tools for living through Zombie attacks than living in the backcountry.

The Silva Alti-Ski Watch makes it easy to see that you only got 8 runs out of that $60 lift ticket. This $100 watch counts runs while you’re on the hill, but you’re still on your own for keeping track of how many beers you drink at the mid-mountain lodge. Barometers on these things are never completely accurate, so don’t freak out if it tells you that the lodge dropped 30 feet while you were just sitting on the barstool. Silva also gave the Alti-Ski Watch a thermometer so you can accurately check your wrist’s temperature.

A new paddling lifestyle magazine aptly named Paddling Life will be launched in spring of 2007. The publisher plans to mirror successful ski, snowboard, and skate lifestyle magazines in with an issue coming out each season plus one gear guide. The inherent problem is that skiers, snowboarders, and skaters have a life, so producing magazines about their lifestyles isn’t tough. Paddlers, on the other hand, don’t get out much.

VIA The Adventure Blog.

It won’t fit a spare tire, but the Stone Cold Outdoor Aluminum Bike Trunk is big enough to let you lock up your sandwich and chips. This $125 bike rack will be available this January—right in time for cycling’s big season. People who feel like they need to lock everything up would be better off just getting a messenger bag than bolting this meager milk crate to their Huffy.