Ultralight Travel System 4.1: Novelty is Dead
Everyone used to feel like a brilliant explorer or inventor before the web was devised as a way of crushing our egos. The Buddha is giggling somewhere in a cold server room full of humming, whirring bubble popping machines. There is a new way to innovate now: first, hatch a brilliant and unprecedented new plan or invention. Then, go find the best price and options on one of a thousand different versions of what you thought was your cool new design. I don’t even bother writing software anymore. I imagine what I want and then I go find a copy on a thirteen year old kid’s website and mod it.
So my amazing and daring new scheme for ultralight travel has apparently been kicked around for a while already.
The Extreme
These are the people who are playing like I am: lets see how hardcore we can be.
Neverending Voyage
Some dude named Eslevy
Karol Gajda Ridiculously Extraordinary
One Bag Manifesto
As We Travel They’d be lightweight without the heavy camera gear
Wilderness version (There has been a lot of work on wilderness ultralight travel, this is just one riff on it)
The Moderate
These are sites dedicated to sane, normal humans who might need to look respectable at some point in their travels.
We’re All One Big Brain!
But as I pointed out in my encouragement to blog, every contribution to the pool of experiences gives us all more options and data. The first few people who refuse to use shampoo are freaks, but after you can find hundreds of people telling their stories, it seems more realistic and the collective data points draw out a real path for less extreme humans. The kinks get worked out collectively and we all win!
The New System
I’m keeping this in mind as I develop the next version of my ultralight backpacking system. I’m trying to find light new ways to handle more cold, as I’m hoping to make it up to Korea on this next round and the winters in the southern Chinese city of Fuzhou were in the high 30s F (3 C). While not freezing, those temps are a whole other thing when there is no heating. Anywhere. And you have to sit in a classroom for hours on end without moving.
Gear Reviews
In the process of researching new gear, I found some decent reviews, but also a lot of useless complaints like, “This medium sized shirt fit horribly. It was a disaster. I’m 6’5″ tall and weigh 420 lbs…” I also found a lot of people listing their gear without talking about why they made certain choices and, more importantly, how did that work out? I’m going to make an effort to nerd out about the features of things I’m reviewing and talk about how I got to my final packing list, and then post an update after I’ve suffered with it for a while.
Coin Funnel
From reading all of these other sites I’ve also learned that, hey, I should be using affiliate links to gear so that if enough people try the things I like in the end, Amazon will sprinkle some coins on my head and I can buy a bowl of noodles on the road.
I’ve set up a scale. I have a spreadsheet. Let the reviewing begin.
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