Archive for December, 2007
It would be difficult to picture all the resources and steps involved in making a gore-tex jacket or a backpack, or the larger costs to the environment or humanity. Or if you’re even the one paying for the entire cost of production for the items you buy. Luckily, the people over at storyofstuff.com took the trouble to figure out where stuff comes from and where it goes, and who’s paying for it. Yeah, if you’re sitting there with a fancy new gift in hand, this video could cause a little bit of guilt, or disbelief. This is where we come in. One easy way to contribute to a sustainable system of stuff, is to keep the stuff that’s already made in play until it’s all used up.
What I mean by that is this: say you have a new tent in hand, and an old one in the garage. Say the old one is 5 years old and has been used 10 times. That old tent probably has another 50 or so uses left in it. If it sits in your garage for another 5 years it will be regarded as obsolete and nobody will want it. Right now there’s someone out there who is thinking “darn I didn’t get that tent I wanted for Christmas!” and is probably looking to buy one as soon as their bonus comes in.
Here is the crux move. Sell your old tent here on iGearList now while it’s still looking a snappy, and while people are shopping - and eliminate two things: the demand for a brand new tent to be manufactured, and a perfectly good old tent taking up space in the landfill.
That’s my two tents! (Ouch! Bad pun.)
- P
December 30th, 2007
Share on Facebook
Oooh! We are so fancy. We have a Facebook page now, and while we can’t have “friends” we can have “fans”. Right now we have 3 fans, but we’d like to 10,327 fans. I’m not sure exactly how to make fans in cyberspace but if you know how to become our fan, please do!
In the meantime, if you got some new gear over the holidays make some room for it by selling off your old gear! Just read the instructions, register and you’re on your way!
Hey - see you on Facebook!
- P
December 29th, 2007
What a pretty thing. A seriously GOOD travel mug.
- P
December 22nd, 2007
Today I whipped through Starbucks (where I am typically known as “Sally” - aren’t Starbucks names fun? What’s yours?) and got my coffee in a paper cup. Well, what’s up with THAT!? I have to listen to my inner critic on this one. I know what you’re thinking: “Starbucks! The evil corporate amoeba!” No, that’s not where I’m going with this one. Sorry, this problem is much bigger. But here it is: I’m a big girl (adult, anyways) and I should know better than to drink coffee out of paper cups! !!! !!!!
I thought about it a bunch and realized, welp, one major problem is that all my good travel mugs are not washed. Ergo, my new crusade. I think that if every person had say, 4 or 5 GOOD travel mugs, there would be few or no obstacles around folks taking travel mugs to their coffee shops.
Here is what I mean by GOOD:
- Fits in car cup holder
- Steel or aluminum interior lining
- No leaks when sipping!
- Easy to blow in and sip out of
- Easy to clean
- Highly durable - rugged, even
- Well insulated
- I like the ones that can press coffee, too.
So if you’re trippin’ on your holiday shopping, and you have no idea what to get for someone, get them a GOOD travel mug. (Can you tell which one I use?) Seriously, you probably secretly think “oh it’s such a banal and impersonal gift and they already have one” but - they could probably use another one and you have no idea the impact it could have on the environment over time. If everyone used durable cups for their coffee shop trips, we’d save stadiums upon stadiums full of methane producing paper waste (we’re talking billions and billions of cups), not to mention the lovables - trees.
And yeah I do write about coffee a lot! What else is there!!! Forgive me, this is the dead of winter. Oh, and please if you have any better ideas for my Starbucks name, please have at it - post to comments.
- P
December 21st, 2007
It’s officially the dead of winter. At least in my mind, it is. I think it’s because the weather is finally here on the west coast, and we’re getting that first cold hard rain from the north. It’s a demanding friend “sleep in! eat 4 pieces of toast! drink 8 cups of coffee! running? what? stay in and watch a movie!” I do things at this time of year that I wouldn’t normally do. I hope it’s like Las Vegas where anything I do in the dead of winter, stays in the dead of winter.
So you won’t tell anyone that I’ve been fantasizing about moving to Wyoming and raising a wild coyote in a log cabin. Or the next best thing, which is reading about it every day.
And I hope you won’t tell anyone that I’m hooooooked on freerice.com. And that I peaked at a score of 40, and I’m addicted enough to beating that score that I might just send like a kagillion pounds of rice to some deserving country, and sink it off the map.
Don’t tell anyone that I keep checking the crunchies to see if I’ve been nominated, or rather, if I’ve nominated myself properly. Because that’s a silly waste of time, especially since they haven’t posted any of the finalists, and nobody knows when they will. My website ain’t a technological marvel after all.
So, how is your winter going?
- P
December 18th, 2007
Good news! Literally, we now have good news on our news and jobs page. Not only that but we now have a super great jobs listing. We’ve recently teamed up with two amazing resources - PaddlingInstructor.com and OutdoorEd.com to supply new and improved RSS feeds to iGearList. All the more reason to bookmark that page and come back to it for the latest outdoor press releases and news, and to find out what the best guiding or instructing jobs are in your area.
The other good news is that, in our fledgling state, I’ve been notified that a sale was made off of our classifieds section. Yep, check this out… SOLD! Terrific news for iGearList - one of our first known sales from our classifieds section. Now that we know it works…g’head, post more ads!
Lastly, this being the height of the holiday season, I’d like to remind you that when you click through our Shop for New Gear page to make your purchases, commissions will be donated to the WildeBeat.
Happy, merry!
- P
December 15th, 2007
Do this folks. Vote for iGearList for one or more Crunchies. Just click on one of these badges and put iGearList.com in the little box, and press “confirm”. It’s as easy as that. Send to your friends, have them do it, too. Also, you can do this as much as once a day.
Go nuts:
This award probably screams “sue me for everything I own!” but really, bootstrapping is really a bold business model. You should reward this level of courage! And what about this:
True, there’s not that much user created content (i.e. classified ads) on iGearList yet, but I do get about 50 spam posts in my blog comments each day. That counts for something, right?
And lastly, if you look at Le Meur’s Top Ten Rules for Startup Success, I basically follow all of them! See? I’m such a bad-a**! That being said, you should also click on this badge:
OK, this is all kind of silly, I agree. But at the end of the day, it would be nice to enjoy a fancy (and free) awards ceremony dinner. Hilarious.
Thanks voters!!
-P
December 6th, 2007
There’s something so nice about September backpacking. I know I’m not the only one who is having delerious cubicle-induced granite fantasies.
- P
December 5th, 2007