Speaker 1: Get in touch with technology with text stuff from stuff
Speaker 1: works dot com. Say everyone, and welcome to tech stuff.
Speaker 1: I'm Jonathan Strickland and I'm Lauren, and today we have
Speaker 1: a listener request via Facebook. This is from Tony. Yes.
Speaker 1: He wrote in to say, would you please compare old
Speaker 1: tiny camping gear, more upstate camping gear, and then some
Speaker 1: of the leading edge ultra light stuff you know would
Speaker 1: stay with us charge your titaniums for inflatable kayaks. So
Speaker 1: some of those we are going to cover. In fact,
Speaker 1: the first one we will definitely cover. The other two
Speaker 1: will probably cover, and and maybe some other episode at
Speaker 1: some point, maybe we'll do a full episode on titanium.
Speaker 1: It should be interesting. But we we've got a whole
Speaker 1: thing about camping to talk about before we get into
Speaker 1: any of the gear. I'm gonna play the room a little.
Speaker 1: I want to find out what our personal um opinion
Speaker 1: is toward camping. Lauren. Are you are you someone who
Speaker 1: would go camping? Uh? No, No, I mean basically not. Well,
Speaker 1: it's okay. I've got some friends who are into camping.
Speaker 1: My roommates are very much into camping, and it has
Speaker 1: been suggested as an extracurricular activity. To me, and I'm
Speaker 1: not entirely against it. Uh. If I had a certain
Speaker 1: number of creature comforts, like I would want to actually
Speaker 1: be within easy distance of a shower, if I was
Speaker 1: going to be out there within a couple for for
Speaker 1: more than a couple of days, toilet would not be
Speaker 1: rowed upon. Really fond of bathrooms in general, I like them.
Speaker 1: I see where you're coming from, bog Obama on this.
Speaker 1: We are simpatico when it comes to this. I have
Speaker 1: camped in the past. Um, I have gone camping before,
Speaker 1: and I am also I think I've just reached a
Speaker 1: point where where the the joy of it is outweighed
Speaker 1: by the inconvenience and the uncomfortable factor. I don't do
Speaker 1: so well if I sleep on the ground these days,
Speaker 1: I don't move so well. I'm celebrating a birthday today
Speaker 1: as we're recording this podcast. At the age i'm at,
Speaker 1: I don't bounce back the way I used to. But hey,
Speaker 1: happy birthday, thank you, thank you. No I know you're
Speaker 1: not on Mike, but I'm gonna I'm gonna ask, are
Speaker 1: you are Do you enjoy going campinging? Noel says he
Speaker 1: has not been camping since cub Scouts. So yeah, we're, um,
Speaker 1: we're experts on the subject. Obviously he has stayed in
Speaker 1: a yurt. Uh, that's fantastic. I once helped put up
Speaker 1: a yurt, which, by the way, is quite the effort. Uh.
Speaker 1: I used to be part of the Society of Creative Anachronism,
Speaker 1: the sc there's yurts of plenty. But yeah, and generally
Speaker 1: don't really do well outside. I mean, yeah, we're we
Speaker 1: are creatures that prefer the air conditioning, the shelter from
Speaker 1: the sun. I'm kind of cave dwelling. I mean I'm
Speaker 1: even a little bit translucent like some of those like
Speaker 1: deep sea shrimp. Right. So yeah, so so, but we
Speaker 1: can appreciate why people would want to go camping. Yes,
Speaker 1: nature is beautiful and the idea of camping is something
Speaker 1: that really appeals to me. It's just the reality. And also,
Speaker 1: to be fair, we all are living in in Georgia,
Speaker 1: which tends to get very hot and humid in the summer.
Speaker 1: That's like your your prime camping season and it could
Speaker 1: be really hard to deal with. Yeah. But but anyway,
Speaker 1: that being said, we wanted to talk about camping, look
Speaker 1: at some of the gear and talk about even just
Speaker 1: the history of camping itself, because it's not that old
Speaker 1: of recreational activity. When you talk about something that's really widespread.
Speaker 1: I mean, there always have been adventurers and outdoorsmen and
Speaker 1: outdoors women if you prefer, who have love to experience
Speaker 1: nature in its most primitive forms. But you know, as
Speaker 1: as a recreational activity that was widespread, it's pretty new.
Speaker 1: Well sure, because people didn't really widely live in cities
Speaker 1: until the Industrial Revolution circle than nineteen twenties here in
Speaker 1: the United States, right, So, yeah, you've got all these
Speaker 1: people who are already living out out in rural areas.
Speaker 1: They that was kind of their every day experience already
Speaker 1: see the stars. Yeah, but once you had people moving
Speaker 1: on moss into the cities, you had a lot of
Speaker 1: folks say, you know, I kind of miss being able
Speaker 1: to commune with nature and to have that experience. And
Speaker 1: then once the automobile came along, this became an ability
Speaker 1: for people to travel great distances in a short amount
Speaker 1: of time and made it possible for them to do
Speaker 1: things like plan a trip for a weekend or a
Speaker 1: week So that's when we started seeing camping come into fashion.
Speaker 1: In fact, there were a couple of pretty famous folks
Speaker 1: who were you know, they were responsible for a lot
Speaker 1: of the technological development that we enjoy today, people like
Speaker 1: Henry Ford and Thomas Edison who reportedly very much enjoyed
Speaker 1: going camping. So you know, it does have it. It's
Speaker 1: connects into technology. I know a lot of people when
Speaker 1: they first hear this are going to say, what does
Speaker 1: camping have to do with tech? Well, part of it
Speaker 1: is that the industry exists because of technology, right, And
Speaker 1: another bit of technology that has led to camping being
Speaker 1: widespread is the highway system. That's true, once the interstates
Speaker 1: were established, and that really is part of tech. It
Speaker 1: took a lot of technology just to make that happen.
Speaker 1: But once that was established, it meant that people could
Speaker 1: get to really remote places, including places like national parks
Speaker 1: where historic landmarks are or natural landmarks were. And then
Speaker 1: you started having these parks established official campgrounds so people
Speaker 1: could come out and enjoy that that park. So we
Speaker 1: really saw it take off in the nineteen fifties was
Speaker 1: like a camping moon where it went bonkers. And now
Speaker 1: these days, around forty seven million people in the United
Speaker 1: States go camping every year. The rest of us know better,
Speaker 1: is what I put in my notes. Um, yeah, I said,
Speaker 1: my ideal camping situation is a hotel room with room service.
Speaker 1: That's my favorite kind of camp. My ideal camping situation
Speaker 1: is not camping, because that's really annoying in first person
Speaker 1: shooters ate strategy. All right, So we wanted to start
Speaker 1: off by talking about tents. Um. You know, it's one
Speaker 1: of those things that is a basic need in camping.
Speaker 1: You need something to help keep the elements off of
Speaker 1: you too, maybe protect you either from anything from rain
Speaker 1: and storms to just the bugs in the area, that
Speaker 1: kind of thing. And basically, you know, they haven't changed
Speaker 1: a whole lot since we started having a whole industry.
Speaker 1: I mean, anything with a basic pole structure and some
Speaker 1: kind of fabric to be stretched over that structure, and
Speaker 1: maybe some lines that secure the poles to the ground
Speaker 1: so that it gives it that stability, some kind of
Speaker 1: spike to help secure it exactly. Yeah, so we know
Speaker 1: these are basically it. Yeah, you're basic dome tense, you're
Speaker 1: a frame. Walled tents. The walled tents, by the way,
Speaker 1: look pretty much like a house, but intent to form
Speaker 1: these are all you know, basics, and you have those
Speaker 1: polls to give the rigidity and the lines to provide
Speaker 1: the stability. But we have actually seen some development intent
Speaker 1: technology over the past to really advance things. One of
Speaker 1: them is just making them lighter. Yeah. Materials science is
Speaker 1: a huge part of the technology that we're going to
Speaker 1: be talking about today, right, And if you are someone
Speaker 1: who likes to go camping, particularly someone who wants to
Speaker 1: go hiking a good distance and then set up a camp,
Speaker 1: having your gear not way too much is a huge issue.
Speaker 1: I mean, you don't sure or being able to replace
Speaker 1: the weight that you would have had to devote to
Speaker 1: a tent with tasty snacks. Yes, because you know, some
Speaker 1: of us are not so uh so proficient at gathering
Speaker 1: food in the wild or are unwilling to eat their
Speaker 1: weight in m r e s. I have yet to
Speaker 1: find fruit roll ups growing just freely, so I have
Speaker 1: to carry them with me. Uh these are important important
Speaker 1: things in my mind. So yeah, this idea of developing
Speaker 1: lighter material there's um uh kind of a trademarked material
Speaker 1: right called cuber cuban sorry cuban fiber ceeu be eaten
Speaker 1: nut cuban as in cuban peat Right. It's the brand
Speaker 1: name of this type of non woven fabric, meaning that
Speaker 1: the stuff is made from layers of plastic filaments that
Speaker 1: are bonded together and then coded. It can be really
Speaker 1: light and thin and strong, especially compared with traditional woven
Speaker 1: fabrics or even lightweight plastic ones like say nylon or polys. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and then you can also find ultra light tents that
Speaker 1: use carbon fiber for the polls that you put through it.
Speaker 1: So anyone who listened to our carbon Fiber podcast, you know,
Speaker 1: one of the things about carbon fiber reinforced material is
Speaker 1: that it's really really light. So again you cut down
Speaker 1: on that weight. You can find some of these two
Speaker 1: person tents that weigh less than two pounds total with
Speaker 1: the poles included. Yeah, I mean this is this is
Speaker 1: pretty light when you think of this is where I'm
Speaker 1: going to be sleeping tonight. Now. Granted, they also tend
Speaker 1: to be rather expensive, the ones that are male this
Speaker 1: material anyway, Like the ones I was looking at they
Speaker 1: were between fifteen hundred and two thousand dollars. That's a
Speaker 1: lot of money for a two person tenth. I mean,
Speaker 1: there's some serious camping hobbyists out there. Sure, Yeah, there's
Speaker 1: some who who have the money to spend on their
Speaker 1: hobby like that. There are other ultra lightweight tents that
Speaker 1: are not nearly that expensive. Most of them are using
Speaker 1: other types of material, or they might be slightly smaller,
Speaker 1: like you might be able to fit two people in it,
Speaker 1: but you better be really good friends because you're gonna
Speaker 1: be shoulder to shoulder inside that tent, particularly if you're
Speaker 1: built like I am. But at any rate, uh, it's
Speaker 1: it's you know. That's one of the things we looked
Speaker 1: at was just the idea of creating material science that
Speaker 1: will allow you to carry more stuff. Now, that's not
Speaker 1: the only kind of advanced tent we looked at. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the next one on our list is inflatable tents. And
Speaker 1: to me, this sounds like you're bringing a bouncy house
Speaker 1: out into nature. If only that were the case. I
Speaker 1: can just imagine a bear doing somersaults in the air,
Speaker 1: being super happy. It's so cute, except for the part
Speaker 1: where bears are jerks. Bears can be jerks, yes, um,
Speaker 1: this is true, but to be fair, humans could be
Speaker 1: pretty big jerks. But no that we don't eat our
Speaker 1: prey from the feet first and then the meat stays fresh. No, no, uh,
Speaker 1: we we find far more insidious ways. But at any rate, uh.
Speaker 1: The inflatable tents in this case are not like big
Speaker 1: domes that you just you know, you pull a cord
Speaker 1: and then suddenly it goes and then you've got an iglue.
Speaker 1: It's not like that. Instead, it's a a tent that
Speaker 1: has a frame, a grid like structure that is made
Speaker 1: up of inflated inflatable tubes. You use a pump, usually
Speaker 1: a hand pump or foot pump to pump it up,
Speaker 1: and then you've got the Once you've got the ram
Speaker 1: pumped up, it holds up the rest of the tent.
Speaker 1: So so those inflatable tubes take the take the role
Speaker 1: of the poles that you would usually use in a
Speaker 1: normal tent. Now, the one I was looking at specifically
Speaker 1: was one called the Cave, which is designed by him Planet.
Speaker 1: They have since come out with a newer version called
Speaker 1: the Wedge uh, and these are pretty cool. They're supposedly
Speaker 1: tested to withstand winds of up to seventy five miles
Speaker 1: per hour, which is pretty gusty. I imagine they also
Speaker 1: need to be secured to the ground or else they
Speaker 1: go flying. I would think so it could be well,
Speaker 1: the tent is safe, but it's also four miles away
Speaker 1: from where we put it. Um, that would be the problem.
Speaker 1: Super Neat the other one I liked a lot, whereas
Speaker 1: one called the cocoon tree tent. To get a chance
Speaker 1: to see this, Yeah, Yeah, there's there's a couple that
Speaker 1: we're going to talk about here that are meant to
Speaker 1: keep you up off of the ground while you're sleeping,
Speaker 1: which I'm in favor of. If anyone has ever had
Speaker 1: to sleep on the ground, even using like a foam
Speaker 1: pad between you and the ground, not pleasant. Yeah, these
Speaker 1: these things are sort of like an an advanced protective hammock. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you can think of it as the cocoon tree. One
Speaker 1: looks like a little globe a sphere, and it has
Speaker 1: twelve points around the circumference of the sphere, like you know,
Speaker 1: if you were to be able to divide it directly
Speaker 1: in half right around that line. Uh, those twelve points
Speaker 1: are where you can secure it to various anchor points,
Speaker 1: usually trees. So six of those anchor points would give
Speaker 1: it the suspension, as in it would actually hold it
Speaker 1: above the ground. The other six are what allow it
Speaker 1: to have some lateral stability, meaning it's not gonna flippy
Speaker 1: floppy left or right, because obviously when you get in
Speaker 1: and out, you don't want it to suddenly tilt and
Speaker 1: then everything comes tumbling. Yeah. Yeah, So you want to
Speaker 1: connect it both to the trees and to the ground below. Well,
Speaker 1: it's mostly to the trees, but it's it's to the
Speaker 1: trees in different points so that you just kind of
Speaker 1: it's kind of like a spider web in that sense.
Speaker 1: And you can also get in fact a net that
Speaker 1: goes under it in case you are a little worried
Speaker 1: about your secure abilities. Um, and you don't actually have
Speaker 1: to have it suspended. I have seen other versions where
Speaker 1: you could have a little tripod legs that would hold
Speaker 1: it above the ground because you can't set it directly
Speaker 1: on the ground or would start rolling and that could
Speaker 1: be unfortant. Like if you are a restless sleeper and
Speaker 1: you toss in turn a lot, you could end up
Speaker 1: in another state. Yeah, that's a hamster ball situation. I mean,
Speaker 1: it has it has its charms, but probably not great
Speaker 1: for camping. But now this thing is really cool. If
Speaker 1: you guys haven't seen it, look up cocoon tree tent.
Speaker 1: It looks really neat. Uh, it's not light. It weighs
Speaker 1: sixty ms, which is about a hundred thirty two pounds,
Speaker 1: so it's really heavy. But it's also supposed to be
Speaker 1: really sturdy. It's supposedly can support up to two tons.
Speaker 1: The frame can not the fabric obviously, that would be different.
Speaker 1: So the frame itself is built so and it's made
Speaker 1: out of aluminum, so it's you know, super sturdy stuff.
Speaker 1: And this is really meant more to put into a location,
Speaker 1: secure it in a location, and then kind of leave
Speaker 1: it there for a while, like you can use it
Speaker 1: over and over and over again over the course of
Speaker 1: a few months before you take it down. All Right,
Speaker 1: you probably wouldn't want to go to the trouble of
Speaker 1: setting something this sturdy up for a weekend trip. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it would be. It would be carrying a lot of weight,
Speaker 1: and I'm sure it takes a long time to set up.
Speaker 1: I mean, if you're if you're securing this well above
Speaker 1: the ground so that you have kind of like this
Speaker 1: canopy view around you, then that means you have to
Speaker 1: climb that far up each anchor point before you could
Speaker 1: even start using this. And so I imagine that this
Speaker 1: is this is more of a long term kind of project.
Speaker 1: The tent is three meters in diameter, which is just
Speaker 1: under ten feet, and you can also, according to the website,
Speaker 1: outfit it with cooling or heating elements for climate control
Speaker 1: for extreme camping conditions. Uh, as you might imagine. This
Speaker 1: is the sort of tent that people who have quite
Speaker 1: a bit of money to spare would go into. This
Speaker 1: is not something that's going to be cheap. But I
Speaker 1: love the design of it just because it was really
Speaker 1: kind of unusual and that's why it appealed to me.
Speaker 1: And we'll try and share a link to the website
Speaker 1: when this podcast goes live, so you guys can take
Speaker 1: a look if you haven't looked at it already. But yeah,
Speaker 1: pretty deep stuff. Then if you wanted to spend slightly
Speaker 1: less money, have a little have a different way of
Speaker 1: having kind of like a hammock style tent, there's another
Speaker 1: company called Tent Styles Tree Tents, Tent Style that's cute anyway, there,
Speaker 1: I don't think you're allowed to disapprove of other people's putts.
Speaker 1: That's I just said. I didn't make it. Um, Yeah, no,
Speaker 1: it's it's a slightly less complicated these they look to
Speaker 1: me like they would anchor at three points, so the
Speaker 1: base looks more or less sort of triangular. And and
Speaker 1: it makes sense because they actually the company says that
Speaker 1: if you buy one of their tents, they'll go up
Speaker 1: and plant three trees. Yeah, so that would that would
Speaker 1: to me, that would correspond to the three anchor points
Speaker 1: that you would need. But same sort of thing. Use
Speaker 1: use chords to anchor each point of the tent to
Speaker 1: a different tree. You keep it nice and tents and
Speaker 1: then you can get in and out the tent either
Speaker 1: through a front door or there's actually a hatch like
Speaker 1: panel that you can open up from the bottom, which
Speaker 1: obviously you want to secure as much as possible before
Speaker 1: we go to sleep. You might wake up during a
Speaker 1: twelve foot fall to the ground or something. But um,
Speaker 1: this one is particularly good for people who want to
Speaker 1: do star gazing or are able to secure it at
Speaker 1: some really picturesque spot because instead of it being like
Speaker 1: a canvas or or opaque uh canopy, it's mesh so
Speaker 1: it's meant for you to have a view of the outdoors.
Speaker 1: Also means that don't be too picky about privacy issues well,
Speaker 1: and and also probably that you want to go during
Speaker 1: good weather. Yes, yeah, if it's raining, you're probably gonna
Speaker 1: have a pretty miserable time of it. But it was
Speaker 1: another one of those that I thought was pretty cool.
Speaker 1: There are a couple of different models that they have available,
Speaker 1: and they are less expensive than the Cocoon Tree um
Speaker 1: camping tents and also easier to set up. You know,
Speaker 1: I'm sure it takes two or three people to put
Speaker 1: one of these up efficiently, but it's not as it's
Speaker 1: not as heavy or bulky as the Cocoon Tree version.
Speaker 1: But what if you what if you'd like me, Lauren,
Speaker 1: What if you are someone who cannot survive for more
Speaker 1: than you know, five or six hours at most on
Speaker 1: a good day without checking one of my numerous mobile devices. Well,
Speaker 1: this is getting much easier to do out in the wilds.
Speaker 1: And one of those reasons is solar powered device chargers,
Speaker 1: Like including your tent. Your tent can be solar powered. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you can get a solar powered tent now. Grant the
Speaker 1: tent itself is not necessarily doing anything with that solar power.
Speaker 1: It may just have a battery pack that allows you
Speaker 1: to charge your devices from the energy that's collected through
Speaker 1: the solar panels. So yeah, there are tents out there
Speaker 1: right now that you can go out and buy. They
Speaker 1: have solar panels incorporated into them in some way. There
Speaker 1: are others that are supposed to be hitting the market
Speaker 1: literally any day now, Like there was one that I
Speaker 1: saw that had to originally been scheduled to to come
Speaker 1: out on the market spring two thousand and fourteen, but
Speaker 1: as far as I can tell, it hasn't actually come
Speaker 1: out yet. Then there are some some concepts they're not
Speaker 1: actually products that you can buy. The Orange Solar tent
Speaker 1: is the one that I saw pop up over and over.
Speaker 1: It was a really cool looking design. I had very
Speaker 1: swoopy kind of lines to it, so it looked like,
Speaker 1: you know, this is the tune of the future. See
Speaker 1: it has swoopy lines. And also the canopy it had
Speaker 1: over the top of the tent, like it had a
Speaker 1: fabric canopy, and then on top of that it had
Speaker 1: these these panels that had the solar panels on these
Speaker 1: like it made it look like it was some sort
Speaker 1: of a fit or or arthur pod of some sort
Speaker 1: of like a carapace, a shell in other words. So
Speaker 1: it was really neat looking and it had you know,
Speaker 1: lights that would light up at night and this, but
Speaker 1: this was all artists rendering and it was essentially saying
Speaker 1: this is what you could do if you were to
Speaker 1: build this thing. And they even had like a panel
Speaker 1: that was on the side of the tent the inside
Speaker 1: of the town it where you could put a your
Speaker 1: mobile devices to charge, and it even had a little
Speaker 1: like touch screen interface of some sort, so really kind
Speaker 1: of cool. But again it was all a concept per
Speaker 1: type currently non existent. Yeah, the stuff that does exist
Speaker 1: a lot more modest, right, We're talking about solar panels
Speaker 1: that can, after several hours of being exposed to a
Speaker 1: good amount of sunlight, can charge a simple battery pack
Speaker 1: which then could charge your electronics. So if you're going
Speaker 1: to be setting up your tent in a sunny area,
Speaker 1: this is going to be pretty useful. It's provide you
Speaker 1: the maximum amount of surface coverage probably of any of
Speaker 1: your other gear to provide solar Yeah, because you're not
Speaker 1: like things like if you have and we'll talk about
Speaker 1: in some other you know, gadgets that fall into the
Speaker 1: same kind of category. But if you have other gear
Speaker 1: that's maybe portable that has solar panels incorporated into them.
Speaker 1: You may or may not be leaving it out all
Speaker 1: the time, right you may you may need it for
Speaker 1: something else, whereas your tent kind of stays there once
Speaker 1: you pitch it. Sure, so that makes it, you know, attractive. However,
Speaker 1: it also means that you have to have that tent
Speaker 1: in that sunny area. If you have it in a
Speaker 1: shady area, you're not going to get as much sunlight. Um.
Speaker 1: And if you do have it in a sunny area,
Speaker 1: if you live someplace like we do, you have to
Speaker 1: be prepared for that tent to be rather toasty when
Speaker 1: you're ready to climb in at the end of the day,
Speaker 1: which could be perfectly nice in colder colder, Yeah, I
Speaker 1: think you could. One thing I would I mean, if
Speaker 1: I were designing one of these solar powered tents, one
Speaker 1: of the things I would design is a very simple
Speaker 1: low power fan that could actually vent hot air out
Speaker 1: of the tent while the solar panel is active, so
Speaker 1: some of the electricity can go to charging a battery pack,
Speaker 1: some of it goes to running this little fan. It's
Speaker 1: kind of like I'm sure you've seen them for cars,
Speaker 1: where you can have these little solar panel things where
Speaker 1: it runs the little fan to blow. In fact, I
Speaker 1: think we talked about a car that does this, so
Speaker 1: possibly on forward thinking, it might be we do so
Speaker 1: many shows now, but yes, we have definitely talked about
Speaker 1: a car that has a similar concept to At any rate,
Speaker 1: let's talk a little bit more about other devices that
Speaker 1: campers use in order to regulate body temperature, okay, or
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, temperature in general, but mostly body temperature.
Speaker 1: So I'm assuming we're moving away from tents and into
Speaker 1: the realm of the sleeping bag. Yes, yeah, So I
Speaker 1: have um mixed emotions when I think back to sleeping
Speaker 1: bags because I just think of the ones that I
Speaker 1: had as a kid that were probably a little uh
Speaker 1: they were probably rated for a temperature lower than what
Speaker 1: Georgia has ever seen in the history of ever um.
Speaker 1: Or maybe it's just because I would always go camping
Speaker 1: and like the spring and summer. Oh, the sleeping bags
Speaker 1: are rated for specific temperatures, and they use they use
Speaker 1: a standard. An interesting center because here's the thing. Temperature
Speaker 1: when it comes to what's comfortable for a person is
Speaker 1: subjective by definition, right, sure, So what's comfortable for Lauren
Speaker 1: may not be comfortable for me, and vice versa. So
Speaker 1: what kind of standard do they use. It's called the
Speaker 1: European norm apparently, and essentially what this is based off
Speaker 1: of is kind of a surveyed average of temperatures and saying,
Speaker 1: all right, technically, if you want to get super general
Speaker 1: and keep in minds in generalization, women get colder faster
Speaker 1: than men do, like at a at a higher temperature.
Speaker 1: So you can have the same temperature and a man
Speaker 1: and woman are both in that temperature, and the woman
Speaker 1: is going to feel colder, particularly at night when it's
Speaker 1: time to go to sleep, uh, than a man would.
Speaker 1: So the way they do their standards is they get
Speaker 1: a sleeping bag and they essentially tested by saying, all right,
Speaker 1: what temperature, what's the lowest temperature we can get at
Speaker 1: where a woman is going to feel comfortable sleeping in
Speaker 1: that temperature And they end up calling that the comfort level.
Speaker 1: So then they say, all right, well, what's the lowest
Speaker 1: temperature we can we can say that where a man
Speaker 1: will be comfortable inside this uh sleeping bag, and that
Speaker 1: one is called the lower limit rating. So you usually
Speaker 1: see both ratings on a sleeping bag. So one, the
Speaker 1: comfort level is all right, well, if it's you know,
Speaker 1: thirty five degrees is the comfort level. Then it could
Speaker 1: get down to thirty five degrees and your average woman
Speaker 1: is going to be fine sleeping in the sleeping bag.
Speaker 1: At the lower level is nineteen degrees, then it says
Speaker 1: your average man is still going to be fine all
Speaker 1: the way down to nineteen a woman maybe feeling very
Speaker 1: uncomfortable or at least a little chilly between those two temperatures.
Speaker 1: But then you also have was called the extreme rating,
Speaker 1: and the extreme rating that's the temperature below which you
Speaker 1: are in serious danger, even if you are inside the
Speaker 1: sleeping bag. Really, it's based upon the lowest temperature a
Speaker 1: woman can endure while inside that sleeping bag before saying
Speaker 1: I'm getting a hotel room call me when this trip
Speaker 1: is over, or getting hypothermia. That would also be another case. Yes,
Speaker 1: So yeah, it's interesting that even though it's a quote
Speaker 1: unquote standard, it's still obviously based on subjectivity. There's not
Speaker 1: like this hard and fast rule of saying, at this
Speaker 1: temperature you're going to be absolutely comfortable. It's more like
Speaker 1: it's more what they call guidelines if you want to
Speaker 1: be all Barbosa about it, but uh, that is, if
Speaker 1: you ever see that a sleeping bag is rated for
Speaker 1: one of these temperatures. That's usually what it means. Most
Speaker 1: of them are going by this standard. Some of them
Speaker 1: may be going by their own kind of you know,
Speaker 1: testing facility and surveys, but it's still basically the same
Speaker 1: thing saying, how what temperature do people still feel comfortable
Speaker 1: while in this sleeping bag. Um. And so you also
Speaker 1: find sleeping bags that are meant for different types of
Speaker 1: of environments. Like there's some that are the higher temperature ones,
Speaker 1: which is usually thirty five degrees fahrenheit or or higher,
Speaker 1: and that would be for things like people who want
Speaker 1: to go camping in the spring and summer months. Then
Speaker 1: you might have the multi purpose sleeping bags that are
Speaker 1: good for between maybe like ten degrees fahrenheit thirty five
Speaker 1: degrees fahrenheit, and that's meant to be you know, a
Speaker 1: little more versatile so that you can camp throughout the year.
Speaker 1: And then you have the cold weather sleeping bags, which
Speaker 1: are usually something between like minus ten degrees fahrenheit to
Speaker 1: ten degrees fahrenheit UM, and that's meant for it. You know,
Speaker 1: if you happen to be camping like in Minnesota in
Speaker 1: the winter. You know, if you're crazy. Um, some of
Speaker 1: you may be camping in Minnesota in the winter. I
Speaker 1: don't really think you're crazy. I would be crazy to
Speaker 1: do it. But anyway, those are your basic rules more
Speaker 1: or less, so if you're ever looking for them, that's
Speaker 1: what you want to look for. And all of these
Speaker 1: temperature ratings have to do with the well again, with
Speaker 1: material signs, with what the shell is made of and
Speaker 1: what the filling is made of. Traditionally it was down
Speaker 1: of various kinds, duck and goose duck and goose feathers,
Speaker 1: and these days a lot of it is plastics. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you get a lot of synthetics, and you get a
Speaker 1: lot of um water resistant or water repellent down, so
Speaker 1: regular down not necessarily water repellent. And that's well. It's
Speaker 1: it's really warm, but it absorbs water like holy woe,
Speaker 1: which means that if you're in a cold situation and
Speaker 1: your down sleeping bag gets wet, it can become very
Speaker 1: dangerous very quickly, because it might actually be sapping heat
Speaker 1: away from your body, like you would be worse off
Speaker 1: in it than you would be outside of it. And
Speaker 1: some synthetics are the same way. That's why the water
Speaker 1: repellent down material has been developed and UH and all
Speaker 1: of these are called PHIL in the industry. So if
Speaker 1: you ever see a PHIL power rating on a sleeping bag,
Speaker 1: what that's telling you is essentially how effective the installation
Speaker 1: is at capturing heat. And the way they determine this,
Speaker 1: it's kind of cool. It's called loft, I believe. But
Speaker 1: the way they determine is they say how much space
Speaker 1: would one ounce of this installation take? So if we
Speaker 1: if we get an ounce of it and we just
Speaker 1: let it because it's normal volume, how many cubic inches
Speaker 1: does that take up? And the more space it takes up,
Speaker 1: the more efficient UH insulator it is. And the lighter
Speaker 1: your your sleeping bag is gonna because it doesn't need
Speaker 1: as much material to fill it out, all right, So
Speaker 1: the higher the number is, the better off you are.
Speaker 1: So you might see film power numbers and right well,
Speaker 1: and the lighter and the lighter the sleeping bag will be.
Speaker 1: So a film power number of six hundred is gonna
Speaker 1: be uh that that sleeping bag is gonna be heavier
Speaker 1: than one that's rated at seven, which is gonna be
Speaker 1: heavier than seven fifty or a hander. Assuming that you're
Speaker 1: talking about two sleeping bags that have the same type
Speaker 1: of film material in them, because obviously different materials are
Speaker 1: going to weigh different amounts. But yeah, you want to
Speaker 1: have the higher umber for it to be lighter. And
Speaker 1: you know, these can be rated for different temperature ranges
Speaker 1: as well. But that's your general rule about sleeping bags.
Speaker 1: So most of the time when you're hearing about high
Speaker 1: tech sleeping bags, they're usually talking about whatever the insulation
Speaker 1: material is and whatever the exterior material is, and whether
Speaker 1: or not it's water repellent. How good it is that
Speaker 1: retaining heat. I mean, the whole secret here is that
Speaker 1: you want to separate the heat from the inside of
Speaker 1: the sleeping bag from the outer environment. You don't want
Speaker 1: that heat to be leached away. So that's what most
Speaker 1: of the designs of sleeping bags are all meant to prevent.
Speaker 1: It's really basic tech, but it's also really important tech. Alright,
Speaker 1: what about backpacks, you know, those things that you carry
Speaker 1: all your other stuff in. You want them to be
Speaker 1: a lightweight. I guess, um it could be cool if
Speaker 1: they maybe had some solar panels on them, because those
Speaker 1: if you're hiking in the sun. Yeah. I actually used
Speaker 1: to have a backpack the head of solar panel in it.
Speaker 1: It was not a camping backpack. The one downside to
Speaker 1: having a solar panel in your backpack is that it
Speaker 1: does take up space because that solar panel, I mean,
Speaker 1: obviously it needs to be connected to something or else
Speaker 1: that electricity is not doing any good. Usually that's a
Speaker 1: battery pack, which is one bulky and too heavy her.
Speaker 1: So there is a bit of a you know, that's
Speaker 1: something you gotta you gotta weigh, literally, you need to
Speaker 1: weigh the importance of that element and whether or not,
Speaker 1: you know, it's really key for you to bring it along. Sure,
Speaker 1: but you know, backpacks are yet again one of those
Speaker 1: material science related things that improvements in the fabric and
Speaker 1: the structure that these guys has let them get lighter
Speaker 1: over the years. Right again, really important when you're hiking.
Speaker 1: So now we're going to talk about the stuff what
Speaker 1: you put into said backpack, Like we wanted to take
Speaker 1: a look at some of the incredible gadgets that you
Speaker 1: could carry with you. And because i mean, you know
Speaker 1: old simately, when you get down to it, if you're
Speaker 1: really roughing it, you essentially need a place to sleep,
Speaker 1: a thing to sleep in to keep you warm at night,
Speaker 1: and maybe some stuff to help you make a fire. Uh.
Speaker 1: For our friends who want to know how to make
Speaker 1: a fire, we have a treat for you, but that's
Speaker 1: going to be another podcast. So one of the things
Speaker 1: we wanted to look at was or what are some
Speaker 1: of the cool gadgets that are available today that can
Speaker 1: make camping a lot more comfortable? Yeah, maybe more convenient
Speaker 1: for those of us who just can't let go of
Speaker 1: our electronic society. And I am mainly talking about myself here,
Speaker 1: And the first one I wanted to talk about is
Speaker 1: one that is so cool that I'm tempted to buy one,
Speaker 1: even though I don't think I will ever willingly go
Speaker 1: camping ever again. And it's a camp stove, specifically the
Speaker 1: one I was looking at, and there are different ones,
Speaker 1: but the one that gets repeated multiple times throughout the
Speaker 1: internet is the bio light uh camp stove, And the
Speaker 1: bio light camp stove is cool. It think of it
Speaker 1: as a camp stove where you can you twigs in it,
Speaker 1: and then you light a fire and you use those
Speaker 1: twigs to help heat the stove and then you can
Speaker 1: cook things on top of the stove. You can get
Speaker 1: one that has a grill surface and actually grill on
Speaker 1: the very top of it, So it sounds like a
Speaker 1: pretty basic portable grill, except that it also happens to
Speaker 1: have a fan powered generator attached to it, so that
Speaker 1: the heat from the fire will turn the fan, which
Speaker 1: will then generate electricity, allowing you to charge electronics on
Speaker 1: your through your stove. I mean not on your stove.
Speaker 1: You wouldn't melt that. That's a terrible idea that you
Speaker 1: can connect a USB cord to this stoves power outlet
Speaker 1: and actually charge your your electronics while you cook. And
Speaker 1: it takes about four and a half minutes from what
Speaker 1: I read to boil a pot of water, and you
Speaker 1: get about maybe twenty minutes at charging in a typical
Speaker 1: cooking scenario. So it's not like you get it's not
Speaker 1: like you're gonna reach out your entire you know, phone,
Speaker 1: but it will extend your battery going a little longer.
Speaker 1: And you know, if you use if you're supplementing that
Speaker 1: with other means to keep your stuff, uh supplied with
Speaker 1: a charge and every little bit helps, right. Um. I
Speaker 1: wanted to talk for a minute about handwarmers, which are
Speaker 1: really more chemical tech than straight gadgetry tech, but I
Speaker 1: think that they're really cool. So you've got both single
Speaker 1: use and rechargeable or multi use handwarmers. And the single
Speaker 1: use ones are just these little pouches that contain iron, powder, water,
Speaker 1: and salt, which together will react with oxygen when the
Speaker 1: packet is exposed to air. It's an exothermic reaction, which
Speaker 1: means that it creates heat and kind of as a
Speaker 1: byproduct in this case rust iron oxide, right. And they
Speaker 1: usually also contain an absorbent or absorbent material to to
Speaker 1: hold onto the water until it's needed for the reaction,
Speaker 1: and also activated carbon to help disperse the heat. So
Speaker 1: those are the single use ones once you know, once
Speaker 1: they they warm up pretty well, but once they're done,
Speaker 1: they're done forever. You gotta toss it. You can't recharge
Speaker 1: that in any way. You cannot know. The multiese ones
Speaker 1: though they're really cool. Wait wait, if you have a handwarmer,
Speaker 1: how can it be cool, Lauren? That sounds like it
Speaker 1: doesn't work at all. So they're these sealed pouches of
Speaker 1: supersaturated saline solutions, usually sodium acetate and water is the
Speaker 1: solution that they're made of. And this stuff is really stable.
Speaker 1: It's really happy to exist as a liquid way below
Speaker 1: it's freezing point and or its crystallization point, because it
Speaker 1: does that thing um that crystallization or freezing point happens
Speaker 1: to be a hundred and thirty degrees fahrenheit or fifty
Speaker 1: four degrees celsius, which you know is way above room temperature. Yes,
Speaker 1: that's that's quite warm. That's significantly about it. Right, So
Speaker 1: it's happy hanging out as a liquid at room temperature.
Speaker 1: But this pouch that contains it also contains this little
Speaker 1: disclike gidget that secrets away a couple of crystals of
Speaker 1: sodium acetate from the rest of the liquid. And when
Speaker 1: you manipulate that disk by kind of popping it, the
Speaker 1: crystals hit the liquid and seed this really quick crystallization process. Now,
Speaker 1: since a solid a k a. The crystal, the frozen
Speaker 1: version of this stuff is a lower energy state than
Speaker 1: a liquid, that energy of it going from a liquid
Speaker 1: to a solid very quickly has to go somewhere and
Speaker 1: it's released as heat. Right Because as we know, you
Speaker 1: can't create or destroy energy, but you can convert it
Speaker 1: from one form to another, right, and then you can
Speaker 1: recharge this kind of pack by boiling it in water
Speaker 1: for for maybe ten minutes. You have to melt all
Speaker 1: of the crystals and a couple of seed crystals will
Speaker 1: stay in the disk, and then you can so you
Speaker 1: can just keep using it until there are no more
Speaker 1: seed crystals left in that disk, and then you might
Speaker 1: have to get a new one. You can you can
Speaker 1: use it until you basically break the bag. Got it.
Speaker 1: You will never run out of seed crystals because the
Speaker 1: way that the disk is formed, it will it will
Speaker 1: just kind of hide a couple when the rest of
Speaker 1: it gets That's really cool. Wow, I never now I've
Speaker 1: fallen into the whole handwarmer cool problem. So, speaking of water,
Speaker 1: water filters obviously very important if you're going to be
Speaker 1: comping someplace you want to you want to clean source
Speaker 1: of water, both for drinking and for cooking with, and
Speaker 1: so water filters and purifiers, I mean, there are a
Speaker 1: ton of them out there. Some of them are very simple.
Speaker 1: They might use you know, essentially carbon to like a
Speaker 1: charcoal type filter for you to filter water through. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you might just fill it up and it takes like
Speaker 1: a minute for it to filter through and then you
Speaker 1: get filtered water on the other end. Some of them
Speaker 1: are more active than that. They don't just have a
Speaker 1: passive system that water flows through. For instance, I've seen
Speaker 1: a few that end up using a UV purification lights,
Speaker 1: so ultra violet light, and that's because ultra violet radiation
Speaker 1: can kill microbial, nasty stuff. And the one I saw specifically,
Speaker 1: you would turn the lamp on and then agitate the water,
Speaker 1: meaning you shake it for about a minute, and then
Speaker 1: that ultra violet light should pretty much kill off anything
Speaker 1: that happens to being water. You first would filter the
Speaker 1: water before you would pour it into the bottle, because
Speaker 1: you know, you want to get rid of anything macro first,
Speaker 1: like you know, maybe I don't want to put a
Speaker 1: fish in here or something crawdaddy until I grew up
Speaker 1: in the South, uh. And then you use the UV
Speaker 1: to get rid of all the little microbial stuff that's
Speaker 1: pretty neat. And in fact, that's one of those that
Speaker 1: I looked at a lot of websites that had lists
Speaker 1: of gadgets that you would want to take with you
Speaker 1: on camping trips, like the high tech stuff, and that
Speaker 1: was one of the ones that popped up over and
Speaker 1: over again, presumably uh, written by people who actually go
Speaker 1: camping as opposed to myself. Well, clean water is really good.
Speaker 1: You know. Another kind of low tech way of doing
Speaker 1: it is you can always boil your water for a
Speaker 1: good long time. Might not necessarily taste great, but at
Speaker 1: least you've killed off anything that would potentially do you harm.
Speaker 1: So but yeah, that's always also a very important thing
Speaker 1: to keep in mind. If you don't have one of
Speaker 1: these filter things handy, you still want to take precaution obviously,
Speaker 1: but or just dunking your head in the nearest water
Speaker 1: source and drinking deep uh or deeply, I should say.
Speaker 1: Then we have solar powered charging stations in general. There
Speaker 1: are a lot that are, you know, handheld. There's some
Speaker 1: that you end up fanning out, and I've seen one
Speaker 1: that looks like a like a large cell phone and
Speaker 1: then it ends up having this sort of three panel
Speaker 1: pedal thing where you just fold the little bits out yep,
Speaker 1: and then you just put it on some some surface
Speaker 1: that is exposed to sunlight and you let it charge.
Speaker 1: Most of them have battery packs, so you're not charging
Speaker 1: directly from solar panel to your device you or or
Speaker 1: you could, but you also can charge the onboard battery
Speaker 1: to save it for later. There's also the good old
Speaker 1: classic hand crank yep, man, I've got one of those, actually, yep,
Speaker 1: I have one of those. It's kind of an emergency
Speaker 1: radio slash genera. And most of those you give it
Speaker 1: a good cranking for like thirty seconds to a minute,
Speaker 1: and then you may know it's pretty vigorous. I mean,
Speaker 1: you have to do a lot of kinetic work. It's
Speaker 1: it's converting kinetic energy into electrical energy, and you've gotta
Speaker 1: do a lot of work in order for you to
Speaker 1: get even a little bit of electricity out. But it
Speaker 1: might be enough electricity for you to do something like
Speaker 1: syndequate text message, which could be the difference between life
Speaker 1: and death depending upon your situation. So there are a
Speaker 1: lot of different companies that make these. Um Swiss Army
Speaker 1: Uh company that is famous for the Swiss Army knives
Speaker 1: also makes stuff like this or partners with people who
Speaker 1: do make stuff like this. I used to see them
Speaker 1: at ces every year. I'd see these different cool emergency
Speaker 1: kits that include a hand crank charging station along with
Speaker 1: usually the hand crank charging station is also something like
Speaker 1: a lantern and a radio, and I don't know a
Speaker 1: tour guide. I mean they got kind of crazy eventually,
Speaker 1: but and spraining eat stuff. Then I also saw fuel cells. Wait,
Speaker 1: camping fuel cells. Yeah, actual fuel cells. There's one called
Speaker 1: the power Trik and it's it's light enough for you
Speaker 1: to carry like you can either clip it on the
Speaker 1: outside of your back pack or actually carry it inside
Speaker 1: your backpack. And it uses little hydrogen pucks. Now a
Speaker 1: fuel cell. Brian herd Is talk about them before, but
Speaker 1: in case you're not familiar, fuel cells use hydrogen and oxygen,
Speaker 1: and uh, you know those those two elements like to
Speaker 1: combine into this stuff we call water. But let's say
Speaker 1: you've got a chamber filled with hydrogen and oxygen. You've
Speaker 1: separated them with a membrane, and the membrane only allows
Speaker 1: hydrogen through. If it's an ion, meaning that it's shed
Speaker 1: its electron, then you can channel those electrons to do
Speaker 1: work before they recombine on the other side, where the
Speaker 1: hydrogen ions, the oxygen and then the electrons coming in
Speaker 1: all conform water. So that's your basic fuel cell and
Speaker 1: power check is that's basically what it is. The little
Speaker 1: hydrogen pucks contain hydrogen gas, which combined with oxygen, you
Speaker 1: get some electricity and a little bit of water vapor
Speaker 1: as the byproducts, and you can charge your electronics using that.
Speaker 1: So yeah, if you want to be super high tech,
Speaker 1: carry a fuel cell with you. Um and fortunately the
Speaker 1: hydrogen oxygen fuel cells can operate at temperatures that are
Speaker 1: comfortable to us. A lot of fuel cells, when you
Speaker 1: get into the industrial level, have to be heated up
Speaker 1: to temperatures that are you know, not conducive to living
Speaker 1: for humans. So fortunately this is not one of those.
Speaker 1: It would not be a very good camping accessory otherwise. No,
Speaker 1: on the slightly less ridiculously high tech level, keeping showers,
Speaker 1: I mean, because anyone can construct a shower in a
Speaker 1: camp by putting some water in a bag and hanging
Speaker 1: it from a tree and kind of letting it dripped
Speaker 1: down on you poke a hole into the bag of
Speaker 1: some sort. Yeah, but if you want to go a
Speaker 1: little bit more high tech than that. The other a
Speaker 1: couple of different options. I saw one where it was
Speaker 1: one that could fold up into a very small case
Speaker 1: so that you can actually you know, carry it in
Speaker 1: one hand. But then of course when you fill it up,
Speaker 1: you'd hang it from like a tree or something. Let's
Speaker 1: sit in the sun. The sun heats up the water
Speaker 1: and then you've got a nice warm shower so you're
Speaker 1: not you're not freezing while you take your shower. But
Speaker 1: there's another some other ones I saw where it actually
Speaker 1: includes inflatable bladders that are inside the bag that holds
Speaker 1: all the water. So you fill it up with water,
Speaker 1: you leave it on the sun, you let it get
Speaker 1: nice and warm, and then you go and use like
Speaker 1: a foot pump or a hand pump to pump up
Speaker 1: the bladders, the inflatable bladders that are inside this this
Speaker 1: back to you push the water out at you slightly more. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's like a pressure rise shower. Yeah, so it ends
Speaker 1: up being a little bit more of a shower experience
Speaker 1: and not just using gravity to pull the water down.
Speaker 1: Because I mean, these days are behind me, but back
Speaker 1: when I used to wash my hair, obviously, um, you
Speaker 1: wouldn't be able to rinse out something like soap or
Speaker 1: shampoo out of your hair very effectively if you don't
Speaker 1: have any water pressure. Anyone who's had to deal with
Speaker 1: that and knows what I'm talking about, So that was
Speaker 1: the way of getting around that. It's actually a pretty
Speaker 1: low tech but creative solution to that problem. Um. Also
Speaker 1: very important is to have some sort of GPS receiver,
Speaker 1: whether that is your phone or its own receiver. There
Speaker 1: are a lot of receivers out there that are very
Speaker 1: good at just barely sipping power so you can carry
Speaker 1: it on a longer trip, and really simple ones that
Speaker 1: you know aren't you're not doing a whole lot with,
Speaker 1: but can at least just give a ping and tell
Speaker 1: someone where you are right and keep you informed of
Speaker 1: where you are as well, so that way you know,
Speaker 1: you might notice if you're heading toward an area whether
Speaker 1: there isn't an easy source of water or something along
Speaker 1: those lines. Very important. Two way radio is also really important. Usually, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, I always recommend if people are going to
Speaker 1: go camping or hiking to do it with a friend,
Speaker 1: you know, and also to let people know when you're
Speaker 1: going to do it. Yeah, this is I did an
Speaker 1: episode on geo Cashing years ago and that was one
Speaker 1: of those basic rules is let people know when you're
Speaker 1: going to go out and do something. Certainly someone knows
Speaker 1: where you are, and there are ways to stay safe
Speaker 1: when you're solo camping. Yeah, but it involves a lot
Speaker 1: of planning and a lot of know how and a
Speaker 1: lot of telling people where you're going to write, just
Speaker 1: in case that, you know, something unexpected happens, like maybe
Speaker 1: some bad weather makes it very difficult for you to
Speaker 1: make your way back to your vehicle or something on
Speaker 1: those lines. Anyway to a radio is very useful. There
Speaker 1: are a lot of really advanced ones out there on
Speaker 1: the market now. I mean back in the day, uh
Speaker 1: you would have limited range and limited battery life, but
Speaker 1: now we've got some that are very battery conscious and
Speaker 1: can operate up to thirty five miles apart if you
Speaker 1: have a good clear line of sight. Obviously, if you
Speaker 1: are in a deeply wooded area and you're both in
Speaker 1: separate valleys, that's probably not going to be as as effective,
Speaker 1: but thirty five miles is pretty significant, and a lot
Speaker 1: of them will also allow you to tune into other
Speaker 1: radio stations, not just a communications channel, but perhaps something
Speaker 1: like a weather report from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric
Speaker 1: Administration or NOAH. A lot of those, in fact, the
Speaker 1: hand cranks that I was talking about earlier, the ones
Speaker 1: that are often radios and lanterns, a lot of those
Speaker 1: also have that kind of capability, so that you can
Speaker 1: check FM a M radio and and no, uh, very
Speaker 1: important when you're out there by yourself or even you know,
Speaker 1: with a couple of other people, just to let you
Speaker 1: know if a storm's coming. Digital binoculars. These are awesome.
Speaker 1: I think, of course, we're all familiar with what they
Speaker 1: can do from the documentary Star Wars and New Hope.
Speaker 1: When sand people are coming toward you and they're walking
Speaker 1: in a single file, you know, to hide their numbers,
Speaker 1: it's important for you to be able to spot them
Speaker 1: from a long way away. Also, these things often have
Speaker 1: video recorders in them, so you can look at you know,
Speaker 1: interesting wildlife and actually record what you're seeing. And some
Speaker 1: of them have um multiple cameras, like two cameras like
Speaker 1: you're you know, essentially it's mimicking your eyes, which means
Speaker 1: that the images they record are three dimensional. You can
Speaker 1: play it back in three D. Then you've got survival tools.
Speaker 1: Multi tools very useful because they pack a lot of
Speaker 1: utility into a very compact form factor, relatively compact. So
Speaker 1: I've seen some that get a little bit on the
Speaker 1: ridiculous side. Okay, yeah, there's some where, like you know,
Speaker 1: I think I've seen like the the Ultimate Swiss Army Knife,
Speaker 1: which has every singlement, it's every single attachment that Swiss
Speaker 1: Army Knife Company has ever done, and it just looks ridiculous.
Speaker 1: You know, you need like two people to hold it up.
Speaker 1: It's like a baseball bat essentially. Yeah. But but your
Speaker 1: typical multi tool has things that would become really handy
Speaker 1: when you're out there in the woods, like perhaps a
Speaker 1: fire starter and you know, something like a flint and steel,
Speaker 1: which we'll talk about in our our Pyro episode. Yes,
Speaker 1: we we have not talked in this entire episode about
Speaker 1: fire starting technology because that that has its whole own episode.
Speaker 1: We're doing that immediately after we record this one. We're
Speaker 1: kind of looking forward to it. I've seen some that
Speaker 1: have things like a way of alerting people if you're
Speaker 1: in distress, usually a whistle. One of the ones I
Speaker 1: looked at was able to produce a tone of a
Speaker 1: hundred decibels, which is pretty loud. Yeah, when you get
Speaker 1: above eighty five decibels, that's about the that's the level
Speaker 1: of safe, So one hundred it's men to be that loud,
Speaker 1: so that if you are truly in distress, you are
Speaker 1: alerting people that this is a problem. And they need
Speaker 1: to try and find you, and obviously that is gonna
Speaker 1: be much louder than you crying out for help, right, absolutely,
Speaker 1: although although I do have to say so you could
Speaker 1: say that that particular gadget has bells and whistles. Nice, yes,
Speaker 1: you could say that, or at least as the whistle part.
Speaker 1: So yeah. I've also seen them that have compass knives.
Speaker 1: I wrote multiple knives because I know how to spell. Uh.
Speaker 1: Signal mirror that's a very low tech but very useful
Speaker 1: led lights. They might have wire or cord or other
Speaker 1: kind of things that allow you to secure stuff to
Speaker 1: other stuff, which comes in handy and survival scenarios, and uh,
Speaker 1: you know other things too, you like some of them
Speaker 1: have things like fish hooks that kind of stuff. It
Speaker 1: all depends upon the individual tool, but uh, and I've
Speaker 1: seen these worked into things like um, hiking poles, where
Speaker 1: use a pole to to help you maintain your balance
Speaker 1: and keep you going even when you're hiking in rough terrain.
Speaker 1: Sometimes those have survival tools built into the handles, which
Speaker 1: are pretty cool too. Any the person who loves spy
Speaker 1: gadgets is going to love that kind of camping tech
Speaker 1: because it's all about conserving that space and weight, which
Speaker 1: often means that it looks like it must be made
Speaker 1: for spies because everything's folded away in these little secret compartments.
Speaker 1: That's always neat. But there's something low tech. Yeah, sometimes
Speaker 1: really low tech is best. There are those survival bracelets
Speaker 1: you guys might have seen, which are woven of incredibly
Speaker 1: strong uh not yarn tech, yarn wire wire something to
Speaker 1: that sent chord probably yes, thank you, uh that that
Speaker 1: you can use in in any number of survival situations.
Speaker 1: And also, hey, analog maps, maps that are on paper
Speaker 1: or perhaps some kind of plastic. The great thing about these,
Speaker 1: you guys, is that they don't run out of bad right,
Speaker 1: nor nor do they have some sort of system crash
Speaker 1: where you have to You never get a blue screen.
Speaker 1: You don't have to reset your map. Yeah. Yeah, things
Speaker 1: may have changed since the map was made, but probably
Speaker 1: not so significantly that you can't you know, can't make
Speaker 1: use of the map. If you're looking at a map
Speaker 1: of like this is Pangaea, probably not going to be helpful. Yeah,
Speaker 1: be careful which map you pack. Also, I mean, if
Speaker 1: you pack a map of end Or its probably not
Speaker 1: gonna not gonna be helpful, but I just wanted to
Speaker 1: put that out there. You know, sometimes you might want
Speaker 1: to bring one of those. In fact, in general, I
Speaker 1: would always recommend bringing one of those along, definitely. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So there's there's some cool stuff out there that you
Speaker 1: can you can take with you if you're a camping
Speaker 1: enthusiast and you want to be able to maybe trick
Speaker 1: out your your camp site a little bit more with
Speaker 1: some high tech stuff, maybe something like that that that
Speaker 1: camp stove I talked about earlier. Uh, those things can
Speaker 1: be you know, they can make your experience a little
Speaker 1: more comfortable. Uh for people who say, well, that's not
Speaker 1: real camping, obviously you can go as as as rough
Speaker 1: and ready as you want someone like me. Um, not
Speaker 1: gonna happen, but if it did happen, it's gonna be
Speaker 1: as comfortable. I mean, I'm gonna have an inflatable pad
Speaker 1: to sleep on. I'm gonna have probably an air conditioned tent.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's just gonna happen to be I think
Speaker 1: that if it's getting you out there, then it's kind
Speaker 1: of beautiful. Yeah. So, uh, you know, until Google Earth
Speaker 1: has every square inch of the planet completely maps, so
Speaker 1: that way I can just virtually go there. Obviously, once
Speaker 1: in a while I'm going to have to drag my
Speaker 1: carcass out into nature and see what's going on. Seriously though,
Speaker 1: I mean I joked about this on Facebook while I
Speaker 1: was doing the research, but it really is true. As
Speaker 1: I was looking at these gadgets, it made me want
Speaker 1: to get a few of them and actually go camping.
Speaker 1: The only thing that keeps me from doing that is
Speaker 1: knowing that once I'm in that situation, I'll be questioning
Speaker 1: my sanity. But but it makes me want to do it.
Speaker 1: And again, it's because the idea of amping is so
Speaker 1: it's nice, it sounds peaceful, yeah, and then you get
Speaker 1: to you get to appreciate landscapes that we who live
Speaker 1: in cities don't see that frequently. The opportunity to observe wildlife,
Speaker 1: that feeling of of being able to just get away
Speaker 1: from everything then obviously has its place. And I would
Speaker 1: be lying if I said that it was not at
Speaker 1: all attractive to me. Certainly it is. I just uh,
Speaker 1: I know my limitations, is all, all right. So, if
Speaker 1: any of you guys out there are really into camping,
Speaker 1: and maybe there's some kind of tech that you were
Speaker 1: really hoping we would cover like something that you think
Speaker 1: is either indispensable or just awesome. Let us know, because again,
Speaker 1: we're not the camping experts right. Also, if any of
Speaker 1: these have piqued your interest and you would like us
Speaker 1: to go and do perhaps a full episode on them,
Speaker 1: let us know that too. Yeah, and guess what. You
Speaker 1: can use our email address tech stuff at how stuff
Speaker 1: works dot com. It should be working now. Uh. And
Speaker 1: also make sure you drop us a line on Facebook,
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Speaker 1: this and thousands of other topics. Is it how staff
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