Ain't no sand on me!

I try out as much new gear as outdoor gear retailers, manufacturers and Hubby will let me. I like a lot of what I try, but I come across very few items that make me go, “Wow-this is everything it’s advertised to be,” The sand rug from CGear made me jump up and down and go WOW.

The company provided the 6' x 6' sand rug free of charge for my review. It arrived on my doorstep complete with its own small bag of sand and a huge dose of skepticism from my not-so-inner cynic.

Wow. Did I say that already? This thing really works.

The mats were originally developed by the military to create dust-free landing pads for helicopters. I had no helicopter on hand, but I do have a dusty husband and a whirling teenager. Together they can definitely raise a cloud of dust or tear up most any gear, given enough time.

Hubby poured the little bag of sand onto the rug. I would have liked a wheelbarrow load, but there was none to be had. Hubby brushed his hand across the pile of silica and poof! It was gone.

Hubby went Wow. He lifted the rug and there was the sand.

No sand came back up. Wow.

I mounded the pile of sand up under the rug, and had The Whee sit on the rug, on top of the sand pile, and just be herself. In other words, twist, wiggle and squirm. No matter how much she ground the rug into the sand, no sand came back up. Wow. I think I said that already.

Does it matter which side is up for the mat to work? Yes, it does, although even upside down it did a better job of taking away the sand than any beach towel or bamboo mat I’ve ever used. Not all the sand went through, but what fell through did not come back up.

Here's what I think about the sand mat:

I would recommend it to others, especially beach goers. We ain't got a lot of beach in Oklahoma, but this rug is enough to make me want to drive to the coast.

I would buy it for others. At $59.88, the best price I've found for it so far (Amazon), I'll only it buy it for people I really like, but I think it's worth every penny.

I think I'll stop avoiding the beach now.

I’m tickled I had the opportunity to try it!

See the rug and other sand-free products at http://www.cgear-sandfree.com/

Fozzils are fun.

Fozzils are fun.  Fozzils are flat.  Fozzils are for food.  Fozzils are flat-out ingenious.

Fozzils are plastic dinnerware that snaps together, unsnaps, and folds completely flat.

It comes with a plate, a bowl, a cup, and a spoon. I acquired my set courtesy of Backwoods, when I asked the manager if she had any new things she'd like me to try out. I would live in the Backwoods store if they would let me.

It took The Whee about .07 seconds to figure out what was going on with the Fozzils and put them together. It took Philoboy about 12 minutes to realize that if he wanted to eat, there was 'some assembly required'.

Look Ma, it's  so easy I can do it with my eyes closed!

The spoon worked great for oatmeal, and ok for noodles. We found that liquids had a tendency to run back down through the handle and onto your hand. And it wasn't very comfortable in your mouth. We chucked the spoon.

The dishes, however, broached no complaints. Since it's a plastic polymer material, and isn't insulated, you can't hold a bowl full of boiling hot soup in your hand, but the bowls are sturdy enough you can hold the sides without fear of it collapsing or unsnapping.

I took them backpacking this last weekend, when the night temperatures hit 48 degrees. They fit flat in my food bag, and were a "snap" to use and clean (sorry, I've been poor pun deficient for a while now).

But I wanted to know what would happen when they got really cold. Would the plastic get brittle and break? Since there was no blizzard in sight, and I have an aversion to camping in the cold anyway, my solution was to put them in the freezer for 30 minutes. My whole life is just one big laboratory.

They worked just fine. The material was stiffer, but not brittle. I snapped and unsnapped them several times. That will be the final test that only time will tell- how long will the snaps hold up with frequent use? The only way to find out will be for me to go camping frequently. Oh darn.

The Fozzil set retails at Backwoods for $17.95.  I think it makes the cut for backpacking, for your picnic basket, and the Whee thinks it works great in her lunch box. I think I want my Fozzils back!

High and dry

I've been spending my free time playing with some gear samples I received from the Backwoods store (at no cost, I must add. Yes, I must). There was quite a variety of things to play with: a pillow, some dinnerware, a porta-potty (oh, I know you can't wait for that one!) and a little dry pouch.

The little pouch is made by Seal Line. The packaging shows a cell phone in it. I found that it held my cheapo cell phone just fine, but the Whee's Blackberry was too wide too fit.  Weren't we trying to get tinier phones a few years back?  Why are they all getting mondo size again?

I started putting the Seal Line pouch through its paces on a short camping trip to Kansas, when we were met by a steady drizzle. I needed to be sure it wasn't leaking, so in the best scientific method, I put a receipt in it and hung it outside the tent for the night.

This did several things.
1- it put the pouch out in the drizzle. The ink on the receipt would smear if it got damp. 
2-The bright shiny pouch might attract some raccoons for pictures.
3-The gas receipt proved I went away from home.  I gotta get my affirmation where I can.

The next morning, no sign of dampness in the pouch. Too easy. Time to move on to step two.

Step two was to put something in the pouch that took up space and actually put pressure on the seal. Enter the Whee's Ipod.  Duh- you didn't think I was gonna use MY Ipod, did you?!

Conveniently, it also rained the same day.  That in itself was reason to celebrate, considering how dry it's been here.  I celebrated by throwing the pouch outside and leaving it overnight.  (Contrary to what you're thinking I don't do all my testing while I'm asleep, but it has its advantages).

The next morning, no dampness inside the pouch.  It's time  to get tough.

What's the scariest thing you can do to an electronic device?  Give it to a tweenager, of course!  Instant limited lifespan.  So I tried to imagine what The Whee would do with this.  She would... clip it onto her backpack.  And then... she would swing the backpack around really fast as she was walking.  And the pouch would fly off and smack into the concrete, killing the electronic device.  (Do you hear the voice of past experience in this?)

Ramp it up by having the device fly off and land in flowing water.  Oh yeah.  Now we're talking.

We had sufficient rain that the gutters were running pretty well (scientific testing sometimes means using what's at hand).  I threw the pouch-literally-into the gutter outside my house.  Covered by two inches of running water.  Dirty running water.

And left it for 10 minutes.  Still dry. I made a short clip of the attempted drowning, but it didn't want to load into the blog. Bleh. The specs on this waterproof pouch state it can be submerged up to one meter for 30 minutes without leaking. We-e-e-ell, that called for one more test. 

I call it the Philo test.  It's even better than the tweenager test.  Philo has dropped more things overboard than I can count. Phones. Car keys. Eyeglasses.  I go fishing with him just for thrill of waiting to see what he'll lose next. And because I carry all the spares.

I took the pouch to the lake, fastened it to my stringer, which is about 3' long, and hung it overboard from my kayak.  There are not pictures because I am well aware of the limitations of my coordination. The possibility of losing the pouch, the paddle or the Pentax was high, and at least one of those was going to be bad. Not to mention that Lake Thunderbird is the color of chocolate milk and you can't see through the water. And I'm talking the cheap chocolate milk, not the good stuff.

I was more than happy with the outcome.

Final analysis:

• when you get the Seal Line pouch, the first thing you do after opening it is throw away the dinky ball chain and put a substantial carabiner on it.
• don't buy expensive electronic for tweenagers. This has nothing to do with the Seal Line, but it's important information for you to have.
• don't try to overstuff the pouch. Cramming something too fat into a too-small space is ugly. Think Spanx.
• The pouch is tweenager and Philoboy proof.  That's saying a lot.
• It's touch screen compatible, if you have one of those touchy-feely phones.
• use it for phones, i-pods, i.d.'s, dentures, and important papers to get you through customs.
• fasten it to your backpack, your kayak, or your tent, if you need to know which one is yours.
• It comes in three sizes. I tested the small, but there's also a medium and a large, if you can't bear to leave your e-reader behind while you're in the wilderness.
• At $19.95, you might think it's a little pricey, but it's cheaper than losing your cell phone, and WAY cheaper than drowning your Kindle. Just ask the Whee.

Did you hear it?

Did you hear it this morning?  The scream of absolute anger, anguish and fury when I accidentally erased the 80-some pictures I took this morning on my sunrise paddle? Followed immediately by some words that can't be printed in a family blog.

You'll just have to imagine the herons, the egrets, the cormorants, the fish, and most of all, the gorgeous sunrise I saw from my kayak.

I don't know which to throw out the window first- the computer or the camera. An hour's worth of paddling history gone forever. This calls for history histronics of historic porportions.

In lieu of the beautiful photos you would have seen this morning, I'm going to take deep, slow breaths and talk about the future instead of the past.

In my future is a bag of goodies that looks like this:

Backwoods of Norman has graciously provided some items for me to test and review next week. It's kind of like an early Christmas.

There's an inflatable pillow-I've never slept with a pillow when camping before. I love the fabric...

There's a porta-potty so small it fits in my hand.

There's some fun dinnerware that will keep the Whee busy for a while...

and more.  I can't wait!

Whew. OK, I feel a little better. Take some Valium. Eat some chocolate. Maybe try for some more photos tomorrow.