Please No More!

PLEASE NO MORE!

When a lady brought in a roof mount ski rack and two pairs of cross country skis last week, we did the paperwork on them, she walked out the door and I thought "What am I doing?"

It's mid-April and effective as of now, OAR will no longer be accepting any more winter sports equipment (including skis, boots, helmets, boards, poles etc.).

It's time to move on.

We took the old downhill skis off the floor this week (and they'll make an AWESOME bench when we cut 'em down this summer), but still have some gear left out, for those folks looking forward to the 2013/2014 season (which is only six or seven months away).

People are totally beginning to look for warm weather gear - camping, hiking, biking, boating, hunting, and (especially) fishing stuff.

Aside from the obvious gear, people have asked for things I would never have thought of (and it continues to be a learning experience owning an outdoor store in a place like Cody Wyoming).

People are looking for good, technical, name brand day and multi-day packs, but there is also a market for old-school beater packs (so guys can haul meat out of the mountains and not worry about messing up a good pack).

They're looking for lightweight and tiny back-country stoves, but they're also looking for cast iron cookware so that they can car camp.

They're looking for good, high quality fishing rods for themselves, but they're also looking for lightweight and cheap rods for their kids.

And soccer cleats!!!!!

TWO THINGS:

1.  If you have a good, high quality, name brand road or mountain bike, or a boat (canoe or kayak), we'll find room for it at our little store. 

At OAR we still have high hopes to be able to expand back, take up the entire garage bay we are currently renting and effectively double our space by the end of the summer.

We need your help to be able to do that.  The more great stuff we have at OAR, the more people will come by to see what we have.

The more great stuff we have at OAR, the more fun it is to dig through and check out what's new!

2.  If you're not sure we can use it, just give us a call.  You'd be surprised what people are looking for and what they'll buy.

We've been surprised many times over the past few months!

We have the awesome-est pair of boots in the store right now! They are a pair of vintage GALIBIER RICHARD PONTVERT hiking mountaineer boots. They were made in France, likely from the 1970's, in great shape for their age, weigh a ton and are virtually indestructible.

The sole looks brand new and is screwed to the upper (not glued like the newer, lighter, high tec boots). I LOVE these things! They're small - we couldn't find a size on them but I tried them on and would guess they're a ladies Size 10 (maybe a man's 8 1/2?). Totally old school and totally bomb proof.

Looked them up and found reviews on these boots: http://www.trailspace.com/gear/galibier/super-guide/

The boots came in with a pair of vintage Carman Super Gator lined gaitors. VERY COOL!

Area Public School And College Students Receive 10% Off All Their Purchases Everyday

We have a group of Outdoor Recreation students from Northwest College who drop by here regularly, and we say THANK YOU for your support of OAR!

YOU GUYS ROCK!!

Don't forget to follow us on Facebook:

https://www.facebook.com/pages/Outdoor-Adventures-Revived-OAR/295312997264285?fref=ts

The Power Of Duct Tape

When I was adventure racing, one of the items that was always on the list of mandatory gear we were required to carry with us at all times, was duct tape.

Early on in my adventure racing career I resented having to carry six feet of duct with me.  It wasn't heavy to carry but it was only one of many pieces of mandatory gear they nailed us with, and the totality of all that stuff was a heavy pack.  Sometimes our packs were only fairly heavy, but for other races (depending on the length of the race, how many transition areas we had out on the course, the time of year we were racing) some of our packs were crazy heavy. 

I resented carrying it until the first time I needed it, and then I was sold.  There's an expression in adventure racing related to duct tape.  Pardon my French (and we spoke a lot of French out in the field) "If you can't duck it, f*ck it".  Meaning of course, that if you couldn't fix it with duct tape, it couldn't be fixed.  I saw a whole lot of McGyver-ing over the many years that I raced.  And I did some of my own.  Just a couple of examples:

1. 12 hour race in North Carolina - my team was up in the mountains outside of Asheville after dark.  I had a headlamp mounted on my bike helmet, but had foolishly not put new batteries into my handlebar mounted bike lights before heading out.  Yes........the batteries died only a couple of hours before the end of the race, I didn't have replacements and ended up duct taping my tiny back up headlamp to the handlebars, so we could book out of the mountains and complete the race.

2.  6 day race in West Virginia - leading up to the race we had been told that we could either use our own paddles or the race-provided paddles, but if we brought our own we would have to carry them with us for an unspecified amount of time during the race.  Stupidly we elected to use the race-provided paddles.  They were single blade, very heavy, we were the ONLY team who was not using kayak paddles and within the first couple of hours of the race we were already at the back of the pack.  We had to paddle in one direction to pick up a checkpoint.  We then had to paddle back the way we had come, pass by the race start and head further down first lake and then river.  As we passed by the race start we saw more canoe paddles laying in the sand.  My team-mate suggested that we duct tape canoe paddles together to make make-shift kayak paddles.  As I held paddles and as he taped the ends together, I doubted that they would hold for the duration of this first paddle section.  They did.  They lasted all 15 hours.

3.  Same race in West Virginia - during the first freezing cold bike leg, my rain pants got caught up in the chain ring and they got badly ripped.  Funny - when you're in the middle of a race it never even occurs to you to get upset that a $80 pair of rain pants are now trashed.  All you're thinking about at that point is that they're ripped and it's freezing cold and you need to keep all of your layers of clothing functioning.  I wore the same layer upon layer of clothing for almost six days straight, and my duct taped rain pants held together for the entire race.

4.  24 hour race in North Georgia - the sole of my trail shoe got caught on a rock and tore away from the rest of my shoe.  I looked down at my beloved Salomon shoes sadly knowing that they were gonna be trashed at the end of the race.  In the meantime I reached into my pack, grabbed the duct tape and wrapped layer after layer of the stuff around my entire foot so that the shoe would hold together for as long as I needed it.

I've seen duct tape used to cover blisters, used as a compression bandage, used to slow down leaks in canoes and rafts and bicycle tubes, to repair a ripped rain jacket, to repair a ripped pack, to repair a cracked water bottle and a leaking water bladder.  The uses are endless and that sticky stuff is priceless anytime you are away from civilization.  I would never head out into the woods or up into the mountains or out on the water without duct tape.

There is no need to carry an entire roll of the stuff (and most people don't need to carry around 100 feet of it anyway).  While I was racing it was second nature to wrap tape in one spot around trekking poles, to wrap it around the base of a water bottle (yes........the bottle will still fit down in a bike cage), to wrap it around a small piece of cardboard or a stick.  

So there you go.  The Power of Duct Tape.  Don't leave home without it.

One of the things we have really enjoyed about opening OAR is the people that we have met along the way and one of those people is a really nice guy who drops by the store about once a week just to chat.  This man is one of my favorite store visitors and the other day he brought this gun case into the store.  It is an older 4-handgun hard-shell carry case, and comes with one slide-out shelf and one static shelf.  Stop by OAR soon to check it out, and don't forget that we have a March Madness Winter Gear Sale going on now - most winter gear is 30% off!

Undertrained And Running A 50K - A True Story

I had been trail running consistently for a few years as one component of adventure racing training. 

After a tough year of illness, serious injury and divorce I decided to run a trail 50K.

I had never run that distance before and although I had spent a lot of time on trails it had been too sporadic.

I was under trained for that distance and weak mentally from too many "life hits" that had happened in such a short period of time.

And in reality that was why I needed to run the 50K.

Because I WAS under trained.

Because I was still sick.

Because I was mentally weakened.

Because it would hurt.

And I wanted to know if I could find the mental and physical energy to dig deep enough to finish the run.

Was I tough enough to finish it?

Or wasn't I?...................

I was making good time and felt solid and strong, but kept trying to hold myself back anyway not wanting to go out too fast.

Not wanting to implode.

I was totally in the zone, enjoying the run, life was good.

 I was fine for the first 18 miles.

By the time I hit 19 everything in my lower body began to cramp.

I was on medication and could not take anything for the cramping and everything only continued to tighten up more and more with each passing mile.

Over the next few miles running became shuffling became limping became walking.

Everything in my lower body was one continuous tight muscle and my good and solid run became a thing of the past.

People passed me and I continued to struggle to walk.

One step in front of the other one step in front of the other one step in front of the other...........

Runners had eight hours to complete the course if they wanted to be counted among official finishers.

I had to cross a field, maneuver across a shallow stream and then hit the final section of single track to the finish.

I made it to the single track, looked up and through the trees I could see the very large digital clock at the finish line counting down the time.

With alarm I saw that I had 1:47 left to go.  One minute forty seven seconds to make it an official finish.

I started to kick it in and something that I could only call magical happened.

I started to run faster and then faster and then faster still until I was sprinting.

I was running just as fast as I could and I saw people at the finish line clapping and cheering me on.

I crossed the finish line, slowed down, stopped and then leaned forward and rested my hands on my thighs, trying to catch my breath.

I had no idea if I had made it or not.

As I was still trying to breathe a guy came running down the hill yelling at me so excitedly you would have thought he had just won the lottery.

"Do you know what your time was??  Do you know what your time was??"

I looked up at him breathlessly and said "No - what was it?

7:59:59

True story............

A few pictures of my favorite trails.

They are located in middle Tennessee and I spent many years trail running, navigating and mountain biking on these trails in every kind of weather.  I knew every inch of that place.

Across the road from the extensive trail system is a huge reservoir and I also spent many years exploring every single cove by kayak..............

I surreptitiously left this trail gnome one day at the entrance to the mountain bike trails, because in middle Tennessee it is almost tradition for all trails to have a gnome (to bring safety and good luck to those who travel the trails) and I thought that my trails needed one too.

This little guy has sat in exactly the same place for the last four years............