I’m a sucker for a dramatic sunset. I love to simply sit quietly, watching the sunset progress, soaking it in. Watching until the end. Dayhikers can’t do that. They have to get back before dark. Back to the car, back home. But the backpacker is already home. They can afford to sit quietly. They can soak it in.
Author: Walt Page 9 of 12
Backpacking places huge demands on a tent. It has to be absolutely watertight, even in ferocious storms. It has to stand up to strong winds. But it also has to be really light and compact. It’s no wonder, then, that if you find a tent that does all these things, you’ll stick with it. And as the years and memories accumulate, you’ll feel pretty fond of it. Such was the case with the MSR Missing Link.
Today we’re going to take a look at my engine lathe. It’s down in my basement shop, and it’s one of the most important tools I own. Let’s get to know its parts and what they do.
I worked in IT for 30 years. That usually meant you were on-call every other week to fix problems at night and on weekends. In the early days we had pagers that would just show a phone number. Eventually the pagers became smartphones, but we still called the alerts we got “pages”.
Some nights we got a lot of pages. Some weeks we would have a lot of those nights in a row. Sometimes we got pretty tired of it. I wrote the following on one of those weeks.
Rainy Day Pagers #12 & 35
(To the tune of Rainy Day Women #12 & 35 by Bob Dylan)
Well, they’ll page you when you’re trying to be so good
They’ll page you, just like they said they would
They’ll page you when you’re trying to go home,
And they’ll page you when you’re there all alone.
But that should not make you feel amazed,
Everybody must get paged.
Well, they’ll page you when you’re at the breakfast table
They’ll page you when you’re trying to watch some cable
They’ll page you when you’re riding in your car
And they’ll page you when you’re playing your guitar
But you should not feel so disengaged
Everybody must get paged.
Well, they’ll page you when you’re standing in the shower
They’ll page you every day and every hour
They’ll page you when they’re trying to pass the buck
Then they’ll page you and then they’ll say “good luck”
But your salary will not be getting raised
Everybody must get paged!
Well, they’ll page you when you’re freaky with your wife
They’ll page you till you think you have no life
They’ll page you when you’re riding on a horse
They’ll page you till your wife files for divorce
But that should not make you feel enraged
Everybody must get paged!
When I was a kid Mom would always talk about the “Brigham Emkey” place. Or maybe it was “Brigham Empty”. Or “Bring ‘Em Empty”? She said it all as one word, like “BrighamEmpty”, and it was hard to tell. But the BrighamEmkey Place was where Mom lived as a little girl, and she told a lot of stories about it. But I could never figure out the name.
In this post and this post we made an alcohol burner to use as a backpacking stove. We’ve also made a snuffer and a pot support. But before we can call this stove project done enough to play with, we need to make a windscreen, and find a fuel bottle. I promise after this we’ll get to set it on fire!