QuixTwits – 2009-08-21
Published August 22, 2009 | 
- After bouncing off Nova Scotia & crossing Newfoundland, Hurricane Bill will then blow out over GREENLAND? – http://digg.com/u1B9D1 Odd. 07:18:57
- RT @OutdoorBusiness: Tomorrow is National Trail Running Day – Get out there and Run! 07:53:34
- Quix Blog – It's just that Mountain Hardwear has this great example floating out there… http://digg.com/u1B9eE 09:07:51
- The coming-out stories of anonymous bloggers – Will the REAL Slim Shady please hit "ctrl, alt, delete" .. http://digg.com/d111WiI 10:43:22
- RT @grist: Change the world by changing your underpants! http://bit.ly/3JCeHx 10:49:29
- Camper at Devil's Lake lost an epileptic cat named Dog in the Quartzite Campground offers reward – http://tiny.cc/DIZpT 12:41:22
- Teaching at Rutabaga http://www.rutabaga.com/ in Madison Sat & Sun.. Have a great weekend! 13:49:41
How Does Your Garden Grow?
Published August 21, 2009 | 
For somebody who don’t drive, I been all around the world. . .
– melanie
Ok, so hopefully Mountain Hardwear won’t be peeved that I’m using them for an example. I just KNOW somebody won’t catch on when I say, “old”, “out of date” or “example” repeatedly below… Thing is there was still a link to an old sponsorship form active on a Mountain Heardwear blog post from September of 2008 (Nothing every goes away). Now what makes the old sponsorship form special is that it offers all those potential, future, world class, climbers, paddlers and other adventurers out there a chance to see in good order what sort of questions they should be answering before they send emails and letters out to companies asking for props. And let’s face it, we can’t all be Freya…
Posted in Expeditions, Learning, Paddle Gear, Paddling | 
camping, expediton, Mountain Hardwear, sponsorships, tentsQuixTwits – 2009-08-20
Published August 21, 2009 | - Registration for the 2009 CSM Marathon event will be closing at midnight on Wednesday, August 26th http://digg.com/u1B6Zg 16:00:02
- Let’s have a break and look in on artist Kurt Wenner. – http://digg.com/u1B6a1 16:01:28
- See The Apostle Islands with Geneva Kayaks – ALL Islands Expedition – http://digg.com/u1B6aR 16:03:10
Kurt Wenner – Ceres’ Banquet Chalk Drawing
Published August 20, 2009 | Let’s have a midday break and look in on artist Kurt Wenner. – www.kurtwenner.com
An international master artist, Kurt moves from Renaissance classicism, to architecture, to wildly vivid street painting. On an interesting side note Kurt once worked for NASA as an advanced scientific space illustrator. Cool!
The Black Knight
Published August 19, 2009 | 
“Peter Bray was 43 days into his attempt to row from Newfoundland to the Isles of Scilly when he was caught in 20ft (6m) swells and 46mph (74kph) winds.” – BBC
Peter Bray called for a rescue in the face of an oncoming hurricane shortly after 1200 BST. What else can you do!? Thanks Pete for setting a good example by demonstrating when to say when! Glad you’re OK…. What really sucks is having to leave the Black Knight at sea without even a flesh wound.
The Quiet Earth
Published August 19, 2009 | 
Omaha / Somewhere in middle America
Get right to the heart of matters / It’s the heart that matters more
I think you better turn your ticket in / And get your money back at the door
– counting crows
It became downright spooky when we arrived in the community of Elroy, WI early Sunday afternoon. Elroy is where the stars, or I should say the bike trails align. The 400 Trail, The Elroy Sparta Trail & The Omaha trail all meet in this little town. It’s here where the Elroy Commons, a renovated train station with gift shop, showers and bike rentals, stands as a gateway to about 100 miles of beautifully maintained bike trails. It’s here where we found out there were no restaurants, no shops of any sort and not a car on a road or a person on a sidewalk. Not even a cliché dog barking in the distance. Having just watched a flick from New Zealand called, “The Quiet Earth”, the day before, we had the spooky feeling we’d arrived on set.
Old man take a look at my life / I’m a lot like you
I need someone to love me / the whole day through
Ah, one look in my eyes / and you can tell that’s true.
– Neil Young
I was sitting here working on an article about a couple new kayak models on their way to market and in the midst of a sentence, a bit of rational, clarity came to mind. Old is fine too. Just as we would expect in our consumer driven society, companies become hard pressed to find something new and exciting to rabbit on about in order to sell their products. Regular business cycles and short attention spans make it challenging to keep churning out “awesome, game changing, amazing, paradigm shifting” wonders. Most of it is BS of course. There’s nothing wrong with selling products.. but let’s be honest here, new is rarely all that much different from old other than there is a bit more shine. A shine that will go away in 6 months when today’s “new” becomes tomorrow’s “old”.
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