The Grey Nato - Ep 15 - "Peak Bag"¶
Published on Tue, 16 Aug 2016 09:02:51 -0400
Synopsis¶
In episode 15 of The Grey NATO podcast, hosts James Stacy and Jason Heaton dive deep into the world of bags and carrying solutions for adventurers, photographers, and watch enthusiasts. They discuss the perpetual hunt for the perfect bag across multiple categories: camera bags, day packs, travel bags, and the elusive "Basel bag" suitable for watch trade shows where backpacks don't work with sport coats. The hosts share their personal experiences with various brands including Topo Designs, 5.11, GoRuck, F-Stop, and others, examining the strengths and weaknesses of each.
James provides an exciting update on his successful summit of Mount Baker after a previous failed attempt, detailing the gear he used including the F-Stop Satori backpack, the training involved, and the alpine climbing experience. Jason shares his recent solo adventure combining scuba diving on the Madeira shipwreck in Lake Superior with hiking in Split Rock State Park. The episode also covers Jason's time testing the new Oak and Oscar Sandford GMT watch, James's upcoming flight with the Breitling Jet Team, and the hosts announce a logo design contest for listeners. They conclude with recommendations including an Atlantic article on atmospheric diving suits, a Cousteau documentary on the Britannic, and Pastiche Patches for watch-related iron-on patches.
Links¶
Transcript¶
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| James Stacy | Hello and welcome to episode fifteen of the Grey NATO, a loose discussion of travel, adventure, diving, gear, and most certainly watches. I'm James Stacy. And I'm Jason He |
| Jason Heaton | aton. So James and I haven't talked much since I left Vancouver after our TGN summit, which we uh talked about in our last episode, and that really doesn't have anything to do with uh preponderance of proximity during my visit to Vancouver. We're just both been kind of busy in the past couple of weeks. I need a full download from from you, James, on your successful ascent of Mount Baker, which we'll get to. Yep. But first uh today's topic we're gonna talk about bags uh backpacks, totes, camera bags, basically the way we haul our stuff around. Uh it's something that's a bit of an obsession for for you and I, James. Uh not a week goes by that we don't really lament the existence of a perfect bag. I think we we discuss it all the time. You know, James, I think for me there are some distinctive categories and some that certainly overlap of bags that I find myself using and, that is you know, bags that are kind of specific to carrying camera gear, day packs that you use for you know a short hike or or some travel, uh, or or even like a more of a dedicated travel pack that maybe you want to use when a backpack isn't maybe as suitable, like when you're wearing a sport coat or something like that. But it you know, it's really tough as we've discussed to really find a bag that overlaps all of these categories and it's been frankly it's been kind of frustrating. It's almost like a unicorn that that I think we've both been hunting. And I think the best example or the best sort of fit that we've been trying to find is the elusive uh what I call a basel bag. Oh yeah. Which is the bag that you take to a trade show and and you and I and you know, the other hundreds of watch writers and bloggers and journalists that show up at SAHH and Basel every year. You know, we've got a lot of us that carry our laptops with us. We've got you know a camera body and maybe a lens, a notebook and pen, business cards, um but then you know, you get stuff from brands, you get catalogs and you get USB drives and you get some swag and you gotta carry the stuff around. And and like I said, a backpack doesn't work very well with a sport coat and I just I've really had a hard time finding a a shoulder bag that that that works. What are you using? Uh you know what |
| James Stacy | do you use at these shows? Well I've done um I've done Basel four times. I've done SIHH once, and actually my first year at Basel, I was using um a Kata four six five, what they call a digital rucksack. It's a backpack that has like a separated lower container for camera gear and then an upper element for just kind of random bits. Mm-hmm. And the first year I didn't take as much gear as I take now. We uh with a block watch we carry a a litany of gear. Typically we have our own bags and then a bag in each hand. And you know, you have a lot to manage and and actually the the first year we were there the the Hubllo sort of promotional gift was a um a tote that came in its own little bag and then you took it out of that and it kind of unfold into this uh nearly two-foot-long uh eighteen-inch deep tote with a zippered top and no pockets. I think well sorry, I think there's one tiny pocket on the inside and one on the outside. Like you could put a wallet or a phone in them. But otherwise there's not much structure to it. It had like a fold out card that sat in the bottom for a little bit of rigidity. Oh yeah. And it would stand upright. And I found that if I took the um kind of camera insert out of my kata and dropped that in the bag, I could get most of my camera gear in that bag. And uh, you know, this bag's probably something that Hublow bought like $10,000 of for three dollars a piece or something like that. Like it's not fancy, but it has survived quite a few bossels. Yeah. And it's big enough that when you get some of the promotional items or all the USB keys and and you know, they all come in those boutique bags. You know, like when you buy nice shoes or something. So uh you always want to kind of collapse as much of that as possible. Sometimes you get this giant bag that has like th three sheets of paper with a USB key kind of taped to it, yeah. And then like a little box that'll be like a money clip or a loop or something like that. Right. As their like press gift. Yeah. And you look at it and you think like, well I could use this bag to hold a bunch of stuff. And that's usually where you start, but eventually that bag's full and you've got more, and then I can so there's enough room left over in that in that bag. And then if you go back to our Basel World episode from this year, I spoke about a low pro uh viewpoint case that was designed to carry like a series of um GoPro cameras. Oh yeah. But it's just a case with all of these little accessory dividers. And I bought one of those, it was very cheap. It was like thirty dollars or something. It's kind of like a small lunch pail. If you imagine what basically the space that three GoPros with their various attachments would take. Yeah. And that's what I was using. So I would I would put the camera insert with my raw like camera, a lens, flash, a ton of batteries, and then this one which would hold all the little bits, all the little cables, all of the card readers, all of the spare memory cards, uh gray card for white balance, all those sorts of things. And that's been my kit pretty much as far as we go to today through five of these shows or so. And then I know that you you when I saw you in SIHH you had like a Topo briefcase |
| Jason Heaton | ? Yeah, uh that that that that was my latest. So l last year at you know SIHH, I guess it would be SIHH 2015 in January, um I had a different bag. I had I had gotten a gift from Tutor Watch Company, and it was a Jack Spade. They called it a dipped canvas tote, is what how Jack Spade had uh branded it. And it was it was a big, really heavy duty cotton canvas with a zipper on the top. It was a tote with the two sort of looped handles at the top. And then the bottom half of the bag looked like it had been dipped in a bucket of red paint. So it was a black bag dipped in like red on the bottom, like a rubberized or heavy sort of rubber uh uh red sort of paint or something that protected the bottom of the bag. And I I I'm just not a tote guy. I just I've never really liked the way you carry them. You know, it's either kind of awkward over the shoulder, the opening isn't big enough to get your arm through, and then your arm gets tired from sort of hanging it low. Um so I I don't know, I've just never warmed up to totes and I always felt like they were a little feminine, so I I just never warmed up to them. But I had that I had that bag at SIHH, and it was an excellent bag. It was perfect for a show because it was just like a black hole. You open it up, you could drop all of that gifty stuff in there. USB drives could just kind of disappear in the bottom. Um it was kind of just sounds like a a bigger or a better version of that Hublow bag. Yeah. And um Yeah, and and the the cotton canvas was heavy enough that I think it provided a bit of protection, so I was able to put a camera in the bottom. Um what you miss out with a bag like that is I mean it literally is just a black hole. There might have been a small zipper pocket inside, but I don't remember. So I got rid of that bag. But you're right, at this past Basel, um I'm a big fan of Topo Designs. They're a Colorado-based company that makes uh sort of retro-style backpacks and bags and clothing. And they've got uh a bag that's called the Mountain Briefcase and it's you know roughly briefcase shaped. It's rectangular and sort of slightly expands as you kind of add stuff to it. There's two separate zipper compartments and there's some internal storage. There's a laptop sleeve that's padded and then there's smaller pockets inside that you can put uh c |
| James Stacy | ables or business cards or you know it's kinda like a uh like an ex like a modern, a somewhat more modern or maybe less like willfully rustic expression of like the Philsen, the two five seven, the thicker one. Yeah, right. Um I like it better than the Philsen. You know, I I have a Philsen a two five six and I you know the bag itself is quite heavy mm and they're quite stiff. Yeah. Once they're broken in. So you don't get a lot of flexibility as far as like for laptops and things like that. So the topo looked really good. Yeah and the topo's light because it's it |
| Jason Heaton | 's it's cordura, so it's a cotton uh well, not cotton, but it's you know it's cordura, so it's it's heavy duty enough to avoid you know abrasions or fend off abrasions and things like that. But what's really cool about it is so it has a shoulder strap, it has two you know, shorter grab handles that you can just carry. And then tucked into a sleeve on one side are hidden padded backpack slap straps. So you can slide those out of the sleeve and clip them and turn the bag, you know, 90 degrees so it's sitting vertically, and then you can carry it that way as well. So you know, so far that's kind of my my best solution. And and certainly I just want to, you know, make clear to to people out there that, you know, when we're talking about Belas bags and SIHH, this isn't necessarily a really specific use case. I mean it is in our case, but this is a bag that could just be a work bag for for anybody that's going to an office uh or traveling or a journalist or anything anything like that. It's just a it's a great way to carry something that doesn't look so techy like a day pack does. So yeah, that'd say the the tote from Tudor was was good. I think the the Topo Mountain briefcase is probably my kind of my go-to now. But I I still feel like there's there's a |
| James Stacy | market out there for something. Yeah, I would totally agree. I've been I've been hunting for a couple years for something a touch smaller than the that Hublow bag, but also something that wouldn't require like that Hublow bag's basically like I pack it in its little zippered case. It goes in my luggage. I get to Bosel and I set up a very specific. I never touch that bag for the rest of the year. Oh yeah. It's n it's not a very good bag. Like it's a um it's just a big pocket of like very thin nylon. And uh it's not good for much else, but because of its few strengths, as a big zipper, a huge opening, nice long straps, and it holds a bunch of stuff. Yeah. Besides my tendency to develop tendinitis in my shoulder or my elbow by the end of the week from carrying that bag kind of straight armed by the end of the day. Yeah. It's been a great bag, but I would really like something that's kind of the full evolution of that idea. And uh and I I think I might have found it, at least I think I might have found it enough that I I shelled out for a Kickstarter project. Oh wow. From Peak Design, who I think we've spoken about before. They're a camera accessories designer manufacturer. Really cool company. Yeah, they make these camera clips with a you put kind of a mounting plate on the the bottom of camera and they make these like speed clips that you can mount on the strap of a backpack or on your belt. And it's a really awesome way to carry anything from a GoPro all the way up to a 5D uh you know, a D A 10, whatever you've got. But last year they launched I think it was a backpack. I don't remember. They launched a messenger bag, their everyday bag. And then in response to that bag's popularity, they started this Kickstarter for the everyday backpack tote and sling. So it's three bags in the Kickstarter and you basically pick the one that you want. And I'll put the link in the show notes. But the fast route is is they've been running for maybe twenty days, I think. Somewhere around twenty days, they've got a little over ten thousand backers, and of a five hundred thousand dollar goal, they're at two point three seven eight million. That's incredible. So the bags are really interesting designs. Um if I needed a backpack, I probably would have gone the backpack route, but like you mentioned, it's a real bummer to wear a backpack with a blazer. Yeah. Or or even a a backpack with like a sweater and uh a collared shirt. Yeah. I just I just don't want to look like a a guy that just got back from private school with you know, with his lunch bag and a couple of books in there. Like I I like having the toad and I like having one that's self-standing, so when you stop to chat with somebody, you can just set it on the ground between your feet, right? And not have the weight on your body. Because that's what a lot of Basel and and SIH is, is you know you go from a meeting to a meeting, but you cross paths with friends and and you know colleagues on the way, so there's a lot of stopping and talking, right? And standing on elevators or or things like that. So uh the uh the tote in the everyday backpack tote sling option is um compelling enough that I've I've backed the project. I you know we won't see these items until around December they say so I hope it's here in time for SIHH. But it's this uh really clever kind of nerdy tote in uh kind of a medium gray color, which of course I like. And um and and and it has adaptable straps so you can actually extend one strap to make it more of a messenger bag. You can put the straps through a channel and use it as a backpack. So if my arm's really tired and I just have to walk across Basel to get from my apartment to wherever my team is working. I can throw it on as a backpack. It carries a pretty considerable amount of stuff. It has a really interesting um interior design. That's such a crazy thing. Um channel that you can push to the side or you can push into the center and have kind of three pockets or none. And uh it's got panels on both sides for access and the really clever strap design. It'll hold a fifteen inch MacBook as well as a ton of accessories, a camera, multiple lenses, and I you know the the pricing seemed very reasonable. I think I paid about a hundred and forty five US uh for it. So I'm I'm excited. I mean uh it'll be in the final notes I'm sure I'll bring it up again because I'm I'm pretty pumped for the project and to have uh kind of a nice solution and if it carries the laptop and the camera really well then it could be my kind of my go to bag for these sorts of press environments sure where normally I pack one bag for getting from my house to the hotel and then switch to something designed for the day, whether you're in a car or you're at a show or whatever. Yeah. And this might be a way to just have the one bag for the through the whole trip. Or at least, you know, that's what I'm hoping |
| Jason Heaton | . Yeah, it looks really cool. I checked it out. It's it's a tempting proposition. I uh you know I just feel like I have way too many bags now, but yet I'm still lacking that one perfect bag. And if that's the one, I'd probably just shed my the rest of my inventory of |
| James Stacy | bags that just aren't quite cutting it. Yeah, that's the phase that I'm at now. I I''mm kinda trying to institute a one in, two out policy. Uh so I've got a couple of bags on on Craigslist in Vancouver and and I'll see if I can move a couple out of here 'cause otherwise I've I'm basically just my office is just becoming a store room for backpacks and various bags and stuff |
| Jason Heaton | . I think the the the crux of finding the right bag comes down, at least for me, um, in ability to carry sensitive equipment, i.e., camera gear, along with everything else. A lot of bags have laptop sleeves, um, but a lot of bags a lot of those same bags don't have the ability to protect the loose bits, you know, like a SLR body or a loose lens or another lens or a flash unit or whatever you've got in the same bag. Um, you know, you might have a laptop sleep, but then the rest is just sort of floppy and loose. And you and I were sort of chatting recently about you know making if you could make any bag into a camera bag by by getting some sort of uh a little pouch, you know, little padded pouch or a sleeve of some sort that you could slide into any other bag. And that that might be my angle. That might be my sol |
| James Stacy | ution is to hunt down something like that. Yeah, that's what I've been doing for a little while with um I take that uh it's that you know, those like a camera insert, like a three three section camera insert from the kata bag. Yeah. And I don't actually use the kata bag very often, but I use the insert every time I travel with my camera because it roughly fits right into the base of my main travel backpack, which is a five eleven rush twenty-four. Yeah. And uh that works really well. But when you had mentioned on Slack that you were interested in finding like essentially a camera management system that could just drop into any bag. I started Googling and I came across that one from Crumpler that looked pretty interesting. It was called the Crumpler Haven. It came in a few different sizes. And then I came across um the ape case uh options and they make four or five in different sizes and depths. And I bought because it wasn't very expensive, it was about thirty dollars Canadian, yeah. I bought the uh ape case QB thirty-five, and it is like essentially a um a padded camera um management system, like uh uh an insert that you would see in a camera bag. It's a little uh thinner, it's about four and a half inches thick. Yeah. And then the top has like uh a sleeve that you draw string shut. So you get you get the protection on three sides, yeah. Or five sides, I suppose, if we're thinking in terms of cube and uh and then the top is closed from any other things coming in or out of the space. And I picked it up on Amazon. It'll show up sometime next week. I'm pretty excited to see how it fits into the bag. I have some I have some travel coming up to Germany at the end of the month and I'm I'm hoping that I can just do the whole trip with one bag. Oh yeah. And a key element of that is like do I just wrap my camera in a sweatshirt or a spare pair of pants or something and drop it at the bottom of the bag and hope for the best? I mean our cameras the cameras these days are really tough. Yeah. But I still think you gotta respect that gear if you want it to work every time you pulled it out of your bag |
| Jason Heaton | . Um you know speaking of camera gear, uh or and camera bags, uh there there's this other category. So you know, moving on from like the the Basel bag category um to talk about sort of a uh more of a camera style bag or or camera specific pack. One bag that I like and yet one that I don't use very often, I have uh uh one of the Philson I think it was last year Philson came out with a line of camera bags uh that they partnered with David Al David Alan Harvey and Steve McCurry, who are two uh Magnum photographers. They worked for the Magnum photo agency. Um and they they did sort of a series. I think there was a tote and a backpack and then sort of a bona fide sort of shoulder camera bag. And I've got the the Steve McCurry version of the Philson shoulder camera bag. And what it's good for, so it's a it's just sort of a a big box, you know, big rectangle with a U-shaped zipper on top, heavy duty zipper, it's waxed canvas, it has sort of bellows pockets on each end and then sleeve pockets on the front and the back that that zip or button shut. And then inside it has these removable padded cubes that you can velcro around in different ways to to slide your gear in. It's's it awkward to carry for any long distance, so I certainly wouldn't want to be hauling it around Basel. Um but it's great like if it's a really camera intensive outing where you're not r you know, running around but you're kind of based in one or two places and you just need to have everything organized and sorted on the ground or in the backseat of a car or or whatever. It's almost sort of the classic when you think of a camera bag, that's what you think of like a field bag. Like a field bag, yeah. Yeah. You know, so that that I think that was kind of the the model for camera bags for a long time and I do like that bag, but to be if I'm honest, it it sits in my office at home ninety percent of the time and and if we have an outing like I said, in the car or or something where it's more of a stationary trip, it works just great. And that that kind of serves as my storage for the camera gear at home actually and it works quite well for |
| James Stacy | that. Yeah, I could see that bag being pretty popular if you were a working photographer. Yeah. So you would pick up some clients and take, you know, for engagement photos or something and go to a location. Sure. Take this big bag out, set it on the ground, pop up your tripod and kind of have like a home base. Yeah. For all your gear. But I mean a lot of what you and I do is transitional. Right. So you you take as little gear as you really need for coverage and you're moving the whole time, whether you're moving around a show hall or up and down a mountain or in and out of a you know, big body of water. It's not always handy to have the weight and the protection as much as it is to have just the right carry solution, which is I think this the the conundrum is that you we're just gonna keep buying bags until we die. That's the end of it. |
| Jason Heaton | Watches, shoes, and bags. You know, camera bags have sort of evolved from this classic sort of field bag style to um of course camera backpacks and and I I've tried a few of that style as well, which we've already discussed did not work well with a sport jacket or anything like that at uh at a show or anything where you need to look fairly crisp. Um but I one of them that I tried that was a sort of a miserable failure was um it was from a small company called Mind Shift and it was a bag called the three sixty and it was a it was a a technical backpack that had you know nice suspension um internal frame uh pack it, had a lot of adjustments and it had the concept of the bag was the it sort of had this hidden lumbar pack that doubled as the the pack's uh waist strap and you kept your your camera, like your body with a lens on it, maybe a spare lens, in this hidden sort of fanny pack. And then when you were ready to shoot, you would reach back like with your right hand and unclip something, and you'd swivel the whole waist belt around so that the fanny pack was now sitting in front of you and you could zip it open and pull out your camera. And so I still have this bag. I I literally have used it, I think, once or twice. Aaron Powell Sounds really complicated. It's kind of a cool design. It's like but it feels very designy, but in real-world application, my biggest problem with it was is that if if you want to use it, other than wearing it on your back with the waistbelt clipped, it's really hard to get your camera gear out because if like let's say you set the the bag on the ground, you know how you then you're it's really fiddly and you're like swiveling around this floppy waist strap on on the grass or on a bench or something like that. So it just it felt very specific. And the you know, the promo videos, you know, showed a guy kind of photographing Kodiak bears or something and he's in the tall grass and he's hiking with this thing on. Now that would be a perfect application. I'm sure there are people out there that could get good use out of that. But it just didn't it didn't quite cut it for me. The the one that has worked really well for me um in that sort of category is the the F-stop Kenty, which they actually don't make anymore. Uh the Kenty is i it's a small camera backpack, you know, really sort of uh very minimalist with a a a sort of drybag style roll top uh and some waterproof abilities. But what's really cool about it is on each side of the pack there are these U-shaped zipper pockets that allow you to take the pack off of one shoulder and just kind of bring the bag up with either your left or right arm and sort of just hold it alongside of you while you zip the pocket open, you can reach in, grab the camera and shoot, put it back, you know, whatever you need to do. And that that that's proved to be a a really versatile bag. I brought it to the Sochi Olympics when I went there. I've um just I've done a lot of trips with it. And the the biggest issue with it is it's quite tiny. I mean once you get your camera gear on those two side U shaped pockets, there's very little space in the top for you know you might fit like an algine bottle and maybe a rain jacket and maybe a couple of energy bars, but uh it doesn't hold a lot el |
| James Stacy | se. Yeah, I think that one was replaced by the Lotus. Oh. Maybe in their new mountain series. I I don't know. Go go F Sop is basically like one of the most premium makers of adventure backpacks designed for use with camera systems. Yeah. And they recently renewed their lineup. So uh I have an F-Stop bag that uh Jason gave me and Jason has the bag that he's speaking about now and and and I'm not actually sure what their direct replacement is but, if you go to their mountain series, yeah, what whatever the replacement is, they now have five in in that line, and I'm sure you could find one that that would suit your need, but they are designed for a use with an internal system called an ICU and uh the ICUs come in different sizes depending on how much gear you want to carry, but once you have the bag and the ICU, um you really have to trim your gear from there uh 'cause they are designed for camera use, essentially. Right. Right. S |
| Jason Heaton | ort of moving on from camera packs, let let's talk a little bit about sort of a a day pack. Um do you have you know, y you mentioned the five eleven, is that your is that kind of your go-to day pack? Like if you were to go for a let's say a hike like like what you and I did in Vancouver, you uh you weren |
| James Stacy | 't using that bag, you used something different for that trip. Yeah, for the uh for a a a day hike where I'm not necessarily training, um so I'm not carrying extra weight in the bag. Mm-hmm. Um so if I'm just going out, I carry two bags. This will sound hilarious to people who hike, but I carry two bags. My day bag is a a duter I think they call it a flash, but it's their like ultra lightweight. It's maybe a 15 liter bag. And it'll hold a three liter bladder, extra water, a spare layer. It's got a couple like mesh pockets on the side. You can put some food in. It was actually a gift from Zinn at Basel two years ago. And it's seen the top of every peak in Vancouver since then. And uh great bag. I really like Duder stuff a lot. This this one looks a little small, like I've kind of a tall, lanky frame, so the bag itself doesn't take up much of my back. Yeah. But you can um uh it it's it's been really tough. Uh uh a hard wearing bag I've had a couple of good falls in it and I haven't destroyed it. I had to modify it ever so slightly for the tube from the the hydration bladder, but uh that hasn't been an issue for it either. I made a small cut in the side of the bag and uh you know treated it with ripstop tape, and that's been uh a really, really reliable simple bright red bag, says in it's kind of fun that way. And then outside of that, uh the second bag I carry is is one that I've spoken about for a little while. I guess it's kind of hard to even call it a bag. It's the amigo agua. It's kind of a large triangular piece of neoprene with a zipper that kind of runs U-shaped around the majority of its body and it holds just my camera. And the bag's quite rigid. It's a nice level of protection against bumps and scrapes and such, but the idea is that the bag is storm proof, it has a IPX rating that's essentially like walk into anything except actually dunking it in water. So around here the weather can change fairly quickly, you can get caught in the rain, or you might want to cross a stream near a waterfall and and you could stop and put your camera in your bag and probably be okay, but this way the camera lives in this bag and the only thing I do is in a bad situation I'll zip the bag up, but otherwise it's fairly well covered even from dust and such. And then all you do is reach in and grab the camera which is tethered to the inside of the bag. Um, which is of course around my shoulder. Um and then you can shoot and just tuck the camera back in kind of with one hand. And it's a solution that I absolutely adore and I just like it's a perfect level of um protection and placement on my body for when I'm hiking. Yeah, I |
| Jason Heaton | was a little skeptical when you you know when you were first talking about this bag, I had kind of a hard time picturing it. I looked at photos of it, but when I was in Vancouver for the summit, we you know we we did that hike and I saw how you carried it. And it's pretty slick. You kind of just open up that flap and the camera's right there. It was super uh super easy to use it looked like. When you're actually carrying it, I I didn't carry which bag do you put on top? I put the uh the |
| James Stacy | the backpack on first and then then the Migo on over and then I clip the 'cause the Migo you wear kind of like a messenger bag like across one shoulder like a sling. Yeah. And then I I when I'm moving around when I'm on moving from one place to another and don't plan to stop to take a photo. I I use a carabiner on the strap of the backpack to hold the strap of the amigo in the same place. Yeah. And that keeps it from rotating forward. And then all you have to do is with one hand is just release that carabiner and the bag rotates to in front of you and you can take your shots. So you know I can wade out into water, take my shots, and even if I drop the camera, it doesn't really fall past the length of the bag. Yeah. And then if you want to take everything off, there's uh D clips on all of it that are locking. And you just un untab like unlock the D clip and just pop it off. Hmm. Hmm. Cool. I really like it. And they're about 60 bucks and I'm like it's a no-brainer if you take the camera into rougher scenarios or you want to be able to say you can actually take the uh the shoulder strap off of the bag and then clip the two corners of the bag together so like on their website they show people like clipping it to the handlebars of their bike. Oh yeah. Or to the outside of a big bag and it just kinda hangs there. Yeah. That might work with a lighter camera than mine. It would work fine on a bike, but on the outside of a bag I, think it would flop around a bit. The 5D is kind of heavy. Yeah. But uh it's a really great bag, it's worth every penny, and uh I really like the uh Migo stuff and and if if you want to just be able to kind of take the bag the camera out in |
| Jason Heaton | So y you know, beyond camera stuff, uh when it comes to to day packs, um yeah, I have two go-to bags that I use for for both hiking and for travel. So if it's travel that you know, again, you know, no sport coat, which is most of my travel. It's just adventure trips or you know going to visit the in-laws in Sri Lanka or wherever. I kind of have two bags that I use almost interchangeably. And one is again it's from Topo Designs and it's their cletter sack. And it's probably their most recognizable bag because it's kind of the one that is I would say represents the ethos of the brand, which is this sort of retro mountain sports sort of vibe. It's it's clutter sack kind of literally in German I think means something like climbing s climbing pack, and it's that minimalist sort of tube style top loading pack that cinches up with a a drawstring at the top and then you fold over a top flat pocket that clips shut. And this one, what I like, it has two side pockets that you can slip some not full on algine liter bottles, but kind of the more of the taller, narrower uh steel bottles that you're getting more and more these days. And then the inside actually has a little sleeve, which you could put a um, you know, I've carried a laptop in it, um, and it works quite well for that. And then the top flap over pocket with it has a zipper and it it's surprisingly big. It holds like when I travel, I'll put like a passport in there, um, wallet, energy bars, you know, whatever I need to grab you know quickly on the trip. And then the the the inside is it's quite big once you just sort of open it out. You can kind of stuff it with a sweater and and extra clothes and and you could actually make it into kind of a weekend bag. It doesn't have a waist strap. But I you know I found I used to be kind of hardcore about day packs needing you, know a, lot of support and suspension with waist waist straps and things, but this one's just two well padded shoulder straps and and a and a big interior. And it's um it's it's it's a retro style bag. You think it looks kind of more like a fashion bag, but it's worked really well on hikes and it it's it's a fun it it's a little bit less sort of military or technical looking when you take it on a plane or in the airport. Um I I I don't know. I'm a big fan of Topo Designs |
| James Stacy | anyway. It's a great looking bag. Yeah. Yeah. It's a great looking bag, and and definitely in stark contrast to my kind of go to travel bag, like smaller travel bag, I I use that like I mentioned, a uh five eleven Rush twenty-four. Yeah. And five eleven's a fairly well-known supplier for um military and police outfits and things like that. And and I bought the bag because I was interested in in a bag that you have, the uh Go Ruck GR one. Mm-hmm. But the Go Ruck is uh quite expensive. Yeah. And I knew that I was buying a bag to essentially abuse it, like uh it was going to be my go to travel bag and I didn't really want to worry about it. So I didn't want something that looked as nice as your um topo. And I needed something that had a lot of um interior volume. So the the the five eleven Rush twenty four is about thirty two, thirty three liters, which is great. It also has a series of internal zippered mesh pockets and a separated like foot locker. So in the situation where let's say I go swimming and I still have a wet bathing suit, yeah. When I'm coming back, it has this like you know, it's like a uh waterproof layer at the bottom. I can tuck something in there. Very cool. Or if you've got really smelly socks or something like that, you can tuck them in there and separate it from the rest of the bag. And if it's if what you put in there is quite wet, there's actually two draining holes. Oh yeah. Wow. The issue with the bag, to my eyes, is that it it looks like I just got off base. Like it looks like I'm a uh a military operator. It's a jet black bag. It's covered in what they call mole webbing. And it has amazing pockets and and it it cinches to be quite small or you can use the compression straps open and you can get a unbelievable amount of stuff and it'll carry a huge amount of camera gear. But whether you're going through I don't know, security, I've been to security all you know, various parts of the world. I was on a dive vote in Hawaii when somebody asked me where I served when they saw the bag and like I just use the bag like just to beat it up and doesn't show a day of where but I would really like I would go out and buy a second one if five eleven made a rush twenty four civilian yeah that didn't have all the mole webbing. Just give me a little bit of it. Just like they do on the G R one. Right. Which has I think maybe three layer three lines of mole webbing, whereas this has like twenty. It's all webbing. Yeah. And don't get me wrong, if you need to tie something to it with paracord or with a carabiner, it's great. But it looks really tactical and like I'm I wasn't in the military. I have no aspersions to claiming to have anything more than, you know, an interest in military, but not enough to, you know, wear military clothing or anything like that. And and and so the bag can c sometimes buck rub me the wrong way with that. But I I've used it for a lot of trips and I really love it for when I leave my house to where I get to the hotel or to where I'm staying because you can put so much in it and I know that I can get it on a bac on a plane. Yeah. It'll go nose first into a an overhead with uh no issue. It's just the right size. It's about the size it loaded out, it's about the size of one of those small roller bags that people use now. Yeah. I would say that if you put a lot of weight in it, it doesn't have the waistband, or maybe I removed the waistband, but it didn't have like a fully integrated waistband. It had like just a strip of nylon with a clip on it. And so I I think if you put a ton of weight in it, you know, like training for Baker, I would put fifty pounds in it. Yeah. And then go up and down hills around Vancouver and and with that much weight it it's all on your shoulders. Sure. And because it's just basically a box, it doesn't there's no real tech design to it. It doesn't handle a huge amount of weight really well, or maybe I don't handle a huge amount of weight really well, but either way I I really love the bag in its usefulness, but I do kind of feel like I'm driving one of those Jeep Wrangler Call of Duty editions that has like it just looks as military as possible and and I I would be really tempted to get one that that didn't have all the mole webbing on it. |
| Jason Heaton | Yeah, I when I saw it when I came to Vancouver, it's uh it I was jealous. I I have the the GR1, as you mentioned, the GoRuck, and and you know, don't get me wrong, and uh everybody that knows Goruck loves it. They make great stuff, it lasts a long time. Um and it's it actually flies a little more under the radar th than the five eleven certainly as you mentioned. Yeah. Uh and I use it a lot. I went I actually went for a hike today, which I'll talk about in a little bit, but uh I I use the Go Rock. I mean it's it's turned out to be a real go to bag becausecause it it's pretty minimalist. I mean I do kind of envy your sort of bathing suit drainage pocket and all the interior organization. But for most things, the GoRock works pretty well for me. It has the it has a padded laptop sleeve that's pretty discrete. It has two actually it has three internal pockets. There's sort of a a sleeve inside that I'll often stash like magazines or flat stuff for for on the flight if I'm taking it on a plane. Uh and then it has a small top pocket that I use for quick access stuff because you can kinda just zip open the top of the bag and I'll throw my keys in there, sunglasses. And then it has kind of a bigger mesh pocket that I'll stuff like uh charging cables and things like that. And then that frees up the m main part of the interior of the bag for clothing and shoes and whatever else I have. So it's it's a touch small for anything lengthy, but I can I can get away with like a two or three day quick getaway kind of travel weekend with that bag pretty well. And uh and w one advantage of is is that it slides nicely under a seat if you're stuck putting it under an airplane se |
| James Stacy | at. So yeah it's a lot thinner like in the distance that like if you take the five eleven and really zip it down with the compression straps. Yeah. You can make it get really thin, but then like it gets so thin that the the the material on the side actually starts to take up space. Oh sure. As it starts to collapse like a baffle. Yeah. The go ruck is a much more like simplified, sleek design, I think. Yeah. Um maybe I could get more done with the added, I don't know, six to seven liters in the the external pockets and such. But what it really came down to me was just price. Uh in Vancouver, I could get a f I could get the five eleven bag for about a hundred and fifty Canadian. Yeah. And uh and you're looking at nearly four hundred Canadian uh before you start to get into shipping, whatever, you know, I think they they often offer free shipping and such, or at least deals on shipping, uh, for the GoRuck, and and it was just like I was able to go to a store and actually see the 511 and uh and I went with it and uh I think the Gorux probably a a better bag or maybe the GR two, which is like thirty-six liters would probably be just about right for especially for a guy our size. Yeah. Very tall. You can get away with a bigger bag all the time. Yeah. And then I mean if we're gonna look at look at bags that are bigger than that, I think we push into extended travel or even like heavy duty backpacking. Uh you did Rainier, w what did you take there? Yeah, so when I |
| Jason Heaton | did that trip I used you know I, I I've had a couple of sort of backpacking packs over the years, um and the some of the names escape me, but the the one I used for Mount Rainier was from Osprey, and I think it was the Ether seventy, uh which you know, big full-on classic style, you know, backpack with uh hydration sleeve outer pockets for for bottles. It had um what was kind of cool about it was is it had a an outer sort of Oh nee. Keep that on the outside on the back. Um the top flap had a a big top pocket, actually I think two zip pockets that you could you could put little stuff in. And then of course the inside was just huge. I mean the thing was like uh you know it's a 70 liter bag, so it's um it's made for three, four, five day outings with everything from a tent to a stove to you know sleeping bag and clothes and layers and things like that. So it it worked really well for for Mount Rainier. Um you know, I I can't say anything bad about it. Um but another bag that I've used um is one that that you know you briefly touched on earlier uh and it's a bag that that I've had and I've used you know quite a bit that I passed on to you and that you used on Mount Baker, and that's the the F Stop Satori. So, you know, it it it came started life I think as a as a camera bag. You know, you can put that ICU in it that you mentioned from F Stop uh to to haul camera gear around it but take that icu out and it's it's a pretty full on good technical pack for for extended trips. How did how did you find that it worked on Mount B |
| James Stacy | aker? Uh yeah, I I think uh it punched way above its weight class on Mount Baker. Uh the bag the the Satori EXP is about fifty five, fifty-six liters, and I was told to have a sixty to seventy five liter bag for the three day trip and I didn't have to carry a tent uh that was part of like the group gear so I only p carried part of a tent. I I had the fly, another guy had the tent, another guy had the poles. Yeah. And uh I could get everything in the bag that I needed to, but what ended up happening was I kind of looked like a decorator crab because I was just covered in ancillary gear that couldn't fit inside the bag. So like I had double plastic mountaineering boots on the outside of the bag, I had my sleeping bag on the outside of the bag. I had all sorts of stuff just strapped to the outside of the bag. And like I think probably when I when I got the bag out of the van and everybody else, you know, a a good portion of my group had the same bag. They were using these um Gregory Palisades bags. Oh yeah. And they were about eighty liters with a big brain at the top that would like cinch vertically down. Yeah. So if you didn't eighty, the bag just kinda got lower Right. So it's a really great design. And I think if I was gonna do way more of this stuff, I would probably go out and buy the same bag. The guys they were all said they got a good price on it, and they all had everything inside their bag. Like you know, I was the only one with double plastics, which worked out beautifully for me and maybe not so well for everybody else. But uh I so I had a lot kind of strapped to the outside of the Satori just because it filled up. You know, you get a sleeping roll, your clothes, your food, and then y you can fill fifty liters pretty quickly and then some ancillary gear in there as well. So it was really just a sleeping bag that I kind of lash to the top. If you had a slightly bigger bag or a slightly smaller sleeping roll, I probably could have gotten the sleeping bag in there. Certainly if I had a smaller sleeping bag I could have. But the bag itself didn't seem to care what I attached to it. I found it to be really comfortable. There's a lot of nice little adjustments on it. It's got a really good hip band. Yeah. And like I said, it punched way above its weight class. When I got to camp and you start taking things off that bag and it's just like it looks like you just knocked over a shelf at an REI. There's just stuff everywhere and and it was all in or on that bag and and and everybody you know guys had probably better suited bags for the job. But I got in and out of there in relative comfort and and I thought the bag did beautifully. It's a it's a great bag. And certainly with uh I think with an ICU would make just an amazing kind of extended trip camera bag. Yeah. But I think it would operate without the ICU. It's really, really well made. Definitely a a considerable step above any other bag I've ever owned as far as the quality of the zippers and kind of the thoughtfulness of the design the in the back, like in the actual back panel, it's this kind of padded back panel that has a z a U shaped zipper around it and you can actually set the bag down on its flank and open this and you have access to like a series of pockets for like thin things like memory cards. Oh yeah. And like a fully watered seal pocket that's for a passport. Yeah. So basically whatever you did to everything else in this bag, you have like this dry bag inside one of the pockets for your passport. It was great. Just a really thoughtful design and a bag that I it's bright blue, which is like a it's a great color. And uh I found it very comfortable. You add a couple of carabiners and then they have these kind of um clip-on straps that allow you to attach more things to the outside of the bag. Couple of those and you're you're carrying way more than you would think for fifty-five liters. Yeah, I I mean I think |
| Jason Heaton | I agree. I and I think if it hasn't come out, you know, d up to now in the show, I think it it's pretty clear that we're both huge fans of F Stop as a brand. Yeah, so like I said, I you know I've got the Kenti and have used that and brought it to Vancouver. Um I used that Satori for a long time. I brought it to New Zealand and took everything from underwater camera gear to three days of of hiking gear in it and then passed it on to you, and then I've got the Talopa, which is their replacement for it. Just great products. So maybe we maybe it's time we kind of step into our new business section of the show and talk a little bit about Mount Baker. I mean you you you used the bag, sounds like the bag worked well. Um but how how did the climb go? Tell me |
| James Stacy | about it. Yeah, so uh for those of you who are maybe just stepping into this or who've phased out when you knew I didn't make it last time, um for my birthday this year my wife got me a guided summit of Mount Baker, which is in the northern cascades in Washington. It's a peak you can see from Vancouver. I would see it on a clear day walking to and from uh you know my office and and it's uh it had always just kind of been there with Rainier as like if I was gonna try mountaineering. It's a perfect playground to do so. Um my wife looked into Rainier as well and for the guided trips it was a a huge backlog of of uh uh basically a huge waiting time to get onto a team and uh ended up going with Baker and I went with Mountain Madness and I ended up doing it twice. The first time didn't go so well but Mountain Madness was really cool about it. It had me come back out again. And it was a blast we had a a team this time What was your what was your team the first time around? It was a smaller team with just one guide? Uh it was one guide and uh two uh three other people. Okay. So one rope team the first time around and this time we had two rope teams, a five five to a team. I see. And uh one of the guides had just come back from Denali, a summit, a guided summit of Denali. And uh she was awesome. Uh we we had a we had a really good time. The team was great, uh a few Canadians on there, uh handful of uh you know, like Americans from from all over and everybody was awesome. I mean it's kinda unilateral, that's my experience with any sort of adventure travel is it tends to bring out not only the best in people but attract kind of the best people. Yeah, yeah. Uh so I I I've these people were all great and uh they were they all were well briefed on on what to expect from the mountain. Um a few of them were quite accomplished adventurers and and one guy had brought his daughter. Uh he had done he had done uh you know peaks in Peru and he had done the Grand Tetons and and he was doing this with his daughter. He had done Rainier before. And we had uh we had a good time. It basically basically the trip, the way Mountain Madness does it breaks into three days. And on the first day, you basically leave a little town called Cedro Woolley whenever you can and you get to it's about that's about 45 minutes to an hour from the trailhead. Put all your gear on your back, maybe 50-60 pounds I would say to expect, and then you hike into base camp, which is a pretty simple climb as a hike, uh aside from maybe the weight would would if you didn't train for it, I think would the distance might take a bit out of you, but it was about nine or ten kilometers to camp and set up camp, have some food and go to bed as early as you can. Were you camping on snow? Uh we were on rock this time. Okay. But when we got to the parking lot, there were so many cars there we were sure we were going to be on snow. And it just turns out most of them were day hikers. Oh, I see. But there were a lot of people on the mountain. Huh. Um, like there for the for the full weekend or or longer. But we were lucky we got we got um kind of two spots on the rocks. How was the weather? Oh beautiful. Yeah. It was uh not freezing at night, certainly, and then it was really warm. I you know, for Canadians it was mid-twenties coming down the slope in the afternoon of the Sunday. So you you really had to be mindful of overheating and of sunburn. So you I there's a picture on my uh on my Instagram if you want to see a picture from the peak and you can see that I'm wearing long sleeve and gloves still, and I've got kind of my s silly shem egg that I I used throughout the climb for to uh kind of various effect to keep the sun off, and I was able to do it with no sunburn, so that's great |
| Jason Heaton | . What did the snow school consist of? Did you was it sort of uh rescue self-rescue skills and and that sort of thing |
| James Stacy | ? Yeah, it was just the basics of how to walk in cramp-ons and a couple different techniques um for how to manage various levels of steepness and then also you know your in balance and out of balance step in terms of using your Isaacs as your third leg uh when moving uh traversing a slope and then a little bit for glissading and a little bit for self arrest. There's nothing really steep on Baker. I was expecting to find the Roman wall, which is the main feature on Baker before the peak. I was expecting to find it quite steep, and instead it's kind of like when you fall on a a steep black diamond at a ski run and then stand up and you know your skis are half the hill down below you. It's basically like that. Like it was steep but and you wouldn't want to fall 'cause it would take you a moment to slow down, but it didn't feel exposed, I guess. Yeah. Certainly in hiking, I felt like where, well, if you slip here, when you stop, it's gonna be done or bad. And I don't think that's necessarily the case. You know, they said that the Roman wall was a no-fall area simply because you're above kind of a a large exposed crevasse. Hm. But I still think you would have had some runway and and you're on a rope team. So the whole time you're tied to four other people. |
| Jason Heaton | And what time uh did you guys get a sort of one of the uh alpine starts the the the morning of your summit attempt do you get up at uh one o'clock or two o'clock to set off |
| James Stacy | or yeah we we got up uh we got up in and out around two and uh and it was great so we basically didn't even actually deal with direct sunlight until we were just below the Roman wall. So we did the majority of the climb either in darkness or in that kind of morning twilight or just in the shadow. You actually walk, there's a full-on a ridgeline essentially facing you from the east. And uh so you get some sun protection from that going up. |
| Jason Heaton | Yeah, and just just for listeners that maybe aren't aware of why there is such a thing as an alpine start, the you know, for mountaineers on glaciated peaks or or snow covered peaks, the the idea is that you get a very early start. You want to get as far up the mountain as you can before the sun comes up because you want the snow surface that you're hiking up or climbing to be as firm as possible. And when the sun starts to come up in the mountains, it's uh you're at higher altitude, the sun strength is higher, and it tends to soften the snow to the point where you get, you know, at l at at best, you know |
| James Stacy | Yeah, and certainly coming down we had terrible snow. It was you know, you would take a step and slide for a foot and on a rope team that's difficult and there's a few points we had to jump a crevasse. Oh wow. And uh and a couple of them people had kind of kicked away the lip. Yeah. So it was just a negative jump. And uh you know, maybe you're only jumping a foot, but when you add in double plastics plus you're tied to somebody, that foot seems like a plenty of a jump, especially when it's on a slope and there's no spot for you to stop at the edge. Sure. So you have to commit somewhere mid step to like, yeah, I'll actually do this and then you hope that the guy behind you is giving you enough rope. Yeah. That that step that your next foot won't be disabled by a you know a taut rope. Right. But yeah, I had an absolute blast. It was beautiful day. There's a handful of pictures on my flickr, which I'll link to. And yeah, we were up in I don't know, about six maybe six and a half, seven hours. I have it on my Phoenix. I just haven't uh downloaded all the data. And then down took felt like it took three times longer, but I think it was maybe three hours, three and a half hours down. And and then you camped that night again, right? And then you went down the final day, correct? Right. Yeah. I think they find that a lot of people if you have to go all the way back to camp, brake camp, and hike back to the car, it's just tough on people to do the weight. Yeah. Uh to carry out. I mean I I would that would have been fine by me, would have saved me taking the Monday off. Mm-hmm. Um but uh it was nice to be able to come back and just kind of sit at camp and have a bite to eat and then just take a nap. It was uh it was a a fantastic day and and if you're even remotely interested in doing this sort of thing, f find an outfitter, whether it's Mountain Madness or somebody else, find somebody and just ask all the questions that you might have or you you feel free to write Jason and I, the gray nightgmail.com I.'ll answer as I can, but talk to an outfitter, talk to uh one of these adventure companies if you if it's something you want to try doing. I I had such a good time and I learned a lot about the intricacies of even just entry-level mountaineering and glacier travel and rope teams and all that sort of thing. It was it was a blast. It was a great great great experience. Well congratulations. I'm I'm glad you finally got to do it after after the disappointing first attempt. Yeah. And then ye |
| Jason Heaton | ah how about you? You you went on a little adventure today, didn't you? Yeah so, I've been a bachelor all week. My wife's been been out of town. So I um I just I had cabin fever all week, so I just set off really early this morning. I speaking of Alpine starts, I I woke up at three thirty and I had some breakfast, packed a bag, packed the car uh with diving gear and some hiking gear and set off for the north shore of Lake Superior, which is about two and a half hours north of Minneapolis where I am. And uh my goal was to uh scuba dive. It's a sh there's a shore dive that that can access uh a a really popular shipwreck that's went down in nineteen oh five. It's called the Madeira, and it sank in a storm in 1905, and you can get to it from shore. It's below a big cliff. So I wanted to dive that in the morning, and then I was going to do some hiking uh in the afternoon, which is what I did. And so it was great. The weather was gorgeous, the bright sun, flat calm seas on the lake, and uh had a had a had a great dive. I mean the water was cold, it was thirty nine degrees Fahrenheit, which is about four degrees, four to five degrees uh centigrade. But uh you know, I w I had I had a dry suit, I had my new uh you know my new to me uh uh bomb disposal suit that I think I've talked about in the past episod.es Very cool. sh Got toake that down in in some cold water and it worked worked really great. Uh had a good rig. And uh it was it was a fun dive. The the rack is fantastic. It it's well preserved in the in the cold fresh water and it's kind of broken up into two pieces. You got the bow, I don't know, about fifty yards from where the stern settled, and they're they're kind of at these dramatic angles, a lot of torn metal. Um but then on the deck on the the bow end of it, you can th there's this big winch or capstan that used to pull up the anchor and it still has rope coiled around it and uh the handle is there and all the gears are still intact and and uh it's just a fun wreck to dive because it's accessible from shore and it's uh it looks like a shipwreck, you know. You y y y you get that sense a lot of wrecks are very broken up and sort of piles of lumber. But this one's a you know, it's legitimate sort of big broken up steel ship that's that's uh sits at about I think from about forty feet down to about uh the pilot house is sitting upright at about uh ninety five feet or so. Um And uh was this your first time diving? No, I this was I think my fourth time my my fourth time diving the Madeira. I try to make it up there at least once a year because it's it's probably the closest kind of cool shore dive that that I can do from home. And uh so it was great. I mean other than the biting flies that were, you know, attacking me around the parking lot, uh it was it was fantastic. Um uh you know so I I I got out of the water and hoofed all my stuff up. It it kind of reminded me of of our approach or of the dive site that we did at Kelvin Grove up in V in Vancouver where you sort of park up above and then you sort of have to hike down a steep trail down to a rocky beach. Right. And it's on this little bay. And uh so it's it's a very dramatic, very beautiful um spot. And so when I was done, I I packed up, tossed all my wet gear in the back, pulled on my my hiking boots, and then drove just a short ways away. This is all right around the vicinity of what they call the Split Rock Lighthouse, which is a a lighthouse that was actually built in response to the storm that sank, I think, 30 plus ships in 1905, including the one that I was diving on, the Madeira. They built this lighthouse the next year, and it's perched on this cliff, and they made a state park out of the area surrounding it. So when I was done diving, I just drove the car just up the road, up the highway, I don't know, about a mile to sort of a a wayside off to the side and parked and hiked up one side of the the split rock River. The Split Rock River actually flows into Lake Superior and I hiked up one side of it uh about two and a half miles to where a bridge crosses over to the other side and comes back down the other side. And it was a it was a beautiful day, like I said and I just I took my time, hiked up and sat on a rock and and had a little lunch and then came back down to the car. I was pretty I hadn't realized how fried I was from from the diving uh until I got on the trail. My legs were pretty tired from the surface swim and from hoofing all my dive gear up to the car, but uh but it was fun. It was a good day. Sounds like a great day. Yeah, it was a really great day. It was kind of like our our T G N s summit, but it was uh kind of on a smaller scale. So great, great, great fun. |
| James Stacy | All compressed into one day. Yeah. Well I've got a great day coming up if we're gonna stick with new business. Uh this coming Thursday I get to have a uh a flight with the Brightling jet team as they're in town for the Abbotsford Air Show which happens later that weekend. Now I you've been with the uh with these guys, so what what am I in for |
| Jason Heaton | ? Well yeah so I did it last summer in my hometown uh of Milwaukee and I think you'll get the same experience 'cause it's your hometown. But uh I w I'm from Milwaukee and and they were there last summer as part of uh the tour. And it it's it's a gas. I mean it's it's really cool. They they're they're so well organized. They uh you know they do this countless times with with journalists and VIPs and retailers. And so they they they really know how to set things up ideally for you. So you'll get you'll get a nice jumpsuit, you'll get your helmet, um, and then when they And then when you get in the cockpit, you're kind of locked in, you're given a few rules, and they've got a GoPro camera mounted in front of you, and then they've got another one mounted on the underside of the plane. So when you're done, literally like, an hour later, someone walks over and hands you two USB keys that has the footage from looking at you in the cockpit and then the footage underneath the plane. And it's such great. It's like the ultimate, like if you think your summit shot from Baker is a hero shot, wait till you show people like a a screen grab from, you know, flying upside down over downtown Vancouver. It's it's it is just super cool. And I think you know I I I don't wanna I don't wanna give in too much because I I think, you know, you'll you'll find out for yourself. But it's uh it's fun. I mean I think some people I know some people, you know, have some trouble with the the G forces and kind of the queasiness that you get. I I didn't have too many problems with that. They kind of teach you a few little tricks to you know keep down your l |
| James Stacy | unch. Um but yeah, so it looks like it's a flight in uh uh Aero L thirty nine C. Mm-hmm. And it's uh so it's a a trainerircraft, uh a jet aircraft. It looks just like a fighter plane. It's this has been on my bucket list for a long time. I had no idea that Brightling would be the outlet for this. Oddly fitting, of course, and uh I'm covering it for Nouveau magazine and I'm kind of hoping that they that I either puke or pass out just because I think that'll be better. Like I think that's I think that's taking it to my limit like in top in top gun parlance. If I push it to my limit, it's gonna be to puke or to or to pass out. I don't think I can I can really I I don't think I can be any more logins about it than that. I think that's uh so I I'm I'm allowing myself to be quite excited about this. I'm hoping for a greatat weher and uh and I'm hoping just you know, it's something that I've been I've loved uh jet aircraft since I was a very little kid and and I grew up right near the um Warplane Heritage Museum in Ontario. Oh wow. Uh so I've been around my dad took me to air shows and it since I was really, really young and I'm I'm I'm really excited about this. I think it's gonna be a fantastic uh fantastic experience. Very, very cool. And you've got uh a new watch in for review. What's uh so I'm a little jealous |
| Jason Heaton | . Yeah, so it you know, as as everybody's probably heard already, if if you listened in, uh we did our first standalone TGN chat with Chase Fancher from from Oak and Oscar and uh Chase was here in town in Minneapolis uh a couple of weeks ago and he was debuting his new Sandford, which is a GMT watch. It's his second watch that he's come out with, the Burnham was his first. And after I uh did our interview for the Grey NATO, um he left one of the the watches behind a sample for me to spend a couple of weeks with and review and I'm gonna be writing that up for Hodinky. And you know I, haven't had it long enough to form any sort of firm opinions yet, but first impression is it's it's a it's a pretty rockin' watch. It's it's a forty millimeter uh steel case, um you know great size, it's not too thick, and it has these nice little details, you know, the stencil dial, the play of orange and gray, which you know, as anybody knows, James and I both like that that color combination. For sure. Great strap that he puts on it. He has it made I believe he said in Indiana. It's a nice sort of chunky Horween leather uh strap. And uh I don't know, it's it first impression's great. I mean w we both love you know, twin crowned watches and and GMTs and this one this one kind of ticks a lot of boxes. It's a |
| James Stacy | it's it's a really neat watch. So Yeah, I wrote up a piece for for a blog to watch about it and and you know they're selling them for uh there's a pre-order price right now and stainless steel 1750 and then the pvd one as I mentioned at the end of the TGN chats from last week the PvD sold out in less than two weeks yeah so it's gone I mean they they were retailing I guess for eighteen fifty for a brief period of time, but not long enough. They weren't available long enough to even outrun the pre order window. Yeah. They're they're just sold out. I mean it it's it's uh I think it's such a great looking watch. I think it's a great size and I love the GMT and and with the twin crown system you don't ever really have to touch that crown if you just want to use the GMT and its most basic feature. But if you really want to go nerdy there,'s a few different ways to use that crown and uh and and and track more than one time zone. Or to be able to track theoretically any time zone. Yeah. Uh once you have the GMT hand actually set to GMT. And you can use the internal bezel, the re at bezel to uh to actually manage just the offset from GMT. So if you know that I don't know Budapest is plus two, then you could set it to plus two and and be able to change it kind of on the fly without changing the timing of the watch, which is |
| Jason Heaton | quite clever. Yeah, he's put a lot of thought into it. And uh it's amazing to me that that it it was almost literally exactly a year from the release of the Burnham to to the release of the Sanford and for a really small company that's making in the the couple of hundreds, it's uh it's pretty remarkable what he's accomplished. |
| James Stacy | So it's a really impressive time span, no doubt. Yeah. And speaking of creation, I think we'll go to our last piece for new business. Anybody who's fading in and out, turn up your earphones a little bit and listen, we actually have a request. So uh Jason and I have been struggling. We've wanted to kind of give away a Grenado kit. I'm not gonna give away any piece of what's in that kit, but if you've listened to us talk about things in New Business and in Final Notes, it's all that sort of stuff. It's things that we really like or use or maybe we've read. I guess that's a hint. The thing is we wanted to find kind of a way to engage some of the audience and and we're thinking it's time for maybe a new logo for the show. And we want to get into patches, which we've talked about uh previously, maybe some zipper pulls. So we're asking you, the listener, to help us out and design us our new logo. So all you have to do is uh Photoshop or Illustrator, however, you like to do these things, design us a logo for the show or that would work for a patch or a zipper pull or something, a piece of gear, and uh put it on Instagram and tag TGN logo. We're gonna let this run for let's say a month. See what we get, and we'll uh pick a favorite. And the favorite will get this Grenado kit. Um, I promise you, you'll love what's in it. If you like the show, you're definitely gonna like all these various products. Again, hashtag TGN logo. If you don't use Instagram, but you've got a really sweet design, just send me an email, thegraynado at gmail.com and we can throw it up on uh on our Instagram or that way Jason and I could at least see it. Uh we're interested to see what people would come up with. I think all of you that listen to the show kinda know what we like and and and what the show's about. It's about you as much as it's about Jason and I. So please uh throw us your best design, throw it on Instagram. We think it might be a neat way to let others know about the show. And uh I'm I'm excited to uh kind of find a new logo and kind of a new uh a new look for maybe some gear and some other stuff that we have planned for uh the rest of the year so again that's hashtag tgn logo and uh i can't wait to see what comes |
| Jason Heaton | in time for final notes. Uh James,' Ill go first here. Uh I've got two today. Uh my first one is an article that appeared in the Atlantic or on the Atlantic magazine's website, Atlantic.com, and the article was called uh The Diving Bell and the Exoskeleton. And aside from the clever title, the the um the topic just really appealed to me. It was all about kind of the history of hard diving suits as they're called. These are uh what some people know as a gym uh gym suit or a newt suit, um, or uh more generically a one-atmosphere suit. And basically, the the article kind of traces the history of these diving suits that are almost like a mini submarine. They pr they protect the body from the the water pressure that's outside, whereas if you're wearing a dry suit or a wetsuit, um you know you're and and breathing you know air from a compressed tank on your back or surface-fed compressed air uh requires uh you know great amounts of of decompression time to come back to the surface. Whereas if you're in this self-contained uh one atmosphere suit, it you're basically descending uh while maintaining uh surface uh air pressure inside the suit. So you can come straight to the surface, pop off the top of the suit, and go about your business without having to decompress. The the big issue with these suits, of course, is they're they're large, they're heavy, they're expensive, and they're quite clumsy. Um and over the years there've been varying degrees of success with these suits. There have been been suits that um I think it was nineteen thirty five they had uh a suit like this uh that looked like something out of a sci-fi film that that they they dropped down on the on the Lusitania um in the Atlantic Ocean. I know that they used one of the Newt suits to bring up the bell from the Edmund Fitzgerald in Lake Superior. And this article kind of covers the history of these one atmosphere suits and it it's's really quite a fascinating piece because it it not only goes into kind of the physics of deep diving and decompression science but also this this kind of cool engineering story that goes along with it. Um James I know you read it. Did you did you find that one kind of cool |
| James Stacy | ? I thought it was such a cool story. Uh if you're listening to this and you don't jump to the show notes or just Google Diving Bell and the Exoskeleton, you're really missing out on the story encapsulates kind of adventure and treasure hunting and the tech side of it and the history of these things. And uh yeah, these ADS, these uh atmosphere atmospheric diving suits are it's just so wild. Yeah. What they're capable of and how deep they can go and and And he explains his experience in the suit as though he can't actually see the water necessarily. Yeah. So he feels like he's just kind of in another world that that isn't necessarily compressed by water. Right. So such a great article. I mean the the Atlantic's just about as good as it comes when they focus on something like this, especially when they focus on something that has a historical perspective to technology. I find their their artic their writings just just top quality and uh yeah, please click this link and check it out. Yeah, it was a good one. Kind of to piggyback on that one, I have uh a video that Jason sent me and I stole for final notes. Um it's uh Jacques Cousteau's Search for the Britannic. Uh it it's it's uh you know kind of a quintessential Cousteau style movie um about them taking their you know full rig and the the calypso and everything out to find the Britannic and I I I there's so much happening in this movie that I'm excited that like that I that that kinda gets me excited. I don't really know where to start. There's some really awesome watches that you can kind of pick up on. Some really hardcore diving. They're doing like they're hanging a decompression bell to dive on this on the Britannic, which is I think in nearly 400 feet of water. Uh it's it's a great movie. You should really again, show notes, click the link. It's on YouTube. Super watchable even now and uh you know maybe have a good time just just buying some of the watches uh that these guys are rocking they were clearly Cousseau was such a watch nerd and that spilled out into his into his crew, his guys. And then maybe when you're done watching this, just watch the life aquatic. Yeah. Just because that's it. Like I you can't watch any of these Cousteau films without getting a real hit of that of that movie uh because it it nailed a few kind of elements of that aesthetic and the environment that those guys this adventurous like there's so much there that we could be doing. Yeah. The movie's great. It was really awesome. I I I think it's a blast. It's definitely one that everyone should watch. Yeah, the one thing I'm always struck |
| Jason Heaton | by whenever I watch one of these old Cousteau films is just how um he didn't think anything was impossible. You know, he he just whether it took, you know, creating a little decompression chamber that he hung below the calypso so that they could decompress on the way back up, or um you know, just the watches they wore, their their their suits were all color coordinated, um, you know, just everything. They here they are in I don't know, must have been made in the seventies or eighties. You know, here they are diving a four hundred foot shipwreck and it's like that they just go and do it, you know, wearing cool watches and red caps, you know. It's just it it's an awesome film. So yeah, check that one out for sure. And you know, for my last recommendation today, uh I've got something sort of cousteau related. I stumbled upon this person on Instagram called Pestiche Patches and uh he's based in Sweden and he just he sells these iron on or I suppose you could stitch them on as well uh fabric patches that are kind of watch slash dive related. The Cousteau related one is actually the the classic Aqualung logo. It's uh black background with a yellow um foreground with the writing and the the old Aqua lung double hose logo that they used to use that's on of course Doxa watches and Cousteau was the the president of US Divers Corporation that that sold Aqualung and of course he was the inventor of the Aqualung. So it's it's just a cool patch. I I I got it in the mail the other day. Um and I don't know where I'm gonna put it yet. Maybe sew it on a jacket or on a backpack or something like that. But he also sells one um one of these no radiation round uh logos as well that that was on the dial of the old Blanc Pond fifty fathoms that indicates that it it was non-radioactive, the the dial. And he also sells like a rectangular submariner patch that's white on black and sort of has the the depth rating that was on the submariner watches. So just cool fun fun stuff. They were I don't know, four or five bucks, um didn't really cost much. Uh came in about a week from Sweden. And uh you you know if're a watch nerd or dive nerd um |
| James Stacy | just something really cool to check out so yeah I think they're really neat especially if you you like you've got a sub and you want the same sort of the the uh the yeah the the depth rating or if you've got a an old docs and you want the same logo somewhere else on another bag or something like that. I think they're they look really cool and the his Instagram seems pretty new, so I think everybody should go give him a follow. Yeah. And hopefully he'll launch more or maybe people could suggest things that they'd love to see other logos from stuff, but certainly the no radiation logo is pretty rad. They've got a couple on bags and and jackets and things like that. It looks pretty cool. Yeah. And yeah my final one is actually just uh I just just want to underline the everyday backpack that peak design kickstarter um I the bags aren't gonna be that much more expensive when the Kickstarter's done but I you know like I said I put my own money into it so I'm I'm I'm pretty excited about the project and if uh if you kinda zipped through the bag talk 'cause you didn't care, I think just about anybody if you carry things day to day or do you do some traveling I think you could find a pretty interesting bag there. And I just get excited about backpacks and and and gear and that sort of stuff so you know swing by the show notes and check that out or I mean if you if you Google everyday backpack you're gonna hit it the SEO on that page is wild given the d almost two and a half million dollars they've earned for it. So some really s really cool stuff. And uh as always, you know, thanks so much for listening. Hit the show notes for more details. Be sure to send us your logo designs with the hashtag TGN logo you can follow us on instagram jason is at jason heaton and i am at j e stacey and you can follow the show at the gray nado and please do if you're gonna support uh the this kind of logo contest uh give us all a follow so we can make sure to see your submissions and your hashtags and such. And uh you know, if you have any questions for us, please write thegray NATO at gmail.com. You can subscribe to the show and review wherever you find your podcast, or you can grab the feed directly from thegraynado.com. Music throat is siesta by Jazzer via the Free Music Archive |
| Jason Heaton | . And we'll leave you this week with this quote from Andre Gide, who wrote Man cannot discover new oceans unless he has the courage to lose sight of land. |