My dad and I went to the REI garage sale yesterday. It’s a big sale of used and returned items for co-op members. We didn’t make it right when the store opened but apparently there was a huge line and mad rush in as soon as the doors opened. Like Black Friday. I’m sure we missed some really great deals that way but I have no desire to get stampeded for camping stuff. We still managed to get a couple of great deals though. I got the REI Base Camp 4 tent ($300) for $43. The only thing wrong with it is that it’s missing stakes and guylines. Which I can easily buy for under $20. Otherwise though, it was brand new and never used. I set it up yesterday to make sure it was okay and it looked to be in perfect condition. It’s much better quality than my current Coleman tent so I can’t wait to use it.

My dad got a Sierra Designs Moken 4 tent ($500) for $15. There was no reason listed on its tag for being in the sale so we opened it up and found out that someone must have put it away wet because it was a little smelly. That’s easily fixed though, just needs to be aired out. We set it up and found nothing else wrong with it. He also got the footprint for that tent for $1.83. He got another tent, a $205 Armadillo one, for $1.83. The reason that was listed for that tent being in the sale was that it “leaks live a siv”. At less than $2 though, it was hard to turn down so we took it home and set it up and found out that the previous owners must have just set it up wrong because there are actually 3 layers of tent wall. Hard to leak into that. We did see that they had tried to seal the seams over a mesh vestibule area, which makes absolutely no sense since rain would go through the mesh 1 inch away. The tent looked like it had been used many times and I looked up Armadillo tents and saw that they went out of business in 2001, so these people must have just not wanted it any more and returned it after using it for years. REI does have a great return policy. When I bought my hiking boots there I was told that if I went on a couple of hikes with them and they weren’t comfortable or didn’t fit, I could bring them right back. Any other store wouldn’t even think of taking back used boots.

There were a couple of other really good deals, like some Swiss Army knives for a few dollars each, and $80 climbing shoes for $1.83. I wanted to get them so bad but they just fit my feet, which means they’re too big for climbing. It took me a while to accept that and put them back though since it was such a great deal. I might go earlier next year after all.

I finally got the DVDs for Long Way Round, Ewan MacGregor and Charley Boorman’s 2004 round the world motorcycle trip. They had filmed it and turned it into a show, which apparently aired on Bravo but I never saw it. I had to order the DVDs from amazon.ca because I wasn’t finding them still available in the US for some reason (at least not the special edition with 10 episodes, as opposed to the original 7). The whole series was fantastic. I would recommend watching it even if you’re not particularly interested in motorcycles. Just the whole traveling into remote parts of the world and meeting the people there angle is really interesting. They had a cameraman, Claudio von Planta, on a third motorcycle with them, and two support vehicles traveling a few days behind them to meet up at borders and help with the documentation needed there for crossings. The roads for probably 2/3 of their trip were pretty much non-existent so you get to see some pretty rough off-roading as well.

They actually ran into Ted Simon in Mongolia – he’s the author of Jupiter’s Travels, about his riding round the world for 4 years on a Triumph back in the 1970s. They worked with UNICEF for the trip and met up with children in different cities to spread awareness of UNICEF’s cause. My favorite parts were when they stayed with Igor in Ukraine (episode 3) and when they traveled the Road of Bones in Siberia (episode 7).

Last year they did another trip, Long Way Down, where they traveled from the tip of Scotland to the tip of South Africa. I’ll probably pick up that DVD set soon to check out.

My favorite band will be up in the northeast quite a bit this year. I recommend checking them out at one of these shows if you’ve never seen them before.

The best part is that I go to these places any way, and they’ll just happen to be there.

February 28 – World Cafe Live
May 16-17 – Camp Jam in the Pines
July 17-20 – Grey Fox Bluegrass Festival
August 29-31 – Delaware Valley Bluegrass Festival

And of course I’m sure I’ll still go down to Louisiana for the Blackpot Festival in November. It was a fantastic time and I loved just about every band that played last year.

We did a 9 mile hike in Wharton State Forest today. The original plan was to do Mt. Tammany or Sunfish Pond so I was disappointed when no one wanted to drive that far and it was decided that we’d stay in flat South Jersey. It ended up not being as bad as I thought it would though. It was actually pretty in the pines. We started out at Batsto Village and did a loop up past some of the wilderness campsites. It wasn’t too cold out either, as long as we kept moving. Might be good for a backpacking or kayak/canoe trip later (several little rivers and lakes back there).

I love the look on the husband’s face.

The Comanche Moon miniseries is finally set to air on CBS. I’ve been waiting for this for a long time. It’s the last of the adaptations of the books, and again Larry McMurtry was a co-screenwriter so it will be very true to the story. There are a bunch of clips available on CBS’s website so I checked them all out. It looks like Steve Zahn and Karl Urban were good choices for Augustus McCrae and Woodrow Call. Those are hard characters to live up to, especially since the great portrayals of them by Robert Duvall and Tommy Lee Jones in the Lonesome Dove miniseries. The rest of the casting looks to be good as well. It starts January 13, and continues on the 15th and 16th, from 9-11pm each night. Definitely watch this. (Also read the four books and watch the other three miniseries if you haven’t.)

I’m signed up to take the Basic Rider Course on the last weekend of March. My plan is to start getting gear ahead of time and then find a good used bike in April. I’m thinking a HD Sportster 1200. I was planning on the 883 but I’ve been told that when riding with others it’s hard to keep up. Also I just got a book called Breaking the Limit about a woman who rides from Jersey to Alaska and back on her Sporty 1200. And I’m easy to convince. Plus I can see the value of getting a bike that I’ll be happy with much longer as opposed to buying something as a starter and then having to get another one in a year or two. Of course I’m still open to other non-Harleys as well but it would have to be a great deal to win me over.

I spoke to my landlord yesterday and he is in the process of getting bids for reroofing the house and shed, and also plans to add another door to the shed so we (myself and the downstairs tenants) can use it. He said he’ll make my side big enough for a bike. I had been looking at enclosures like the Bike Barn and Cycle Shell (mainly for winter storage) but then it’s still very obvious that you have a motorcycle. Much better to have it in the shed and out of sight completely.

I’ve probably mentioned this before but a website with great information on it for women riders is VTwin Mama. Check it out.