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Boats marketed to diverse paddling conditions, but also diverse paddler's skillsets. Anybody can hop into most Wenonahs and have a good time.

eh, it's twenty bucks. I used to belong to an internet forum that did frequent and often very generous giveaways, in which interested parties would say "I'm in" or some variation and their post number was their 'raffle ticket', but by and large the giver and his friends would just pick the...

I have very strong opinions on this. I'm picky enough about coffee that I'll bring my cook kit into hotel rooms instead of drinking hotel coffee.(Incidentally I also found out I was autistic this year.) I have one coffee cup at home that doesn't leave the house and gets used every day...

I just drove from central VT to Saranac Lake yesterday. New York had streams and rivers blown out, but I didn't pass anything too bad. Vermont was nervous; they had traumatic flooding this time last year and prepped up as well as they could. From what I hear the flooding stopped at "very bad"...

I carried a canoe on a topped truck for years with just four foam pads and two bolt-on webbing loops under the hood. Hooked bow and stern handholds to those loops up front and into voids on the rear bumper. I was carrying a 15-foot canoe.

@CaptainOllieWest The virolock was added in the 50's, but it wasn't unti 2000 that it was altered to allow the knife to lock the blade in closed position; Boatman could have had a pre-2000 knife in his pocket.

Opinel makes a kid's folder with a rounded point; he can cut, but not stab. They're cheap, decent steel, attractive, and light, which is exactly what you want for a knife that's about to get lost. It's a 7, not a 6, called the Outdoor Junior. 20-ish bucks. Mora also makes a kid's fixed blade...

Music was life until a few years ago. I played in enough bands that I'm mostly deaf in my early forties. Today I listened to Slipknot, Jeff Beck, Hildegard von Bingen (or rather the music she wrote), and Missy Mazzoli. I don't take music on outdoor trips but occasionally I'll take a HiFi Walker...

Dang. I was just out there...

I'm sure I've had Lyme at some point. The testing is dicey at best; a negative result doesn't necessarily mean you don't have it or haven't had it. (The science behind that is beyond me.) I have one friend with alpha-gal, which doesn't bother her too much, and had another friend so deeply...

These kind of threads are one of my favorite parts of this website. I never owned a canoe until maybe ten years ago, when I tried to build myself a platt monfort skin-on-frame design. It was awful. I didn't trust the tiny dimensions of the gunwales the plans called for, and so I overbuilt it and...

Good morning all, I am happy with my skin-on-frames and the only plastic boat that I've had a hankering for is a little OT Pack. However, everyone else is hankering for them, too, and I don't need another boat THAT bad. But this morning, I drove past a yard sale, and - lo and behold - drove away...

@Woodpuppy - Trad is alive and well in the Virginia woods. I hunt recurve only, and a lot of compound guys I know are buying old Bears and getting into it. Hope isn't dead yet. I'm glaringly young for this site (41) but I think there's hope for canoes. I just drove up to Vermont from Virginia...

I call a good tough trip "recreational deprivation." That does not, nor should not, encompass macing your own man parts. I did do five days through the St. Regis in June wearing a kilt and no bug spray one time, so I can't say I haven't done dumb s$%t. I would paddle out into the middle of...

We're at 40 degrees and pouring rain in Virginia. I don't know if we'll see snow this year.

I got into skin-on-frames in my 30s, because I wanted to build a birch bark canoe but I lived in Virginia. So I did my damnedest to copy Adney's draughts and just started building. It coincided with me getting my life back together after a shaky decade, so I'm very fond of SOFs in general. I ran...

They've got Turing tests. Maybe we need a Touring test.

I'm scared of being cold, so I overpack warm stuff. I rarely dig into it, but at this point it's ingrained into me. I've done lots of "pick out what you didn't use on your last trip and leave it next time" winnowing, but at some point, in a canoe, that extra five pounds of gear - which is a...

I have pulled mine off wet many times. Apart from being the stinkiest sock in existence, they've done their job.

I've never seen a Farrimond hitch before. It's like a little walking prussik. I'm happy with a tautline for tarps and lines but the farrimond does seem like it would easy to tie with numb fingers. I used to love learning new knots. I still carry an armspan of string around with me most days...