I stopped by a couple of shops this afternoon to pick up some stuff for Zion. By the way, the park is neither plural nor possessive. Don't call it Zions. It is
Zion National Park. In short, Zion. Drop the 's'.
And can I also just say that it
uber-sucks to have planned on going to
Havasu Falls for 9 months only to have it
closed due to
crazy flooding the week before our permit. (
btw; I talked to the permit office yesterday and the report is that
Havasu will be closed for a YEAR to a YEAR AND A HALF?! Lame. (if it's an option, who wants to go down with me to help rebuild bridges and give a hand to
Supai? Seriously. I'm looking into it.)
Moving on. Why does the
namby pamby sales clerk at every outdoor recreation shop interrogate you ("Where are you headed? What routes are you climbing? How experienced are you?") when you explain a trip like it's his backyard and he knows much more about it than you do? Truth be known, most of them are pasty white,
indoorsey sales clerks who read about adventures more than they
actually go on them. Fact is
Tim -you don't mind if I
call you Timmie do you?- if you've ever done
Keyhole Canyon you'd realize that no, no you won't
"probably die". You will have fun. But that's not my point.
My point is that these same know-it-all-even-though-I've-never-done-any-of-it clerks try to sell you every piece of equipment ever invented because "you will need it". Well, that's not really my point either, but it does lead to my point. Okay, so here's my point;
I love gear. But I hate gear. Gear is the giant, black jacked-up trucks of the outdoor/athletic world. No one on earth needs
a truck that big. No one on earth needs all the gear Timmie tries to push on you. And
no one, no one (thanks Alicia Keys) needs an Arc'
Teryx Alpha LT Jacket for the three hours of 'powder' skiing they'll do at
Sundance this year. Yet every time I go out, I see these miserable debacles. And every time, the people who are drowning in their overpriced garb look like
SAR is going to have to rescue them any minute.
See, I love the guy who's outside, braving the elements in his worn out flannel jacket, trudging past all the yuppies in the most expensive gear you can find. And I love the guy who's riding his 20 year old bike up a hill in a worn t-shirt, wearing gardening gloves while he pedals past the guy who
looks like he's got a factory sponsor.
For me, the fun of an activity is inversely related to the amount of gear needed to do it. I've found most endeavors don't need -contrary to what all the fools at REI tell you- that much stuff. You can have fun on a weekend campout without a full titanium cookset or custom built hiking boots. A pan from the cupboard and tennis shoes work just fine. So does your old carabiner and so does your dad's hand-me-down 1964 pop-tent trailer with squeaky wheels and ripped canvas. But good luck walking into any outdoor store and telling the "I-buy-everything-not-because-I-use-it-but-more-so-because-I-get-a-discount" employees that that is your plan. They will look at you like the 11 looked at Judas and then introduce you to new titanium laced shoelaces. Waaaaaaaaaaay better than normal shoelaces.
Well my friends, 
