my plan to completely complete the complete list of things i need to complete my complete list of camping things is pretty well complete! that’s a lot of complete! behold, the brand newness that is my brand new Osprey Aether 70. having little to do today other than stay out of the way lest we be handed a cleaning job, my dad and i drove into edmonton to check out some camping stores so I could do some more looking around. you know, real life looking around after i do the online looking around part.

anyway. we went to three places. the first was a smaller store on Whyte ave that had pretty much all the really high end stuff pack wise hanging on the wall next to mostly North Face tents. for some odd reason that made me feel sad for the packs. any north face tent i ever looked at i didn’t really like. anyway, i tried three packs there, all of them pretty much $100 to $150 more than i was looking to spend. which, really when i think about it is kind of a shame cause the first one i tried on was also an Osprey but the next model up from the Aether and as soon as I put it on it was like “fuuuuuuuuuck this is sooooooo nice!” if ever there was a pack that fit off the shelf without adjustments for moi, that was it. but too expensive. so off to the second store which had pretty much bleh stuff. well, they did have one 1st gen Aether that was ugly as fuck so I passed. on to the third store, told the guy what i was looking for, “yep, here it is”, put it on, fitted it, loaded it, wandered around with it, said “ok, I’ll take this one, but i don’t have my hiking pants on so I have to come back to have the belt moulded.” but then my dad was like “why don’t you just borrow a pair of hiking pants from the camping store you’re in and fit it?” and they were agreeable to that, so on goes a pair of hiking pants, in goes the hip belt to the heater thing, out it comes, on it goes and moulded harness I do now have.

so yeah, I’m pretty stoked about it.

while we were walking down Whyte my dad asked me why i didnt just buy a cheaper bag now, wait a few years and then buy the big, nice expensive one. I could have just as easily done that, but in my mind, why bother getting the cheaper one that I wouldn’t like as much and know i’m just going to replace if I spend the money on one of the best bags you can get for this amount right now and have it last me 15 years.

in other new stuff news, having gotten back from their driving vacation through the states for a few weeks, the first thing my dad hands me when we got here on friday was a new pair of cammo overalls and matching coat. fucking rights!

also, I’ve mentioned on here the odd time that i’m a big believer in the fact that things do balance out as long as you can push through. if something shitty happens, inevitably at some point something good will happen to counter it. i say this having rear ended a guy, being down a vehicle for three weeks, losing out on $500 for it and putting more than 5 grand in damage on the front end, and then seeing the amount I’m getting back as an income tax return.

some campsites should be opening up soon. i have to check out where i can hike up for a long weekend.