Gear!

Mike and Jim made me get up at 5:30 on a Saturday. This after Mike got me to get up at 5:50 on Friday for a fruitless effort to ride bikes together to work. Today it was for REI's gear "garage" sale. It always makes for an experience of the best and worst in people.

Best...I stood in line from a little after 6AM to 9AM while Mike and Jim made me laugh over and over. We even discussed utilitarianism, and tried to determine just how many utils we each were worth. (Note: Mike has 3 utils, but that's another story)

Worst...People shoving me out of the way, grabbing 6 backpacks and 5 sleeping bags to ensure they got the best deal. These people apparently are willing to ignore the value of their fellow-man in order to score some used gear. We took the approach that "they can have the gear, it's not worth it". Jim went so far as to walk out with nothing but an 83 cent water bottle, ethics intact! Mike got a nice roof cargo box for a good deal.

I'm sure our wives love that we keep spending money on gear. Spending time with the guys this morning though, I was realizing we're buying the gear to use it to create more memories of hikes, camping in the rain, peaking mountains, etc... (that's how we'll justify it anyway, and hope our wives believe it!)

In the meantime I have to figure out when I'll start using the little pack I bought for running, so I can convince Sarah it was a "steal"!