I’ve heard similar stories of hellish bills from search and rescue ops.

I don’t think I encountered any scammers in Japan?  at least nothing that comes to mind.  But I do remember drinking with random people fairly often.  Sake on some guy’s porch, being guided down some unadorned steps to a tiny little karaoke bar, being guided up some unadorned steps to some place that had bigass mugs…

these are more of an abrasive than any sort of standard cleaning agent.

when I worked food service, I vaguely remember using something like ice and salt.  Although, I guess most people don’t have big ole icemakers lying around their kitchen, so...

yeah, this comment really needs to be up higher.

they’re basically a super fine abrasive, so... probably?

I remember this being used in college, over 25 years ago.

This is nice advice and all, but making eye contact doesn’t mean they actually “see” you.

I worked at a pizza place when I dropped out of school, and while a 1/2 topping isn’t too hard, a 1/4 is almost impossible to manage, due to customer’s expectations.

there’s a lot of info out there on “Passive Solar Design” that isn’t much help to current home owners, but for people looking to build, it has a lot of benefits.

the low-tech (and more useful) version is to occasionally stop and look back in the direction you’ve came from, and then just look around in general.

it will be full of riders and poison pills, and then they will try to accuse AOC of lying

eh, you can make decent guesses, especially if you start from a known position/land mark, but there are a lot of places with similar topographic features, like parallel ridges and such, and being able to take a couple compass readings of of some mountain peaks can give you a really accurate idea of your location.

she’s pretty amusing

I’m still laughing at

I’ve been in a decent amount of climates, and the one time I witnessed someone in the early stages of hypothermia, was in a subtropical climate, during the day, when it was warm out. They were exhausted, and wet, and started acting almost like they were seriously drunk. People got them out of wet clothing, into a…

I got to witness some trees blown over on a backpacking trip, and it was one of those scenes that I will remember as long as I live.

reminds me of some article I read a while back (can’t even remember where, never mind a link...), that was basically discussing how there is too much focus on survival kits and skills for backpackers, when it should be more focused on dayhikers and such. Because your typical backpacker usually has food, water, shelter,…

I really like the exotac ferro rods, since they are contained. Because if you just have a bare ferrocerium rod in your pocket, and you get wet (fall in the water, get caught in a rainstorm, possibly even just get really sweaty, etc.), those things will turn everything in that pocket indescribably gross.

You can use an analog watch and the sun to estimate North. Point the hour hand at the sun, and half way twixt the hour hand and the 12 o’clock mark is approximately North (for the Northern Hemisphere). If you have a digital watch, just try to imagine where the hands would be. If you don’t have any watch, put a stick…