Wednesday, March 21, 2012

How to Build a Pot Stand

Before I get into the building a pot stand, I'd like to first comment on A Backpacker's Cookset, Exploded. I happened to mention that I sometimes carry condiments, and when I do, I put them in my cookset. My cookset currently has no condiments in it which is why I didn't include any photos of that, but Amanda felt this was simply wrong and rooted around finding condiments and a Zip-Lock bag for me. She's very supportive of me in that way. =)

So now that page has an image of condiments! Of course, since I took the photo long after the rest of the photos were taken, it's still not really cohesive, but at least it's pretty!

I've also made some updates to the CSS page, so you might have to "refresh" your browser if something looks a bit off....

My newest page on the site is How to Build a Pot Stand. This was actually what pushed me into updating my little soda can website. My previous pot stand--which I've been carrying since I did the Florida Trail in 2008--has seen better days and I figured it was about time to retire it. Which meant I had to build a new one, and that's what I did, photographing my progress along the way. =)

You can be certain that this pot stand will be coming with me to hike El Camino later this year! Oh, the adventures we will have.... =)

Tuesday, March 20, 2012

My Little Cookset

How many of you realized that I put up The Soda Can Stove website? I did that a couple of years ago and haven't really done much with it except directions for building a soda can stove, but I occasionally get e-mails from people with questions about their stove, fuel, or to tell me about things they do differently. I'm almost always a little surprised when I get such messages because it's not a website I think about very often and update even less.

For years, the entire website had only four pages to it, and I've always wanted to add a little bit more....


So I've started working on it again. And first up, is a new page: A Backpacker's Cookset, Exploded. It has my cookset deconstructed, as it were. I get a lot of questions about exactly what I carry and how much individual items in my pack weigh. Obviously, that covers a lot of areas--packs, sleeping bags, shelters, etc. But since this is a soda can stove website, I'm starting with my cookset.

I even went so far as to weigh every single item in it for those of you wondering what kind of weight it has. Some of you might be surprised to learn that I've never done this before. While weight is always an all-encompassing issue to a backpacker, the absolute weight of an item isn't so much a concern for me as the relative weight of an item. I don't really need to know that my stove weighs 0.5 ounces or that my pot weighs 3.0 ounces--I just need to know that it weighs less than the alternatives out there. So it's very uncommon for me to weigh any of my gear. Except my pack, which I'll sometimes weigh just to get a sense of what I'm dealing with overall. The individual items in my pack, though? Never!

Until now.....

I'm still working on updates to this site (there aren't even any links to my cookset page yet!), but I'll post more when there's more to show. =)

In completely unrelated news, please complement Amanda on her deck. She's very proud of it, and I used it as the backdrop for all my photos. =)

In more completely unrelated news.... For those of you wondering when I'll be having another Great Adventure and using this stuff--I plan to hit the Camino de Santiago this August.