crackers

Indeed.

strong work duder! How about the picture of the packs coming out of the car? It's hilarious! your packs were bigger than the rig!

awesome.

It's been awhile. [video:youtube]

Kids on Mont Blanc sounds like a fantastic idea, doesn't it?

Enjoy your departure! The land of FOB will surely miss you! Travel well

IMHO, the BD stainless front points are fine. I've treated mine like I hated them and just wanted to make gravel from rocks and they're doing fine. YMMV. I second the excellent advise on the long extender bars.

They haven't gone to press yet, but they claim to be very close...

Rad! That's proud!

Sweet video! That's a lot of climbing!

I honestly have no idea. I always surmised that REI wasn't returning old crap, it was just throwing it out but I really do not know. I'll ask around, I'm kinda curious

I was just using the boot leaking as an example. But, a goretex boot shouldn't leak after after 5-10 trips, and in which case, I would consider them defective. I did gather that defective items can still be returned, although it seems like that is going to be subjective. For your example, I'd follow up on Jon's thought concerning the manufacturer. In the case of buying a boot with a Gore Tex liner thinking that it would always keep your feet dry*, you're buying that promise from Gore Tex. So who cares where you buy it as long as Gore Tex is selling you that promise. Gore Tex's return guidelines make it pretty easy to get a new pair of boots or what have you. *Why does Gore make it so easy? Because that's really the kind of promise that's worthless. If your boot is leaking when you're in the mountains, their promise isn't going to help. Perhaps it was just marketing anyway. Like John wrote, try getting them at a shop where the employees are selling the same things they're using and see what happens...and waterproof them.

See and this just sucks, because only a select few companies have the profitability to do this. What small shop could possibly do this? ... The manufacturers job is to stand by the product they made. This isn't the retailers job, with the exception that retailers should not carry brands that are not reliable. If you buy boots that leak, that should be on the manufacturer to rectify this not the retailer. REI was able to do this because of their huge buying power and being able to leverage that into making manufacturers take returned items back. So just out of curiosity, when does responsibility transfer to the owner of the product? After one trip? After 2 years? After an hour? I think that in general people have gotten inured to an idea that if something breaks it's not their fault. In the original article, an REI staff says What? I know that my friends get out a lot, but after two or three YEARS you think it's the manufacturer's fault? From my perspective that's just insane. If I've used something for two to three years, I've put wear and tear on it. I've had fun with it and I've most probably treated badly as often as I've treated it well. It's my responsibility, not anybody else's fault. I don't know, maybe I'm just crazy.

Uh, you mean their taxable free cash flow, dontcha?

I know the horse is dead and that it left the building. And I own cilogear, have strep throat, have been lying like a sack of meat on a couch for a week, yada yada yada. But I thought I'd try (and most likely fail) to share this video of a cc poster and his pack... [video:youtube]