Date: 2005-02-17
To: View Entry
Miles today: 0.0

It's been an interesting day Trail prep-wise. As if there could be anything else on my mind at this point in the game.In my last post I talked about LEKI being nice enough to send me some new hiking poles. I was supposed to send an email today to get a tracking number. The poles arrived YESTERDAY. Talk about good service. And the poles are great. I really notice now in comparison that the poles I had were quite strange and perhaps defective. As mentioned previously, it was determined that the combination of features in my old poles were not a combination that LEKI has ever offered. Strange. Also, I now realize that the shock system was faulty. I never liked it and I guess it's because it was broken. It was really loose, bouncy, and noisy, and would lock and unlock itself unexpectedly. The new poles are a different style to be sure -- not ultralights -- but the shock system seems to act as it must have been intended all along. I may even end up liking it. Heh.And not having hiked with the new ones yet, I still think it worth mentioning that the positive angle grips seem MUCH better than the straight ones. OK, enough about LEKI.I'm watching the time because my rice might be almost finished cooking. I use a CAT stove with my own configuration of pot stand, windscreen, mantle (insulation), and it works really well. I've used this for a few years now on many hikes.But today is the FIRST time I've used a homemade pot cozy. I found several designs on the net, but I like Hopeful's the best. It uses glue instead of tape, which should be lighter, I figure. Also, I like the way the whole thing -- top and cylindrical body -- slide over the pot. Anyway, I made one tonight from an old piece of 1/2" blue foam that was lying around. I was also reading Sgt. Rock's cozy info and was inspired by his test -- to cook rice. Pre-cozy I wouldn't have tried this as it would take too much fuel, even assuming I could get the simmer ring thing to behave without having to reload the stove with fuel, or burn my fingers, or both.So, I'll be right back. I fired 2 cups water, 1 cup rice, without any pre-soak, with about 5/8 oz. alchohol (2.5 caps of my particular disposable water-cum-fuel bottle). This finished burning at 10:16 pm and it's now 10:52. The rice should be well cooked by now, and still very hot. Let me run and check, and I'll let you know. Don't go away.OK, I'm back. That was quick, eh?Holy crap! This is so-o-o low-tech-no-moving-parts cool. I can't imagine why I never tried this before. I had the pot and cozy sitting out on the deck where I had cooked. It's about 20 deg. out there. Even in that temperature, sitting for 40 minutes, the pot was so hot I couldn't hold it when I took it out of the cozy. I mean, it was really HOT. And the rice was cooked to perfection. I anticipate that I'll use about half of the fuel I used to use.Oh, this is so cool. Ya know, even though I've known in theory about pot cozys for years now, I never really thought to try one until yesterday when I was reading Liteshoe's 2003 AT journal and saw a picture of her in her tent eating breakfast out of a pot in a cozy. Seeing it just when I thought I had all my gear tweaked made something click, I guess. (Sorry Stumpknocker. I promise I'll hit reload on one of your pages for each page of Liteshoe's journal I read, so she don't get no extra hits. It's just that her stuff is more interesting than eat-sleep-hike-lay on beach-swim in ocean-play silly leaf games, etc.)So, I found out today that I appear to be a member of M Company. M for starting in March. Looking over all these folks' journals, it looks like some good people will be hitting the trail around when we start. Should be good to run into and play leapfrog with them. 17 days till the train to Gainesville. Did I mention that Goldilocks and I got STICKERS!!! to use in the registers? Oboy-oboy. How to make the time go faster...?