Tagged with 'Gear Ties'

A garage can be many things. A place to park your car, a storage unit, a spare bedroom for an adult son.  For me, it’s a place to work on my vehicles and Nite Ize has some awesome products to help me complete my projects.  

Here are a few that I use in my garage.

Winter is officially here, and it's got us daydreaming about hitting the slopes. Whether you're a skier or snowboarder, keep reading for gear hacks that'll help you shred smarter. 

Nite Ize is such an innovative company making an amazingly wide and diverse set of products, most of which go totally and completely unnoticed as they are utility tools that discreetly make my life and adventures far more comfortable and organized! Below is a list of 5 of the most mission critical tools that my team and I always have on hand, and some uses that may been seen as unorthodox!

When it comes to running an efficient kitchen, organization is key. The more orderly your space, the easier and quicker it can be to whip up recipes from a basic boiled egg to Julia Child’s boeuf bourguignon. Here are ten of my favorite hacks I implement around my kitchen, bar, and grill, to make my life easier (and even more colorful).

My first long distance road trip was a complete failure.  I had been riding for years, so I felt assured I could manage a multi- day trip for a couple thousand miles.  It was early June in Colorado, and about 5 hours into the ride it started snowing, which turned into a white out.  It was wet, heavy and cold and I was not prepared.  It was in the high 70’s when I left home, so I was wearing a half helmet, fingerless gloves and a leather jacket.  After waiting out the storm on the side of the road and giving time for the snow to melt, I continued, freezing, until I made it to a gas station.  I consumed large amounts of hot coffee and chocolate attempting a warm up.  The only clothing options available to try to keep dry on the road were bright yellow dishwashing gloves and a shower cap.  I planned to be Wyatt from Easy Rider, but I looked like Scuba Steve and I felt miserable.  I was so embarrassed I couldn’t even look at the other riders when I finished that days ride.

I’ve learned a number of lessons on my rides throughout the years.  To save your ego and get you safely to your next destination, I’ve put together some helpful hints from my years on the road.

National Preparedness Month is here again, and it is a great reminder that if you still haven’t built or updated your emergency kit, there’s no time like the present. A Go Bag (also referred to as a Bug-out Bag) is a pre-packed kit that will be your lifeline in case of an emergency evacuation situation. Some disaster scenarios don’t leave time for thorough planning in the moment. Fires, for example, move fast – so should you. In these instances, you aren’t going to be able to take your time to gather up everything you want to from home. A Go Bag is about making sure you have what you need and getting away quickly and safely. After working in the survival and medical industries over the last two decades and experiencing my own fire evacuation due to living in California, I have compiled a list of items that I have tested and strongly recommend.

Before you start compiling your kit, here are a few helpful considerations:

• Build it out for the number of people in your household (including your pets). My bag (pictured above) is built for five: two adults, two small children, and one dog for 24 hours.
• Consider the type of disaster you are most likely to encounter where you live. For us, it’s likely grass fires or floods, so we should be able to reach a friend’s home or red cross shelter in 24 hours or less on foot. If you live in earthquake or hurricane territories, you should pack enough supplies for 72 hours as those disasters can take out a much larger area of infrastructure at once.
• Determine where you’re going to keep your kit and communicate exactly what it’s for to all members of your household (you can even label it as an extra reminder). I recommend putting it in a place that you would pass on your fastest way out of the house, like a coat closet or hook near the front door.

Imagine a quaint, red rock western town that used to be one of the most isolated spots in the lower 48.  What comes to mind?  You may be thinking Moab or Sedona, but the town I am talking about is further off the beaten path than either of those: it is a small pioneer town in Southern Utah by the name of Kanab.

Kanab is located smack between Zion, Bryce, and the North Rim of the Grand Canyon. It is a fantastic jumping off point for many of the Colorado Plateau’s incredible national parks; it is also home to me personally, and to the guides of Dreamland Safari Tours – a hardy bunch of most excellent backcountry desert guides with decades of experience in delighting guests by creating access to hard-to-reach locations like the Wave, White Pocket, and more.

Imagine wanting to ski 350 miles through Alaska – next week, without much training or real experience on cross-country skis.  That’s the situation I found myself in a few months ago:  I was signed up to ski the Iditarod Trail Invitational, a 350-mile race through the interior of Alaska.  The only challenge was that I am neither a skier, nor had I ever completed a 350 mile non-stop race — and in true “me” fashion I didn’t have the time to properly train for this behemoth of an adventure, either.

The official first day of spring is this weekend and you may already have the itch to start cleaning. Last spring, we all may have been a little gung-ho, purging our closets and diving into home improvement projects that we may, or may not, have had the skills or know-how to do. This year, I suggest easing into your spring cleaning with a little smaller task – tackling your junk drawer.  Let’s be honest, we all have (at least) one, and it probably gets cleaned out less than every few years. So, allow me to help you find the motivation to clear out the chaos and bring calm to the place in your house where little items make the biggest mess.