Posts Tagged survival gear
Women’s Edition Travel Medical Kit
About a dozen years ago, when my husband and I were packing for our first-ever camping trip together, I asked him where his first-aid kit was. He looked at me like a deer in headlights. Needless to say, my husband does not live the Boy Scout motto of “Be Prepared.”
I bought myself a soft-sized travel first-aid kit soon after that weekend getaway, and have brought it on many of our adventures since then. (I’d check the brand, but it’s buried in the confines of my winterized RV.) Though I’ve (frankly) made little dent in its contents, I know that if I’ve got a burn, blister or bite to deal with on family camping trips, I’ll be the parent to come to the rescue with the proper ointment or bandage.
Now I’ve got first-aid goodies to call my own, with the Women’s Edition Travel Medical Kit from Adventure Medical Kits. This company makes dozens of first-aid kits specifically designed for various types of travelers, adventurers and sports enthusiasts — from mountaineers to paddlers to hunters.
Decidedly non-prissy (and not pink!) the Women’s Edition Travel Medical Kit contains a typical supply list you’d find in any travel first-aid kit — such as bandages, gauze, painkillers, moleskin, antidiarrheal medicine and antibiotic ointment — but also items geared just for the girls, such as tampons and cramp-relief remedies. I’m also partial to its compact-size, 200-page “A Comprehensive Guide to Wilderness & Travel Medicine” as well as the “Visual Communication Tool” chart: if you find yourself in a foreign country and unable to communicate to medical personnel there, you can point to images to explain, say, that you’ve been bitten by a dog or that you’re allergic to bees.
The kit — which measures about 7 x 5 x 3 inches when full — is meant to be used among up to four women on a multi-day trip, but it does contain many small, one-use items, so you’ll need to refill the kit as you go through them. And of course, you could just compile your own travel medical kit from items you already have in your medicine cabinet (it would certainly be cheaper to make your own), but my guess your homemade kit would be much bulkier than this one.
For one-stop-shopping, I give this Women’s Edition Travel Medical Kit a thumb’s up for it’s handy, streamlined case, valuable medical guide, and extra pockets to supply your own items if you like.
Purchase the kit online at Adventure Medical Kits for $60. Better yet, check out Amazon.com: right now it’s selling for only $33.60 — a relative bargain!
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Posted by Kara in Adventure Gear, Kids and Family, Travel Light on February 5th, 2010
Grab and Go Emergency Kit
One of those nagging things I always think is a good idea but never get around to is having emergency supplies in my house and car. Every time I read one of those articles about what should be in either one in case of emergencies, I realize I have almost none of those things in the trunk or basement and start feeling guilty.
Today I take off on a nine-hour road trip into snow-covered Virginia and am going a little better prepared. The folks at 4SurvivalToGo sent me one of their compact emergency kits to try out, so with this and a shake flashlight I’m at least partially armed and ready should we hit a blizzard along the way.
This Grab & Go Kit is the dimensions of a trade paperback but far thinner, so it could fit in a glove compartment or be unobtrusive in a hiking backpack. It’s packed with lots of items though that could come in handy in an emergency. Here’s what’s inside:
duct tape
bleeding control gauze
antimicrobial hand wipes
face mask
emergency whistle
glow stick
rubber gloves
biohazard bag
It all goes inside a thick plastic waterproof pouch.
If that’s not robust enough for you, there’s a a larger 72-hour kit with a carrying case that is loaded up with more, like a survival sleeping bag, a rain poncho, a knife, and waterproof matches.
The Grab & Go kit retails for $20 and you can get it at the 4survivaltogo.com site. Sure, you could probably put together one of these on your own for less, but will you ever get around to it? I’ve learned I probably won’t, so this is a convenient way to compensate.
Posted by Tim L. in Adventure Gear, Kids and Family, Travel Light on December 23rd, 2009
One Serious Outdoor Watch – Pathfinder PAW2000
It’s not often here on Practical Travel Gear that we review a watch that sells for more than $250. But here’s something even more strange: I was wearing this on an airplane when I saw it on the cover of something I usually laugh about—the SkyMall catalog!
I’m not sure what that says exactly, but I’ll chalk it up to the fact that this Casio Pathfinder PAW2000 watch has an incredible amount of gadgetry built in. It’ll tell you which direction you’re going, read the temperature, tell you how high you’ve climbed, give you the barometric pressure, time your ascent, give you a heads up on when sunrise will be, wake you up in the morning, and oh yeah—tell you the exact time and date in multiple spots around the globe. All well and good, but it also does all this while recharging on solar power and being water resistant to 100 meters.
“Holy crap,” I thought, “this is going to be a royal pain in the rear to use.” That’s my usual reaction to digital watches with lots of functions and multiple displays. I usually get so frustrated with them that I end up gravitating back to a plain analog watch with one button and a dial. The hassle is not worth it.
Fortunately, I figured this one out without taking a semester to study the manual. It’s still a sizable manual, don’t get me wrong, but this watch feels like it was designed with the input of real users rather than just a team of engineering geeks. For one thing, the buttons are marked by what they do. To get altitude you just press the “ALT” button. To work the compass you press “COMP” and to light up the display you hit “LIGHT.” No, it won’t make Steve Jobs drool because of its sleek coolness, but it’s functional and clear instead of baffling. And here’s the cool part: to get back to just a regular time and date display, you can hit the MODE button or…just wait. After two minutes of no button pushing, it returns to the default. No fumbling around just to see what time it is.
Despite all this, it’s not very clunky though. It weighs noticeably less than some of my analog watches and is significantly thinner than many other sports watches. It’s comfortable to wear, though I have to say the resin strap doesn’t feel as durable as the watch itself.
But what about all those fancy functions. Do they work?
Well, I took this on a trip to the mountainous Coffee Triangle region of Colombia and since I had no idea where I was or where I was going half the time, I was able to try the Pathfinder PAW2000 out across the board. In my tests, the altimeter worked especially well, being within 10 meters of the official measurement in spots where that was known. The electronic compass also was accurate enough that it could have gotten me out of a jam if I got lost in the woods. I can’t read a barometer in the best of circumstances, but I could tell it was adjusting to changes in the pressure and cloud cover. If you do find the readings on any of these things are off, you can make some manual tweaks to adjust. The solar recharging, alarms, stopwatch, and atomic time updates were flawless.
The one clear failure wass the temperature gauge. It wasn’t even in the ballpark, telling me it was 95 degrees F out when it was really 65. I went back to the instructions to see what was wrong and found the following advice. “Remove the watch from your wrist, place it on a well ventilated surface out of direct sunlight, and wipe all moisture from the case. It takes approximately 20 to 30 minutes for the case of the watch to reach the actual surrounding temperature.” Sure, that would be fine, if only it wasn’t…a wristwatch! Maybe a detachable thermometer next time?
But hey, with a list of features this long, one minor dud isn’t a real setback. Chances are you don’t often need a watch to tell you whether it’s freezing outside or balmy. Everything else comes through strong and this is the first multi-function electronic watch I actually want to keep wearing.
See the official Casio Pathfinder watch site.
Search Pathfinder PAW2000 prices online
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Posted by Tim L. in Adventure Gear on December 10th, 2009
Live From Gore-tex
I got invited up to the Gore-tex headquarters for a few days in Delaware with some other gear experts and I landed not really knowing what to expect. Now that I’ve peeked under the microscope a bit, I see that this is more than just a brand label plunked on fabric that turns into a jacket from North Face or Marmot or ski gloves from Spyder. There is some serious research going into this stuff.
First of all, I realize now that I didn’t even understand the fabric itself. It’s made from woven polymers that are manipulated (under heat) to to provide different qualities depending on need. The Gore-tex outerwear division is just part of the business. This company makes medical stents, naval ropes, spacesuits, and parts for fuel cells—just for starters. There are some serious science geeks in the building. They’ve got parts on Mars from the first mission landing that are still functioning.
The photo at the top is just a random sampling of fibers in their different form—fibers whose main raw material ingredient is flouride. Who knew? They also developed Glide dental floss.
The shots at the bottom are just a few items that use material from Gore. Combat, space, mountain biking, whatever. This is not just fancy marketing. I’ll give the tried-out lowdown on some specific products later. Stay tuned by subscribing to our blog feed.
Posted by Tim L. in Adventure Gear, General Gear on October 29th, 2009
Flashlight Envy: 511 Tactical Light for Life
You can call this the father of all flashlights, or a torch for a men with big tools, but either way this 5.11 Tactical Light for Life is one manly way to see in the dark. Putting aside questions of compensating for something, how well does a $150 flashlight work?
Amazingly well, actually. There’s a good reason this thing is aimed at cops, firefighters, and EMS personnel. It’s heavy duty, powerful, and feels solid in the hand. But so what, right? Lots of competitors can make that claim. What makes this 5.11 Tactical one really special is that it charges up in just 90 seconds—in your car! “No way,” I thought as I unpacked it and looked at the instructions. The very first charge took longer than 90 seconds: 100 actually. The second and third took almost exactly 90 seconds though. Eerie. And I actually watched it charge. I couldn’t help it: the blue light on the charger blinks slowly at first, then picks up speed as it goes, blinks like mad at about 75 seconds on, then goes solid blue. Climax time.
Sometimes a flashlight is just a flashlight, as I think Freud said, but get a look at the charger to the left. The Tactical Light for Life goes into that sheath when it needs to recharge. Light for Life results.
What matters is, this is a damn fine piece of machinery, with specs that are hard to believe until you test them out. There’s real innovation at work here that takes a tiny amount of electricity and turns it into hours of light. Consider these attributes:
- Lasts for four hours on one 90-second charge.
- Retains 96% of capacity after 50,000 cycles of charging and discharging.
- You could charge it once a day and still use it for more than 135 years.
- The LED bulbs are rated to last 50,000 hours (that’s 40 hours a week, for more than 24 years)
There’s a regular mode, a strobe mode, and a high-power mode for when you need a lot of brightness. It’s hexagonal so it won’t roll away while you’re changing a flat or putting in tent stakes in the dark. The charger comes with mounting screws to permanently drill the charger into your car interior. How hardcore is that? You can also order an AC adapter so you can recharge it in a wall socket as well (necessitating another insertion—of car charger male plug into female receptacle. Just a coincidence I’m sure…)
This isn’t airplane or “travel light” gear for sure, but it would be great to keep in the car, the RV, or the box of camping gear. You can literally use it for the rest of your life, then pass it on to the grandsons. Just make sure they’re old enough to know what to do with it.
(If you don’t believe this piece of equipment is coming from a serious company, however, check out the dealer locator page for 5.11 Tactical. You can pick this flashlight up at Copquest.com, 911Supply.ca, the U.S. Patriot Store, or DSTactical.com. )
Posted by Tim L. in General Gear on October 28th, 2009
