In Praise Of Watered Bottles

The gods of the road leave many interesting things for the two-wheeling gutter caste. A long while back, I found a fancy polycarbonate NALGENE bottle, an $8.50 value according to REI. These are spiffy vessels for putting drinking water in. They are favored by the people who are slightly cooler than the cool because to have one of these is to show that you're concerned about the environmental impact of the bottled water habits of typical yuppies. Unfortunately this path to environmental utopia is marred by reports such as this from Stuff White People Like:

Previously, the gold standard was the Nalgene bottle, however recent studies have shown the plastic can leak toxins into the water. Currently, white people on the cutting edge are really into metal bottles of water with a twist cap. It is recommended that you buy one of these as soon as possible.

I've had a lot of experience with water carrying and I've never seen the appeal of these Nalgene bottles. I used to use the normal bike waterbottle for riding, but they are delicate, stinky, plasticy, hard to clean, too small, leaky, vulnerable to UV damage, expensive, and bad at handling both physical and thermal shocks. Perhaps the Nalgene bottles are a big improvement on that, but why mess around with another type of bottle that is expensive?

I buy my water bottles now at Trader Joe's. They're only $.59 and they even put some water in them to get you started. These incredible vessels never cease to amaze me with their indestructibility. I've sent them flying into the road to get batted about by cars several times without losing any water.

I was cleaning the garage and I came across this Nalgene bottle. Given the kind of people who own this kind of bottle, it's probably free from leprosy, but because of its unknown provenance and my complete lack of enthusiasm for it, I started to carry it to the trash.

Then the enthusiasm hit me - destructive testing! I have to say that I didn't plan the test very well, I just chucked the thing into the air as high as I could (which just clears the roof of a second story structure). Then it lands on the concrete with a satisfying smack. The Nalgene bottle was filled about half full (same water I found it with). After two rounds, the top came askance and water leaked out, but I resealed it and it seemed fine. However after four landings, there was a gurgle following the impact crack of landing. Hmmm, not indestructible after all.

That itself was interesting, but then I wondered how that would compare to my Trader Joe's bottle. I then made a mistake by filling it 2/3 full which was the ultimate capacity of the Nalgene bottle. I had forgotten that the Nalgene was only half full. So the Trader Joe's bottle got a more challenging challenge. After three successful launches, I was completely unsurprised. But on the forth, I was quite surprised to see a rent in the bottom of the bottle. Hmm, so they are not indestructible either.

I think that a lot of people think that a polycarbonate bottle is going to be stronger and that is their motivation for the increased liability of it. But my test, strongly indicates to me that this is a not necessarily true. For hiking, biking, climbing, and other weight sensitive endeavors, it's worth noting that the empty 1 liter Nalgene bottle is 150g. The Trader Joe's bottle which has a maximum volume of 1.5 liters weighs 38g.

Notice I didn't say that it was a 1.5 liter bottle. Unlike the Nalgene bottle, you can flatten it when it's not in use. This makes it much less than a 1.5 liter space liability when you're trying to pack it.

Two more things to bear in mind. First having a Nalgene bottle lying around to destroy was a special occasion. Having a Trader Joe's bottle on hand for destruction, despite the fact that it was in active use, is completely mundane. But here's the most incredible part: now that these bottles have big holes in the bottom of them they are worthless, right? Well, the Nalgene one is. However, the State of California will buy back my destroyed Trader Joe's bottle for 17 cents on the dollar.

Second Time's A Charm

Monday Van and I went camping again. This time the weather was really superb, quite a proper San Deigo evening. This time I went to the Sweetwater Reservoir. This campground is relatively close to my house which is probably it's main compelling feature. Unfortunately it's a bit too accomodating for the snowbird land yachts and although I've been to much worse campgrounds, this one had a bit of that parking lot feel. There was a nice grass section that is uncharacteristic in this region and after I had set up my tent on it, I was warned by someone about the nocturnal sprinklers. Of course! I should have thought of that. Oh well. Van and I had a nice evening outside, the way evenings in this area should be. With that I could say that the mission was accomplished.

I decided to use my North Face Tent since I was fairly certain that it would not be raining. (That's right, my expensive Expedition 25 from TNF is completely pervious to water! It went from being waterproof to being useless in less than 6 months, and although I'm still alive, TNF refuses to honor the lifetime warranty.) In the middle of the night, I started to notice that my throat was beginning to hurt. I thought that maybe the fumes of the tent stored for so long were not so healthy. The next day I woke up and my throat still hurt. This was a bit mysterious, since the previous and only other time my throat felt this way was when I had suffered arsenic poisoning by drinking water out of a new vessel designed to carry water. I actually didn't know this at the time and complaining to the manufacturer didn't help, but eventuatlly the manufacturer sent a recall notice admitting that arsenic poisoning was possible.

Once I got back to work, I was thinking about how my throat really felt exactly like that time I had arsenic poisoning and I was trying to figure out what was going on. So I naturally turn to wikipedia and I found this in the main page on arsenic:

"Although the use of CCA [chromated copper arsenate] lumber was banned in many areas after studies showed that arsenic could leach out of the wood into the surrounding soil (from playground equipment, for instance), a risk is also presented by the burning of older CCA timber. The direct or indirect ingestion of wood ash from burnt CCA lumber has caused fatalities in animals and serious poisonings in humans; the lethal human dose is approximately 20 grams of ash. Scrap CCA lumber from construction and demolition sites may be inadvertently used in commercial and domestic fires. Protocols for safe disposal of CCA lumber do not exist evenly throughout the world; there is also concern in some quarters about the widespread landfill disposal of such timber."

Ah ha. Very interesting since the wood I was burning in my campfire was from demolition debris. I am very careful not to ever burn anything with paint or glues on it and I certainly would not burn obviously pressure-treated wood with its greenish tint. The wood I was burning, however, was dimensional lumber made from some very fine old growth pine tree, probably Douglas fir. The reason to not just reuse the wood was that it was riddled with termite bores. I had wondered if perhaps the wood had been the problem. I was thinking that after many iterations of "tenting", where the entire house this wood was a part of was covered and pumped full of poison, the wood could have become toxic. If it is arsenic, the good news here is that if it doesn't kill you, it seems that the body clears it away pretty quickly. So that's probably not going to kill me.

Then on the freeway on the way home from work, I looked up from my book and, since I was near the front of the bus, I looked out the front window to see a box about the size of lawn tractor sitting in the freeway. The bus driver was just able to miss it. I had a flashback to an incident on that same freeway where I was driving and suddenly came upon a box the size of a queen-sized bed.

I've really had enough of freakish potentially-fatal events getting a replay!

Enlightened Tea

I'm hardly delighted to be the owner of an automobile, but now that I have it, I do want to put it to good use. Usually, I find myself confidently driving around the remote regions of San Diego County knowing exactly where I'm going because I have previously explored the route by bicycle. Today I decided to do things the other way around. Today I burned about half a tank of gas just driving around looking at things in the back country. Specifically I wanted to check out potential camping locations that were at the end of dead ends that, by bike, would have been unpalatable. I took a drive up to Palomar which was still covered in quite a bit of snow. There was no snow on the roads and this is a point worth remembering and part of the mission was to find this out. I had planned to go hiking up there, but, amazingly, I couldn't find a place to park. The entire mountain top was covered in Mexican (really, greater than 90%) families who'd gone up there to see some snow. It was kind of cute. It was quite the busy attraction. That's another point to bear in mind in the future.

On the way down from Palomar, I got the odd notion to scout the Rincon casino. I wondered if it might be a good staging area for a Palomar mission. It's certainly close enough to the base of the mountain. First off, the casino seems to have plenty of parking and a nice touch here is that it can be in a parking garage which can afford some shade (though obviously you don't want to drive in there with bikes on the roof). Inside the casinos, I checked out the bus situation. The casino runs a fleet of buses designed to round up those people who've had to sell their cars to pay gambling debts. I found out that one can travel from San Diego to Los Angeles (about a dozen specific destinations) pretty much for free. All you have to do is spend 5 hours at the casino. Basically you take the morning bus from San Diego and then take the afternoon bus to LA. Next day, reverse the process. Losing money at the casino is not actually a requirement. If I could get a road bike on that bus, it'd be a great way to get out to Palomar, but I don't think that'd go over well. Walking through the casino, I noticed that they have easily accessible bathrooms and even free coffee and soda. Both points might make it worth a quick stop if biking by. The amazing thing about this place is that while I'm hardly the best looking guy in the world, at this casino I am. It was really weird. There were some reasonably attractive employees, but as far as guests, wow. I guess the difference is that I was thinking thoughts about how the place could help me assault Palomar Mountain in some kind of athletically flamboyant way, not where could I get more rent money after I'd gambled it away. I was also shocked, with actual dropped jaw staring, to see some miscreants inside a public building in California *smoking a cigarette*! Turns out it's legal! Astonishing!

Back at base camp, I wanted to play with a new toy I bought, a Vargo Titanium Triad Stove. This is basically like the end of a soda can with some holes poked in it. In fact, less well-employed people get by fine with exactly that. But mine is *titanium*. Yes, titanium! Just by being able to incant the word "titanium" while referring to my gear, my load is lightened. How much you ask? Well this stove is a mere 25g! Ha! Only 25g! That's amazing! That means my ability to boil water in the wilderness weighs almost nothing! Uh. Except for the 41g of alcohol it burned. Ok, ok, 425g of H2O, pot=196g, lid=74g, cup=65g, pot handle=53g, lighter=17g, and the tea bag was 3g. And I used 8g of aluminum foil to make a wind screen, which is not bad since this doubles as a "tin foil hat". But still, thank goodness for *titanium*!

As far as operation of the thing goes, it's a bit like I spent years as a lion tamer and now I am working with housecats. My MSR Whisperlite stove is a monster compared to this thing. Unlike the MSR, but just like housecats, pretty much any problem with this stove can be cured by smacking it with a towel. The alcohol stove is quiet and mild, and now that I've used it, I'd say it's chances of bursting into a huge fireball are pretty slim. Can't say that about the MSR which bursts into a big fireball every time you start it. To get the alcohol stove to light, I finally just resorted to dumping fuel (thanks to MvW for that by the way) all over it including a nice puddle on the concrete and just lighting the whole thing. It would be a very satisfying experience for a pyromaniac. Eventually it warms up and operates in a stove-like fashion. For comparison, the Whisperlite operates in a cutting torch-like fashion. It managed to boil water as promised and it seems to work as I'd expect. It's also much cleaner than the MSR with no detectable soot. I was also able to pick up the stove within 10 seconds of it going out and it's completely cool in about a minute. Definitely a nice addition to the line up. And it's *titanium*! It's so awesome because it's titanium! Real titanium! You can hand it to your friends and say, "See how light this is?! That's because it's titanium!"