Reality check?!!

Heads up....there is incoming on target!

I try to remind readers every couple of months that I write this blog for my own pleasure.  What you read here may not be anything helpful to you or your own gear needs.  The blog posts are simply my own observations on gear based on my own needs, observations and experience.  Gear gets donated for reviews. I buy some of it with my own money on sale and I pro deal the rest.  The donated and obvious excess gear gets resold, after I write a review, to help finance another gear purchase or  just gas money for the next climbing trip.  Way better deal for the buyer than the seller generally.  I don't review gear that doesn't interest me.  So you don't see junk here.  It might get a bad comment or two.  But it won't be junk or I wouldn't bother writing it up.  If I take the time to write about it, that means I thought enough of it up front to use it climbing, trial running or on my road bike.  If it is climbing gear (and most of it is) you can bet I looked at it with a critical eye long before stuffing it into my climbing sack.  Pays to remember that when I make lengthy comparisons. 

The previous Julbo sun glass comments are a classic example.  Took me a year before I finally decided I would pay retail for a pair at REI.  Money well spent when I finally did.  I like those kinds of surprises.

I have distinct tastes in gear usually developed over time and from using gear I might actually have consider shite...for a while previously.  Or it might just be my climbing style and lack of committment and strength.

I've made some folks unhappy in the hard goods industry by calling an ice tool or crampon a "spade" when they were less than what I thought they could be.  Better safe than sorry on gear, imo.  Likely getting myself in trouble for doing similar things with boots and clothing now.  If not I will eventually anyway and will again on the hard goods.  I simply try to report what I see and think.  What ever value that may have I am comfortable with.  The blog isn't a job for me.  Although it is often way too much work!  I try to take what I do write, seriously.   So no pulled punches but not elaborate bs either.  I don't get into every detail, just what I find interesting and important to me.  It is how I entertain myself.  No one paying me to do this.

So feel free to disagree or ignore the blog.  I disagree with reviews I read all the time. 

Like it or not you always get what you pay for here :)
So make sure you don't take it all too seriously!