Bob's Arctic Adventure

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Gear Reviews l


Items

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Hein Gericke El Chott Jacket. Part of the HG Tuareg Adventure Gear clothing line. Originally cost over $300. A batch of about a hundred of these were found in the distributors warehouse two years after they were thought to have been closed out. New Enough bought the whole batch and liquidated them for $99 each. A great Cordura/leather jacket. Stylish in an old school,'90s Paris-Dakar kind of way. Makes you look a little like a cross between Star Wars Hoth Trooper and an officer in Rommel's Afrika Corps. "Jawol, Herr General!"

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Thermarest Luxury Camp large sleeping pad. Two inches thick...26 inches wide by 77 inches long. It almost completely covered the floor of my tent and was more comfortable than some of the motel room beds I slept on. Unfortunately, such luxury comes at a price--both monetary and in bulk. This pricey pad consumed the majority of the space in the main compartment of the huge Alfa Rear Bag.

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REI Half Dome Tent. A nice tent with aluminum poles, easy to set-up, award winner in Backpacker Magazine. Packs down to 7 X 23 inches, but in conjunction with Thermarest pad consumed virtually the entire rear bag, which necessitated adding saddlebags...which necessitated adding the Side Rack guards...which...well, you get the picture.

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Sierra Designs Sandman 3D Flex Sleeping Bag. Simply put, this is a great bag. It's made with stretchy, flexible panels so you can sleep in any position you want or turn comfortably any way you want. The hood stretches too, so you can lie on your side and read with the hood over your head. Plenty warm at freezing temps, but still comfortable when it was 50 degrees. The Polarguard 3D version is significantly less expensive than the down, but compresses less and is therfore bulkier when packed. If I had to do it again I would spring for the down version. With this bag and the plush Thermarest pad I actually slept better when camping than I did in motels.

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DEET mosquito repellent. You will become very familiar with mosquitos in Canada and Alaska. DEET is pretty amazing--the bugs will fly all around you but not land. If you can get used to having a swarm of mosquitos inches from your face you'll do ok. Start waving them away and you'll go nuts---they are always there, even when it's windy. The stronger formulations of DEET are not anymore effective than the 30% or 25% formulations--they just last longer. Since DEET can eat Cordura, I used the 25% mixture and reapplied every couple of hours.

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Marsee "Gary Eagan" deerskin gloves. Lightweight, super comfortable summer weight gloves packed with features constructed of impressively named material you've never heard of before, like "Arama fabric on palm", and "Clarina fabric at fingertip areas." Rex gave me a super deal on these at Laguna Seca because he didn't have a properly sized pair of the cool weather gloves I wanted. This are very comfortable and well constructed, but like all summer gloves they don't inspire great confidence in terms of out and out protection.

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Tour Master Winter Elite cold weather gloves. Tourmaster's best winter glove in '05. Made of leather with a "Hypora" waterproof liner, which actually did prove to be waterproof. Zippered pouches in the tall gauntlets contain waterproof mittens for severe weather. After a while I got tire of putting on and taking off the mittens, and just left them stored, my gloves never soaked through. Surprising temperature range, these cold weather gloves were comfortable up to the low 70s.

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Wolfman Alfa Duffle. 20' x 8' x 8'. Has webbing to attach to Wolfman rear bag. A fairly bland bag for the KLR rear rack, this bag is not waterproof, nor does it have any eternal pockets. Essentially a nondescript generic cordura bag which is of interest primarily because it matches the more feature laden Wolfman Alfa Rear Bag.

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Alfa Rear Bag by Wolfman. Beloved by many KLRistas, I found this bag frustrating in the extreme. It has such a vast number of possible ways to attach the multiple straps to the multiple tie down points that one could conceivably attach any number of additional camping items to the outside of the bag using the almost infinite number of variations for attaching the 17, yes 17, separate straps and male or female plastic buckles. What is not readily apparent however is a simple way to just attach the damn bag to the bike and the rear bag to the duffle bag. The poorly photocopied "instructions" are virtually illegible. if you enjoy solving a Rubik's Cube every morning, you'll love the Alfa Bag. I struggled with this bag every day for over three weeks, and always ended up with at least one orphaned male or female buckle left over. To be fair, the Alfa Bag had to compete with a set of Chase-Harper saddlebags for tie down points and the positioning of the saddlebags (which necessarily had to be mounted to the bike first) made attaching the Alfa bag a convoluted task at best. Nonetheless, I found the Wolfman bag to be overengineered and needlessly complex. In fact, the arrangement of some of the male/female buckles is not even symetrical! And with so many straps lashed across the bag, once underway whatever is in the main compartment of the bag is there for the duration, so anything needed during the day has to go into the tank bag. When loaded, the side pockets of the Wolfman bag spilled over onto the top of the saddlebags, making them hard to access. And the Wolfman Alfa bags are not waterproof, so bring some trash bags with you. Oh, I almost forgot: the fully loaded bag will impinge on the room available for sitting--you will find yourself wedged in between your tank bag and the Alfa bag. A check of the pictures on the Wolfman website will confirm this. Damn, I really wanted to like this bag. In fact, I ordered it from Eric at Wolfman personally so as to give him the full cut of the profit. Unfortunately, for me the bag was a big disappointment. YMMV, and I hope it does.