Survival PTrick Style

So I've had a ton of free time and I've been watching through Netflix streaming quite a bit. I've recently watched season 1 of Man vs. Wild and season 1 of Survivorman. Once I watch through all of both shows, I'm going to do a big review/comparison article (this may take a while as I am not someone who can watch a whole season of a TV show in a day, just not the patience here).

I've done a fair amount of outdoor adventuring, specifically backpacking, back in the day... I've done some rafting rafting rafting last summer and earlier this year, great times, but I do miss the backcountry. I'll preface this next section by saying 95% of my experience has been in Mt. Rainier and Olympic National Parks and the surrounding areas, so although I feel like the next section is fairly general, if you live somewhere far away from the Pacific NW, it may not pertain as well...

So on to Patrick's Survival Tips Part 1 (these are in no particular order by the way)

Footwear!

The number one thing I'd like to say on the subject is to make sure you have quality and appropriate footwear for outdoor situations. I personally have a pair of mostly waterproof, fitted boots that I've had since I was 17 and taken all the way around the Wonderland Trail. Many of the tough times co-backpackers have had were with poor fitting shoes or the wrong type of shoe. The majority of the trails I've hiked on have consisted of combinations of muddy, rocky, wet, and slippery surfaces. A really solid, broken in boot is completely vital.

Another part of footwear is the sock. I'm a huge proponent of wearing two pairs of socks on any trip longer than 2 miles in total.
Here's the logic. Blisters on feet = bad
Blisters are generally caused by socks rubbing on skin and are exacerbated by wetness (from sweat, rain, whatever)
So sock in shoe rubbing on skin = bad
So instead, wear 2 pairs of socks... a pretty tight inner pair (I actually prefer dress socks, but shorter athletic socks would work) and a studier outer pair (smartwool REI type socks)
Sock rubbing on sock = good for your feet
Also, assuming you are in a wet climate, the outer wool sock can function much better in rain or just walking through dewy moist plant life and keep your feet drier, especially when working with a waterproof boot.
Using this method, I've only gotten blisters on my feet once in over five hundred miles of backpacking*. (that was when I had injured my leg thus altering my normal gait and how my feet moved in my boots.) So while otherwise healthy, I have never once gotten blisters (including two Wonderland trail runs).

So there's my survival/outdoor advice for the night. More to come...

Getting Tangental with it

So I haven't seen any crazy ground breaking movies lately... Legion was decent, helped out by a capable supporting cast (love me some grumpy Dennis Quaid and Charles Dutton), but had some big logic plot holes and was poorly edited at times (also the 2 best moments were totally spoiled by the preview and Patrick favorite Doug Jones had about 1 minute of screen time). So like a solid 6/10

Daybreakers looked really cool if I hadn't seen the Matrix first (same sort of color filters), it was good to see Ethan Hawke and Sam Neill in lead roles, and also to have a vampire movie that actually used real vampire rules (these vamps weren't sparkly and twinkly in the sunlight). On the other hand, the pacing was slow at times and once again I had serious logic problems with some of the basic concepts... Super quickly, why aren't the sunlight proof car shields made of something sturdier than glass (not just for bullets, but like a rock hitting the windshield) and how is it that the super advanced vampires are so awful at planning out how their "farming" humans would work. Also a solid 6/10 for me...

My next Netflix movie is Descent 2... Now I really love the first Descent (its a easy 9/10) but I am sort of dreading a sequel. Most horror sequels are different levels of awful, especially recently (the Hills Have Eyes remake and the Tex Chainsaw Remake, I enjoyed both, but both sequels were just horrifically terrible).

Also the high up movies on my Netflix queue for those who care: The Road, Crazy Heart, Hurt Locker, Blind Side, Pirate Radio... So there are some entries for future movie reviews. However my next article is going to stray a long ways from movie reviews... Read on... if you dare