The Adventurer's Gear Thread

[Blackthorn]

I hate to see this thread die. Anyone got any new adventures ahead or recently enjoyed? I've started metal detecting myself. I know not very adventurous but it's gets me out to new historic places in search of interesting relics. In addition,I get to wear my safari and khaki outfits while doing it.

You have the perfect avatar for an adventure thread, jswindle2. That's Roy Chapman Andrews, isn't it?

 

[Big Man]

I hate to see this thread die. Anyone got any new adventures ahead or recently enjoyed? ...

I took my two year-old grandson on a hike (about three miles) to the top of Shortoff Mountain last week. That should qualify as an adventure.

 

[Big Man]

I also did a little fly fishing about a week or so ago.

 

[Curmudgeon]

I also did a little fly fishing about a week or so ago.

I don't see any fish.

 

[Big Man]

I don't see any fish.

Catch and release ...

 

[jswindle2]

You have the perfect avatar for an adventure thread, jswindle2. That's Roy Chapman Andrews, isn't it?

Yes,it is in fact. As far as I'm concerned he was the real Indiana Jones.

 

[Blackthorn]

Yes,it is in fact. As far as I'm concerned he was the real Indiana Jones.

My thought exactly. He had adventures much like Indiana Jones, he spoke fluent Mandarin and was afraid of snakes. It doesn't get any more accurate than that. His book "This Business of Exploring" is a classic. My hero, for sure.

 

[Blackthorn]

I posted this to Fedoras in Action, but it's appropriate here, too, from a recent trip to Mount Shasta, McCloud River:

 

[BlueTrain]

Now, that looks like a place worth going to. I take it you weren't alone.

As far as adventure gear goes, I just acquired a new 50-year old rucksack, a small one. Although it was advertised as an Italian alpine rucksack, I'm pretty sure it's Norwegian. I have another one, slightly larger. I love things like that, although to be honest, they are a little dated. They tend to pull the shoulders back with a load, most of them (I have more than two). But one, a WWII U.S. Army mountain rucksack, is just about the most comfortable pack I have. It still isn't the one I'd pick for even an overnight trip but for what it is, it is surprisingly comfortable.

I also buy just about every surplus khaki shirt I can find, too, although the best ones are from Filson. The old ones, not the new ones. I think I have watched one too many Jungle Jim movies.

 

[Mr. Godfrey]

I think I have watched one too many Jungle Jim movies.

Now that's funny but I know what you mean and would have to agree to explain my mental state for adventure and style.

 

[BlueTrain]

We all have different ideas about adventure, or rather, the sort of adventures we'd like to have. But there are no more jungles where it never rains (it never rained in a Jungle Jim movie). Today we have tropical rain forests. Jungle Green is no longer a color. One of my wife's two cousins (I have about twenty) lives in Afghanistan, currently working for the U.N. He was with our forces in one of the invasions of Iraq (got thrown out, too). He's been around. He has had adventures. But I can barely stand to sit next to him with the way he talks. He is at home in a bar. I have no interest in doing anything like that.

Another person, totally unrelated, moved to Alaska after the war and when he was about 51, built a log cabin on a remote lake and lived there for thirty years, keeping a journal which has been published and filming his life. It wasn't much of an adventure, aside from a few encounters with bears. It was a peaceful life and one that I could embrace, although I'm not as frugal as he was nor could I build a good log cabin, even in spite of the fact that I once lived in an ancient log house (but not a cabin!).

Living a quiet and peaceful life seems to have little appeal to very many people. Besides, I really don't believe there were ever any white goddesses that came from a house in the sky living deep in the jungle with a gorilla or a lion to protect her, all the while maintaining a nice looking hairdo. Anyway, even if there were, I'm already married.

 

[Mr. Godfrey]

We all have different ideas about adventure, or rather, the sort of adventures we'd like to have. But there are no more jungles where it never rains (it never rained in a Jungle Jim movie). Today we have tropical rain forests. Jungle Green is no longer a color. One of my wife's two cousins (I have about twenty) lives in Afghanistan, currently working for the U.N. He was with our forces in one of the invasions of Iraq (got thrown out, too). He's been around. He has had adventures. But I can barely stand to sit next to him with the way he talks. He is at home in a bar. I have no interest in doing anything like that.

Another person, totally unrelated, moved to Alaska after the war and when he was about 51, built a log cabin on a remote lake and lived there for thirty years, keeping a journal which has been published and filming his life. It wasn't much of an adventure, aside from a few encounters with bears. It was a peaceful life and one that I could embrace, although I'm not as frugal as he was nor could I build a good log cabin, even in spite of the fact that I once lived in an ancient log house (but not a cabin!).

Living a quiet and peaceful life seems to have little appeal to very many people. Besides, I really don't believe there were ever any white goddesses that came from a house in the sky living deep in the jungle with a gorilla or a lion to protect her, all the while maintaining a nice looking hairdo. Anyway, even if there were, I'm already married.

Very true Blue Train, my own view is life is a great big adventure and it is how you look at the things that come your way then make the most of them. Having travelled the globe in all sorts of terrain and climates one of my happiest times was being with my wife and daughter ( she was about 8 at the time) in a two man tent in Cornwall telling my daughter the story of the old empty barn and having her belly laugh for five minutes and then it later during the night a storm came in with the tent blowing and shaking all over it was really exciting for my daughter, so I find pleasure in so many other things as I get older.

However I still love Tarzan, Jungle Jim and those movies from my childhood for they helped shape my taste for a certain period and style. I do so love drab, khaki earth colours along with brown leather.


Although as I age and look in the mirror I see my grandfather looking back, so perhaps he shaped my style too, he did take me for my first short back and side haircut so long ago!

 

[BlueTrain]

I will first have to admit having great interest in the sidekicks in the movies, too, like Gabby Hayes and especially Al St. John (Fuzzy). Anyway, my grandfathers both died before I was born. I sometimes hear my father when I talk, in a manner of speaking, but I know I'm not that much like him. Our experiences have been quite different, although we both served in the army and even took our basic training at the same place (as did my son).

But to read the journals of Dick Proenneke, one could be surprised that very little adventure comes through for someone who lived by himself for 30 years deep in the Alaskan back country. He was no hermit, though, and seemed to have had a string of visitors. He took pleasure in the simple things of life and that's pretty much all he wrote about. He did later write about the politics and problems of creating a national park there and about some people's poor habits of hunting and housekeeping. It wasn't so much an adventure as a series of sensual pleasures, including a great deal about the local animals. In a way, it was a lot like "Under the Tuscan Sun," just in a different place with longer nights.

 

[Tiki Tom]

We all have different ideas about adventure, or rather, the sort of adventures we'd like to have. But there are no more jungles where it never rains (it never rained in a Jungle Jim movie). Today we have tropical rain forests. Jungle Green is no longer a color. One of my wife's two cousins (I have about twenty) lives in Afghanistan, currently working for the U.N. He was with our forces in one of the invasions of Iraq (got thrown out, too). He's been around. He has had adventures. But I can barely stand to sit next to him with the way he talks. He is at home in a bar. I have no interest in doing anything like that.

An old truism is that no matter how well-travelled and adventuresome a person is, they will always meet people who can top them. Now, by most yard sticks, I'm no slouch. But I have a close friend who absolutely puts me to shame. He is one of those guys who has been everywhere and done everything. In fact some of my top adventures have been with him. But he keeps me on my toes and keeps me from getting complacent.

When I think "Jim" and jungles, I automatically jump to Marlin Perkin's side-kick, Jim, on the old "mutual of Omaha, Wild Kingdom show". Jim was always head to toe in khaki and running down African wild animals. (Why do I remember that Jim was always traipsing through the bush barefoot? Could that possibly be true?) Daktari was also one of my favorite TV shows when I was a boy. Add to those shows my reading habits and my dad's stories of 25 years in the merchant marines during the golden era, and it might not be a mystery why I'm so interested in the global nomad approach to life.

Give me anything involving khaki clothing with lots of pockets, maps, tropical locations, Landrover Defenders, cheap gin joints with slow moving fans, and tales of adventure, and I'm all over it! It's probably not too uncommon a dream-world for folks of our generation. I'm not surprised, however, that millennials are left scratching their heads by it all.

 

[BlueTrain]

Some people have their adventures by climbing rocks and running the rapids in a canoe. One of my wife's co-workers of about 35 years ago disappeared on Mount McKinley, now called Denali. His body was never found. I already mentioned my wife's cousin who is currently in Afghanistan.

I'd say that being a sailor on a merchant ship would still be an adventure. But it used to be that many jobs had sufficient danger to qualify as an adventure, even though the job itself might be unhealthy and was actually dangerous. But I've known lots of coal miners and I doubt any of them would describe their work as an adventure. Being a long-haul truck driver could be something of an adventure. Adventures don't have to happen in exotic foreign lands at all, although it might be more interesting that way.

My son once asked my wife's cousin if he carried a gun as he traveled around the Middle East and he just laughed. But my son, on the other hand, did, when he had his fifteen-month adventure there.

By the way, I once owned a 1965 Land-Rover. I got that out of my system early on. I also had a couple of Rover sedans a long time ago (that's where the Blue Train comes from--the Blue Train Rover). I had some adventures in the Land-Rover, too, all while I still lived in West Virginia. For a while, I even lived in a log house, which is where my father lived for over 30 years. Not an adventure but an interesting experience nevertheless.

 

[greatestescaper]

I figure at the heart of it, as others have pointed out, life is an adventure if you make it so. And certainly too, there is always someone just a bit more wild than the last. I have found that in moving from Queens, New York to the Davis Mountains of West Texas that my friends and family still up there think each day of my life is an adventure now, while many that have become my family here shudder at the trilling adventures I must have experienced in New York. I reckon that it's all a matter of perspective. Something more, in either place I have met folks who have shared tales of adventure that I could not even conceive to write about. And, while I feel that living where I do now I'm more likely to find myself in some adventure or another, there really is something great about Tarzan, Jungle Jim, Roy Chapman Andrews, and Theodore Roosevelt. Perhaps it is something about the style that ropes me in, and gets me thirsting for some adventure of my own.

 

[BlueTrain]

The problem might be nothing more than expressing what you really want. Being on a sinking ship would probably qualify as an adventure but what you really want is to keep your head above water. Generally speaking, for most people, keeping your head above water as you live your life is about all they can do.

Some adventure characters, real and fictional, displayed admirable traits. Others merely lacked a few necessary qualities. Desi Arnaz was not considered an adventurer by anyone. Lucille Ball said he was a good provider but he was never at home. That is the problem my wife's cousin has, if I may be so blunt. He has had real adventures , too, even if they weren't quite up to the level of "True, The Man's Magazine" stuff. He married, too, to a lady from Serbia. But he was never home and they eventually divorced.

I always thought Jungle Jim in his movies had a lot of nice qualities, even if he did kill at least one crocodile in every movie. He never carried a gun and didn't seem to own a lot of possessions. That wasn't real-life Johnny Weissmuller, though.

Another individual who had real adventures was a man from Latvia named Sasha Seimel. He was a professional hunter in South America and also a guide. Although otherwise probably a wonderful and interesting person, he still earned his living by killing wild animals. I have no objections to eating animals, at least some of them, but people who raise cattle never have adventures.

Except for cowboys.

Do boys still want to grow up to be a cowboy?

 

[BlueTrain]

Okay, it's been nearly nine hours. Nobody will admit to wanting to be a cowboy?

How about a logger? It's hard work, to be sure, maybe not as much adventure as all that, but you still get to get out of town. No one lives in a logging camp anymore, though (as far as I know), so no bunkhouse and chow hall pleasures. Just plain work.

Well, then, what about joining the army? Yeah, I know, always having to do what someone else is telling you, but the pay isn't too bad anymore and there's a pretty good chance for action. And the barracks are all new. But you have to be pretty young, though. It's not for old folks.

You like heights? Lots of jobs out there in construction. Big, tall buildings going up all over. Not really everywhere, actually. Where I'm from they're tearing down old buildings but that's fun, too. English not required but helpful. Same with Spanish.

When I was a freshman in college, though, to man a fire tower in the summer was considered something worth doing. It's sort of an adventure (You like heights?) but I never did anything like that. It must be a dream job, though, but I don't think there are many jobs like that now. Never knew anyone who did anything like that.

Anything's probably better than being a cowboy, though. The pay isn't that great.

 

[Big Man]

I worked for 30 years at a State mental hospital. Talk about an adventure ...

 

[Correus]

Since we're sharing adventuring vehicles, here is mine

Owning this is actually what sent me to the Fedora Lounge; one of my Land Rover contacts mentioned it as a place to get ideas for safari outfitting. It took me a while to find it here, but he obviously meant this very thread

Jambo!

Greetings from South Central Kansasikhstan! I had intended to hold off on my first post and make it a formal introduction; yet when I saw this post I just had to respond!

I'm currently in the middle of a mechanical and safety rehabilitation of my '63 SIIa 88 SW Land Rover. Hopefully Grover will be up-n-runnin' by the end of summer.

I came across the Fedora Lounge while researching classic safari outfitting for Grover with the intention of displaying Grover in "classic" safari mode for car shows as well as trekking. The attached photos are of Grover before heading to the mechanic shop.

I shall post a more thorough introduction in the next few days.

Chin-chin!!