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It has been awhile since I tried to do anything with this pad, but I think my first try was just spreading a thin layer of contact cement on the rubber part and pressing the fabric down. The fabric didn't stay glued down when I used the pad again so the second time I tried to spread contact...

The thin knit fabric top on my Bell T-pad kneeling pad is coming unglued. I've twice tried unsuccessfully to glue it back down on the pad with contact cement but it didn't stick and I just ended up peeling more of the fabric loose in the process. Anyone have success with getting the fabric to...

The one time I remember being in a situation like that I went into a small cove with trees along the shore and hunkered down in the bottom of the royalex solo canoe waiting out the storm and wondering whether that was the appropriate choice. I was less than a mile from the landing I was heading...

A straight shaft Sawyer Cedar Voyager (now apparently just called Voyager) is currently my most frequently used paddle. To avoid wear on the Voyager in shallow gravel streams I'll sometimes use a Bending Branches Sunshadow. The Sunshadow, which isn't a current model listed on their website...

Maybe a Woodstrip Watercraft Teal model? http://woodstrip.wcha.org/index.html It says plans are available for the Teal and the description seems to fit the type of canoe you are talking about. I have no experience with these canoes but had bookmarked this when fantasizing about building a strip...

Costco has prescription glasses at a significantly lower price than other stores in town. Not a great selection of frames, but I found ones that work for me. Even though my prescription has been changing more lately (the Dr. says cataracts can do that) I splurged and got 4 pairs last month...

I've settled on prescription polarized bifocal sunglasses with a minimal reading area. Sometimes opticians don't quite believe me when I try to describe how low I want the dividing line between reading and distance for glasses I am getting specifically for outdoor activities such as hiking and...

The Wenonah Voyager is great on big rivers like the Mississippi if you want to get going and paddle at a steady pace to cover distance, though it can be hard to handle in the wind, but it is not good for start and stop sorts of trips. Before paddling the Voyager I didn't really appreciate the...

A spray cover such as those made by CCS can help in wind as well as deflecting splashes from waves so you could have some of the advantages of a decked canoe with any canoe. Don't know if you are looking for new or used, but if you can find a suitable used canoe to start with, even if it isn't...

A guy on Paddling.com posted about adding flotation to an Old Town Guide 147 canoe by strapping peanut shaped yoga balls into the ends: https://forums.paddling.com/t/flotation-safety-yoga-balls/106804 Maybe something similar to what he did would work for adding relatively inexpensive flotation...

I've only briefly test paddled Swift Cruisers, but my impression of the 14.8 was that it was small enough to be easy to accelerate and had great glide, taking less effort to cruise along. Three or four years ago I had gone to a Swift demo day - hadn't given any serious thought to the Cruisers...

I'm a hoarder and although I'm told it is easy to de-clutter - just give or throw things away - I haven't mastered that concept, so I'm frequently looking for things. Sometimes in the process of looking for something I run across something else I forgot I had. Recently when sorting through...

My introduction to paddling was in old wood and canvas canoes at Rucker Lake Girl Scout Camp in the Sierras in 1966. Don't know if the camp canoes were Old Towns or something else. They were rather beat up and many leaked a bit, but I was happy to be out on the water.

The Watershed bags I have seem designed to roll 270 deg. at the top, though occasionally I stuff them too full to roll the last 180. They do get difficult to open and close if I don't periodically wipe the closing strips with 303.

Perhaps the idea is to help emphasize ending the forward stroke at the hip and avoiding the tendency to lift water that occurs when a power stroke is carried too far back. I was taught a thumb-down J at Girl Scout camp more than 50 years ago so that is the style I'm used to, but keeping the...

Being easy to reach is an important point. I usually have a whistle in a pfd pocket but hadn't thought too much about accessibility until an incident on a multi day Buffalo river trip. There had been rain overnight and the river was rising as we were packing up. In hindsight launching that...

Good point about microfiber melting! That would definitely limit usefulness for things like grabbing a pot off the fire. Hadn't considered that limitation. I may still try cutting a bandana size square out of a larger microfiber towel, even if it wouldn't be a 104.

Probably the oldest item I take regularly, partly for nostalgia, is the Sierra Club cup I got in 1969 when my family went on a Sierra Club boundary waters trip. The leader's gear list for participants included a Sierra Club cup with name written on the bottom. The idea was that when you wore...

A few years ago I bought a Roll-A-Cot after reading recommendations on one of the paddling websites. A Thermarest mattress on top of that is real luxury camping! Even though it is a bit lighter weight and more compact than some cots, the Roll-A-Cot is a bit big for fitting in with other...