Okay, you gram-shaving bike weenies. You can appreciate the new Garmin Edge 800 GPS cycling computer like a set of titanium chainring bolts: The 800 is smaller and lighter than the popular 705, but its 2.6-inch screen is larger. It also has a color touchscreen – Garmin’s first – and the ability to display 1:24,000 topo maps and satellite imagery. The only bummer? Those drill-down maps cost extra.
$800 LINK
Diggin’ the old school Pendleton Hood River jacket. Anytime you can make a shirt, jacket, or piece of outwear that looks like it started life as a horse blanket, we’re for it. The Hood River is 100 percent sheep trimmings with a soft liner, horn buttons, and zip closure. Like all Pendletons, it fits large, so order down.
$198 INFO
When Clark Foam shut down, many decried the end of the surfboard industry, but what seemed apocalyptic at the time has turned into one of the best events in board development. Forced off the monopoly of foam blanks supplied by Clark, new suppliers and new ideas have sprung up around the globe. Ocean Green uses hollow balsa wood cores from sustainably harvested Nicaraguan forests and the boards are shaped under fair trade practices. It also substitutes organic hemp or cotton cloth instead of fiberglass. The 6′4″ Gondrina is a swallowtail tri-fin–Ocean Green says it’s suited for any size waves, but we’re guessing head-high is where it’s gonna excel.
$NA INFO
Most Casios are only certified to bash down brick walls, but the Ultimate Tough GX56 has a new shockproofing system that ratchets the demolition capabilities to rebar-reinforced concrete. You can hammer nails with this sucker–though, be safe and don’t use the crystal side. The GX56 logs four alarms, a countdown time, world timer, and has a backlight. Be careful where you swing it.
$150 INFO
POC is killing it, and by killing it we mean killing it. Swedes are exempt from the laws that dictate all Euro fashion must be devoid of taste and style–they pretty much exist in a design-mandated zone the encompasses much of Scandinavia but ignores Belgium and eastern Finland. Translation: They’re killing it with the helmets and the armor and the glasses and the whatnot. All the shades are plastic over plastic, but our faves at the Eye Do — the most bugeyed, the most Swedish, the pair most begging for a floppy bang of long blond hair to drop down in front like a whimsical curtain of cool. Or something.
$139 INFO
We’re super stoked that Icebreaker’s new “Real Fleece” is as soft as synthetic but comes from the naturally sustainable hair farmers known as mutton, but memo to the model (or the photographer): Loosen thine buttocks. And relax the shoulders, too, chicky. We know you’re an über-people, but you look like you’re about to snap. You should be enjoying the fact that you’re wearing what feels like a baby’s blankie and will keep you warm when summer goes away, what with its brushed merino and deep hand pockets and all that.
$175 INFO
Okay peoples, this whole Star Wars thing? It’s gone too far. Legos and Super Mario, too, just for the record. Quite mining someone else’s childhood toys for post-ironic hipster memes. Why doth the protest? Cause this would be the baddest parka ever if it weren’t for the stupid Star Wars logo on yet. Yeah, yeah Stars Wars. adidas. Mashup. Ultra cool, blah blah blah. It’s a dope jacket rendered so five minutes ago by the logo. Can’t we just look like wookies without having to write on the front like a pre-schooler who can’t remember his name? We’re just sayin’. Cause we want this jacket. But not with WOOKIEE on it.
Does the name of a bikini really matter? Of course not. What matters is how it looks. Or how you look in it. Or how she looks in it. Whatever name it goes by, Roxy’s Surf Essentials Surfer Bra and Surf Essentials 70’s Lowrider Tie Side are money, a nice little treat in the last few weeks of summer.
$34, $32 INFO
It goes without saying that everyone should have at least one down sweater. Actually, it probably needs to be said: Everyone should have at least one down sweater. There are dozens of great ones out there — it’s like a chocolate sampler box with nothing grody inside — but Patagonia’s Special Edition Down Sweater is like 10 ounces of Friday night love. The feathery outer nylon is translucent, which is a big word for little minds but means “see-through” (in case someone you know doesn’t know), so you can catch a glimpse of the 900-fill goose down, which come to think of it, is kinda feathery, too. 900-fill is to goose down what powder is to snow: It’s rare, expensive, and worthy saving for. How much it gonna cost? See below.
$275 INFO
Mr. Science lives inside this little wrist-based intertidal computer, crunching numbers and telling you when the sun’s coming up and going down, when the moon’s doing its funky lunar thing, and most of all, charting the highs and lows of the tides at 200 beaches worldwide. The Rip Curl Ventura Tidemaster 2 is programmable by cross-eyed monkeys (programmABLE, not programMED), so even your dopiest bros can slot Blacks or Rincon or, shoot, Ocean City, Maryland, into the mix.
Freetown, population 400,000 and the capital of Sierra Leone, has just one hospital and four gynecologists. The country has the highest infant and maternal death rates in the world. But despite the bleakness of the situation, there is hope, as photographer and filmmaker Ami Vitale, good friend of The Adventure Life, reports in “Where Every ... keep reading
