Top 10 Signs You're a Gearhead

[72Twenty]

(my climber friend e-mailed this to me. #7 totally explains us in the gear swap area... )

Top Ten Signs You’re a True Gearhead

10. You know more about the product than the sales person.

9. You cooked Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners for your entire family using only your Primus stove and a one-quart titanium pan.

8. You sleep in a bunk bed just so you can use your climbing equipment every night.

7. You sell last year’s gear to friends to help finance this year’s gear.

6. You quit your $50,000/year job to work for $6 per hour at your favorite outdoor store because you make more money after the discount.

5. You own 40 ‘biners and don’t know how to climb.

4. You know the weight of every item in your pack.

3. You know GORP doesn’t really stand for Great Outdoor Recreation Pages.

2. You don’t know what it does, how it works or when to use it, but you read it was new and cost more than your car payment, so you MUST have it.

1. Your friends ask for advance notice and an early viewing of your garage sale.

[Trackhead]

1. My AT boots are seven years old, the liners have holes in them. The shells have holes. The vibram toe is nearly worn off.

2. I still ski the old white Fritschi's with a bungi cord to keep the heel elevator up. My 'new' fritschi's are five years old.

3. My skins are torn all over the place, held together in the tips with tape.

4. My Patagonia jacket is more like a sponge than a shell. I spary it with silicone spray on wet days.

5. Xover and Stash can attest to my climbing gear. I have locking biners, they lock OPEN.

6. My frontpoints on my crampons are filed down to nubs and couldn't cut a babies skin.

7. I haven't read a climbing or skiing mag for years. I don't know what fat skis are anymore. I thought 84mm was fat.

8. I just recently retired my pack that would no longer hold a rope in the bottom, it kept falling out through the gaping hole.

9. All my BD Camalot triggers are taped together, occasionally blowing out when you try to place them.

10. One of my twin ropes has a big gobie on it, so I lead on the other end. My partners are always relieved when the gobie passes through the belay device.

Am I a gear junky?

[Huck Finn]

Am I a gear junky?

It sounds like you might have been a gear junky seven or more years ago.

[Telekóptero]

I figgered your list would be mass exaggeration and was embarassed to relate with 10 and 7. Trackhead. I "know" you. I skied in my dad's REI 2nd generation goretex until just last march. Sponge. Before that, his first generation, from early 1980's I think?