I had a fun encounter today! I stopped by Moontrail Outfitters just to browse around - many of you probably know their website, http://www.backcountryequipment.com. Well, those guys' store location is only a few miles from my house, so I stopped by on my way home from school. Their showroom is quite nice, though I was disappointed by their selection of UL gear, but the guy I spoke with was very nice and helpful. They will apparently no longer sell Granite Gear, and have a very small selection of Golite. They are focusing on Gregory now.

Anyways, the fun part was that I started asking if they had any connections or sources for materials, fabrics, etc. When he said no, I asked if they had any other customers who were into making their own equipment. He said "yeah, there's one guy who comes in pretty regularly - he has talked about building packs out of some kind of Brazilian sailcloth, and he got a Coleman stove that he's been milling to cut weight..."

That's right, our own great Bill Fornshell was spotted in San Antonio! I told the guy about BPL, and encouraged them to check out a corporate membership - some of the guys on this site are really cutting edge, and I think that a great company like Moontrail can only benefit from this kind of info and insight. Bill, the guys at the store all thought that your ideas were really interesting, and the guy I talked to went on and on about how knowledgable you were and how cool your ideas were.

I love that site, they always have lots of pictures of the tents they sell , but they dont have alot of UL. :-(

If they start selling more SUL gear I will be very happy, they usually show pictures of all the features of a product, makes it easier to buy gear if you can see it :-)

Edited by ryanf on 01/17/2006 17:25:26 MST.

Benjamin, small world, I live in San Antonio. North of the airport but just inside 1604.

The folks at Moontrail are very nice. I was there last Friday. They are about 90% internet sales and when I walk in they have aways acted like they were really happy to see someone. The place where they are now is the second place for them since I have been buying stuff from them. If I need something and they sell it I buy it from them. They have more stuff in the back and will let you look at any of it.

You can get down on the floor and play with anything they have. I know they look at BPL.com as I have asked about things that have been reviewed here and reference this site a lot.

Have you been to the new park - Government Canyon yet? There is no overnight camping yet but should open some "Primitive tent camping sometime this year.

Just thought y'all might like to know:

It sure is a small world. Just one "global village" as my friends in PRC call it now - thanks to the internet.

So, any who consider that they "know" me from these BPL Forums are also within the "required" 6deg-of-sep from such infamous figures as Adolf Hitler, Mao Ze-Dong (you know, he was that Chinese tailor...right? the one, who designed the "Mao suit" that everyone in PRC used to wear some years ago?), also other non-infamous figures, (i'll give a very abbreviated list, selecting from various walks in life ) the astronauts John Glenn and Neil Armstrong, Sylvester Stalone, Tom Cruise, the author Stephen King, Albert Einstein, "the BOSS"-Bruce Springsteen, Maria Carey, the composer Aaron Copeland, Admiral Hyman G. Rickover - father of the Nuclear Navy, several former UCONN players now in the NBA, Formula 1 Race Drivers Michael Schumacher and Rubens Barichello, former Egyptian president Anwar Sadat, and of course most recently, Franco-the-Roo. However, I haven't gotten the "link" down yet for that Bushman of the Kalihari.

Bill, you probably live very close to where I work - I'm a student a Trinity, and I work near NW Military and Bitters.

The Moontrail guys are nice, indeed. I got the same impression, that seeing an actual human customer was a nice treat.

I've been out to Government Canyon several times. My parents got my wife and me annual state park passes for Christmas (a really great gift idea), and I've been out there three or four times. In fact, I spend MLK morning hiking the perimeter of the park. It's a really nice 12-mile loop, and if you get all the way around to the Far Reaches trail, you have a killer view of downtown San Antonio from a distance.

Funny story - I spend a lot of time in Government Canyon without knowing it when I was in high school. I used to mountain bike back behind the San Antonio Ranch subdivision. You could follow a trail way back past "the windmill." When I was hiking Monday, I realized that the Far Reaches trail was a trail I used to ride before they had the park boundary fenced off. In fact, once I rode out far enough to see buildings - in retrospect, those were the park headquarter buildings, before the park had opened. Anyways, that was fun to think about.

Ben

Edited by bugbomb on 01/18/2006 10:20:16 MST.