First, check out the product. Make sure to read the description and the specs.
If my memory isn’t erring, I bought my set of pack towels in 2003. I own 1 extra large, 4 or 5 larges, and 2 washcloth sized towels.
To put it simply, I have used these pack towels DAILY for at least 5 years. They are still in perfect condition and satisfy my every need of them. They have been with me all over the world and returned in one piece. Every time I shower at home, I use a pack towel. When I’m dry I just clip it to hang from the shower rod, and it dries without dripping. I only use conventional bulky, long-drying, thin-wearing towels when I visit someone else or stay in a hotel. The small sizes make a washcloth you can use daily.
I take a pack towel hiking with me every time now. They’re great if you need to dry your feet from sweat or body on a hike or after a rain. They are super compact and lightweight. I understand MSR has Nano and Ultralight pack towels now, but why should I upgrade when the ones I bought 6 years ago still work perfectly? I haven’t tested the new ones, and I cannot compare them on durability.
They are between $7 and $23, roughly. If you’re a backpacker, one of these towels will go the distance of any expedition, no matter how many times it gets soiled and washed. It will stay soft, fluffy, and easy to care for.
Think of the efficiency. My set of towels cost roughly $100, and I have had personal drying expenses covered for 6 years. I don’t see them wearing out anytime soon. What’s more, they don’t form a heap under the sink; they are about as compact as they come and can go places you’d never take an ordinary bathroom towel. All of my towels together are about the same volume as one conventional bathroom towel or beach towel. If you travel overseas, this is important, especially if all your possessions for six weeks are in a backpack you routinely have to transport. I speak from experience.
As far as this adventurer is concerned, the MSR expedition pack towel is perfection in a towel.
You can buy them at www.backcountrygear.com.
NOTICE: I receive ABSOLUTELY NO money or other incentive from MSR or anybody else for my reviews. I don’t get paid a cent to blog or give praise to the products I enjoy. I don’t get favors or anything else of value, either. And I only review stuff I actually know about, rather than things I’ve used once. If it’s my first time using a product, I’ll let you know.
THE GREEN FACTS AND A RATHER UNCALLED FOR RANT
MSR pack towels are made in the USA, rather than in sweat shops overseas. Do you know where your towels were made? There’s less material used, and the material is smarter. I couldn’t find anything negative about MSR’s business practices. A look at their website will tell you they are a model company in terms of product design. Small, efficient, long-lasting investments are what MSR produces. They inspire people and empower people to enjoy the outdoors. For that alone, MSR is a good company in my book. Also, many bathroom towels are made from cotton, which is hardly the fabric of our lives.
Cotton that isn’t organic uses more pesticides than any other one crop. More on that at WorldChanging. If you read the book, you’ll learn more.
But I will endeavor to explain in a way the dedicated optimists will not approve of. The good ole’ USA is the world’s leading exporter of cotton, even though this is silly. First-world, developed countries like us are supposed to import raw goods and transform them into luxury goods that aren’t as susceptible to price fluctuations. Cotton is like coffee beans or cocoa beans, which we make into gourmet foods and drinks. Cotton is like crude oil, which we process into all kinds of refined fuel. The US does well to produce racing motorcycles, yachts, MP3 players and whatnot. Other first-world countries stick to service businesses, like finance, to go even further beyond. But about $4 billion of your tax dollars go to keeping American cotton farmers in their businesses, because they probably wouldn’t be lucrative otherwise. The US is still in the cotton trade because we have the pesticides to dump on the crop by the gallon (and then wrap babies in the resulting blanket) and high tech machines to grow and collect it, so as few people as possible get jobs from the land on which it is grown. We prefer to do things the way they have always been done.
Didn’t you know? The US has always been a huge cotton exporter. But we didn’t always have fancy machines and chemical plants to make it so we could work an antiquated system. No, back then we used, oh what was that … oh yeah, SLAVES.
Speaking of screwing over Africa, the US keeps the price of cotton ridiculously cheap so that nations suited to producing it must do so at an enormous loss. It is suspected that the best thing we could do for third-world development is stop giving aid money and stop producing cotton, saving tax money with a double-edged sword and reclaiming our poisoned land at home. Then farmers in developing countries could make a descent living off of farming. When we give Africa aid, we’re basically stealing their opportunity to develop with one hand, then giving a little bit of our profit back and telling ourselves how good we are that we give money to the poor, whom we impoverish. And as usual, when humans suffer, the planet is suffering in the background, though if any force in the equation is innocent, it is nature.
It reminds me of a United Way banquet I went to. The biggest issue United Way funds were going to combat was the need of health care for the working uninsured, many of whom worked 2 or 3 jobs. And who was donating the money to run clinics for people with no health insurance? The same big companies who were slashing benefits and using part-time workers. The very people creating the problem were patting themselves on the back for “donating” money so selflessly to fix their society. The sickest tyrants of course see themselves and make others see them as heroes.
How nice that we oppress the poor and then become the beacon of philanthropy through aid money and “relief.” I personally see a lot go out of my paycheck, and we could split $4 billion or so more back among us, plus what we give in foreign aid to help those we’ve hurt, which, by the way, is less than $4 billion by the accounts I’ve read.
So buy and use a pack towel for the world’s sake, or else buy organic cotton.
I don’t have a political party, but sheesh, when are O’Reilly, Hannity and Limbaugh going to talk about this stuff? Where is fiscal conservatism when our “great nation” is still growing one of the most demanding crops man harvests? I guess they think its just the “crazy” liberals caring about the soil we live on.
In a way, there are two ways to look at things. Either the future is in the future, or it’s in the past. The people who think it’s in the “good old days” will resist and resist change, liking things the way they are and demonizing the people who accept the painful, difficult process of changing society for the better (which is rather like changing oneself to kick a bad habit like smoking or eating terribly). But, as WorldChanging’s article demonstrates, eventually even the naysayers will come to praise, in retrospect, the things they should have had the forethought to do in the beginning, like Wal-Mart becoming the world’s biggest in the organic cotton biz. When the old way of doing things eventually accepts the new, where do the naysayers stand?
I heard that in my grandmother’s youth, the thought of parents was that women who wore red lipstick were “ladies of the night,” and I’m not talking about vampires. But now what do old women, the children of that generation seem to prefer? Why, bright, red lipstick. And we look at the whole notion as ridiculous. Look at church doctrines about who was going to hell and how they’ve changed as the church matures and abandons some of the old ways. A generation ago the Church of Christ sent instrumental musicians to hell, now they just think they aren’t appropriate. The problem with always wanting things to stay traditional is that there was a time when the American revolutionists were “crazy liberals” and rejected the patriotism for Britain, a time when conservatives would have called the participants in the Boston Tea Party “faceless cowards” for dressing up as Indians to “terrorize” Britain’s merchant marines, a time when the liberal north thought slavery shouldn’t continue even if it cost many wealthy people a complete lifestyle change, and a time when only societal rabble-rousers wanted women to get the same salaries as men. My generation scoffs at racism as ridiculous. Even children with no nurture to the contrary see through skin color. But don’t we all know some very old people who still wouldn’t like us to date someone outside of our “race?” The disgrace of racism is still with us, lying just a generation or so behind us, but, I’m happy to think it will soon go the way of the dodo just like everything else certain “good old day” supporters fight so desperately to hold onto.
However many people think living efficient and green is pointless or just elitism, society is already changing for the greener, and the future when our generation is condemned for its stone age ideas about the environment (well, they might have respected the environment more in the stone age, so I’ll say “selfish ideas about the environment”) is dawning. Eventually, even the biggest obstacles to the process, whether big corporations or radio hosts, or their posterity, will accept reason and change to embrace it, just like Wal-Mart. I’m sure there are some in my generation who will become grandparents that still think they can throw their cigarette butts on the ground or throw plastic to the landfill instead of recycling it. And the then green world and their children will see that part of them as a disgrace from another time, just like the old racists who still walk the earth.
BUT THIS IS ABOUT TOWELS
So why the rant? Living the Life of Adventure is about feeling happy in a deeply satisfied way. The largest part of happiness is being okay with who we are. Being the change we want to see in the world, working for a better future, is the service that gives us security in our own skin. Then, in the knowledge that we’re doing our best, we can adventure happily, with a nice pack towel to dry us off.
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