In the last year or two I’ve spent a heck of a lot of time in the outdoors.  Hunting, fishing, hiking, kayaking and climbing all over Mongolia has become my passion, and I’ve never been happier.  As a younger man I was never all that interested in outdoor pursuits (a night at the bar was enough to keep me happy), but when I got sick and was told I had to stop drinking I took to the outdoors like a fish to water.  What began as a way to stay healthy and beat an unpleasant, chronic condition turned into a joy in itself, and I don’t miss my drinking days at all.  

One thing that gets me about my late introduction to the outdoor world is that so few people seem to plan ahead.  Folk who grew up in the world of hunting, hiking and so on become set in their ways, and they seem to fail to deal with avoidable problems simply because they never solved them before, and neither did their old pa.  If it’s good enough for pa, it’s good enough for me. 

Lemme explain what I’m talking about.  A couple of weeks ago I went out with a few western friends to the Mongolian steppe.  It was a surprisingly warm day (‘warm’ being around -20 Celsius), so we were kitted out in light cold weather gear – my trusty Columbia Bugaboo parka, in my case – and bug chunky boots to deal with the acres of tough, icy snow mixed in with mud and sand. 

After a day of trudging around the landscape we returned to my buddies 2 month old car, climbed in and drove back to the city.  By the time we got back the heating had melted the ice and snow on our boots into a nasty, muddy slush.  The guy didn’t have floor mats, so naturally his carpets are now covered in muck, and his floors will never be the same again.  

The same goes for his seats.  The only protection was the Hello Kitty car seat cover his wife had pulled over the driver’s seat, but the rest of them were uncovered and are now pretty much wrecked.

Here’s the thing.  Because I was into my 30s before I got into the outdoors I’m still pretty anal about my car.  If I know I’ll be spending a weekend out on the steppe I’ll plan ahead.  I’ll lay down mats.  I’ll protect the seats with a sheet.  I’ll bring a hug pack of baby wipes to clean up before the long drive home.  These guys, though, who’ve spent their entire lives outdoors, just don’t think about these things.  They spend every weekend out in the dirt, get back to the car and only then do they realise we’re about to make a mess (leaving me, as a passenger, feeling guilty all the way home).  

So here’s the message: if you live your life outdoors you should really buy a damned car seat cover.  It’s not rocket science.  

For the last two months or so my girlfriend and I have been living through a frigid Mongolian winter, running between Ulaanbaatar and the Gobi Desert in temperatures as low as minus 40 degrees Celsius.

Not many people know much about Mongolia (it ain’t your fault – it’s been hidden from the world between China and Russia for many years, and it’s just now re-emerging to the wider world), but if there’s one thing people have heard about the country it’s that it is the land of the blue sky.  Here in the centre of Asia you could go a week without seeing a cloud, so despite the freezing temperatures the sun is always shining. 

This is great, but it can also be a bit of a problem.  Bright sunshine and white snow don’t make good bedfellows, and glare from the sun can be a real pain in the ass when you’re driving, shooting… pretty much doing anything that requires eyes.

As I’ve had issues withe Mongolian glare before, I picked up a pair of polarized hunting glasses last time we were in Beijing.  Shooting glasses may not appear on the radar of most folk, but when you’re out on the Mongolian steppe even the most basic pair of cheap shooting glasses will beat the pants off regular sunglasses.  

Shooting glasses are, cosmetically, very similar to a pair of regular sunglasses, but they’re designed to surpass the ANSI Z87.1 industrial eyewear impact standard.  Shooting glasses must be able to withstand an impact from a projectile much better than sunglasses, so they’re often used by hunters and marksmen to protect the eyes from ricochets and ejected shells.

Anyway, this year I’ve been rocking a pair of Allen Company shooting glasses on the Mongolian steppe.  My pair of Rugers (the best, in my humble opinion) came with four interchangeable lens sets in different colours, so I can switch them out according to the conditions.  The basic yellow lenses aren’t too great for Mongolia as they’re designed for overcast conditions (not too many days like that over here), but the black lenses are pretty ideal for the bright sunshine.

It’s weird how your view of a country changes with a pair of shooting glasses.  I’ve always spent my time in Mongolia with a permanent squint against the bright sun, so it’s nice to walk around with wide open eyes.  It reminds me what a stunningly beautiful country this is.

I made a mistake when buying a huge toy for my kids to play with this summer. I loved the look of those huge inflatable water parks that you can put up in your backyard, keep inflated all day, and then take down at night.

I set myself a budget of $500 -quite generous, I know, but when compared with the potential cost of trips out all summer long it didn’t seem so bad, and I plan on using it for more than one summer.

So with my credit card in hand I began searching online for the best inflatable water slide for $500 I could buy. I soon found lots of slides and water parks on offer and foolishly I thought the way to get the best value for my money was to buy the biggest water park I could for my budget.

So I ended up with a huge water park. When the kids saw the box they went crazy with excitement. I looked at the box and was filledwith terror – this bad boy was 15 feet wide!

But I’d bought it, the kids had seen it, there was no going back.

I unpacked it and I was exhausted. I blew it up and the kids jumped around for hours. I sat on my chair happy int he knowledge I was a top notch parent, who had spent their money wisely. But when it was time to deflate it, that’s when I realized bigger is not necessarily better. After several attempts to roll up an inflatable that is almost three times as wide as I am tall, I gave up, drapped a cover over it, and resolved to more carefully research my purchases in future.