As I Xi It

Since the post about my impromptu stove, I seem to have developed a bit of an obsession with testing out different hand sanitizing gels and built up a mini stove kit.

That delightful Aladdins cave also known as Poundland, tend to have a veritable selection of hand sanitizers at low low prices. I picked up a few bottles and also some small stainless steel pots.

It seems that the runnier the gel, the easier it is to ignite and leaves less of a gooey deposit behind.

A visit to Blacks turned up a solo cookset and I also ordered a Ti stove off eBay for a few quid. It claims to be 13.5g and seems mighty small and light to me. I also managed to dig out a small metal tin which used to contain mints that I had picked up from one of the many careers fairs back the in day. It made an ideal recepticle to hold the gel and once used, I could pop the lid back on to stop the residual goo from dripping all over my bag.

Since it was snowing today, I tested it out in the garden and noticed a few things -

1) You can’t tell if the gel’s lit or not, you just cannot see the flames, unless you stick your hand over the top to feel the heat. A bit dangerous really, not for the accident prone. To solve this, I sprinkled a few grains of coarse sea salt (NaCl) onto the gel. The sodium when burnt gives off a yellow flame indicating whether it’s “on” or not, a bit of GCSE Chem for you there. It doesn’t leave any soot behind. Addition of salt also separates out the ethanol from the water and seems to enhance the performance of the gel. I actually saw larger and more vigorous bubbles in the pot.

2) Making a windshield from the snow without gloves leads to very cold hands.

3) It takes longer for the water to heat up while in the cold outdoors than on my desk. Not surprising as there was a bit of a breeze outside this morning.

4) It’s pretty good at making boiled eggs and heating up baked beans. As this set up isn’t that hot, food tends not to get burnt onto the pan which makes cleaning a lot easier.

5) I miss real camping.

The whole kit packed together is quite compact for what it is. I could easily take it with me out photographying out in the wildness for a quick hot brew.

I dunno why I didn’t get one earlier! I need one of those neoprene pouches though, it gets a bit cold in winter.

Swiss Mark Sigg

On another note, the WordPress app is still buggered up. Tried all the suggestions on their forum and no cigar.

I picked up a Spork today. Simple, light and oh so useful. Well, I perceive it to be useful otherwise why would I have brought it? I guess I can now leave my metal camp cutlery behind. Incidently, it’s made in Sweden much like the Fold-a-Cup I picked up while I was in Abisko, Sweden earlier this year. I didn’t intend to go with a Swedish theme. I brought it in yellow just because it’d be easier to find should it wander around my cavernous backpack.

How exciting could a mug be? Well, apart from all that commotion with the Canon mug in recent months, I came across the Sea to Summit X-Mug which is just so neat that I had to share!

Basically, the X-Mug is a drinking vessel by Sea to Summit made of food grade silicone, acepting both cold and hot beverages . It folds down to a disc shape approximately 1.5 cm x 11.3 cm and has graduations on the inside for measuring things out. Being fairly light and compact makes it ideal for those travel adventures. It seems fairly robust and there is also the X-Bowl and X-Plate in the collection of X items which all nest together when squished down. I’m pretty confident that this will replace the Lifeventure mug I usually pack for my next globe trotting adventure… assuming that this dastardly cloud of volcanic ash moves along.