i feel i should explain why this is one of my categories (which have been freshly cleaned up as of late…i eliminated many which seemed redundant or only had one or two posts filed in them.) my husband, who of course you know i love, has a little problem. i have joked here and there about his issue, sometimes referring to him as the gearhead. but i do not jest when i say he has a problem. i am not holding myself in any way superior. we all have our addictions. his just happens to be a severe weakness for many different forms of outdoor gear.

in his defense, he does do many things outside. it is one of the things i love most about him. he loves to camp, to backpack, to hike, to climb mountains, to bike, to ski, to do yardwork. oh wait, scratch that last one. but all those others. he loves them. and to an extent, yes, these activities require a certain amount of gear. which brings me to the explanation of the category name, minimal gear. an inside joke of sorts. at some point when i was giving taido a hard time about the arrival of some piece of gear (all of our gear arrives through the mail, via the internet…you just can’t get good gear in arkansas, apparently) he turned and said to me,

“i am surviving on minimal gear.”

at which point we both burst out laughing, at the sheer ridiculous-ness of his statement. even he could not pretend that he could really justify saying that he was barely surviving on the amount of gear he has. only as he thinks about all the gear he desires does it seem like what he has is minimal. since then the term surfaces frequently as a reference to why we need something. more ski pants? i don’t have any green ones. therefore, it is minimal to get one pair of ivy green ski pants. you get the idea. we aren’t really being minimalist here. and when we use the term to joke with each other (he can now tease me over the yoga clothing, which after bemoaning my lack of last summer, he has completely hooked me up with all things yoga), we both know that we are pretty much always talking about something that if push came to shove, we could live without.

so that explains the category. even though it is unused (only 2, now 3 posts), it makes me smile to see it there, and maybe i will now write more often about some sort of gear choice we make. so you too can get some minimal gear.

and of course, if we ever move to some mountain town and open a gear shop, we have our name all picked out.