Interesting trip to put it mildly.  First, I’ll admit that I didn’t have the time to do all of the field testing I wanted, so, I’m going back again in another week!!!!!!  That’s the good news.

But, a couple of products I did try out and want to report on. 

Dave from Knife Leather Traditions set me up with a Ben Hogan Belt Sheath in Dark Brown.  Dave and I are both great fans of the Ben Hogan’s so this was a natural for me.  Before I left home I put a super thin coat of Renaissance Wax on it (which is also one of the steps Dave performs when finishing them).  The sheath sheds water like a well oiled duck.  PLUS, it doesn’t have an oily or waxy feel.  The sheath is for a 1 ½” belt and fit both my belt and the knife superbly. 

It held the knife securely in all kinds of unusual positions (more on that later).   While it’s plenty deep to prevent the Hogan from falling out, it still leaves enough knife exposed to make extraction easy.  Great sheath!!!!!

For the last couple of years I’ve been a great fan of the Maxpedition bags and pouches.  I’ve never carried them in the store but had planned a couple of reviews and just never got around to it till now.  The one I want to talk about right now is the Maxpedition Cell phone pouch. 

It’s tough, padded, has a snap closure that’s secure and attaches to your belt with a clip that makes the springs in a #23 GEC seem puny by comparison.

HOWEVER, while mucking around picking blueberries in a faraway place, somehow the damned thing came off my belt with an I-Phone in it that is/was less than a month old.  You’re constantly bending over, crawling over brush and deadfalls so it’s not a particularly friendly environment.  The phone didn’t fall out; the pouch became separated from the clip.  Don’t ask, my wife already has numerous times, it just came off.  Chalk it up to another of life’s mysteries.  Oh yeah, Dave’s sheath didn’t fall off!!!  Would I recommend the Maxpedition Cell Phone pouch, probably not.  I like it, it’s well made, does a great job protecting the phone, but under the circumstances, I’m not overly impressed.

Now the back story on this I-Phone is that I’ve been resisting getting one for months and finally broke down and got one the end of June.  I’ll admit it’s a handy tool and makes life a lot easier to monitor email and text messages when I’m on the move, which is most of the time.  The last few weeks the blog has been inundated with spam and I do mean inundated.  Up to 100+ spams per day and I’ve been desperately trying to stay ahead of it, deleting most of it before it gets on the blog.  This super duper phone was really doing yeoman’s work for me while up North as I could pick up a phone signal to access the website in areas I couldn’t get a wifi connection.   

Now I know there’s a couple of you techies out there just dying to explain to me how that phone is setup with GPS and all kinds of clever bits of internal technology that’ll help you find your phone when it’s lost.  Well, they don’t work for squat when you’re outside of any kind of service area.  My wife tried calling my cell phone (she’d left her’s in the Jeep so she wouldn’t lose it) while we stood in the berries hoping for some sort of miracle to ring.  Doesn’t work.  Anyway, those couple of pints of blueberries ended up costing me around $330 for the first phone and the deductible to replace it.  Hate to tell you, but them berries were just a bit bittersweet.  As I said, I would have considered myself a lot luckier on all accounts if I’d run into a bear OR a Sasquatch!!!

So, IF you’ve been trying to reach me by phone since Thursday, you’re probably getting a message that our number has been discontinued or suspended.  It’s not that I didn’t pay this month’s phone bill, I just figured it’d be my luck some other berry picker would win the lottery, find my phone and make a few calls to mama back in the homeland, so I decided to suspend the service till the replacement gets here.  Right now I figure the new phone will be here by Tuesday.

Dave, have you given any consideration to making I-Phone belt cases???????  Later on, I’ll share just exactly what all I did with the Hogan.