This highly-adaptable bottle carrier designed by ITS Tactical and manufactured by Zulu Nylon Gear can fit almost any EDC water bottle currently on the market, even legacy GI 1-quart canteens. Made from US-sourced materials in the USA, this MOLLE-compatible bottle holder uses a Velcro-adjustable perimeter nylon webbing band at its base and elastic shock-cord keeper at the top to retain bottles up to the size of a 1-liter Nalgene.  The MOLLE attachment is a traditional 1″ nylon webbing weave strap with a terminal snap. It uses one channel in width and three high. It can also be configured to fit a 2″ belt by passing the strap under the lowest two sections of weaving webbing. The main body is made from a piece of 2″ nylon webbing folded over a LDPE stiffener. The webbing perimeter band is sewn to the body and uses hook Velcro on one end and loop on the other for diameter adjustment. The tail of the main body loops under the bottle and is captured in the adjustment of the perimeter band by hook and loop sections at its terminal tip to keep the bottle from just slipping out the bottom. The elastic shock cord top retainer has a grippy tab for easy manipulation, and can be adjusted both in girth by tying it larger or smaller (the knot is inside the tab) and height by using one of two slots in the main body. I got the MultiCam version that uses jacquard woven MultiCam webbing and pattern matched Velcro. The snap is a blackened, Mil Spec non-magnetic brass component. Continue reading ‘ITS Tactical Skeletonized Bottle Holder’
Saturday as we were finishing up the brake job on the Dodge, I heard a HFD truck approaching. Scat and eye looked at each other and immediately the thought was, oh, here comes HFD1! The pump truck however turned onto side street that wouldn’t be a normal route to the hiking trail. Looks like a house call. Ambulance followed some minutes later.
HFD1 did fly by later though, but it surprisingly did not go to Koko Crater. More sirens, but none going up our street so looks like it really wasn’t Koko Crater.
Scat and I hopped into the Dodge for a test cruise. As we were going down Lunalilo Home Road, I spotted HFD1 hovering along the Koolau ridge. Uh oh. As we got closer, I could see the flourescent green/yellow of the ground crew hiking up Yoga Sisters ridge and a bevy of HFD trucks at the skate park.
As a special edition for sale in Hokkaido as omiyage to take back to the rest of Japan, Yuraku confectionery introduced the Shiroi Burakku Sandaa (White Black Thunder) chocolate bar. Since the introduction of Ishiya’s Shiroi Koibito white chocolate coated butter cookies, Hokkaido has been inexplicably tied to white chocolate. This is of course in tune with the image of Hokkaido as a snowy, white realm. Thus, the substitution of a white chocolate overlay on the normal dark, milk chocolate automatically makes the Shiroi Burakku Sandaa “Hokkaido-ish”. I haven’t seen the white version as a single bar for sale in grocery or convenience stores, but I’m generally not looking for candy bars. This gift pack is available at various shops at the Shin-Chitose airport, and according to the packaging is in fact made in Hokkaido. I have eaten the normal version, but I can’t recall what it was like, beyond being not “premium” chocolate. The white version essentially tastes like an inside-out Oreo cookie.
Several shows are on hiatus over the new year holiday, but a few new shows have sprung up on CR. Nothing outstanding though, but a few are not terrible. Read about them after the page break! Continue reading ‘2013 Post-New-Year Anime’
Seasonal offering from Sam Adams. Pours with light head, medium dark amber, almost red. Nicely balanced, crisp. It does have addition of some spices but it really is subtle, I don’t think I could point it out if I wasn’t told. Nice drinking beer, one of the better winter seasonals I’ve tried so far!
3 out 4 ginger sipping monkeys.
This past weekend spent some time at Lanai lookout, I’d popped by a few times before to see what the humback whales were up to, but viewing conditions were bad and/or there weren’t very many around. This time conditions were good. Activity wise it was still slow, but picking up. Here’s a couple turtles who seemed to be chowing down too. Continue reading ‘See Creatures’
Here we go for another music extravaganza from Japan. With the declining economy, the presentation has been getting progressively sparser, but hopefully the talent will shine and carry the day. We’re doing this live, so bear with the typos and frequent updates! Ikimassho! Continue reading ‘2013 63rd Annual NHK Kohaku Uta Gassen’
Yet another year of thoughts of waking up early and riding up Koko Head for hatsuhinode ignored as I rushed up the street 10 minutes before sunrise. Pretty clouded over so couldn’t see actual moment of sunrise. Wasn’t until a good fifteen minutes later could get a decent picture.
I forgot to blog about this, after months of waiting and back and forth and sending multiple old shafts, waiting for me when I got back from Thanksgiving trip was the box from The Drive Shaft Shop. They ended up manufacturing everything except the wheel hub cup. All from Chromo/300m steel. 300m is a slightly different alloy of 4340 chromo and features higher strength all around. Looks good, although missing the dust shields on the transaxle side.
Installation of the short drivers side went without a hitch. The long one gave me problems, the little spring clip retainer was not seated correctly and I ended up mangling it trying to insert into the transaxle. It took me a bunch of trips to Napa to find another. Had to find different nut also, the one they provided was made for the style where the shaft has a notch and you punch the flang of the nut into it to lock. I needed the nut with locking castle type washer and cotter pin. It’s finally in, driving around the neighborhood, they work. No race for a while though, so I don’t know how they’ll perform. Odds are these shafts won’t break. I hope so because with the single piece transaxle side cup design, it’s not as easy to change.
Okay, I’m back in the land of cinnamon-scented urinal screens. The old HAL 767-3G5 ER, tail number N586HA had to return to the gate to get the brakes worked on. This is another one of the three Lufttransportunternehmen transfer aircraft. Apparently, the ABS light came on while taxiing to the runway, and that’s a mandatory checklist fail, so we had to come back in and get it looked at. It was probably a bad sensor, mabye affected by the cold temperatures, as they cleared it up in short order and we left only one hour late. I guess that’s what happens when you actually depart the gate early!