The Hard Way Diet | Outside Online

You Are Here:

Home >> The Blowhard Way (cont.)

Today's Question
How do you make primitive snowshoes? answer

What should you do if you get lost driving in a snow storm? answer

Today's Question
What is the greenest ski and snowboard on the market? answer

Can I really damage a coral reef with sunscreen while snorkeling? answer

What kind of dog will make me look manlier? answer
Is there a sport that safely combines my twin passions for guns and kayaks? answer
How come most of the world's cultures enjoy eating goat, but Americans don't? answer

Online Favorites

Special Issues

Photo Galleries

Outside Magazine October 2004

Page:

The Hard Way
The Blowhard Way (cont.)

HOW MUCH WOULD YOU PAY to have me yell at you about stuff that bugs me in the privacy of your own home? The Hard Way's Nearly Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Travel, the Outdoors, and Other Stuff video seminar will teach you nearly everything you ever wanted to know about travel, the outdoors, and other stuff.

Here are a few diverse samples of the comprehensive ranting and raving—I mean teaching—found in my essential THWNEYEWTKATTOAOS:

Have you ever awakened in a hotel room and not known where you were? The curtains, the dresser, the TV—they all looked nondescript but familiar in a mind-numbing sort of way. Well, what did you expect? You were staying in another big-name, cookie-cutter hotel chain. Hello? Do you go to an Indian restaurant and order a hamburger? Isn't the point of foreign travel to experience foreignness? Pluck up your courage, comrades: Forgo reservations, hit the streets, and find yourself some indigenous accommodations. A castle parador in Spain, where you can sleep in a real prince's room with your princess. The Wie Hin Lo, in Hanoi, where you can watch old movies of the Viet Cong.

Say you're out for a hike with the guys. At noon you stop for lunch, and what have your friends brought to eat? Energy bars! Am I missing something? Back in town these guys would be wolfing down a sloppy joe and a platter of fries. You pull out your lunch: a couple bagel sandwiches, a tin of baby oysters, a bag of cashews, a bag of raisins, and a salted nut roll. Their little low-fat bars gone, your so-called friends start begging like dogs. What ever happened to the cheap, noble sack lunch? It's energy that lasts all day!

Moving now to winter travel: An absurd number of people can be spotted plodding through the snow with snowshoes strapped to their boots. These valiant perambulators march up the hill and then, believe it or not, march back down. Yoo-hoo, ever heard of skis? Check it out: Skis slide. Sure, you may have to herringbone uphill clumsily, but you'll glide down effortlessly. Skis are like sails: You breeze across a sea of snow. Snowshoes are no better than a rowboat.

Cocktail party on your calendar? THWNEYEWTKATTOAOS is your source for opinionated bluster about the biggest small-talk topic on the social circuit today: Mount Everest. Impress the neighbors with these erudite insights: Neither guiding on Everest nor being guided up Everest is immoral. But what's the point? Mountaineering is an accretionary process in which you learn, little by little, how to make good decisions in sometimes bad conditions. Is this what the Everest guides are teaching? Is this what the guided clients—many of whom have never before worn crampons—are learning?

In true Hard Way tradition, no topic is taboo, no ego too fragile: Why do so many Koreans die on mountains? Why is the United States the only country where you have to pay for an airport luggage cart? Why is the term "soft adventure" an affront to every true adventurer? You'll find the answers to these and many other questions in the always surprising, occasionally offensive THWNEYEWTKATTOAOS.

Page:

•	Subscribe to Outside and get a FREE Gift!

•	Give the gift of Outside Magazine!

•	Subscribe to Outside Online's free weekly e-mail newsletter featuring gear reviews, fitness advice, galleries, podcasts, and more.