My love of the letterboxing quest is not diminished, but I have been a horrid homebody through our lovely spring and now we in Northern California have moved onto the true "Dog Days" of summer.
So I thought it would be a good time to review my pack and get ready for the eventuality that I get an opportunity to seek out a letterbox in the near future. When I pulled my pack out of the closet I noticed a huge gap – my Nalgene was gone. I know when and where it happened. I had taken my dear wife to the emergency room several months back, and I took the Nalgene with me, as I tend to do. In one of the waiting rooms I left the bottle, and when I returned to claim it, it was, as expected, gone. I checked with the desk staff and with the lost & found maintained by the security department, but to no avail.
I have other Nalgenes, but they are not of the BPA free variety, and, whilst I am not convinced of the horrors of BPA rich plastics, I get so many raised eyebrows when dealing with my fellow wannabe hippies on the trails of life that I just prefer to use the more health conscious variety.
Newly made Nalgenes are all BPA free. Though many still carry the recycle code 7, in itself that is not indicative of having BPA content. Naturally, I am tempted by the new stainless steel Nalgene jugs, but I cannot bring myself to add the additional weight to my pack.
Given my fondness for old stuff, I even contemplate going an entirely different route and getting myself an old-style canteen. The main reason that I do not is because I have a fitted, insulated sleeve manufactured by Maxpedition to hold a wide mouth Nalgene, and a really beautiful stainless cup that fits over the bottom, much as the old canteen cups fit over the bottoms of the old canteens. And, besides, I really like the plastic Nalgenes. They are rugged and well designed and just about everything that one looks for in a water bottle. Besides, they set off the nut-job hippies who think that anything with a recycle code 7 is going to kill them and their babies.
So I am off to track down a shiny new Nalgene, then it is off to the woods for me!
