[pct-l] Gear question?

[abiegen at cox.net]

>Which leads me to my question of: Is it just that I am misinterpreting a 
>persons reply to a gear question or is that honestly on the overall a large 
>number of people on here?have personal issues with brands? 

Yes you are correct - personal issues. In most cases those personal issues are based upon personal experiences. If someone has a bad experience with a brand, they figure that the least they could do is to help others avoid the same bad experience. If someone has a good experience with a product they figure that the least the can do is share that information with others. Some would call this a community of like minded individuals with similar goals and needs sharing experience and preferences. 

The people on this board had probably not heard of ULA either until they read about the brand here, heard about a product from another hiker or seen it at kick off. We live in a commercial society and the brands that do the most advertising are not always the best to meet the users needs, and often are advertising to make up for something lacking in their products. There are small companies that make good quality, light weight products that most subscribers to Backpacker magazine and visitors to trail shops have not heard of. Quality is something we should support, branding is not. Even beyond that, there are some products that you can make yourself for less cost, comparable quality or at least with some pride of your own limited skills.

We should not be beholding to corporations that want to sell things to us. On the contrary, we should seek out the things we need and buy them or make them based upon our own needs not upon what advertising wants us to buy based upon name recognition, implied status, or fear of being different.

Corporations are not gods and we should feel okay with yelling out, "Damn you Nike for making me buy three pairs of shoes cause I know you are going to discontinue the one model I like six months from now." Shout it out and don't feel like it is a sacrilege.

TrailHacker
"I can't think when my feet hurt."
Abraham Lincoln

P.S. I don't own a home made alcohol stove, I don't own a ULA pack (although I've seen them and they are great). I do own a trap tent becuase my personal experience is that it saved me 5 pounds of weight off my former well known brandname tent with improved comfort.