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I was ready to write off my new sleeping pad after a freezing night in the Tetons, but giving it a proper 15-minute inflation with the pump sack instead of my breath made all the difference.
Has anyone else had a piece of gear totally fail until you realized you were using it wrong?
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grantf731mo ago
That's a classic one. It's amazing how many gear issues are just user error in disguise.
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hannahm391mo ago
Okay but calling it "user error in disguise" feels like a cop out. A lot of times the design just sets people up to fail. If something needs a perfect, exact motion to work right, that's a design flaw, not the user being dumb. Good gear should be forgiving because people are going to make small mistakes. Blaming the user lets bad design off the hook.
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butler.kevin1mo ago
Honestly, that's a tough call. Sometimes gear just has a bad design that makes it easy to mess up. My old stove would flood if you didn't open the valve exactly right, which felt less like my fault and more like a flaw.
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