flipflop wrote:unless I'm planning to go halfway up a mountain or doing a spot of underwater knife fighting
Cheers
For some of us working stiffs, that ain't too far off.
(in all honesty, I started out doing fieldwork in jeans, but after a while, wearing my wallet in my back pocket chafed my ass after about 7 or 8 miles of woods walking - a chafed ass makes woodsman an unhappy camper, so I ditched the jeans and went commando. Ripstop camo fatigues are the most comfortable pants there are until they get wet. Since I work in all weather conditions, and cotton sucks ass when it is colder than fuck or wet and soggy, that leaves one obvious choice: lightweight tough as shit synthetic (or mostly synthetic) pants with thigh pockets - ahhhhhh no more chafing! I'm still looking for the ideal pair, but even the lower quality ones I have are 1,000,000x better than jeans - and that goes for the el cheapo zip off varieties).
I'll give you an example of how basdass el-cheap-o nylon zip offs are:
I had one gig a few years back where I had to jump on a ferry over to an island and go walk 160 acres of lowland conifer woods (you guys call these moors - same type of ground, but this thick up fully forested so at times you can't see 5m in front of you). There was solid shintangle in there for miles and I stepped on a root mass of a fallen over tree (looked solid enough) and sunk up to my dick in humus inside the root mass (as it was not as solid as it looked). The humus was of course mostly sphagnum moss dominated black organic soil - the same type they use on the laundry soap commercials - dark sooty soggy stuff. All day long, I had to toil in the pokey sticks of hemlock and cedar and some sporadic thorny berry brambles. This is pretty typical stuff for me, except I don't have the ability to just go home and change clothes - it's a day gig and it was paid for in advance.
After the workday was over, my clients and I offered me beers in the truck and it was obvious we were going to get shitfaced the entire rest of the day and night, so I emptied the mag of my .45 pistol I brought over to try and sort-of abide by state law (as it is administered on the island - which mostly it is not), and that is exactly what we did. We wound up going to a couple of bars and ending at a wedding of one of the guy's cousins and I wound up sleeping on the couch of their house as the last ferry of the day was gone. Then after a raging hangover, I had a great breakfast and got back on the ferry.
I got sweaty as hell, but I did not shower.
You could not even tell with those pants that I had ever stepped foot in the woods, much less THOSE woods or in that bog hole. If I would have had jeans on, I would have been completely screwed as if those get the least bit dirty, you have to wash them or you look like a dirty bum and it takes them forever to dry.
I had no idea what the weather would be, so I chose those pants for the day trip (that was the plan anyway) and guess what: it was a good choice.
Sure, nylon zip offs make a man look like a dork - and you better not get them around fire - but they fucking perform in all other categories. Hey - if I can choose a pants that perform and look LESS like a dork, what is gay about that? That is not gay, that is smart!
I still own 2 pairs of jeans. They are probably 10 years old and hardly ever get worn.
Jeans look alright and they are fine for the average layman, but they are pretty shitty for my workday. I try to live to be ready for anything, because my job can pretty much require me to do about anything and I never know when I'm going to run into someone who wants me to take a look at something at any time, so at some point in the past, I just decided to say the hell with jeans and look for pants that are better suited to climbing mountains, running through brambles, shimmying up rocks and wading through or even swimming through water. Everything is lanyarded, even the pencils.
As for trekking poles, well they are great for those with disabilities, mental and/or physical. ;)
Life is short. Eat, Drink & Be Merry!