Daily deal – up to 40% off the SeV summer collection

by Scott Carmichael on

My daily deal today is for the “Scottevest summer sale”. If you have never heard of Scottevest (SeV), let me give you a brief introduction to what they make.

SeV has created a lineup of clothes specifically targeted towards people who tend to carry (too many) gadgets and other items. Most of their products have extra pockets (as many as 25 of them), and some products even include what SeV refer to as a PAN – Personal Area Network.

The PAN is essentially a way to route your headphone cables inside your garment, without having those stupid wires get in the way when you run down the concourse trying to make your connecting flight. In every possible way they are the perfect garments for traveling in.

Every single one of their products goes way beyond just making you look cool. Take for example their “Ultimate Cargo Pants”, which are on sale for just $60. These pants look pretty regular on the outside, but hidden away are 14 pockets, including a key holder, battery holders and even an “airplane pocket”, which is located mid-shin and lets you access your gear when you are crammed between 2 people back in row 87.

The pants are Teflon coated, so when your seatmate spills his or her drink all over you, it should be a pretty easy cleanup job. Also if things get too hot, you can unzip the pants legs and turn them into ultimate cargo shorts.

Since summer is slowly coming to an end, SeV is offering a great 40% discount on some of their top selling products:

To get the discount, you’ll have to enter a “secret” coupon code at checkout. The coupon code is SUMMERSALE. All products ship for just $5 each. The coupon code is valid until Monday August 4th, or until they run out of stock of the sale items. To learn more about the other products SeV makes, be sure to check out their site.

Gadling Gear Extravaganza: The Ultimate Travel Clothes

by Tynan on

I’m all for fancy gizmos and high tech electronics. It’s my bread and butter. But what really makes the difference when traveling, a lot of the time, are the simple essentials that you deal with every day.

Clothes, for example. The right clothes can lighten your pack, keep you dryer, warmer, cooler, and happier. Believe me.

Today’s Mega Gadling Gear Extravaganza is going to cover all of the clothes I own, which are actually so few that they fit in a single Aloksak plastic bag.

… Okay, I just got a tux made here in Bangkok too (who can resist?), but I’m having it shipped back, so it doesn’t count.

All of this gear has been tested personally by me on a crazy around the world trip that I’m five months into, and most of it was being pre-tested in Austin, Texas before I left.
Icebreaker Superfine Wool Shirts

I was initially going to write this article only about these shirts. They’re good enough that if I thought people would read it, I would write a three part series about them.

Serously, I love these things.

I started out with just one, but after two months of traveling I threw my other shirts away (capilene and another brand’s wool shirt) and bought more Icebreaker. That means that for the past five countries in four months, I have worn only three Icebreaker shirts.

Wool is an amazing material, and icebreaker uses ultra high quality wool. The best of the best.

First of all, wool is very odor resistant. On many occasions I’ve worn a shirt to work out in the Panama heat, let it air out while taking a shower, and after getting out of the shower realized that even upon very close olfactory inspection, it didn’t smell at all.

Miraculous.

I get some of the lightest weight shirts (the 150 series), which are perfectly fine for hot climates. They’ve withstood the rigors of Thailand and Panama summers. In the cold they offer a little more warmth than a cotton t-shirt, but nothing to write home about. If you’re going somewhere cold, they have much heavier shirts you can wear.

Perhaps the best property of the shirts is the way they handle water. They dry VERY quickly. On the island of Koh Phi Phi, Thailand, we twice got stuck in flash storms while running to Karaoke at night. After an hour or two of singing I was almost perfectly dry. My friends with cotton shirts were freezing and cold.

Speaking of which, did you know that, like a wetsuit, wool keeps you warm even when it’s wet? It’s eerie.

Last, but certainly important if these are the only shirts in your wardrobe, icebreaker has very fashionable styles of shirts. I found that other brands are either too scrubby looking or too athletic looking. Icebreaker shirts are cool enough that I’ve been able to wear them to fairly fashionable clubs without any problems.

They are hard to find because they’re so in demand. Try Amazon, or your local outdoor gear store.

Cloudveil Cool Convertible Pants

I love these pants almost as much as I love my shirts.

They’re made of brushed nylon, which is a great material for pants. These pants are super rugged, my one pair clocking in with nine months of daily use and not a single scratch, rip, or stain.

I’ve worn them exploring the jungle, on planes, to dinner, and even swimming. The key feature is that the pant legs zip off near the knees, converting them instantly into shorts. I love this feature to death. Start hiking in the morning when it’s cold, and then as it gets warmer you just zip off the legs. Perfect.

I picked these particular pants because the fabric doesn’t have that sheen and swishing noise that nylon pants usually have. In fact, they look a lot like cotton. They’re also relatively slim fitting, which is good. Most convertible pants I tried on looked like Hammer pants.

As a little bonus, the velcro pockets on the thighs are the perfect size to hold a passport. I’ll mention this because I’m a stickler for things like this – the pockets aren’t cargo pockets like most brands put in, so they are nice and flat.

Get them at Amazon.

Ex-Officio Give-N-Go Underwear

For months now the most common question we’ve received here at Gadling is, “Can you PLEASE share the details of Tynan’s underwear situation?”

The wait is over – I’m ready to reveal all.

I’m pretty into underwear. Not to the level that girls are into underwear, but enough that I once had an “underwear shootout” which involved me ordering five different kinds online and then testing them for a couple weeks before buying many pairs of the winning pair.

When I was faced with the prospect of getting travel underwear, I was concerned that I may not be able to find a pair that could stack up with the shootout winners.

Ex-Officio pulled through for me.

They have a few different styles. I went with the below the belt sport briefs. Normally I go for the boxer brief, but I’m nuts about light packing and so I opted for less fabric. Also, their version of a brief was so huge that it could probably double as a tent in a pinch.

The draw of the Ex Officios is that they dry fast. Really fast. So fast that when I demonstrated them to a couple of strippers in an all night diner before leaving for my trip, even they were impressed. Strippers are really into underwear, so I consider their approval to be a strong selling point.

Get them at Amazon.

And that’s it!

That’s all the clothing (besides outerwear) that I pack. I got rid of my shoes in favor of some that don’t require socks, but the best socks are SmartWool socks. I love them so much that I shipped mine home from Taiwan instead of throwing them out.

When you get the right gear you can get by comfortable with very little. And you can join me in mocking the backpackers that carry backpacks so big that they can actually be seen from space.

Talking British

by Martha Edwards on

I had to stifle a laugh a few years ago when a new bar popped up on the hippest street in my homecity. The source of my amusement? The name: Ming. To many, it might sound like a trendy Asian name for a trendy Asian hangout, but to me and anyone else who tends to throw British slang into everyday conversation, Ming means something else: Stinky and/or unattractive. For instance, if you pick up a dirty shirt from the laundry hamper and sniff it, you might say, ‘Ewwww, this mings.’ Or if mustachioed lothario was sending sultry looks your way at you local (pub, that is) you might say to your friends, ‘Ugh, he is so minging.’

I was always so Brit-savvy. In my younger years, a bloke (guy) who I was planning on meeting up with told me he would ‘knock me up.‘ I was stunned at his audacity and told him so in a few choice words, but found out later it was entirely innocent — he merely meant he would pop round to where I was staying and knock on the door. On the other hand, some elderly British relatives of mine went a little red in the face when I declared that I was wearing my nicest pants. To them, pants are underwear and those long things that go down to your ankles are trousers. Whoops.

If you’re planning on travelling to the UK, or even if you’re not and want to sound a bit more worldly, brush up on your Britspeak with this post. It’s worth it — even though English is the national language there, things still sometimes get lost in translation.

Hidden Pocket Pants Project (HPPP): Completed

by Justin Glow on

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: I dislike wearing a money belt. I understand and respect their importance in keeping your documents safely nested near your crotch, but they’re uncomfortable. Most trips I end up wearing it for a week or two before the nasty combination of laziness and a belt rash kicks into high gear and I end up scrapping the pouch in favor of nervously traveling around with one hand in my pocket at all times.

But, as a few of you might remember, I ran across a nifty little tutorial on sewing a hidden pocket into your pants. When I saw it, I knew had to try it out… so that’s exactly what I did this past week. With the help of my lovely girlfriend (who did 100% of the sewing), I now have two pairs of pants with a built-in secret pocket. It’s every little boy’s dream.

We used a stretchy, breathable material and sewed it on the inside of the pocket. Check out the gallery below. It’s definitely not the prettiest thing in the world, but who’s going to be looking down my pants anyway, right?

%Gallery-7599%