I have everything including the box - I got it brand new...

I paid nothing for it. so it's not for sale.

How'd I pull that off?

Well.. I have a lot of European Friends. We work on a free software project. some of us have infected them badly with the hiking bug, and it's contagious.. (Innerly we joke that OpenBSD is a hiking group with a serious computing problem)

I've drug them down lots of canadian stuff, I usually do the legwork for them. Did West coast trail a number of years ago with some for their first time, including a friend from Zurich. I was much lighter than the rest of them and so the conversation would turn to packweight sometime and some of the stuff I did to keep the weight I carried down.



On the last night on the trail, around the beach fire in Michigan, the conversation turned to winter, and I mentioned I didn't use alcohol then, I took white gas (for the reasons I had already outlined here). I mentioned it was heavier except that no good really small white gas stove existed except this crazy old german/swiss thing that occasionaly showed up used and vastly overpriced on ebay.

My swiss friend remembered this.. about a year later, when I couldn't make it to an event, and was kind of down about it, the dirtbag managed to 1) find one of them *new* in zurich, in a trekking store, 2) buy it, 3) send it back with a local who smuggled it into my office and stuck it on my desk as a gift.

When I walked into my office I was having, well, a crappy day. I recall seeing this box, and registering.. "I know what that is, but why is it here.." It was completely surreal. I was really quite shocked and, well, it was a real pick me up. I couldn't believe someone would remember that from an on trail conversation in passing a year before.. and act on it, to say thank you - one of the more thoughtful gifts I've ever received.

Anyway, I'll never sell that stove

And he also helped organize the herd for the wedding I put together for another couple friends on west coast trail, allowing me to yoyo the trail and still get everything in place without worrying about the newbs.

So, now I owe him. I have 23 days in the rockies planned for him this summer, as unbelievably, he's hardly been in there.