The first was fairly simple, and happened to both my brother and dad. Paul's dad experienced the same failure. It is simply being warm enough at night.
Camping in the mountains is very different from camping in the midwest. The higher altitudes alone will be enough to drop overnight lows to the 30's, and this means that fleece blankets or lightweight sleeping bag just won't cut it. When we camped in the Ochoco mountains last night the temps dropped down to the 30's. Both my dad and brother's sleeping gear was insufficient, thus they had to stop and get additional sleeping bags. Now they both have two small lightweight sleeping bags, which isn't a bad solution. They will be warm enough on cold nights, have the option of using one on warm nights, and it is easier to pack to small sacks than one large one.
Another failure on this trip was my GPS, a Garmin Zumo 550. The digitizer (the layer on the screen which detects finger presses) went haywire, sending random inputs to the unit. this renders the unit useless. The fix is to order a new screen and digitizer from Hong Kong for $50, but won't help me now. I considered simply purchasing a new motorcycle-specific GPS but they cost upwards of $600 (besides being waterproof, they have lots of bells and whistles like bluetooth, cell phone headset passthrough, bike mounts, multi-step routing, mp3 players, etc). But for the rest of this trip we will rely on my brothers unit. So far this is working out ok.
Yesterday morning I experienced a failure in my earbuds. On this trip I am using etymotic er6i buds with Sebote hearing aid tips glued to them. This $90 solution blocks nearly all road and wind noise while comfortably delivering crisp and clear sound. They sit deep in my ear canals. Once before, when removing them, the tip remained in my ear. Paul managed to extract it with a Leatherman tool and since them I have used glue to hold the tips on. Well... yesterday when I tried to remove them, the glue on both of them gave up. This time it was Chuck working a leatherman who extracted them. In leiu of anything better, I resorted to using a pair of MeeTek earbuds designed for use under helmets which a friend gave me. They worked ok for a short period. They blocked enough wind noise such that I could ride 65 mph. Any faster and the wind noise was painful. And the audio quality sucked. This was definitely not a workable solution. So once back at the campsite I dug out the original etymotic tips and used those. They are nowhere near as comfortable as the Sebotek tips and we will see how long I can last with them. One tip came of in my ear again, wich was surprising as these are the tips made for these units. I have since superglued them on. We will see how well this works... for now it looks like I will have to save up and buy custom molded earbuds over the winter.... $400....
For now, let's hope that is the extent of our equipment failures...
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