Discovering the World in Miniature

There's no such thing as bad weather", say the Norwegians, "just bad clothing."

They aught to know -- Bergen get's over 70" of rain per year compared to Seattle's 37". Although we've now broken our streak of consecutive rainy days and must settle for second place for that record we're still in the running for the rainiest January ever. Using that Norwegian proverb as an excuse I decided that it was time to upgrade my rain shell from the 18 year old teal colored REI shell to something a little more modern and a little more high tech.

One of the advantages of middle age is that you can occasionally afford nicer gear than you could in graduate school. In this case I went down to Patagonia and purchased one of their new soft shell Dimension jackets that is water repellant and breathable but not water proof. (I've never understood why folks go camping in the pouring rain and have never needed the kind of gear that keeps you dry in a downpour.)

After checking out the typical Patagonia overkill features like the "roll-down, 3-way adjustable, helmet compatable hood" I decided to take a closer look at the fabric itself. The strategy for creating softshell jackets is very simple: take some artificial fibers and weave them very, very tightly. For snow and light rain this should be enough to keep wind and moisture on the outside. At 30x you can just make out the individual fibers and the mesh is very tight indeed. I haven't had enough time to put this jacket through its paces but at least now I no longer have an excuse to stay inside.