Month: March 2019

Beat the winter blues by turning your lawn into a laboratory

Winter can be a bear for outdoor-loving parents with young children. Getting outside in cold weather requires serious logistics. Layers must be applied. Matching gloves must be found. Potty breaks have to be coordinated. Frostbite has to be avoided. Try squeezing naptime into those scarce daylight hours, and a parent can start to feel like a tethered animal. It’s tempting to pull up Daniel Tiger on Netflix, brew another cup of coffee, and slink back to your desk to maniacally refresh your email.

Winter needn’t be so grim. Get outside, for everyone’s sake, with these simple backyard science activities. Because science is about asking questions, asking questions cultivates wonder, and wonder is the best cure for cabin fever.

Build a Rocket

Of all the magical things that can happen when you combine baking soda and vinegar, my two favorites are this chocolate cake and a homemade rocket. My four-year-old, Theo, is obsessed with rockets and space, so I was pleased to find simple homemade rocket instructions in a science book at the library. Find a 35mm film canister (remember those?) at your local film store (or online here). The white Fuji canisters work best because the lids have a divot and seal tightly. Pack some baking soda into the divot in the lid. Fill the canister halfway with white vinegar. Find a safe launch site, put the lid on the canister, flip it upside down, step back, and watch it blast off.

Suck an Egg

My sister is a Montessori teacher, and she turned me on to Sergei Urban’s excellent YouTube channel, The Dad Lab. Start this activity by making a hard-boiled egg, and then teach your child how to tell if an egg is hard-boiled or not by spinning it on a cutting board and then stopping it with your finger. The uncooked egg will keep spinning, thanks to the centrifugal force of the liquid inside. Let your child peel the hard-boiled egg. Now, insert three birthday candles into the top of the egg. Find a glass bottle with an opening large enough for the candles to fit into, but not the rest of the egg. (I used a GT’s Kombucha bottle.) Light the candles and insert them into the inverted glass bottle. The candles will briefly burn in the bottle, expanding the air. When they go out, the air cools, contracts, and—POP!—sucks the egg into the bottle. When I did this with Theo, he couldn’t stop laughing. Here is The Dad Lab video.

DIY Quicksand

One of the many things Isaac Newton left us with was a clear understanding of fluids and solids. But why so binary, bro? Some substances, like quicksand, can behave like a fluid and a solid at different times. Using a recipe I found online, Theo and I mixed up some backyard quicksand with cornstarch and water to create a non-Newtonian fluid known as “oobleck” among the youths. (The name comes from a Dr. Seuss book.) Simply put two cups of cornstarch into a bowl, then slowly mix in a cup of water until you get a paste-like substance that pours like a liquid but turns solid when you squeeze it. When I poured some into Theo’s hand, his first response was “yuck.” But then we both got carried away playing with it. According to YouTube, you can walk on a swimming pool filled with this stuff. You can also try hitting it with a hammer or a potato masher. It might seem really messy, but it cleans up easily with water.

Make an Eggshell Geode

When the ground is too frozen to hit the hills with a shovel and dig for your own geodes, these instructions on the handy website ScienceBob.com will teach you how to make geodes out of eggshells and common kitchen crystals. Start with some eggshells cracked as close to the tip as possible. Pour hot water into the empty shells, then clean out the inner membranes with your fingers. (This will be tedious, like many parenting tasks, but important—if the membrane stays in the eggs, it can mold and turn your crystals black, which feels inauspicious.) Boil some water in a pan, and then pour it into several cups—one for each egg. Into each cup, stir a different solid, such as sea salt, sugar, baking soda, borax, Epsom salts, or cream of tartar, until no more will dissolve. Add food coloring for effect. Pour the mixtures into the eggshells. Set them into an egg carton and allow the liquids to evaporate over several weeks. Compare the crystals that the different solutions make. Real geodes form in a similar way when mineral water seeps into cavities in rocks.

Build a Lava Lamp

Children are bizarrely preoccupied with lava. Theo is so taken with the stuff that we checked out a library book about Pompeii and spent the afternoon flipping through grisly pictures of 1,900-year-old Romans buried by ash, mud, and lava from Mount Vesuvius. I channeled that fascination in a happier direction by making Theo his own lava lamp, using a recipe I found in Jim Wiese’s book Weird Science: 40 Strange-Acting, Bizarre-Sounding, and Barely Believable Activities for Kids. Fill a clear jar three-quarters full of water. Stir in some food coloring. (Red and orange are the most lava-like.) Pour a quarter-cup of vegetable oil into the water and watch it float to the surface. Sprinkle a tablespoon of salt on the oil. Watch the salt pull the oil to the bottom of the jar and then dissolve into the water, sending the globs of oil floating back to the surface. Add more salt and see what happens. Then kick back, put on some Peter, Paul & Mary, and talk about life and the universe and stuff.

Why was the ocean so nasty along the West Coast on Sunday and Monday? It’s all thanks to a low-pressure system thousands of miles away and a meteorological phenomenon called a fetch. Let me explain.

The West Coast has phenomenal surfing, but the waves that crashed ashore Sunday and Monday were too wild for everyone except the best athletes. In fact, the waves were so high that the National Weather Service warned people in central California to avoid the beach or “RISK CERTAIN DEATH,” (never mind that that's impossible, but you get the idea). 

Local weather forecasts had called for dangerously high waves along the California and Oregon coasts to close out the weekend and they were right on the money. A 27-foot wave measured by a buoy off the shore near Monterey Bay was the seventh-highest swell recorded there since the 1980s. A beach-goer captured a picture of a wave topping the 62-foot-tall Tillamook Rock lighthouse in Oregon. 

So why were the waves so nasty in California those two days? It’s all thanks to a low-pressure system thousands of miles away.

These epic waves are similar to what you'd see beneath an intense hurricane in warmer oceans. Really, the conditions that led to these huge waves aren't all that unusual for the eastern Pacific Ocean. What was unusual was that the waves got so big right along the coastline.  

First, a sprawling storm system in the Gulf of Alaska generated high winds that slammed into the West Coast. Pretty normal, and in most cases, you'd expect to see the highest waves near the strongest winds at the heart of the storm, way up north. But that’s not what happened this time. Instead, the pattern over the eastern Pacific Ocean allowed for an insanely long "fetch" (a term for how far wind travels over open waters) from the Gulf of Alaska straight to the West Coast.

This fetch that developed over the eastern Pacific on Sunday and Monday was responsible for the intense waves. The above image shows winds near the ocean surface on Sunday evening, according to the American GFS weather model. Winds roughly follow the isobars on the map, and you can see how they’re parallel almost the entire distance from the Gulf of Alaska to California and Oregon. That extremely long reach allowed those waves to build up over a considerable distance, leading to life-threatening conditions and coastal flooding. 

The storm that generated the mammoth waves has since weakened and moved closer to land, lowering the risk for massive waves along the West Coast. Another storm system approaching by the end of the week will kick up the waves again, but they'll be much smaller—and maybe even surfable for us mere mortals. 

Amid concerns over trail conflicts and land-management issues, e-mountain bikes just keep getting better and better

I’m continually shocked at how much disdain and vitriol e-bikes—especially the mountain variety—elicit. If you raise the topic among a group of cyclists, as I did recently at Outside’s annual bike test, you’re sure to get an earful about how pedal-assist bikes are making the world a lazier place, causing all manner of trail conflicts and trail closures, and generally just ruining cycling. My position: Calm down, people. We’re talking about bicycles, not Satan. Then I usually send naysayers off to ride one of these machines. When they return, they’re inevitably grinning ear to ear.

That’s because, like it or not, e-bikes are fun to ride. Long, slow climbs become quicker. Lunchtime rides become more interesting because you can ride farther and see trails that otherwise wouldn’t have been possible in such a short time. And whole new trail systems are accessible as the assist opens up terrain that would be too steep, loose, rocky, or brutal on a standard pedal bike. In short, rather than be afraid of e-mountain bikes, we should see them for what they are: a new tool. In the same way you’d choose an enduro bike for shredding supergnar descents or a cross-country bike for all-day endurance epics, an e-mountain bike is simply another arrow in the quiver for situations when standard pedal bikes might not be as much fun.

For clarity, the e-mountain bikes in this review are electric-motor-equipped bicycles that only go forward if you pedal them. Officially, they are categorized as Class 1 e-bikes, which means they have no throttle and a top-assisted speed of 20 miles per hour. (Class 2 and Class 3 varieties have throttles and/or different top-assist speeds. We’re limiting our coverage to Class 1 because most of the advocacy for trail use is currently for these models.) Though critics like to try and characterize all e-bikes as motorcycles, this couldn’t be further from reality. All of these bikes generate less than one horsepower, and they do it only when you are pedaling, akin to riding with a strong tailwind.

I took a fleet of the latest out on a range of trails throughout New Mexico and was amazed by how much these machines have advanced since my first ride back in 2013. Like all technology, these bikes are going to continue improving. But if you’re in the market and can swallow the high price tag, I feel they have come far enough that they’re well worth buying. 

Specialized S-Works Turbo Levo ($12,050)

The new Turbo Levo is effectively the 2019 Stumpjumper equipped with 29-inch wheels, a Brose motor, and a built-in 700-watt-hour rechargeable battery. I start here because it was my favorite, though it’s also true that it’s the most expensive in the test by a wide margin. With 150 millimeters of travel on a full carbon frame and carbon wheels, this bike approaches what unassisted downhill bikes weighed (45.1 pounds for a size medium) and felt like a decade ago, except the motor gives you extra power when you need and want it.

The Brose motor is probably the least seamless in this review, meaning it feels a little jerky and powerful when it engages. However, it is also the quietest, which I appreciate above almost everything when I’m in the woods. Power levels are indicated by a series of LED panels built into the top tube, not a display on the handlebars, which makes gauging a little more difficult but not impossible. The turbo button, to give a quick boost to the top power, is a great addition, as is the walk-mode button—just hold it for a one-mile-per-hour assist on hike-a-bikes. The 700wh battery is the biggest capacity on the market, which equates to longer range. And while it’s not as easy to remove the battery as on the Intense or Trek (reviewed below), it’s doable with the included tool. Specialized has also done a great job of building its own app to tweak power levels and diagnose problems, should they arise, as well as a calculator to help estimate range.

Otherwise, this is just a stupendously capable bike that will assist you with three various levels of power. While the 2.6-inch tires were fine, I personally feel like the added weight of the bike feels more confident with 3-inch tread, which will fit if you choose. And the bike is not so heavy that you won’t be able to pedal home should the battery die. I’ve slashed plenty of nasty singletrack with this bike, and while the power comes on hard, I always appreciate it. The suspension is firm and ample, and it makes the bike feel more capable than the numbers suggest. Yes, the Levo is expensive, but the truth is, you could get a less expensive model and, thanks to the motor, still enjoy the same ride.

Buy now

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Pivot Shuttle ($9,999)

The Shuttle has perhaps the most normal feeling of all these bikes—and by normal, I mean least assisted—courtesy of dialed-in geometry, a tuned motor, and a careful parts selection. Chris Cocailis, the founder and owner of Pivot, is an engineer, and his expertise in dialing in a ride is completely evident in this bike. The Shuttle feels small and maneuverable, which is exactly what I want when pushing around a 46.2-pound machine. Pivot calls this “the world’s lightest Class 1 e-mountain bike,” which is perhaps true for the frame alone, but our tester was over a pound heavier than the Levo.

Pivot uses the Shimano STEPS 8000 motor, which delivers three levels of power (eco, trail, and boost) and projects it on the same display Shimano specs for Di2—a benefit for being able to see what level you’re in at all times. The motor is smooth and feels as powerful as the Brose in top-assist mode, though the lower levels, especially eco, seem a touch underpowered. (It is possible to tweak the power levels in Shimano’s smartphone app.) As with many of these bikes, the STEPS 8000 seems to favor a high cadence. Whenever my pedaling speed would slow, particularly at the top of steep pitches, the motor would bog down and sometimes even cut out, leaving me hefting a very heavy bike up a steep pitch. The 500-watt-hour battery is removable, but only with tools, meaning it’s not plug and play like the Intense and Trek (reviewed below).

Motor aside, this is a firmly rooted and very comfy trail bike, with 140 millimeters of travel out back and a 150-millimeter fork. This bike feels nearly as capable as the Specialized but a bit lower and trimmer all around (despite the extra pound). I appreciated the 2.8-inch tires, which might not sound like a lot more compared to Specialized’s 2.6-inchers, but the extra weight of an e-bike demands a wider tread. This bike isn’t quite as inconspicuous as the Levo, but it rides great and, if not for the power issues in the eco mode, might have been my top pick, especially considering the (slightly) lower price tag.

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Intense Tazer Pro Build ($7,590)

I really had to temper my misgivings about the Tazer from the moment I saw it, mostly for its pregnant-looking down tube and the honeybee graphics. Also, the 29-inch front and 27.5-inch rear make it a bit of a Frankenbike. And yet, on the trail, the Tazer stopped me dead with its rooted feel and the way it shrugged off seriously steep and ugly terrain.

Like the Pivot, this bike uses a Shimano STEPS 8000 motor. But here it felt quite different: I didn’t experience the same cutting out at lower cadences, and the three power levels seemed better tuned to my riding style. (Again, the assist percentages can be tweaked.) I also appreciated that the 500-watt-hour battery is easily extractable from the frame; simply pop off the plastic cover on the down tube and it pulls out, for both external charging as well as a battery replacement. (Intense sells external batteries in case you want to heft one along for extra range.) This motor is not as quiet as the Brose—there’s a constant dull whine, which ramps up as you pedal. However, with Intense’s settings, it’s the most intuitive and natural feeling of the group, and I found myself riding almost exclusively in eco mode because it easily got me through everything I threw at it.

Between the superslack head angle (64.9 degrees) and longer travel (a 155-millimeter rear and a 160-millimeter front), the Tazer felt like the most capable bike in the group. I chucked it off some pretty big drops, and it barely blinked. The 29- and 27.5-inch wheel combo also seems effective, rolling over pretty much everything up front but still retaining a fairly snappy feel out back. Again, the 2.6-inch tread up front feels slight diminutive, though you could easily sub in meatier rubber. The Tazer doesn’t have the same component level and carbon wheels as the Levo, but alloy hoops and SLX seem to work just dandy in this application. Truthfully, the spec here seems dead-on, especially given that this bike costs 30 percent less than the Levo. It’s a rowdy shredder, if a little tall feeling. Provided you can look past the Euro graphic design, and you want a bike that can tear up some serious terrain, this is worth a look. I’d use the Tazer for shuttle runs on serious trails—minus the car to get me there.

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Trek Powerfly LT 9.7 ($5,999)

With 150 millimeters of rear travel and a 160-millimeter fork on 27.5-plus-inch wheels, the Powerfly LT is ostensibly a very capable machine. And the Bosch Performance CX motor is the smoothest of the bunch, delivering the most even (albeit the loudest) power application. It’s powered by a sleek 500-watt-hour battery. It’s also the heaviest model we tested, at 51.5 pounds—we rode a 19.5-inch compared to mediums with all the rest—though weight differences aren’t as big a deal on e-bikes as everyday pedal models.

The Bosch-motor drive delivers fluid, almost seamless assistance. Like the Shimano system, it’s all displayed and controlled via a bar-mount display and offers four levels. The eco, trail, and boost settings felt about right, but the e-mountain-bike level, which is meant to augment power based on terrain, never quite anticipated my needs.

I love the fact that the Bosch battery can be removed with the simple turn of a key. It makes this system feel infinitely upgradeable, which is important in the age of constant technology improvement. I also appreciated that, like the Levo (and unlike Shimano STEPS), there’s a walk mode: hold it down and the bike rolls at one mile per hour to ease the burden of hiking. In short, the Bosch motor feels more refined than the ones by Shimano and Brose, though I personally overlooked the torquey feeling of the Brose in the Specialized for its veritable silence.

Motor aside, the bike feels plush and capable, perhaps partly due to the 2.8-inch house-brand tires. Again, I’d say bigger sizes are a boon for e-bikes. The wheel base is longer than the others, though that sensation is partly due to the larger size of the bike. Still, the longer geometry and steeper head angle (66 degrees) made this feel more trail bike than all-mountain ripper. Having said that, this is a solid all-around bike burgeoned by the fact that it’s upgradeable over time.

Buy now

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A Final Word

A friend said to me, “These new e-bikes are great, but they are basically expensive toys right now.” I get his point. You can only ride e-mountain bikes on half of the trails out there, likely fewer. So it’s important to consider where and how you can use them before you make a purchase.

Yet I’m incredibly jazzed about these bikes’ potential. The utility aspect—for trail building, commuting, training (think motor pacing), exploration (there’s nothing better than a little extra power when plowing around places you’ve never been), and flat-out capability (I hauled out an elk with mine)—makes them difficult to ignore. I also sometimes just love the speed and ease of pedaling they provide: when I’m on a rest day but still want to get out and breathe, I grab one of these bikes and power off.

You’ll note that I didn’t dwell on range or battery power. That’s because there’s not a concrete answer to how long the power on these machines will hold out; it varies by terrain, rider weight, speed, pedaling style, and chosen assist power. What I can say is that I took all of these bikes on three- to four-hour trail rides in the Rockies, in places with significant elevation gain and loss, and by spending most of my time in the lower-assist modes and powering up when needed, I finished with approximately 20 to 30 percent battery in each. I also think it’s worth pointing out that while the super-high-end builds are sweet, with their carbon frames and wheels and topmost components, given the motor assist, they probably aren’t completely definitive the way they are in standard pedal bikes. If I were in the market, I’d look at the least expensive builds of these bikes, with an eye to both durability and technology improvements over time.

Are e-mountain bikes perfect? Not yet. But they are darn fun to ride, and as we’ve seen in just a few years, they are only going to get better. For now, I’ll be blasting around the backcountry from time to time with a big grin on my face.

Planning a ski trip? Here’s where to score deep snow.

OK, it’s actually impossible to guarantee powder on a ski trip you’ve booked well in advance. The only way to do that is to keep one eye on the short-term weather forecasts and purchase a last-minute ticket to wherever is going to get hit next. But even then, there are variables. Will the resort open good terrain? Will your flight be canceled due to the storm? Will the storm bring inches rather than the reported feet? Don’t fret. There are a few trusted places where the perfect powder day lines up more often than not.

Alta, Utah

There’s a reason Alta earned the top spot on Zrankings, an independent site that grades ski resorts based on snowfall data and a custom algorithm to determine the best overall resorts. According to the site, 22 percent of ski days at Alta deliver more than six inches of new snow, and the resort gets a documented 521 inches of snow per year on average. Stay slopeside in Little Cottonwood Canyon—we like Alta’s Rustler Lodge (from $334)—and if you’re lucky, you’ll have the ski area to yourself when the access road closes from too much of the white stuff.

Turner Mountain, Montana

Chances are you’ve never heard of Turner Mountain, located 23 miles north of the small Montana town of Libby. With just one double chairlift and around 800 acres, it’s not a huge ski area, but here’s what makes it worth a visit: Turner gets around 300 inches of snowfall per year, and it’s closed Monday through Thursday. Which means if you show up on a Friday morning after a storm, you’ll have a week’s worth of waist-deep snow waiting for you. Oh, and lift tickets cost just $38. The Evergreen Motel isn’t fancy, but it’s been recently renovated and offers ski-and-stay packages and free breakfast (from $59). 

Grand Targhee, Wyoming

Located just over Teton Pass from Jackson Hole, Grand Targhee actually gets more snow than its famed neighbor—around 500 inches on average, compared with 459 inches at Jackson Hole—and significantly less people. It also offers plenty of ways to score powder even if it hasn’t dumped for a while. Bootpack out to Mary’s Nipple, an inbounds zone you can only reach on foot that holds snow well after a storm, book a day backcountry cat skiing on the backside of the resort, or sign up for the mountain’s first tracks program to get on the lifts an hour before everyone else. Stay slopeside at Teewinot Lodge (from $220), and you’ll be set to snag first chair.

Silverton Mountain, Colorado

Silverton Mountain’s season is already off to a great start. Ski patrollers were scoring powder days in October, and the resort opened for heli-skiing in November. Plus, due to this throwback ski area’s single lift, minimal crowds, hike-to terrain, and high elevation (it tops out at 13,487 feet, the highest in the U.S.), it’s usually a good bet for finding powder. You’ll need to ski with a guide during the peak of the season, but they know the best spots to find soft snow. The recently updated Avon Hotel has 14 rooms and a live music venue in the basement (bunks from $40).  

Alpental, Washington

When the Pacific Northwest is having a good winter, there’s nowhere better to be than Alpental, especially bright and early on a Tuesday morning during a storm cycle. Why Tuesday? Because Alpental, the closest ski area to Seattle, is closed on Mondays, which means storms have a full day to pile up without any tracks. And: this area gets, on average, 428 inches of snow per year. Stay in a brand new loft at Loge at Snoqualmie Pass (from $350), next door to the new DruBru brewery and Commonwealth restaurant.  

Kirkwood, California

Kirkwood locals call it the K-Factor. There’s something in the air at this ski area, located 35 miles south of Lake Tahoe, that translates into massive amounts of snow. Maybe it’s the resort’s position on the Pacific Crest, or the peak elevation of 9,800 feet, but Kirkwood scores an average of 354 inches of snow per year. After a storm, you’ll find untracked powder in Sentinel Bowl and plenty of stashes in the trees off the Wall. The Mountain Club has condo-style rooms at the base of the mountain (from $155), or stay at the hip Coachman Hotel in South Lake Tahoe if you want to be closer to nightlife (from $98). Either way, don’t miss beers at the Kirkwood Inn, at the end of the access road, after a powder day.

Whitewater, British Columbia

Whitewater Ski Area is perhaps best known for its food—the lodge’s famed Fresh Tracks Café serves up legitimately good home-cooked fare. But Whitewater is also known for its powder: about 480 inches of light, dry fluff each year and little in the way of lift lines. Ski inbounds glades in Enchanted Forest or off Glory Ridge; the backcountry access is also top-notch. There’s no lodging at the hill, so book a room in the charming town of Nelson, 25 minutes away, at a spot like the Adventure Hotel (from $125).

Eight gift ideas to help your friends and family save up to book the international trip of their dreams

I’m always on the search for affordable, creative ways to gift money each year that don’t involve just handing over a stack of bills. Here’s a list of some of my favorite money-centric gifts for travelers building new adventure funds or gearheads saving up for those carbon skis.

Investing Gifts

The best way to save up quickly for big, aspirational purchases is to invest wisely. These gifts will get friends and family on their way.

Books (from $12)

Investing-focused books are a great way to help educate someone. Some of my favorites:

• Invested by Danielle and Phil Town: An excellent millennial-friendly book about dipping your toes into value-based investing.
• One Up on Wall Street by Peter Lynch: A staple in my house that I’ve read over and over again because it breaks down investing fundamentals in an easy-to-understand way.
• The Intelligent Investor by Benjamin Graham: An in-depth book that’s considered a classic because it goes deep into money strategies for every type of investor.

Investing with an Acorns Gift Card (from $25)

Acorns is a mobile app that invests contributions into portfolios based on your risk tolerance. You can give cards in $25 denominations.

Buy a Stock (from $5)

Give someone a fractional share in stocks this holiday season. Stockpile lets you purchase fractional shares of more than 1,000 stocks and gift them to your favorite person so they can start growing their travel funds.

Goal-Related Gifts

Part of my monthly money system involves setting new money goals each week so I can save up for big purchases without getting overwhelmed. These are a few of the very-giftable strategies I rely on.

Credit Card Rewards (Free)

One of the biggest credit card mistakes is to let your miles, points, and rewards expire. Loads of credit card rewards go to waste each year, and it’s a shame because they can be worth a lot. Depending on your credit card, you can redeem points for airfare, car rentals, hotel stays, cash back, and gift cards to stores, movies, and restaurants.

Groupon Getaways (Varies)

If you haven’t discovered Groupon Getaways, you’re missing out. Groupon is my go-to site for great travel deals where I can save a ton of money. Groupon Getaways features travel destinations all over the world with lots of all-inclusive stays. Tip: Always double check the value of the Groupon deal by pricing it out yourself before you book.

Retirement Roth IRA (from $5)

If the gift recipient has earned income, you can make a Roth IRA contribution to match their earned income (or less). For example, if they earned $3,000 as a ski instructor, you could contribute up to $3,000. The maximum contribution in 2018 is $5,500, and you can set up a Roth IRA at places like Vanguard, Fidelity, and Betterment. (Roth IRAs have income limitations, so be sure to stay on top of the current rules.)

Financial Planner Session (from $100)

Nothing says “I love you” like a financial planning session. In all seriousness, gifting a financial planning session is the best way to help your loved one reach their goals. Many certified financial planners are fee-only, meaning they don’t charge commissions but instead charge a flat fee for a planning session.

Magazine Subscription (from $10)

If you’re working with a limited budget but still want to give a money-centric gift, consider a magazine subscription. Two of the most popular magazines on the shelf are Money, which covers all sorts of personal finance topics, including homeownership and money makeovers, and Kiplinger’s Personal Finance, which covers topics like investing, retirement, and taxes.

Shannah Compton Game (@shannahgame) is a certified financial planner professional with an MBA. She hosts the award-winning podcast Millennial Money, where she shares relatable, easy-to-understand financial advice that will actually make you want to talk about money.

Give the ultimate holiday present: new ideas for healthy and delicious meals

Still struggling to find the perfect gift for the outdoorsperson who has it all? These cookbooks can provide a constant source of kitchen inspiration and healthy dish ideas for anyone in a culinary rut. Here’s a selection of this year’s most giftable cookbooks, whether your loved one’s skill level is Top Chef or Kitchen Nightmares.

‘Run Fast. Cook Fast. Eat Slow’ by Shalane Flanagan and Elyse Kopecky

This cookbook was written by runners for runners. New York Marathon winner Shalane Flanagan and her coauthor, Elyse Kopecky, incorporate meal planning and training tips with recipes for prerun smoothies and recovery dinners. The approachable dishes are great for a beginner cook and athlete looking to take their training and nutrition up a notch. There’s a whole section on bowls, including a savory coconut curry and a cashew-quinoa bowl. The authors also include straight-talk chapters about eating disorders among athletes and why they personally don’t count calories. 

‘The Campout Cookbook’ by Marnie Hanel and Jen Stevenson

Hardcore backpackers might roll their eyes at some of the recipes and suggestions in this book, including a Bloody Mary with a pine-cone skewer. But the cute cookbook is good for first-time car campers, families, urbanites (there’s even a stargazing-for-city-slickers guide), and backcountry regulars looking for a break from freeze-dried meals. The suggested breakfast spreads—one calling for three different pastries, two jams, butter, a baguette, yogurt, fresh fruit, and café au lait—are a bit ridiculous but definitely droolworthy.

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‘Saladish’ by Ilene Rosen with Donna Gelb

Yes, it’s a book about salads. But if you can’t stomach one more kale Caesar, this is a refreshing look at everything you can do with greens and grains. It includes interesting and healthy takes on salads, like a recipe for cucumbers with black sesame seeds and sweet-lime vinegar. Many cooking how-tos are scattered throughout, like a step-by-step guide to supreming citrus fruits and breaking down a cauliflower head.

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‘The Noma Guide to Fermentation’ by Rene Redzepi and David Zilber

For the foodie who’s ready to make their own fermented goodies, such as kombucha, vinegar, and miso, this book breaks down the exact chemical processes that turn tea into probiotic gold. There’s a massive primer on the main players, like bacteria, fungi, and enzymes (which might give you flashbacks to high school biology), and an in-depth explanation of what separates fermentation from rot. A word to the wise: many of these recipes require some dedication—enough to trick out a cooler or a rack for an in-house “fermentation chamber”—but your hard work will result in a pantry stocked with unique vinegar, sweet fermented veggies, and seven different kinds of kombucha.

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‘Healthyish’ by Lindsay Maitland Hunt

Promising “good-for-you (but not too good-for-you) recipes,” this cookbook is a solid choice for athletes looking to spice up their diet without compromising nutrition. Each recipe was tested and tweaked by home cooks to help minimize time, ingredients, and the after-cooking mess. This is a great choice for quick, healthy weekend dinners (like turkey and chickpea burgers with dill Havarti) and travel-friendly lunches (banh mi rice bowls with spicy pork). It also offers eight different variations on the ever reliable morning grain bowl.

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‘Six Seasons: A New Way with Vegetables’ by Joshua McFadden with Martha Holmberg

If you’ve ever come home from the farmers’ market wondering what to do with kohlrabi—or what kohlrabi even is—this is your book. It’s divided into six chapters based on the time of year and provides primers and recipes for a smorgasbord of seasonal veggies and legumes. Plus, there’s a good roundup of recipes for staples like croutons, salsa verde, vinaigrette, and eight different kinds of butter. Best of all, the recipes are easy to follow and packed with insider tips from Chef McFadden, whether you’re making a braised celery and radicchio salad or a Swiss chard crostata. 

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‘Chloe Flavor’ by Chloe Coscarelli

Even meat eaters can use this vegan cookbook to find plant-based takes on classics like goldfish crackers, matzo brei, and any kind of pasta dish you can think of. Coscarelli creatively uses tofu, beans, beets, and nuts—so many nuts—to add protein, heft, and creaminess to veggie dishes, with a promise that “carnivores won’t miss the meat one bit.” Plus, many of the recipes can easily be made gluten free.

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‘Jerky: The Fatted Calf’s Guide’ by Taylor Boetticher and Toponia Miller

On the opposite end of the spectrum is this keto-approved celebration of dried meat. Many of the recipes call for an at-home dehydrator, though there’s a guide to other, less equipment-intensive drying methods as well. The intro includes nifty tips like proper cutting techniques and the pros and cons of various cuts and types of meat. Recipes for jerky and the many dishes that can be made with it come from all over the globe, including a tamarind and lime-spiced Indonesian dendeng balado and a Brazilian feijoada.

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‘The Ultimate Instant Pot Cookbook’ by Coco Morante

This book tells you everything you need to know about cooking with this year’s favorite kitchen appliance. With recipes for yogurt, hummus, broths, pasta sauce, jelly, applesauce, and more, it’s a great pick for athletes looking to fill their pantry with grocery-store staples without additives or extra sugar. Morante also includes recipes for mindless meat cooking and large-batch meal prep. Pro tip: despite the use of “instant” in the title, you might run into trouble if you’re looking to whip up something in 30 minutes or less. Be sure to add an extra 20 minutes to any recipe for the pot to pressurize and depressurize.

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‘Eat A Little Better’ by Sam Kass

Kass, the former senior food-policy adviser to former president Obama and first lady Michelle Obama, starts his book with advice on how to reevaluate your diet from the farm up. He explains how to read nutrition labels, walks through strategies to reduce food waste, and details what, exactly, the term natural means. Kass encourages a stripped-down, commonsense approach to eating with a sustainable bent: eat lots of vegetables, grains, seafood, and chicken, and limit your intake of beef and pork. Try grilled clams with shishito peppers or one of the many vegetable side dishes, like balsamic-roasted eggplant with basil.

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We know that cognitive function is impaired at high altitude, but it’s not entirely clear why

In 1925, the eminent physiologist Joseph Barcroft, fresh from a pioneering high-altitude research expedition to heights of Cerro de Pasco in Peru, made a provocative claim. “All dwellers at high altitude,” he wrote, “are persons of impaired physical and mental power.” The accuracy of that statement remains hotly debated, to put it mildly, nearly a century later. Highlanders in the Andes and Himalayas, whose ancestors have lived above 10,000 feet for thousands of years, beg to differ. But for temporary visitors to the highest places on earth, Barcroft’s claim is self-evident: mountains make you weak and stupid.

It’s not obvious why, though. The obvious culprit for reduced cognitive function is the thin high-altitude air depriving your brain of oxygen. The resulting impairment of judgment and decision-making can have serious and sometimes fatal consequences when you’re choosing routes, scaling cliffs, and assessing weather and snow conditions. But there are lots of other factors beyond the oxygen levels during a typical alpine expedition that might dull your judgment, such as sleep deprivation, dehydration, and simple physical exhaustion from the prolonged effort it took to get there.

A recent study in PLoS ONE, from researchers at Ruhr-University Bochum and the German Sport University Cologne, tries to sort some of this confusion out with an ambitious experiment. They tested cognitive performance in 80 volunteers under one of four different conditions:

• Altitude plus prolonged exercise (during an ascent of Mount Kilimanjaro)
• No altitude plus prolonged exercise (during a seven-day “backcountry ski hiking tour in the high plateaus Setesdal and Sirdalheiane in the south of Norway”)
• Altitude plus no exercise (in an altitude chamber set to 12,500 and 19,000 feet, roughly equivalent to the two elevations where testing was performed on Kilimanjaro)
• No altitude plus no exercise (basically sitting on the couch in sweatpants)

Cognitive function was measured with the Frankfurt Attention Inventory-2, a pattern recognition test that assesses “alertness, focused attention, divided attention, and vigilance.” The researchers chose to focus on “attentional dysfunction” because it’s a form of cognitive impairment that can have particularly disastrous effects on mountain expeditions, where ropes and crevasses and weather demand constant focus. Interpreting the results isn’t entirely straightforward, since the test spits out separate measures of speed, accuracy, and continuity of attention. But there are some telling patterns in the data.

The most unambiguous—and unsurprising—finding is that the Kilimanjaro group had seriously impaired attentional capacity at the summit, though not at the lower 12,500-foot testing point. The altitude chamber group also showed signs of impairment at the 19,000-foot elevation, but nowhere near as pronounced. And the backcountry skiers, who were skiing four to 10 hours a day carrying packs weighing up to 45 pounds then sleeping in huts, showed no decline at all in their cognitive test scores.

It’s important to note that there are many differences between climbing a mountain in Africa, skiing to a hut in Norway, and sitting in a sterile lab in northwestern Germany. It’s possible that the test results were skewed by the effects of travel, or the ambient temperature, or the characteristics of the subjects (since the groups were chosen voluntarily rather than assigned randomly).

But if the general patterns are correct, we can draw two conclusions. First, thin air alone doesn’t fully explain the cognitive deficits observed in mountain climbers, since the Kilimanjaro group fared worse than the altitude chamber group. And second, fatigue from prolonged exercise doesn’t explain the difference, since the ski touring group didn’t show any negative effects. It’s possible that there’s an interaction effect: prolonged exercise only takes a toll when it occurs at high altitude. Or it’s possible that some of the other factors like sleep deprivation and dehydration play a significant role.

That last option would be the best one, from a practical sense. If you’re heading out for a big adventure in the mountains, there’s not a whole lot you can do about either the thin air or the prolonged physical exertion. (Okay, you can take supplemental oxygen, but that’s a pretty niche solution. And you can hire someone to carry all your gear and give you a piggyback ride, but where’s the fun in that?) Sleep and dehydration, on the other hand, are much more modifiable. Neither is easy at high altitudes—but if you make them a priority, there’s potential for improvement.

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My new book, Endure: Mind, Body, and the Curiously Elastic Limits of Human Performance, with a foreword by Malcolm Gladwell, is now available. For more, join me on Twitter and Facebook, and sign up for the Sweat Science email newsletter.

The luxury brand partners with the Explorers Club to support far-flung scientific journeys

In the 1970s, well before dive computers and GPS altimeter watches became de rigueur expedition wrist wear, more often than not, explorers of all stripes wore a Rolex. Reinhold Messner wore one when he summited Everest without oxygen in 1970. Robin Knox-Johnston had one on his wrist when he circumnavigated the globe nonstop the year before; so did Ranulph Fiennes during his epic Transglobe Expedition a decade later. It was simply the best timekeeper available for adverse conditions, whether underwater or atop Himalayan peaks.

Since those heady days, Rolex has come to be seen by many as more of a luxury product than the sturdy tool it once was. Lately,  adventurers have become enamored with inexpensive wearable tech en lieu of analog watches. Now, though, through a new Expedition Watch program with the Explorers Club, Rolex hopes to remind the world of its derring-do credibility by sending watches into the field on the wrists of modern explorers.

The Explorers Club is a New York-based organization that, as its name suggests, was founded to celebrate all things related to exploration. It counts as its members astronauts, climbers, divers, and polar explorers, including such luminaries as Will Steger, Buzz Aldrin, and Sylvia Earle. Rolex is a long time underwriter of the Explorers Club, but this year, that support takes on a more tangible form. The Expedition Watch Program, which launched in August, piggybacks on the club’s existing flag expeditions, a tradition in which members can apply to carry one of the organization’s trademark pennants to the corners of the Earth on scientifically-focused journeys. The flag is then cycled back into the field with another expedition, meaning that the same flag might end up in the Arctic and  under the sea before it’s retired and displayed at the club’s mansion headquarters on Manhattan’s Upper East Side.

Flag expeditions must be justified through a lengthy application process, which is reviewed by a scrutinizing committee. The same goes for the Expedition Watch Program. Approved flag expedition applications are passed around a small committee that includes Don Walsh, first man to the bottom of the Marianas Trench, and Kathryn Sullivan, the first American female spacewalker, among others. (Full disclosure: I’m also a member of this selection committee.)

If an expedition is deemed a good venue to showcase a Rolex, one of the three watches are loaned for wear during the adventure. Watches come back afterwards, to be serviced and engraved by Rolex, then are dispatched back into the field on another worthy wrist. After a certain number of expeditions, the watches will be displayed at the club’s headquarters with a plaque listing where they’ve been. The models Rolex has provided included a Submariner diving watch, an Explorer field watch, and an Explorer II model, all of which have proven highly capable of tolerating the abuse of an expedition. There is no financial incentive to wear one of the Rolexes on an expedition. Like the Explorers Club flags, the watches are good luck talismans passed from one club member to another.

The Expedition Watch Program kicked off this summer and, so far, three watches have been awarded for use. One for exploring a cave system in the Mexico, another for studying narwhals in the Arctic, and a third for documenting shipwrecks in the Greek Mediterranean. To date, all the watches have performed as expected and, perhaps more importantly, none have been lost.

The freedom to move and play outside inspires creativity and improved brain function

When I was eight years old, I spent an hour every autumn day after school shooting baskets in our driveway in New Jersey. I was small for my age, had little talent for the sport, and didn’t love it all that much; what I loved were the stories I made up in my head as I practiced my layups alone. I loved how my mind was free to wander as my arms and legs and hands went through the repetitive motion of throwing the ball. Entranced by the silence and solitude, I invented elaborate tales and characters. I never wrote them down, nor did I go on to play competitive basketball. It wasn’t the game or the plots that stuck, but the discovery that motion and imagination are inextricably linked. Move your body and your mind will follow.

Now that I’m a parent, I’m reliving it through my daughters. I watch my eight-year-old talking to herself as she lags behind on the walk to school. Sometimes I get impatient and chide her to hurry. Then I catch myself. This is what I was did when I rode my bicycle over and over around the block, pretending I was Harriet the Spy. My older daughter makes up songs and sings them aloud while she skis. When children have time and freedom to move through the world at their own pace—not necessarily unsupervised, but unstructured—they delve into their imaginations. This is the important work of childhood, and it lays the foundation for growing into curious, open-minded, problem-solving adults.

Research shows that exercise—whether team sports, individual sports, or even just goofing off outside—makes us more creative and more attentive when we come back to our desks. It can also help us imprint learning into our muscle memory, much like repetitive sports training. In a 2014 study from the University of North Texas, researchers found that aerobic activity among kids led to higher scores on reading and math tests. Scientists at the University of Illinois, using MRI data to measure brain size, found that physically active nine- and ten-year-olds had larger hippocampi than their sedentary peers and scored higher on memory tests. And in an ongoing study, Northeastern University psychology professor Charles Hillman has found evidence that children who run and play for 70 minutes a day exhibit better cognitive skills than those who don’t.

Why is exercise key to cognition? “There are many different mechanisms,” Hillman says. “We don’t understand them all, but one of the basic ones is that in response to cardiovascular exercise, there’s an increase in blood flow. Blood carries oxygen, which feeds the brain tissue. Another is that neuro-protecting molecules increase during exercise, and these are related, among other things, to memory.” The bottom line is movement—even a single bout of moderate physical exercise improves brain function. Says Hillman, “If you asked me to design a perfect school day, it would have 45-minute lessons, with ten- to 15-minute recesses in between so they can gain the benefits of outside activity.”

The human brain has evolved to integrate and respond to signals from all five senses—not just sight—which may help explain why kinesthetic and tactile stimuli are a boost to learning. A friend whose ten-year-old son is dyslexic sends him to a tutor who has him practice spelling words aloud while jumping on a trampoline. Repetitive, rhythmic, multisensory activities like jumping, skipping rope, dancing, hopping, and throwing a ball engage the body, not just the mind, helping us better absorb information and retain it longer. Movement, especially when it’s enjoyable, also takes our minds off what might be otherwise perceived as an onerous task.

Just how much movement do kids need? In a report issued in November by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Service’s Physical Activity Guidelines Advisory Committee, kids ages six to 17 are advised to get one hour of moderate-to-vigorous activity every day. This is is unchanged from the previous report, but what’s new is the recommendation for even younger children: Preschoolers ages three to five should be “active throughout the day.” Team sports and organized activities are great physical outlets, but unscripted or solo free-play is also important. When they’re not responding to outward stimuli and instructions from their coaches or friends, kids are better able to tune in to their own imaginations. And according to recent studies, daydreaming is both a marker of intelligence and a conduit to greater creativity.

So the next time my girls seem too slow on their bikes and destined to be late for school, I’m going to chill out and let their minds and bodies wander.

Helmets have been mandatory in the pro peloton for well over a decade. Where’s the data that it’s helping?

It’s become an article of faith among cyclists that you should always wear a helmet while riding and that not doing so is irresponsible.

I mean sure, this is mostly a load of crap, but whatever.

Nevertheless, when it comes to living the All Helmets, All the Time lifestyle, no group of cyclists has bought in more completely than the roadies. You can still show up at your local advocacy meeting with nothing on your head save for your vintage cycling cap and for the most part your fellow do-gooders will hardly look up from their couscous. But roll up at the Sunday group ride with your locks flowing in the wind like a Flandrian cresting the Mur de Huy in the ‘70s and you’ll find yourself greeted like your B sample just came back positive.

Of course, there’s a reason sporting cyclists are so particular about helmets: bike advocates just ride slowly to the food coop, whereas roadies soar majestically across the suburban sprawl, courting glory and tempting fate as they battle for the town line sprint. Certainly this sort of high-performance, high-risk cycling warrants the use of safety equipment in a way casual riding simply doesn’t—and it also warrants heaping derision on Lycra-clad riders who dare not wear them. Right?

Well maybe, maybe not. Helmet studies are problematic at best, so it’s difficult to say, and our feelings about them are based more on emotion than most of us are willing to acknowledge. Furthermore, despite our relatively high rate of bicycle-helmet use here in America we’ve also got a significantly higher cyclist fatality rate than in countries where helmet use is much lower. At the very least, we’ve got much bigger problems than what we’re wearing (or not wearing) on our heads.

Still, you’d think that at least in the context of go-fast stretchy-clothes cycling, the efficacy of helmets should be much easier to quantify and justify. After all, we’ve got a great big rolling sample group in the form of the professional peloton, for whom the UCI made helmets mandatory back in 2003. Prior to that, spectators had always delighted in the sport’s colorful coiffures, from Laurent Fignon’s flaxen tresses to Mario Cipollini’s considerably oiler ones. The UCI instituted the helmet rule in response to the death of Andrei Kivilev, of a head injury, during Paris-Nice. (Though sparing the world from the sight of Laurent Brochard’s mullet may have been a contributing factor.) It stands to reason then that comparing pre- and post-helmet rule head injury data in the pro peloton would provide some insight into the importance of wearing a helmet whilst speed-cycling.

Alas, it does not, mostly because there’s no data to analyze—the sport simply does not track such statistics. Anecdotally, however, the frequency and severity of crashes in the pro peloton is increasing, and pundits have cited a host of possible causes reasons ranging from changes in European road design to riders nodding off on Tramadol. Furthermore, the sport is still plagued by concussions, and of course riders continue to die from head injuries sustained in competition.

Given all of the above, there’s presently no basis for claiming mandatory helmets have made pro cycling any safer in the past 15 years—though it has resulted to near-100-percent helmet adoption among amateur cyclists, whose equipment choices are always informed by whatever the pros happen to be doing. And arguably any safety benefits helmets might impart on these cyclists is undermined by all the other ways they’ve been copying the pros over the years, including but not limited to: Riding around in untenable positions on bicycles with narrow, over-inflated tires while in a state of anaerobic distress due to a chronic lack of fitness, etc. The sheer number of weekend riders I see who hold onto lampposts at red lights or unclip at the first sign of danger because they’re not proficient with clipless pedals indicates to me that plenty of road riders are in over their helmeted heads due to this tendency to take all their equipment cues from the pro peloton.

None of this is to say I’m against mandatory helmets in competitive cycling. After all, rules are the very basis of sport, and whether it’s the Tour de France or your local criterium, submitting yourself to an arbitrary system of governance is the name of the game. Yesterday it was helmets; today it’s making sure your sock is no higher than the halfway mark between your lateral malleolis and your fibula head. Wear this, pee in that, whatevs.

So what’s really happening when the group ride spurns the bareheaded rider? Is it because they think he or she is being profoundly irresponsible? Or is it because helmetlessness undermines their (somewhat delusional) image of themselves as elite athletes pushing themselves to the very limits of human endurance, just like their professional counterparts? You’d think if it was really about safety we’d also be pushing the UCI to analyze crash data and the helmet companies to make better products. As it is, everyone seems perfectly comfortable to strap on whatever Peter Sagan happens to be wearing and call it good. Maybe we’d all be better off it we just called it what it is: Accessorizing.

Now go and measure all your socks.