As long time readers of this blog know we as a family are big fans of Survivorman as well as Les Stroud’s other projects so it should come as no surprise that we sat around and watched Beyond Survival tonight.  We hadn’t even gone by the opening credits before I said, “we may as well pre-order season one on DVD right now”. 

The point of the show is that Stroud is revisiting and exploring some of the ancient survival forms that he showed in Survivorman as well as showing ancient survival forms that are in danger of disappearing in an age of globalization and modern technology.

Like Survivorman, there is a lot of first person shot that Stroud made popular but unlike Stroud, there is a second camera person which ads a lot of the production.  Of course there are dangerous bugs, poisoness tree sap, and predatorial mammals.

The show is a good one and I was right, I will be purchasing the series on DVD as soon as it comes out.

SeaWorld doesn’t forget, and conducts safety and rescue training once a month. Among other things, trainers are taught to go limp if they are grabbed, so the whales will lose interest. The killer whales are taught to keep their mouths closed while swimming, and desensitized so they stay calm and circle the perimeter of the pool if someone accidentally falls in. They learn emergency recall signals—transmitted via a tone box and hand slaps—and are trained to swim to a pool exit gate if a net is dropped in. Scuba gear is always nearby. SeaWorld’s intensive regime helped its trainers interact with killer whales more than two million times without a death. But when a killer whale breaks from its training, all bets are off.

It’s hard to know exactly what triggers an incident. It could be boredom, a desire to play, the pent-up frustration of confinement, a rough night in the tank with the other orcas, the pain of an ulcer, or maybe even hormonal cycling. Whatever the motivation, some trainers believe that killer whales are acutely aware of what they’re doing. "I’ve seen animals put trainers in their mouths and know exactly what the breaking point of a rib cage is. And how long to hold a trainer on the bottom," says Jeffrey Ventre, who was a trainer at SeaWorld Orlando from 1987 until 1995, when he was let go for giving a killer whale a birthday kiss, in which he stuck his head into an orca’s mouth.

Of course the Orca that snapped had some other problems, in addition to being kept in bad conditions in his earlier home of Sealand.

If you’re a killer whale in a marine park, there’s probably no better place than SeaWorld. Yet no matter how nice the facility, there’s stress associated with being a big mammal in a relatively small pool. Starting at Sealand, Tilikum had developed the habit of grinding his teeth against metal pool gates. Many of his teeth were so worn and broken that SeaWorld vets decided to drill some of them so they could be regularly irrigated with antiseptic solution. And once again, he had to deal with the stress of hostile females, particularly a dominant orca called Katina. "Tili was a good guy that got beat down by the women," says Ventre, now a doctor in New Orleans. "So there are a lot of reasons he might be unhappy."

John Jett, who was a team leader for Tilikum, says he sometimes would suffer a beatdown bad enough to rake up his skin and bloody him and would have to be held out of shows until he healed. Jett had a term for the blood left streaming in the water: "sky writing." After a good thrashing from the other orcas, Jett says, Tili kum might be "off" for days, "splitting" from his trainer to swim at high speed around the pool, acting agitated around the females, or opening his eyes wide and emitting distress vocals if asked to get into a vulnerable position (like rolling over on his back). "It’s extremely sad if you think about being in Tili’s situation," says Jett. "The poor guy just has no place to run."

There was also an ugly incident in 1999

In 1999, Tilikum reminded the world that, at least when it came to humans, he could be a very dangerous animal. Early on the morning of July 6, Michael Dougherty, a physical trainer at SeaWorld, arrived at his office near the underwater viewing area of G pool. He glanced through the viewing glass and saw Tili kum staring back, with what appeared to be two human feet hanging down his side. There was a nude body draped across Tilikum’s back. It wasn’t moving. As in the Brancheau incident, Tilikum was herded onto the medical lift in order for SeaWorld staff to retrieve the body. Rigor mortis had already set in. It was a young male, and again the coroner’s and sheriff’s reports are telling. He had puncture wounds and multiple abrasions on his face.

The victim was Daniel Dukes, a 27-year-old with a reddish-blond ponytail, a scraggly beard and mustache, and a big red "D" tattooed above his left nipple. Four days earlier, he’d been released from the Indian River County Jail after being booked for retail theft. On July 5, he apparently hid at SeaWorld past closing or sneaked in after hours. At some point during the night, he stripped down to his swim trunks, placed his clothes in a neat pile, and jumped into the pool. Perhaps he was simply crazy or suicidal. Perhaps he believed in the myth of a friendly Shamu.

The coroner determined the cause of death to be drowning. There were no cameras or witnesses, so it’s not known if Tilikum held him under or hypothermia did him in. But it’s clear Tilikum worked Dukes over. The coroner found abrasions and contusions—both premortem and postmortem—all over his head and body, and puncture wounds on his left leg. His testicles had been ripped open. Divers had to go to the bottom of the pool to retrieve little pieces of his body. SeaWorld ramped up its security, posting a 24-hour watch at Shamu Stadium.

So SeaWorld brought in a whale with issues from another park despite being a far older male than what it was used to working with, it had a series of problems with the whale that resulted in two other deaths, saw that it had anxiety and abuse issues and still decided that it was a good idea to use it in it’s shows.  The OHSA report is going to be a great read when it comes out.

Update: SeaWorld plans to return Tilikum to being in it’s shows.  Apparently it feels that despite being involved in the deaths of three people, Tilikum is fine to be around other people.  Is it just me or have we seen this movie before?

• The Blue Microphone :: If I produced a weekly podcast, this is the microphone that I would purchase to do it with.  It looks fantastic and the reviews are over the top for it.
• Casio has gone old school with it’s G-Shock watches.  I have a fondness in my heart for Casio watches as they are the only brand that I couldn’t destroy as a kid growing up.
• Not sure how much bike riding you do but here is a great helmet cam at an affordable price.  Personally I think Dave King should get one of these.  I would love to see his ride to work through the busy Calgary traffic.

Police have found the body of a Toronto man who wanted to test his survival skills in the woods north of Huntsville, Ont.

Richard Code was an avid follower of the television show Survivorman and had taken few supplies on what was to be a weekend trip.

His brother, Stephen Code, said provincial police told him that his brother died of hypothermia.

It dropped to minus 12 at night in the area and snowstorms hit much of southern Ontario during the weekend.

It’s not clear if Mr. Code had formal wilderness training but relatives said much of his knowledge came from watching the television show which features Les Stroud living in the wilderness without food, shelter or equipment.

Mr. Code’s landlady Barbara Ellis said he frequently read books about wilderness survival and would regale her with tales of his adventures.

Wow, I don’t really know what to say.  Having watched all of the Survivorman episodes with Mark, the one thing that you come away with is that this is really, really hard and also there is an emergency team standing by in case things do go bad.  You also get how important it is to have the right supplies with you if you do get sick, hurt, or just plan unlucky.

According to CTV

She said Code would use what he learned in the books to make shelters in the summer using branches and bark.

"He would strip tree bark off the tree in the backyard, and he’d weave them and braid them like rope," she said.

Ellis said Code went on four previous trips without a tent or food, but she was especially nervous about what would turn out to be his final trip to the Huntsville area.

"He’s come back from all these other survival trips but I knew this time he was going up into a snowstorm and I wasn’t very happy about that," she said.

Surviving a weekend in the summer is a lot different than going into the Canadian winter at –25 and a snowstorm.  It’s too bad it ended this way.

There are 85 search-and-rescue associations in the province, staffed by roughly 4,700 volunteers. However, these groups can only launch a rescue mission after they are enlisted by an agency such as the police, the Coast Guard or the military, and then receive a task number from the Provincial Emergency Program. Regulations prohibit them from self-deploying. The Golden search-and-rescue team is a well-trained unit. Composed of roughly 40 volunteers, it conducts mountain and swift-water rescues, and is one of only six search-and-rescue associations in the province that also does highway vehicle extractions, an additional role that keeps members busy on the treacherous stretch of the Trans-Canada snaking through the Kicking Horse River canyon. Hale estimates that each year his team receives around 90 tasks, many of them involving wilderness missions coordinated among rescue volunteers, police and mountain professionals. But in the case of Blackburn and Fortin, that coordination started going haywire the moment the first report of strange tracks and a distress signal was made.

Hale claims that, after Kicking Horse Mountain Resort staff had checked for any indications of missing skiers, Rudi Gertsch was told to notify the local RCMP detachment about the SOS sighting. Gertsch denies this, saying he left it with the mountain safety people at Kicking Horse, assuming they would follow up on his report. What is known for certain is that for some reason, the RCMP were left in the dark.

Like I wrote before, Wendy bought me Survive! for Christmas and I have enjoyed the section on survival kits.  He listed some essentials for what everyone should have before heading out on the road and with it getting really, really cold in Saskatchewan, I thought I would post it over at Jordon Cooper Outfitters.  I am not one of those “live in a compound” survivalists but I have had to walk for miles more than once to get help when stranded at the side of the road (hit a deer twice, avoided hitting a deer once, icy roads).

Looking back at it, because I didn’t feel comfortable riding out the occasional storm, I took risks that I never should have (once while driving home, I had to get out of the car to figure out where the road was and where I was on said highway).

Stroud has a more complete survival pack list that I’ll post this weekend (it took an hour or so putting this one together).

Mark

It’s a journey that took 114 days and was done by a team of explorers and amateurs led by Pasquale Scaturro and Gordon Brown.  They faced rapids, bandits, Nile crocodiles, civil war in Sudan, and other seemingly insurmountable challenges as they make their way along all 3,260 miles of the river to become the first to complete a full descent of the Blue Nile.

It’s a great journey but after watching it, I was somewhat disappointed as I wanted more.  A two hour film was not enough time to show a 114 day, 3,260 mile journey.  They could have made an entire television series or a long mini-series just on their adventures with the Nile crocodiles and several episodes could have been dedicated to the people they met as the floated down the Nile River, their adventures with bandits, and even the background of the cultures they are engaged in. 

So for all of you filmakers out there, feel free to steal my idea and make this series.  I’ll be the first to purchase it.

• Purchase DVD at Amazon.com

• I am posting once a day because it is easy to set up a posting schedule with WordPress.  Right now I have posts set up to go five days a week into early March which means that I don’t have to worry about the site every day like I do with this one.  As the content is added to the site, it will be formed into other content like gift guides, seasonal guides, and best of lists.  Look for those lists to start as we start to escape winter and then for things like Mother’s Day days like that. 
• The site won’t be an instant success because there really isn’t that much content.  It’s funny because most of the questions that I get about blogging often deal with SEO stuff which is a craft that I have never cared about.  Blogging is pretty simple.  Write well, post it online and if people find it worthwhile, you will generate readers.  We’ll see if people find Jordon Cooper Outfitters worth reading.  If not, I’ll have learned a lot about a topic that interests me.
• The most encouraging stat about the site is the amount of people who have subscribed to the RSS feed.
• While I get a small commission from linking to Amazon.com and Amazon.ca, it isn’t going to pay any bills.  I may add some advertising but even with 1000 people a day coming by the site, that isn’t going to pay very many bills either so there isn’t a great business plan.  If I add advertising, it will be discrete like what you would see on Kottke.org or The Morning News.  There will never be ads all over any site that I curate.  It will never ever happen.
• I will be trail testing some items this summer.  Mark and I planning to hike to Grey Owl’s Cabin this summer and I hope to hit Johnson’s Canyon as well in addition to a lot of mountain bike riding. I’ll let you know how those go.
• I am open to other people contributing to Jordon Cooper Outfitters.  If you are interested, drop me a line.

I was checking out Ben Saunders blog today and saw this great video profile on his site.  Here is a list of his expeditions, both the successful ones and the ones where he didn’t make it.  Ben is currently preparing for three expeditions between 2010 and 2012: solo and unsupported speed record attempts on both Poles and the 2011/12 Scott Antarctic Expedition, the first return journey to the South Pole on foot, and the longest unsupported polar journey in history. Ben and his team mate Alastair Humphreys depart for Antarctica in late October 2011.

Straight from the Leftorium, the MEC Left Handed Slingpack.  Wendy has had a slingpack for years and just about jumped for joy when I told her that there was a left handed version available.  She may have actually wept a tear of joy.

Topeak Alien III Mini Folding Bicycle Tool :: 25 function folding tool with bag will keep you biking all day long, even if your body won’t want you to.

Pelican 1050 waterproof case :: These are great camera/GPS/iPod cases.  They are water proof, padded, floatable, and strong enough to take a lot of abuse in the back of your trunk or any backpack.  They are pretty much indestructible which means that of all of the things you have to worry about, this isn’t one of them.

While this cycling computer/GPS by Garmin may be out of your price range, the Cateye Wireless Bicycle Computer displays speed, max speed, average speed, trip distance, 2nd trip distance, total distance, elapsed time, and a clock for a very affordable price with a big screen for easy viewing.

Leatherman Wave Multitool with Leather Sheath :: The most popular full-size Leatherman tool has been upgraded with larger knives, stronger pliers, longer wire cutters and all-locking blades. The pliers have been redesigned to withstand more than double the previous squeezing load.  For about $20, you can get a Leatherman Kick.

Outdoor Coffee Press :: Now there is no reason to bring that horrible tasting Starbucks Via coffee with you when you go camping or hiking.  Instead bring some fresh ground coffee or loose leaf tea with you and make some excellent coffee when ever you want with this outdoor coffee press.  In case you have never made coffee with a coffee press, check out the definitive guide to making good coffee by Derek Powazek.  Of course you won’t bring a bean grinder with you on most trips but it gives you an idea of what it takes to make a good cup of coffee while on the road.  Of course you need something to drink it from.  You may want to check out some excellent stainless steel coffee mugs/beer mugs to drink from.

Cammenga Lensatic Compass :: This is the Rolls Royce of compasses.  It has been used by U.S. troops, foreign militaries, law enforcement, and special forces for years. A total of seven Tritium light sources provide readability in total darkness for 10 years without external power or the need to “recharge” using a flashlight.

Coleman Aluminum Cookset :: It’s a four piece cookset for under $9 on Amazon.com.  They weigh almost nothing and have some good reviews.  While they won’t replace your cookware at home.  Coleman has a non-stick set as well.  If you want something stainless steel, Texsport makes a set for under $14.

I already mentioned this Pathfinder watch from Casio.  Is there anything this watch can’t do?  It includes a digital compass, altimeter, barometer and thermometer.  It’s altitude measurement up to 10,000 meters in the air and 100 meters under water.  Another great watch by Casio is quite a bit less expensive is the Casio Men’s Digital Compass Twin Sensor Sport Watch which goes for $50 and has a compass and thermometer.    I am still a fan of Timex Atlantis 100 watches which you can give with the stainless steel or the more traditional polyurethane strap.   For those of you who are Timex Ironman fans, don’t overlook their latest reincarnation.

All three seasons of Survivorman on DVD.  You can order them from the Les Stroud Productions store.  Season 1 | Season 2 | Season 3.  We have all three DVDs and they are a lot of fun to watch.  You can also order them from Amazon as well.  Season 1 | Season 2 | Season 3.  In case you just want to see how Les Stroud survives in the American wilderness, you can order this DVD as well.

Not only is Mark a big fan of the show but Wendy has become quite a fan as well which around here is the entire television viewing family.

In case you want to take some photos while you are out in the wild, you will want a Camera Pod.  I recently ordered one and have come to love it.  Despite being made in Canada, Amazon.com won’t ship them here and so you can order them from Les Stroud Productions or get them from The Pod.ca.  If you are in the United States, you can get them from Amazon.com.  You may also be interested in this Pedco Lightweight Camera Tripod.

While we are talking about Les Stroud and Survivorman, you may want to consider his book, Survive!. While it isn’t on Amazon.com, there is another edition with full color photographs and the ultimate edition comes with a DVD as well but the paperback can be picked up at Amazon.com.

Bushnell BackTrack GPS :: The Bushnell Backtrack- Never Get Lost Again with the easiest to use personal location finder for around $50. Just mark the location and BackTrack will help you get back. Use it at the mall and stadium parking lots, at the festival, the park, for travel or your next outdoor adventure.  Wired has a quick real world review and it looks like Cabela’s is one of the few places you can get it in Canada.

The Jetboil Personal Cooking System :: Everything you need is stacked and stored inside the 1.0 liter cooking cup. The system lights with the click of a button and within two minutes provides two cups of boiling water for cocoa, coffee, instant soup or a gourmet freeze-dried meal. The newly designed burner secures the igniter, protecting it from bumps along the road. Flash is designed to be one of the safest cooking solutions out there. The cooking cup clips onto the burner, preventing accidental spills, and the fuel canister tripod ensures overall stability. The insulating cozy has a color-changing heat indicator that signals when contents are hot.

Double Nest Hammock :: The DoubleNest allows room for one, two, three, or however you decide to pack 400lbs. The DoubleNest seats more than one person comfortably and is essential for family adventures. The DoubleNest still packs down to the size of a grapefruit, so there is no excuse to be without your ENO hammock.

For other Christmas Gift Guides keep checking out the Christmas gift idea category for other ideas as we keep creeping closer and closer to Christmas.

Swept out to sea by a riptide, a father and his 12-year-old son struggle to stay alive miles from shore. As night falls, with no rescue imminent, the dad comes to a devastating realization: If they remain together, they’ll drown together.