Equipment Crew- Part IV

[urbanlifter]

Are they proven to safe in long term on your liver, BP, Glucose and other internal organs levels etc..

Typically, most of the ingredient lists are fluff with only a couple things impacting your workout. Caffeine being the major player, then yearly we see other 'Revolutionary' ingredients hit the market and then get banned a year later when kids rave "Its was like *******, I crushed my workout and almost ate a baby afterwards'. Stuff like Amp Citrate, DMAA (1,3 Dimeth), ephedra, Amphetamines, N, alpha- DEPEA (meth I think). Are they 100% safe long term, who REALLY knows for sure. I knowingly ingest alcohol on a regular basis, and we all know how destructive yet incredibly delicious that stuff can be LOL.

But like my consumption activities, I try to maintain a conservative 'Everything in moderation' approach, and most of the time I take 1/2-3/4 of the recommended dosage. Go over to the supp section and you will see kids bragging about taking enough caffeine before a workout that could have potentially made their heart explode (SRS). I do my best to research key ingredients to ensure there are no studies that show it causes bodily harm, but at the end of the day nothing is guaranteed I guess. You want to see something TRULY scary, go watch the 'What the Health' documentary on Netflix...LOL

[Domicron]

with all this supplement talk it's starting to smell like ace K in here...

can i ask about ladders? Costco has the little giant ladder on sale from time to time, anyone use it and is it worth the cost? curious if it's actually a well built ladder or if it's mostly just marketing.

i need a better ladder so i can climb onto my roof to clean the gutters from time to time, occasionally will need to move it into the house to reach a light bulb.

btw Urban: back is looking good man.

[urbanlifter]

btw Urban: back is looking good man.

Thanks man, really been hammering away at it hard lately! Figured it was about time to change up the avi, been side chest for as long as I can remember

[thejosef]

Thanks man, really been hammering away at it hard lately! Figured it was about time to change up the avi, been side chest for as long as I can remember

Yeah it confused me for a bit. I was like "who's the new guy posting in here like he's a regular or something?!... Oh, it's urban. Cool cool.. Nice back bro!"

[Cleveland33]

Yeah it confused me for a bit. I was like "who's the new guy posting in here like he's a regular or something?!... Oh, it's urban. Cool cool.. Nice back bro!"

yes I hate avatar changes - takes me awhile to figure things out

[Synthetickiller]

can i ask about ladders? Costco has the little giant ladder on sale from time to time, anyone use it and is it worth the cost? curious if it's actually a well built ladder or if it's mostly just marketing.

i need a better ladder so i can climb onto my roof to clean the gutters from time to time, occasionally will need to move it into the house to reach a light bulb.

My dad bought one when they came out oh so long ago. It's been one of my favorite ladders since it's a collapsible A frame ladder that doubles as a straight ladder. If they are built like they were originally, go for it. They are tough as nails. I can't even remember how tall mine is. If I needed a taller one, I'd consider the little giant extreme. The fact that it folds up & takes up very little space is worth it to me. I hate storing ladders & wasting space.

[Synthetickiller]

Anyone here run all terrain or mud tires?
I'm looking for some real world opinions on tires. I currently have a set of BFG KO2 with about 2.5 years of ownership & 35k total miles that are nearly shot. There's significant dryrot & cracking between the treads. My original BFG KOs would get 90K miles before I had to swap them.

I'm considering a set of Cooper AT3s, ST Maxx or STT Pros in 37x12.5r17. Anyone have experience with these on a heavier truck (6000lb +)?

[1651Naismith]

Anyone here run all terrain or mud tires?
I'm looking for some real world opinions on tires. I currently have a set of BFG KO2 with about 2.5 years of ownership & 35k total miles that are nearly shot. There's significant dryrot & cracking between the treads. My original BFG KOs would get 90K miles before I had to swap them.

I'm considering a set of Cooper AT3s, ST Maxx or STT Pros in 37x12.5r17. Anyone have experience with these on a heavier truck (6000lb +)?

I recently dumped my KO2s as well. Only got 29k and 2.5 years on the last set (Dodge 2500 MegaCab). Really disappointing... The local Discount Tire has seen a lot of unsatisfied users over the last 12-18 months. 25k miles seems to be what folks get on the KO2s.

After considering it carefully, I ended up with Goodyear Wrangler All-Terrains with Kevlar (sidewall). Not as aggressive as I would normally like, but after reading a lot of reviews it seems to be the best fit for my needs -- 80% highway, 20% off-road, snow & ice, sidewall protection for rocks while offroading in the mountains.

A buddy has had these on his truck for 2-3 years and is very happy with them. The 60k mile warranty is there in case the wear sucks. I had a bit of back-and-forth with BFG and DiscountTire on the crap wear on the BFGs before I got something back on them (no warranty).

I was very hesitant on Goodyear as I haven't been pleased with the Goodyears that come on new vehicles. However, that was 10 years ago and I wasn't going to go with BFG again. Initial impressions have been positive. Did some decent off-roading over labor day weekend and didn't have any issues. Ride quiet on the highway. Good stopping in wet.

Good luck with whatever you go with. It does seem that choosing tires has gotten much more "involved" in the last 10-15 years.

[rthawker]

Anyone here run all terrain or mud tires?
I'm looking for some real world opinions on tires. I currently have a set of BFG KO2 with about 2.5 years of ownership & 35k total miles that are nearly shot. There's significant dryrot & cracking between the treads. My original BFG KOs would get 90K miles before I had to swap them.

I'm considering a set of Cooper AT3s, ST Maxx or STT Pros in 37x12.5r17. Anyone have experience with these on a heavier truck (6000lb +)?

My truck is a Crew Cab Silverado 1500 and the tires are 325/60r18 (about 33" tires). Right now I'm running on Nitto Terra Grappler G2's. I'm about 20,000 miles into them and they still look fairly new. My previous set were Toyo Open Country AT's and they lasted me about 40,000 miles. The Nittos do seem to lose traction a little more than the Toyos did when I take off from a stop on wet pavement but that could just be my heavy foot at times.

[Domicron]

My dad bought one when they came out oh so long ago. It's been one of my favorite ladders since it's a collapsible A frame ladder that doubles as a straight ladder. If they are built like they were originally, go for it. They are tough as nails. I can't even remember how tall mine is. If I needed a taller one, I'd consider the little giant extreme. The fact that it folds up & takes up very little space is worth it to me. I hate storing ladders & wasting space.

thanks, i don't need mine to be too tall, so i'll just keep an eye out for the next time it goes on sale.

[Bench905]

Typically, most of the ingredient lists are fluff with only a couple things impacting your workout. Caffeine being the major player, then yearly we see other 'Revolutionary' ingredients hit the market and then get banned a year later when kids rave "Its was like *******, I crushed my workout and almost ate a baby afterwards'. Stuff like Amp Citrate, DMAA (1,3 Dimeth), ephedra, Amphetamines, N, alpha- DEPEA (meth I think). Are they 100% safe long term, who REALLY knows for sure. I knowingly ingest alcohol on a regular basis, and we all know how destructive yet incredibly delicious that stuff can be LOL.

Pretty much how I feel.

There's a few preworkout ingredients that work...I guess it's not considered cool for most companies to just put them in a supplement, tell you how much is in there, etc. Instead, we get a lot of proprietary blends (hiding individual ingredient dosages), fluff ingredients, and/or dangerous ingredients. I used to be one of the people chasing the latest fad preworkout - then I found out I was taking one with basically Meth in it (Craze).

I'm a father of two - it would be stupid to take any dangerous crap just to get a little extra amped up. I avoid fly-by-night supp companies and stick to researched ingredients and non-proprietary blends.

This whole thing reminds me of an Onion artlcle: http://www.theonion.com/article/fda-...ng-suppl-38400

[Synthetickiller]

Thanks guys!

I recently dumped my KO2s as well. Only got 29k and 2.5 years on the last set (Dodge 2500 MegaCab). Really disappointing... The local Discount Tire has seen a lot of unsatisfied users over the last 12-18 months. 25k miles seems to be what folks get on the KO2s.

After considering it carefully, I ended up with Goodyear Wrangler All-Terrains with Kevlar (sidewall). Not as aggressive as I would normally like, but after reading a lot of reviews it seems to be the best fit for my needs -- 80% highway, 20% off-road, snow & ice, sidewall protection for rocks while offroading in the mountains.

A buddy has had these on his truck for 2-3 years and is very happy with them. The 60k mile warranty is there in case the wear sucks. I had a bit of back-and-forth with BFG and DiscountTire on the crap wear on the BFGs before I got something back on them (no warranty).

I was very hesitant on Goodyear as I haven't been pleased with the Goodyears that come on new vehicles. However, that was 10 years ago and I wasn't going to go with BFG again. Initial impressions have been positive. Did some decent off-roading over labor day weekend and didn't have any issues. Ride quiet on the highway. Good stopping in wet.

Good luck with whatever you go with. It does seem that choosing tires has gotten much more "involved" in the last 10-15 years.

I realized I should have said I need a 315/70r17 / 35x12.5r17 or larger. It actually came with 305/60r20s from the factory, but only toyo makes that size. I have an H2, so that's the stock size. Wranglers, unfortunately, don't come in anything that's remotely 35" tall.

I'm considering the 37 over the 35 for extra ground clearance when flooding. The KO2s actually measure to 33.5. I've heard coopers run oversized, so they should be right around 37. 2" of ground clearance would be awesome.

Goodyear has the MT/R which supposedly does really well on roads, but the cheapest I've seen a set of 4 is around $1800. I've heard some bad press about goodyear sidewalls. For normal driving, it's not of any consequence, but I've had some close calls in New Orleans' famous potholes where there'll be a random piece of a metal waiting to take you out, especially by a culvert. It's probably not something I really should worry about, my I've had bad experiences where overkill solutions prevailed, lol.

I considered the Falken Wildpeak AT, but it's EOL & I'm not into buying tires that have been out of production for a little while. I don't know how much dryrot they've suffered from just sitting around.
Falken does make that A/T3W, which looks like a good option, but it only comes in a 35". I've heard good things about Falken tires, but I've never had the experience of running them.

I've heard that most (other than BFG tires) all terrains typically have 2 ply sides. Actually, I ran across a thread about the Cooper AT3 having the same or worse cracking/dry rot compared to the KO2. I don't know what's going on in the tire industry, but tires are not made like they used to. They tout a lot tech & buzzwords, but we're getting 1/3 or less of the mileage we used to get or have other wear issues. Everyone's cutting corners. It sucks!

Not going AT leaves me with hybrid (AT inner treads w/ MT blocks on the edge) or a real mud tire.

That leaves me with:
Toyo Open Country RT, Nitto Ridge Grappler, Kumho KL71, Cooper ST Maxx or STT Pro.

I've heard not so good things about Toyos in the rain. I assume it's because the tire is made from a harder compound (less silica?), so it doesn't grip as well, but wears like iron.
The Nitto worries me because it's not tested. I've seen one review where someone got 5k miles & they were shot (user error? defective pair/rare issue?).
The Kumho's have been said to ride well on the interstate. They are a directional tire (which is fine with me). From what I've read, the center treads make it ride well & not "walk" some people have described the ride quality of many mud tires. I was strongly considering these before looking at cooper tires.
The ST Maxx look awesome, but I've heard they love to pick up stones. I have that issue with the KO2s now. Oddly, they weigh more than the STT Pros.
The STT Pro tires might be the tire to go with, only because most people claim there's not much of a difference in ride comfort, coming from an all terrain & they don't "walk". We get a lot of flooding & I'm wondering if the voids would help me avoid hydroplaning.

I've just been thinking about this for a while & I go back & forth with tire choices as there's no real clear winner.

My truck is a Crew Cab Silverado 1500 and the tires are 325/60r18 (about 33" tires). Right now I'm running on Nitto Terra Grappler G2's. I'm about 20,000 miles into them and they still look fairly new. My previous set were Toyo Open Country AT's and they lasted me about 40,000 miles. The Nittos do seem to lose traction a little more than the Toyos did when I take off from a stop on wet pavement but that could just be my heavy foot at times.

I actually ran a set of Toyo AT2 extremes. They did the same thing my Michelin tires did; they lost traction in rain, a lot. I've actually heard the same about the nittos. The G2s are really nice looking & typically get good reviews, but the lack of wet traction is a killer down here where we get rain a lot. That's why I've written off highway tires (really just michellins, unless I go bling bling with 24s and pirellis, which is retarded). Even ATs have some issues with wet roads, in my experience. The original BFG KOs did well in rain. Arguably better than my KO2s do. I'd assume the General Grabber AT2s would also do well, but they only come in a 35".

I've heard great things about the Toyo MTs (they ride pretty well for a mud tire, I must say), but they suck in the rain. That seems to be the consensus with the tires.


Back in the day, buying tires was straight forward. It's now exercise in futility, at times. At least I can say I've learned a lot about what makes a tire a tire.

[urbanlifter]

Hmmm. I wonder if it ended. All I'm seeing is Buy One get a free shaker bottle.

That Kraken deal is back on, buy one get one free! I tried a session with it and it's legit, probably one of the better PWO's I have tried. Meso can make me crash so I use it for evening workouts, this was smooth energy and good feels all day so good for AM sessions. Very similair to the God of War Black I cracked open a while ago. Glad I gave it a shot!

[keyboardworkout]

I like Muscle Feast 8 hour powder. The stuff is really cheap at 76 servings for $22.99.

I can be rather sensitive to caffeine so I throw 200mg of l-theanine in it.

[KBKB]

Page 2 bump!

I got this photo of a young tarantula on last Friday's hike:



I got these photos of three Arizona Sister Butterflies while hiking at See Canyon last Sunday:



Two other photos from the See Canyon hike:

[keyboardworkout]

We took our boy (front) to see his sister this morning. This was the first time they had seen each other in over ten years. They are the last two still around from their litter of eleven.

[KBKB]

Page 2 bump!

Two photos from Friday's hike...

[1651Naismith]

Spectacular as always. But, you come across way too many of these guys for my tastes!

[KBKB]

Spectacular as always. But, you come across way too many of these guys for my tastes!

That one was about six feet off of the trail. We wouldn't have known about it had it not started rattling. I didn't get as close for the picture as I sometimes do - my wife was along and for her sanity, I stayed a little further back.

I just got an email from a past hiking companion who told me, "Looking forward to joining you guys as soon as those pesky snakes go away!!" I only ever see her in the winter. She's told me in the past that she doesn't do any late spring thru fall hiking because of snakes.

[keyboardworkout]

[irongrandpa]

Spectacular as always. But, you come across way too many of these guys for my tastes!

One is too many when they're that close!

[weisgarb]

Page 2 bump!

The picture with the tree is simply amazing . . .

[thejosef]

The picture with the tree is simply amazing . . .

Agreed! Frame that one and put it on the wall KBKB!

[KBKB]

The picture with the tree is simply amazing . . .

Agreed! Frame that one and put it on the wall KBKB!

Thanks!

I've found that shooting into the sun makes for some pretty dramatic shots. There are several technical problems to be solved though.

One obvious one is that the dynamic range is far too great for just a single exposure. If you look at a typical out-of-camera shot, the foreground ends up being really dark and the background is really bright. For that tree photo, you might end up with a nice silhouette... The solution for this type of shot is to take bracketed exposures (which use different exposure values for each shot in the bracket) and then combine the exposures in some fashion. HDR software is commonly used to do this, but for this shot I combined two exposures by hand.

The other problem is lens flare. There's an artistically (IMO) good type of flare which sometimes shows up as rays emanating from the bright light source. The other, bad, type of flare (IMO) is the colored spots that show in the photo. When I inspected the exposures that I took with the sun in the shot, I didn't see too many of these, but subjecting the sensor to a very bright light source also seems to create some overall muddiness in the color along with what appeared to me to be a loss of detail. So... what I do to avoid this is to take one or more (sets of) bracketed exposures with the tip of my finger covering up the light source. (I also take shots of the scene without my finger in the photo.) Blocking the bright light source removes the flare artifacts from those shots. When I do the postprocessing, the exposure that I intend to use for the sky is used to replace the fact that my finger is now in the shot. Prior to learning about the "finger" trick, I would attempt to correct color and fix the spots in post-processing; this not only took a lot of time, but almost always produced inferior results.

Beyond that, there are the obvious technical challenges with post-processing (such as alignment and making sure that exposure levels appear to match), but I won't go into those. With practice, they're not that hard to deal with.

To better show what I'm talking about, below are the OOC JPEGs (resized) showing the two exposures that I blended in Photoshop to create the tree photo. (I used RAW versions of these exposures though.)





And, once again, here is the final result:

[BulkMore]

Cool photo of the tree KBKB. Im sure people understand this by now but every single professional photo you see at galleries, magazines, museums, national geographic, etc etc...is heavily photoshopped. Im not sure if its even possible to take a photo and not make it look better with photoshop or lightroom.

There are so many tutorials on youtube of lightroom...which is an awesome tool. You can make your photos really pop.

[KBKB]

Cool photo of the tree KBKB.

Thanks!

Im sure people understand this by now but every single professional photo you see at galleries, magazines, museums, national geographic, etc etc...is heavily photoshopped. Im not sure if its even possible to take a photo and not make it look better with photoshop or lightroom.

There are so many tutorials on youtube of lightroom...which is an awesome tool. You can make your photos really pop.

I've learned a lot from youtube tutorials. In fact, that's where I learned about the "finger blocking the light source" trick. That's not really a post-processing trick, but it sure does make post-processing easier if you're into that sort of thing.

I've used videos to learn some nuts and bolts postprocessing stuff too. I also read books on these topics, but spending multiple pages on which button to push when, is not really a very efficient use of either time or paper, IMO.

[urbanlifter]

Hey fellas! Just thought I would share this, I have been working my tail off in the gym lately and have been dropping weight! Can't believe how quickly my little spare tire came off without any cardio, had to take my Inzer belt in a notch the other day and it was quite the moment of realization! So I started looking at protein powder to help supplement my an attempt to clean bulk. My favorite always used to be Syntha6 because it's delicious, and it is currently B1G1 50% off with free shipping! Then if you use 'Forum10' you can get an additional 10% off. It's been a LONG time since I used protein, but $66 shipped for 10lbs seems like a good deal. I remember when I used to get 10lbs of ON Whey for $69 shipped, those were the days!

[Farley1324]

Hey fellas! Just thought I would share this, I have been working my tail off in the gym lately and have been dropping weight! Can't believe how quickly my little spare tire came off without any cardio, had to take my Inzer belt in a notch the other day and it was quite the moment of realization! So I started looking at protein powder to help supplement my an attempt to clean bulk. My favorite always used to be Syntha6 because it's delicious, and it is currently B1G1 50% off with free shipping! Then if you use 'Forum10' you can get an additional 10% off. It's been a LONG time since I used protein, but $66 shipped for 10lbs seems like a good deal. I remember when I used to get 10lbs of ON Whey for $69 shipped, those were the days!

Syntha-6 does bring the taste, but if you are trying to restrict calories there are more macro-friendly protein powders that still taste great. How much the calories matter to you depend on how tight your diet is and how many scoops of protein powder you go for in a day I suppose

[Stasher1]

Syntha-6 does bring the taste, but if you are trying to restrict calories there are more macro-friendly protein powders that still taste great. How much the calories matter to you depend on how tight your diet is and how many scoops of protein powder you go for in a day I suppose

This.

We (the wife, middle son, and I) have been using PES Select for the past couple months, and I've been extremely pleased with it. Very clean, low carb, with no extra crap. I've been adding a scoop to my oatmeal in the morning, and it has killed my desire for morning snacks. I've also been using their "Snickerdoodle" to make keto-inspired pancakes that are absolutely fantastic and taste a lot like french toast.


https://www.bodybuilding.com/store/p...t-protein.html

[urbanlifter]

Very cool, I'll have to keep PES and MuscleFeast in mind if I keep this up! I wrote off protein powder about 2-3 years ago, had been taking ON/BSN for a long time and when I stopped I noticed absolutely NOTHING in terms of muscle building or recovery. BUT, it has been a while and since I'm looking to UP calories I figure it will be an easy way to add some in between meals. I'll probably use 1-2 scoops a day and then drop it when I go to cut next spring, thanks for the suggestions gents! (on spread)