May was great this year--just warm enough that we could be outside all day long on the weekend. I also happened to change jobs for the first time in my adult life. While I am still a lawyer I went from a large office at the Public Defender to a small private firm in the same town. In between the jobs I took a week off and flew back to Ohio. All of this means I had a lot of chances to carry some different stuff. I also got sent a new pack, one from SOG, that I took with me on the vacation. All in all, a lot of different stuff this month. Also, the Mnandi I bought on the podcast came in and it is so amazing. Naturally it showed up and when in the pocket lot.

Here is the Mnandi with the Aeon Mk. 3:

Chris Reeve Knives Mnandi in Snakewood and S35VN with 2nd gen. nail nick, Sinn Spezialurhen 556i and Muyshondt Aeon Mk. 3 in Titanium

This is a beautiful pair not just because they both look nice, but also because they both function so incredibly well. It's hard to imagine something being more classy, compact, and high performance than what you get here. I carried the Mnandi without the leather slip, preferring to drop it in the top pocket of a button down. No one even noticed, as the clip looks like the clip on a very nice pen. Hey Chris Reeve, would you make a nice pen? Don't do some tactical piece of junk, gimme a metal version of an Edison. I'd be stoked.

The two Kickstarter knives both came, the Kadima and the HEST Urban. The Urban is a big surprise.

The Edison Pearlette in Indigo Flake with a Stub Nib, the DPx HEST Urban, and the Muyshondt Aeon, Mk. 3 in blue anodized aluminum

I was not expecting to like it as much as I do. It is very heavy for what it is, the clip is a misery, but everything else is out of this world. For a first production, this is a great knife. DPx now has something that competes quite well with the Strider PT and Small Sebenza. It's that good.

The Kadima is a bit of a hard thing to process.

Kickstarter Caston Kadima in G10

It's well made and well designed, but I am not sure if I "get it". It's a lot like that butterfly pen that Spyderco makes, the Bali-Yo. It is a great fidget thing, but I am not sure if it is a great knife yet. I have to carry it around some more. It is uber pocket friendly, so that is a plus.

In Ohio, we (my family and I) visited with my parents and everyday was spent outside. We spent time in my old stomping grounds, a State Park behind the neighborhood I lived in. Though things have gotten overgrown and a few landmarks (such as a fallen log that crossed a ravine) have been reclaimed by nature, I was still able to trace my steps using my 12 year old brain. Almost all of the patches were still there and a few secret shortcuts still worked. This part of Ohio is absolutely rich with fossils and so every creek bed was a gold mine of remnants from the Ordivician Age. Because I had no idea what we'd be doing I settled for the most utilitarian and easiest to use carry I have--the Surefire Titan Plus (which runs on NiMH batteries but can use regular AAAs) and the delightful Robert Lesssard (SAKModder) custom Pioneer. The Pioneer X just came out and though all of the tools are the same, my gem has a clip. Here is this pair with a sample of the fossils we found:

Top: Surefire Titan Plus
Middle: Fossilized Orthotetes, Rhombopora, Cephalopod, and another Orthotetes
Bottom: SAK Modder Custom Pioneer

While looking for fossils (they are so plentiful we don't even have to dig--just sit down next to a creek and you will find them in massive handfuls), we also did a little crawdad (crayfish) hunting. This was one of my favorite things to do as a teenager. It took me a bit but I still have the touch, catching 15 in one morning all by hand. A few more hours and we could have had a nice meal. The technique is something I developed over the years and if you do it right you need nothing more than a pair of water shoes (such as Crocs), a pencil-sized stick, and your hands. If you grab the little boogers behind their eye stalks they can't reach around and pinch you. While I was doing this many of my peers 25 years ago, we're listening to MC Hammer, wearing Skidz, and covering themselves in Drakar Noir. Is it any wonder why I didn't fit in?

The other thing we did outside was play around with this:

My Dad's 2016 Corvette Stingray aka The Beast

My Dad has pined after a Corvette for decades. When I was born he had a Porsche 914, which he got rid of because, well, it is pretty much the anti-family car. So for 38 years, he was without a machine that was fun to drive. Now he has this beast and boy is it a blast to drive. Andrew Lang and I have talked about cars on the podcast before, he just purchased an old 65/66 Mustang, and I forgot how fun driving can be. Again recalling things from long ago, I took the car, with my 5 year old son safely in tow, to the wide open cornfields where the roads are arrow straight and you can see for 10 miles and I hammered the gas. The performance data read outs were insane--G forces, global positioning speed measurements, it was awesome. Nothing like hitting triple digits with the top down. One small point though--even with 10 miles of straight road you run out of pavement FAST when going three times the speed limit. Not that I would know ;)

After coming back I had this weird period. I just left my job of 12 years and started a new one, but I needed to take a week off to make everything work with both places' schedules. So I had three days all to myself. One day I did a pilgrimage to Kittery Trading Post and I bought the Benchmade 555-1. This is a stupendous knife and something that will make a lot of appearances on Instagram this next month. Love this knife.