Back in the Saddle With Another Mt. Hiei Climb (and Thoughts on Under Armour Clothes and Stock)

Panasonic DMC-TS3 at an effective 29mm — 1/8 sec, f/3.3, ISO 400 —
map & image data — nearby photos

Heading Up Mt. Hiei

with Damien Douxchamps, but without a good camera

昨日、友達と一緒に比叡山を登った。小さいゴミのカメラしか無かったので、今回の写真はかなり質が悪いです。ごめん。

The past few months have conspired to keep me mostly inactive, with
travel, injuries, and colds weighing me down for most of the summer, but
I'm finally feeling pretty good, so when I came across some photos of a
previous hike up Kyoto's Mt. Hiei while tidying up my photo archive, I thought it
was about time to try it again, so the next morning I did it.

Luck would have it that Damien was available to give it a try, so we met
at the trailhead yesterday morning at 8:00.

This was my fifth hike of the mountain. I brought a full-frame SLR the
first,
second, and
third times.
On the fourth I just brought the iPhone,
but because the camera lacks quality (and the battery lacks endurance) I thought maybe
I'd get a step up with a small compact camera we have lying around, but wow was I wrong. The photo quality is just pathetic. So sorry about that.

Panasonic DMC-TS3 at an effective 29mm — 1/10 sec, f/3.3, ISO 400 —
map & image data — nearby photos

Muddy

you walk along/in a stream for just the first few minutes








Panasonic DMC-TS3 at an effective 29mm — 1/60 sec, f/3.3, ISO 320 —
map & image data — nearby photos

“Feeling Great!”

he was actually a bit tired

Damien has had his head buried in a startup business for almost the last
year, so hasn't gotten out for much exercise, so this was a sudden
challenge for him. Still, he did much better than I did my first time.

Panasonic DMC-TS3 at an effective 29mm — 1/15 sec, f/3.3, ISO 400 —
map & image data — nearby photos

More Water than Normal








Panasonic DMC-TS3 at an effective 29mm — 1/1000 sec, f/3.3, ISO 100 —
map & image data — nearby photos

So Stylish at the Top!

with bonus crazy hat hair

My clothes are all about function.

The leggings and shirt are from Under Armour's “Heat Gear” compression
line (which I've written about in the past here and here).

They're designed to be worn when it's hot, to wick away sweat and keep you
cool. They do a fantastic job of it.

These versions are of the “compression” type, which means the stretchy fabric
wears like a second skin. They have non-compression versions that apparently wick just as well,
but I like the compression
aspect because it makes you feel
more comfortable; it eliminates the sticky/clingy/yucky feeling of
a wet shirt. It's just
always there, so you don't feel any wet “cling”, and you also
don't feel sweat dripping down your back/arms/whatever. It's really just so much more comfortable than
a non-compression shirt such as
the Uniqlo “Dry” T
that I wrote about a couple of years ago. I still wear those when I'm
not exercising, but they're comparatively horrible for exercise.

I could get white and navy colors at Amazon Japan, but to add some variety
to my workouts while in The States this summer I picked up orange, bright blue
(to match my eyes, you know), and just to be odd, purple.

A side note about the company that makes these, Under Armour...

When I first gave them a try I
noticed the really high quality of their product right away, a feeling that
has only strengthened over the months as I've tried more products. But on top of that, while in The States for the summer, over the course of many
visits to a trampoline
park, I noticed that Under Armour was the predominant brand that the
kids were wearing. Not Nike, not Adidas, not Umbro, not New Balance, not
Champion. Five year olds, 10 year olds, 15-year olds (and adults).

These kids are already voting with their parents' money, and will soon
vote with their own. Under Armour, it seems, is “cool” with the young generation,
and I think this bodes very well for Under Armour's future because one's idea
of style sticks with us as we age.

(When I was a kid in the 70s and 80s, a red sweater vest was the epitome
of “old” and “grandpa”, because back then, that's what old men wore.
They wore it because they thought it looked good, because when they were kids in the 40s and 50s,
it did look good. Back then, a red sweater vest was the epitome of preppy cool, and that
fashion sense stuck with the men even though it didn't stick with the general culture.)

This certainly wasn't the limit of my research, but I ended up buying a
few shares of Under Armour
stock. With a market cap of $15B it's quite risky... that's 1/5th the
market cap of Nike, but the company doesn't “feel” like it has nearly that
much presence, so it's got to grow into its pricing. In most trailing comparisons
to Nike it seems overpriced,
but it's smaller and has more momentum, so those expectations are built into the current price. On Wall Street, “expectations” can be quite fickle, so it wouldn't surprise me to see this
stock level out for a year or two at half its current price, but it also wouldn't surprise me to see
it much higher five and ten years out.

We'll see. I'm in at $69.61/share.

僕が好きな運動用の服のメーカーはアンダーアーマーです。
値段は一寸高いけれども、質が最高です。ジムでは結構人気ですが、この間アメリカで気が付くのはこのブランドは若者にかなり
人気です。品質がよい＋人気はいい組み合わせので、会社の株を一寸買いました。将来はどうかな〜？

Anyway, back to yesterday's climb. Because it
was Damien's first time, I let him set the pace, and we made it in 2h 18m.
That about what it took on my first time (2h 8m), but Damien was in
much better shape at the end than I had been. For example, he can
stand:

Panasonic DMC-TS3 at an effective 29mm — 1/100 sec, f/3.3, ISO 100 —
map & image data — nearby photos

Not So Much Worse for Wear

I'll have to try again by myself sometime soon, to see if I can beat the
1h 37m time of the previous hike. But it's so painful to do it with a
crappy camera, I'll have to give some thought into what to do there.