Denied by the thrift store

I went looking for cheap clothes today. I need to get some good midweight and heavyweight layers for winter hiking, but all the stuff at EMS and similar outdoors stores is too expensive. Sure, the microfleece might be really warm and really soft, but is it worth $50? I can’t bring myself to spend that much on a simple fleece jacket. So the backup plan was to start searching around in thrift stores for wool and fleece. Those are pretty much the only materials I can use because of the heat-absorbing properties when wet. That’s a critical property in winter and why cotton is so dangerous for hiking.

Anyway we went to one of the local thrift stores today to try to find a sweater. We were looking for something that’s only wool, not horribly ugly, and not too large. After a while of searching, we only found a single sweater that met those criteria. Since it was only $2.50, I bought it. I can figure out if it will be warm enough later but adding a long sleeve shirt underneath and bringing a backup layer ought to do just fine. We didn’t even worry about looking for non-cotton pants. We just walked right by the endless rows of khaki and jeans and kept moving to the register.

It seems like most all the sweaters were either acrylic (which I know nothing about, so better safe than sorry) or 100% cotton. That’s just not useful stuff for me. I guess I will have to go with my second backup plan, which is to go to the Army/Navy surplus store in Milford.

Remember, cotton kills.