Welcome to another edition of Gear Review. I'm Don Freeman. I'm Scott War and today we're talking about ultimate directions, PB Vest, but it's pretty cool Vest. This is the one that you've probably seen advertised with Scott Jurek and Tony Kruppicica. You know, they're wearing this. This has the bottles up front. It kind of is, has the Euro front? Yeah, the Euro front. Yeah, it kind of looks like the European version. And at first, I was not, I mean, it's really cool looking and I got to say, I'm a backpacker and I like to do ultra light backpacking. And this is the first hydration vest that I am aware of that uses Cuban fiber. Do you know what Cuban fiber is? Well, obviously, Scott, it's fiber from Cuba. Here's that. Yes, it's kind of noisy. But Cuban fiber is actually stuff they make sales out of for, you know, those ships that run that do the America's Cup. Yeah, yachts, the racing ones. We're really showing our knowledge. It's 15 times stronger than steel. It looks like crinkled wax paper. Yeah, it does. From across the table. And it actually sounds like it and feels like it. But I'll tell you what, let me tell you the reason why it's on here.

There's two reasons. One, it's super, super strong. And number two is, and the reason why it's used in ultra light backpacking is it's extremely light. It's probably one of the lightest fabrics out there. You know, our trail friend, Lee McKinley, was excited about that very best because of that fabric. because he's a fast-packed and when he said

wow they really hit on to something you've got this this fabric was excited about that very best because of that fabric. Because he's a fast-packer.

He's a fast-packer. And when he said, wow, they've really hit on to something. He've got this fabric and I need to get this best. So anyway, the vest is, first of all, the one thing that you need to know is these vests are sized. So there's two different sizes. You need to go on their website and check out their size charts so that you can get the right size. This one is very, very comfortable. You also need to kind of pay attention to the adjustment guide. I know that some other people that have tried this say that they didn't like it because the bottles bounced around on front when they were full. I believe that that is mostly because of an improper fit. Because when I tried this out, the bottles did not bounce around. But anyway, this is a very cool vest. The way that it connects from the back to the front is a very, very light mesh. And there are lots and lots of pockets. So you can put in whatever you want on this thing. You can put in your GPS unit. If you're using a GPS, you can put in your Goos, you can put in basically everything you want. But it can hold two bottles up front. If you want to, you can put a hydration pack bladder in the back, which is not what I like to do. don't like to suck to suck out of it too But rather have a bottle so they have but they actually have a do they does it come within a a Blatter in a tube no, it does not okay, but there's a space for it right okay? I believe it does come with two bottles is there a space for the tube to come out on the bottom if in fact there's It actually does have a place where you can attach a bladder, a little velcro strap, and then you would just run the tube out the zipper. So the tube exits from the bottom or the top, the top is where you would have to have it exit. And I did just quickly find out what PB stands for. There's a little piece of that Cuban fiber, by the way. Can I have that scale? Yeah. You can try to write on it. I was joking that PB stands for peanut butter. It stands for Peter Backwind. Yes, the guy coming after you for making fun of his initial Scott. And he looks pretty tough. You know, it's a pretty cool vest. It may be one of my favorite vests out there. And a lot of that is because I typically don't like vests because I don't like to suck out of a tube. I think it takes too much energy to suck. And so I like it because you can put two bottles in there and it has plenty of room. You could even take this on a short backpacking trip if you wanted to. There's that much capability of room in it. You know that material you say is very light but the other material that they use with it seems to be pretty economical as far as weight goes to. Do you have a weight on the entire pack? Yeah, without the bottles it weighs 12 ounces. So that's 16 ounces as a pound. Yep. For you metric people, you can get out your converter and find out how many grams that is. Actually, I can tell you it's 340 grams. I was gonna say that. But I'm trying to see it has volume capacity of 61 cubic inches or 12 liters. So it does have some availability there in packing. It has a lot of cinch cords on there so you can cinch it really tight. Oh the one thing I was going to say on the straps there, there at the top you see those two little loops. You can pull on those and they will actually pull the pack closer to your body if the thing is bouncing around. You know what's got this thing is super light as I picked it up and I'm no one do you have it let you have it? Let me check this thing out. No, I haven't like to try it. It's pretty nice. Yeah, it is. That is one light pack. It's very nice. So I did want to say, like I said, there are two sizes that you want to look at. There's a small medium and a medium large. The small medium, if you measure your chest, is 25 to 33 inches. If you are a 33 to 41 inch, then you want to go with the large. Well Scott, whenever you build a product, as if I was a big product builder, but you want to make something that differentiates yourself from your competition. And this clearly is a different pack. And if you're in the market for packs, packs I would just I take a look at it because I think they've put some technology and some design into this and if you like the way that it rides when you're running with it. It has two straps on the sternum by the way so it's it keeps those bottles from bouncing out. They have male and female versions do you know that? No, that's unisex. Okay. Very good. Well, I like the looks of it. Now, let's rate this in Coca-Cola Scott. And we're gonna use, I forget what we decided was the Coca-Cola rating for the packs. So we could keep some consistency because the pack rating. Because we have done consistent ratings. Yeah, and I believe it was 32 I think you're right That's good if people if people are if people are are concerned that that's not accurate You can go back and check there is a coca-pele conversion from our older podcasts if if it isn't accurate We do have a chart where you can there's a calculator somewhere on our web Yeah, just keep looking for it for it. And if you would, just go ahead and ping Ninja, Tim Smith at tim.smith at www.trueonarnation.com and ask him for that converter. Yeah. So between zero and 32 Coca-Pellies, I am going to rate this very high. Well, yeah. And I would say, well, first of all, I'm gonna say of all the packs that I've tried, this is probably my favorite. It's my favorite too, because it's yours. I like it a lot. I have some closet space that is devoted to packs, and I have to say this is probably my go-to pack now. I would say, I'm gonna be, it's gonna sound conservative, but I'm gonna say 28 out of 32 Coca-Pellies. But how I know you, Scott, that's a very high pack rating because you're not much of a, I'm a pessimist when it comes to packs. So that is a, that is an enormous rating. So check it out. And go ahead, like to try this guy.

You're welcome to.

Go out and hydrate, moss.

Thank you.