Back-Light

By: Mark Meyer
Spork Lite

The titanium "spork" is a marvel. A curious symbol for the pursuit of weight loss among backpackers everywhere, and an acknowledgement of the fact that you really have no idea why your backpack is so heavy. You aren't carrying anything heavy. You have a few choice essentials chosen for their extreme lightness and suddenly the pack weighs 70 lbs. How did this happen? Maybe it's the weight of the fork and spoon. If you could discard those two utensils and replace them with one ultra-light spork, maybe your pack would be light again. This is the reasoning of a backpacker. This madness originates from the fact that there are 16 ounces in a pound. What follows is that if you can shave 2 ounces off of sixteen items in your pack, you have just lightened your load by 2 pounds. It's quite simple, but it leads one down the road to the $11.00 spork.
If this isn't difficult enough, you now decide that you would like to take some photographs. There are two scho...