STORIES

BRE WANDERS

PDX BLOGGER, DESIGNER AND OUTDOOR ADVENTURER TRIES XSCAPE POD

"I’ve been an avid outdoors woman for over half a decade now. I know just as well as anyone how much time and money goes into accumulating all the gear you need for a successful adventure. Whether it’s just a weekend camping trip, your first overnight backpacking trip, or a summer road trip that you’ve been scheming for the entire year, everyone needs some essential things to get on the road. Sometimes the things you need can be so expensive and seem unobtainable that you’re discouraged, so you put off the great outdoors. Wouldn’t it be great if you didn’t have to? What if there was a kit with everything you needed for any adventure all rolled up into one grab and go box? Thankfully I have found such a thing!

This is to all the new adventure seekers, weekenders, those visiting from afar, and the budget friendly, just starting out, outdoorsy wannabe’s. Wannabe no more. Getting started is hard. I know first hand how long it took me to acquire every piece I needed or that I just wanted to have. Some were essential, others weren’t (like camp lights, a solar panel, or sleeping pad?) I know that last one sounds essential, but I just didn’t have one the first few times I went camping. Besides getting the gear you need, I replaced gear so many times until I had fine tuned every single piece to be the perfect piece for me and my needs, that took a lot of trial and error. Not everyone has patience for that either. Let’s say you have all the equipment needed for car camping, but suddenly you want to throw everything in a pack and head into the mountains! That’s great – if you want to carry 100 lbs on your back. So, now you need a whole new set of gear: a lighter tent, lighter sleeping bag, a backpack, a different stove…and the conundrum repeats itself.

Recently, I came across a local start up company right here in Portland, Oregon called Xscape Pod, which is the literal answer to your all-in-one gear rental needs. You can rent a box tailored to the single or double camper and backpacker at an affordable daily rate. Xscape Pod comes prepackaged with everything you need for your adventure (minus the food), delivered to your door, all in a self containing waterproof box. So when you jet off to camp all you need to do is enjoy nature. There will be no question of did we remember to bring that, or darn I didn’t realize we would need (fill in missing item of choice.) It’s happened to me more times than I’d like to admit. As an added bonus, if you fall in love with any of the gear included you can choose to keep it and they will charge you upon your return. This experience doubles as gear trial-and-error without the messiness of purchasing a full price item first, only to realize later you didn’t need it or want it. This Pod delivery service is seriously the easiest way to get into nature with minimal effort. I really love the idea of helping everyone spend time in the outdoors, even if you don’t own your gear that shouldn’t be something that holds you back, and I’m glad to say it doesn’t have to anymore. Now go, venture forth and explore the world!"

MATT

CUSTOMER, 2018

I'm a "city boy" no ifs,ands, or buts about it, but I still like getting out in nature. City life takes it out of you like a river erodes its banks - slowly. If you don't take a moment to get outside the city you could forget how relaxing and rejuvenating being outside the city really is. I went camping for the first time in a while. My girlfriend and I went with a group of friends to a campground in the shadow of Mt. Hood. Make no mistake, it was on theglampier side of the spectrum. We had a designated campground, stayed two nights, and went on a few day hikes (followed by sitting around the campfire cooking sharing stories). We had some of the essentials, but the expense of buying everything to "try out" camping again is nothing to scoff at.

The Xscape Pod was perfect for the "test run". We got everything delivered to us (super easy), and it contained everything we knew we needed as well as some other useful things we wouldn't have thought of. The best part was it was at a fraction of what it would've cost to purchase it all (only to risk having them live in storage for years after).

Speaking of storing, the icing on the cake was that while usually, you'd spend an hour or so cleaning gear to the standards of a hermetically-sealed surgical utensil, we didn't have to. Of course, we gave everything the once over before packing it up, but the gear is expertly cleaned for you after its returned. We got to use that extra hour at the site relaxing and exploring, which would've otherwise been dedicated to relatively intensive manual labor.

All in all, this city-slicker had a great experience in nature, came back from a three-day weekend with the feeling of a 7-day beach vacation, and will definitely be using Xscape Pod for our next camping trip. Once we go more than once or twice a summer we'll buy our own gear, but until then Xscape Pod is great for us."

ALEXANNE

CUSTOMER, 2019

Our group was ten humans and three pups strong, and we all had a really great time. My friends were very intrigued with the Xscape Pod and at first made comments like: “that’s a really, really great idea… if you’re a newbie to camping and don’t have gear” or “does that bag really have enough gear for three people? It must just have the minimum amount of gear because surely it couldn’t fit everything in to that pack…..” I kid you not, it wasn’t 15 minutes after everyone had setup camp that they started asking around for little things here and there that they had forgotten and every time, low and behold, my pod had what we needed! By nightfall everyone wanted to know everything I knew about Xscape Pod, how it worked, daily rates for certain packs, up to how many people the pods can accommodate for, etc. By morning my “newbie to camping pack” was now referenced by the group as, “hey AlexAnne, where’s your Mary Poppins bag? Didn’t you say you had a swiss army knife and a few headlamps?” It was pretty awesome. There were a few biz cards in the pack that I gave out to friends and the others jotted down your company name to lookup/research later. All in all, the weekend was amazing and I keep looking back wishing I had taken even more photos! Thanks again for allowing us to try out a pod last weekend, and keep up the great work in bringing that outdoorsy Mary Poppins vibe to us!"