Can a Smartphone Really Replace Your Camera? The Best Pens for Your EDC The Sexy, Mind-Bending Supercars of the '70s The 25 Best Places to Travel in 2017 Editor’s Note: This post has been updated with our picks for 2016. You can still find last year’s picks on page two. There are many styles of camping. Some people go off the grid in Patagonia. Others park their trailers in a lot. But no matter what, every camper likes to take a load off. As a result, the market for camping chairs includes everything from heavy, relatively luxurious chairs to ultralight chairs that can slot into a pack. These are our favorites for kicking back outdoors. Additional contribution by AJ Powell. More Sports and Outdoors Released earlier this year, the Helinox Chair Zero is the lightest four-legged camp chair on the market. It weighs in at just over a pound and offers a seating height of 11 inches. The Chair Zero is also extremely easy to set up, with one shock-corded pole for assembly.
Evrgrn’s collaboration chair with Pendleton is perfect for those who splurged on Pendleton’s Airstream trailer, but really, it’s at home in any camp. It features a Pendleton jacquard print that dates back to 1910, folds up easily, and weighs in at a surprisingly light (for a rocking chair) 5 pounds. If you seek ultralight performance in a camp chair but still want a fun print, Alite’s Four-Legged Mantis is the way to go. The San Francisco-based company offers a lifetime guarantee on its camp chairs; if you ever have an issue with one, simply send it back, and the brand will repair or replace it. When it comes to portability and packability, the Quadra is tough to beat. It packs into its own base, which is roughly the size of a tennis ball canister, and when unpacked, it can hold up to 300 pounds. Setting it up is a little bit more involved than other chairs on this list, but you get more than you give. The Crazy Creek Hex 2.0 is dead simple, and that’s a good thing.
It consists of one piece of fabric folded at a 90-degree angle and held together by two nylon straps. It’s the most affordable on the list, as well as the lightest, coming in at 21.9 ounces. It has less parts to break, and has been a mainstay in the packs of lightweight backpackers for decades.The Ultimate Portable Folding Stool w/ Backrest by TravelChair The Ultimate Portable Folding Stool w/ Backrest and Adjustable Height by TravelChair The Ultimate Slacker 2.0 by TravelChair GCI 360 Sports Stool Oak Portable Folding Camp Stool Deluxe Folding Stool by Blue Ridge Chair The Quik-E-Seat by GCI Outdoor TriLite Folding Stool by Byer of Maine The Packseat Portable Stool by GCI Outdoor Steady Walkstool Accessory for Super Heavy Duty Walkstool Comfort Gold Medal Director Chair Style Folding Stool The Portable Folding Stool by TravelChair The Sidewinder by TravelChairI am starting law school in August. I am excited about school and my career plans.
I did notice a problem when I was touring the school, however. All of the classroom seats are at long tables with chairs attached to the table supports. The chairs have no legs of their own, they just swing out from the tables. I’m a large woman and I could barely wedge myself into a seat during the school tour. By the time the tour’s mock class was finished, I thought I was going to faint. I don’t know how I am going to survive day after day in class with those chairs. I am sure that the school would provide an alternative to a student in a wheelchair. Can I ask for something similar, and how would I ask without embarrassing myself and the school? Aunt Fattie is an agony aunt, not an administration aunt, so she forwarded your query to a friend who is an expert in college administrative rules and regulations: the wonderful Lesley of Fatshionista. Lesley suggests that you think of this as a matter of accessibility, not just a matter of fat: “There are lots of reasons why some bodies need easy-access chairs, and being fat is just one of them.”
You avoid embarrassing yourself by realizing that you have nothing to be embarrassed about: you are making a perfectly reasonable request, reasonable not only for you but for many other people in many other bodies. Of course fat is a fraught issue, and even those of us who love and accept it can find it awkward to relate to other people in a way that highlights our fat, knowing what their sentiments might be. This post on Fatshionista perfectly sums up the experience. But you are not asking the school to praise your fat, to understand your fat, or to support your fat — all of which can be time-consuming, difficult, and intimate journeys. You are asking only that they accommodate your fat. This is their job. Lesley suggests that you start by having a conversation with an understanding instructor; they may not have considered space issues in the seating, and should be interested in helping. If your instructors seem more distant or unhelpful, or if you simply haven’t had time to get to know them, Lesley suggests that “a conversation with the school’s disability services department may be in order.
If it’s something as simple as making sure there’s an armless chair (or two or three — the person asking should also keep in mind that other folks might take an armless chair for their own reasons if one is made available, and she may have to willing to call dibs), they should certainly be able to make that happen. Also, once the student has established a relationship with this office, she can ask that accommodation be made for ALL her classes.” At first blush, it may appear somewhat unfortunate that asking for help from the disability services department seems to cast fat as a disability. Because disability still has negative cultural associations, some fat activists bristle when fat is considered a disability — it’s rhetorically counterproductive, when you’re trying to argue that fat people are in no way hindered by their adipose tissue. But, like other so-called disabilities, your fat is a disability here only in context of what you’re being asked to do. In and of itself, it is not a problem, but in a context where you are being asked to squeeze into a tiny seat, it is.
As with other physical and cognitive differences, the disability services department exists only to minimize the discrepancy between what you can do and what you’re being asked to do — not, thank goodness, to arbitrate whether your particular idiosyncrasies are desirable or not. Lesley warns, though, that “the helpfulness and effectiveness of disability services can vary dramatically by school, so your mileage may vary.” Lesley agrees that embarrassing the school is probably best avoided, not to mention unlikely to be effective: “When I was a grad student facing horrible seating — before I knew I could even ASK for accommodation — I would either hijack a chair from another classroom, or sit on the floor. Admittedly, I expect law school is probably less understanding of an angry fat girl sitting on the floor in protest of painful seating than my program was.” Luckily, you know that you can ask for accommodation, and that this asking should embarrass no one. The school does not want you sitting in a seat that will endanger your health and your ability to learn;