Jeff

haha - I enjoyed your deserved putdown of my little comment. From your picture, you certainly don't look funny to me, and if you were to see what I generally wear, you'd know I'm not very fashion-conscious.

For the techno-record, we have three black diamond trekking poles. A matched pair and a sinlgle one, which also has the little screw thingie on top, to use it as a camera monopod.

They are very good poles, and I can find no performance difference between the shock absorbing ones and the non-shock absorbing single.

I still plan on only using one pole, and not two, at least for the foreseeable future.