My sister (Becca D.) and her "significant other" (Jeremy) have been working hard over the last year on an environmentally friendly small business called Atayne (http://www.atayne.com). As a business owner myself (Netarus and TeleArk) and Becca's brother, I'm really proud of both of them as it is a lot of work to get a business off the ground. However, from a purely unfiltered and unbiased perspective, I love the concept of providing products that are environmentally friendly and practical. I've personally seen in the past where many products are considered "green" but are overpriced and serve little or no purpose other than claiming that they are environmentally friendly. Don't even get me started on the whole natural versus organic debate... I'll leave that for another rant.

For Christmas, they both sent me a shirt that is made of recycled material. Being the curious person that I am, I wanted to try out this new "high performance environmentally friendly" shirt a little bit differently. Since it is a bit cold outside right now and instead of going running with my new shirt, I decided to take it out on the slopes and give the shirt a test drive while snowboarding. Yeah, it isn't running, which their Atayne promotes, but I think it works just as well while snowboarding.

First of all, the shirt that they sent me was an XL 4Rs POV Performance Top for Men - http://www.atayne.com/shop_mens_pov_4rs.html.

Here are some of my thoughts on the shirt:

• The shirt was very light and comfortable against your skin.
• The recycled material in the shirt is excellent at keeping moisture off of your body. I found that it was great at keeping my body cool while not sticking to the inside of the layered clothing that I had on while snowboarding.
• After doing a day-trip of snowboarding for nearly 8 hours straight at Snowshoe, I ended up keeping the shirt on even after sweating in it all day. I was quite surprised to notice that it dried out so quickly. However, I did have to put on an entirely new sweatshirt.
• Best of all, I do not need to wash it every single time I drenched it in sweat. They actually recommend that you only wash it every 6 to 7 times that you wear it. Even then, you can just rinse it out with water and you're good to go! Very nice feature for those single guys that are out there - less laundry, less time wasted... oh yeah, and even environmentally friendly because of all of the water and detergent you're not using. Now I just need my jeans, suits and underwear to be like that too!
• I even threw a sticker on my helmet while snowboarding - http://www.igottrashed.com. I didn't do the best job ever putting it on my helmet, but at least I attempted to practice safe snowboarding.

Overall, the 4Rs POV Performance Top for Men is a great shirt as an undergarment when wearing multiple layers of other clothing in the winter. I like how it kept the other layers that I wore off of my skin, which is really important when in the cold. Next, I need to try it while actually running. Well, maybe once it warms up a bit more outside.