Luffys "steam" is cause by rapid vaporisation of his bodily liquids, extreme sweat if you like, and since we all know that sweat is a way for our bodies to cool down i dont really see how making himself sweat, thus losing body heat, would ever help against a guy whos entire power is all about freezing (sweat = liquid -> massive advantage for aokji).
I'm pretty sure he did. He mentioned to Blueno that he had been thinking about ways to get stronger ever since Aokiji defeated him. The way I see it, Luffy had been toying around with ideas for training regimens or power-ups since his loss to Aokiji, and had possibly come up with something like Gear. Later, while he was stuck between those 2 buildings after fighting Lucci in Iceburg's house, he came up with two ideas for Gears that he thought would work well, and used them. He DID say on the train that he had a new attack he wanted to try out. I think that he was referring to Gear. He'd been thinking about how to get stronger for a week or two, and came up with a good way earlier that night. I know, not quite as spontaneous as usual, but for something like Gear, even Luffy would take a bit of time. It's not like using Gomu Gomu no Gatling and rotating, like he did to form Gomu Gomu no Storm, it's a completely different level of fighting, and that would take some time, though a week is still a pretty short time to come up with something like that. And he probably didn't slowly evolve the concept of Gear either, he probably only just came up with the idea of what actually ended up working as Gears 2nd and 3rd between the buildings. I'm sure he didn't come up with them during the train ride, because he put meat in his pockets right at the beginning of Volume 39, which I think means that he had already come up with Gear 2nd. So he did plan that. And he was about to use Gear 3rd on Blueno before Blueno collapsed, so he probably came up with that on the train or between the buildings too.
I was agreeing with you. And yeah, what you said is basically my post in a nutshell.
Actually, no that you mention the extreme sweat thing, sweat is indeed liquid, but warm liquid. Not only that, it is salty. Both of these are known to melt ice. That combined with the steam thing, I have got to admit that there is potential there. I'm not saying anything definite seeing as how Aokiji has already proven he can freeze massive quantities of water if he wants to, but hell, an icy arm suddenly heated from the inside moving out with warm liquid, salt and steam. You never know, Oda works in mysterious ways.
~ Luckas
