March 15th, 2003 was not a terribly notable day in history – Hu Jintao was elected President of the People’s Republic of China, a role he would serve in for ten years, the World Health Organization issued warnings about a pneumonia of unknown cause – SARS. In my personal history, it’s the kind of day …
Our host at The Discerning Hiker dropped us off at the Pidgeon River Bridge, right where he picked us up, and I started hiking. I had pretty good cell phone service, which we didn’t have at the hostel, so I took advantage of that to make some phone calls while I was hiking. While I …
Weight is a huge thing in backpacking. If you’ve ever been car-camping, you probably filled your trunk up with whatever you needed (a cooler, a campstove, a tent, sleeping bags) and didn’t have to think much about weight. In backpacking, it is the opposite. There’s an art of packing for a backpacking trip, and you …
I read Looking For Alaska in 2007, when I was 14 years old. I loved it, and I read the rest of John Green’s books when they came out, and I asked my dad to drive my brother and I to Ann Arbor so we could see Hank and John on tour in 2008. I’ve …
When I first heard people moving in the shelter, it was still dark out. Knowing that we had a long day ahead, the group of section hikers who were in the shelter the previous night had planned to start hiking early in the morning, getting up around 5 and getting on the trail at 5:30. …
I woke up, having slid to one end of my tent, the side further from the trail. I packed up my tent and sleeping bag, leaving my sleeping pad out. I took down my bear bag, sat on my sleeping mat, and made oatmeal and coffee for breakfast. I changed into my other pair of …
I have COVID. I’ve been getting COVID tests pretty regularly, starting in mid-December. Several people who I work with have tested positive in the past three weeks, so I felt like it was only a matter of time until I got it. Given that we’ve been in this pandemic for two years, and we’ve been …
I love 99% Invisible. I’ve been listening to the podcast since my freshman year of college (which was in 2011, which…was ten years ago. In other news, I am elderly now.) The book is a series of stories about different pieces of the built world – different design elements that show up in cities, in …
I was talking with a co-worker yesterday, and he mentioned that when he did his undergraduate degree in social work, he had to do practicums, and he was working with people who were victims of crimes, mostly domestic violence and abuse. He said that the part that was hard to see, and what eventually made …
It’s been a while since I’ve written anything, and WOW, life has changed a lot since the last time I wrote anything here. The last time I actually wrote something and published a post, it was early January. The pandemic was at it’s height, members of congress were the only people who could get vaccinated …