So you want to go hiking…

Hiking options are listed in A) order of nearness to North County and B) level of difficulty.

• Torrey Pines[1]: walk 1+ mile up the beach, climb the trail all the way to the parking lot/bathrooms, and then hike down if you want a decent workout.
• San Pasqual Clevenger Canyon Open Space preserve¹, both North and South trails, about 5 minutes past the Wild Animal Park in Escondido. I just discovered this area in spring and its pretty in a grassy hillside kind of way, and the north trail has a sweet ridgeline hike that you can extend as far as you want. This is a great, steep hike with views and a cool rocking chair at the top.
• Iron Mountain^{1, 2}; this is a pretty boring hike and not terribly long. But you’ll feel outdoorsy and its only ~20 minutes off the 15 in Poway.
• Mt. Woodson^{1, 2}; there are two ways to do this one, the long and short. The short is off Hwy 67 about 25 minutes off the 15 in Poway (past Iron Mountain); it’s a service road that starts at a fire station and is very steep. Once you’re used to it, you can bag the summit in about 30 minutes, but to begin with, expect an hour or so and pack lunch for the top. The long way starts at Lake Poway and it’s a real trail called the Fry/Koegel trail. My friend Mike Fry built most of it. If you start in the morning on this one, you’ll be done well after lunch. Both trails are pretty and have lots of really cool boulders (especially the service road option) so you might want to make a day of it your first time. You can hike it alone but its more fun with a friend.
• Cowles Mountain¹, [2], off the 52 in Mission Trails park in Tierrasanta. I think this hike is super boring but its convenient if you’re meeting folks from central or south SD, and at least it’s a real trail. There is a coffee shop at the bottom. It took us about 1 hour.
• Stonewall Peak in Cuyumaca¹. Drive up through Ramona and Julian and out to Paso Picacho state park. Cross the road and there is a bouldery summit towering above you; ~2.3 miles to the top I think, pretty steep, with some altitude (?5K”). This one looks easy but will surprise you with lots of huffing and puffing. The summit is fantastic, with corny old iron railing to keep idiots from falling to their deaths.
• Mt. Laguna¹. Same drive and parking spot as Stonewall. This a go-to localish hard training hike. It’s a paved service road to the summit but a respectable 3 miles, starting at ~5K” and rewarding you with some pretty huge views of SoCal. It’s the tallest peak in the SD area other than HotSprings Mountain or Palomar, neither of which have terribly good hikes. If you’re training for something bigger, go here with a loaded pack.
• Idyllwild: the following trails are all good and hard all-day kinda hikes:
  _Devils Slide trail[3] , (hardest permit to get, prettiest scenery). I think its about 6 miles one way up this trail to Tahquitz Fire Tower, which is a darn cool spot for a picnic and offers amazing views down to the village and out across SoCal. Elevation starts at 6500” so bring your lungs.
  _Desert View Trail³_ is another nice ?6? mile trail from the eastern flank of Tahquitz, and takes you to the fire tower too. The permit is easier to get but the trailhead is a little harder to find.
  _Suicide Rock³_ is an exposed, 10 mile dayhike to a less than rewarding view from the top of a popular climbing area. Some people dig this hike, not me.
  _Marion Mountain Trail³_ is the shortest route (about 6 miles one way) to the 10,400” summit of San Jacinto. It has big lovely fir trees most of the way and is murderously steep. Sometimes you will feel like just getting on all fours and crawling. It gets prettier the further you go. Crawl if you have to.
  _Fuller Ridge Trail_ is my favorite long hike in the area; ~17 miles, starting around 8600 feet from a remote trailhead up an 8 mile dirt road (near a _lovely_ carcamping campground). As the name implies, the trail hugs a ridge all the way to San Jacinto summit, dipping annoyingly around rocky blocks while teasing you with constant views of the summit as if it were just around the corner. Sweeping views down to the 10 and Palm Springs make you feel more like a breathless bird than a feeble human. The summit is a true accomplishment. Bring LOTS of water, and stop at ranger station in town for self-serve permit.
• San Gabriels: this front-range region has lots of shorter hikes with views of LA, but the more remote ones are every bit as rugged as the eastern Sierra. Here are my favorites in order of difficulty:
  _Bridge to Nowhere (East Fork of the San Gabriel River)¹: 5 miles one way with many stream crossings and some minor route finding to an amazing ! bridge ! spanning a deep gorge, built by the Army Corps of Engineers before a massive flood ripped out the road leading to it. Wear shoes that can get wet, and pants; start early, this takes all day.
  _Icehouse Canyon/Saddle¹ is a lovely, scenic family stroll alongside a river with waterfalls and swimming holes, for the first 3 miles. Then the trees end and the real work begins as the trail switchbacks through scree up to a barren saddle. From here you can do a short, steep dayhike up a use trail to the top of Timber Mountain, which offers eagle’s views of Baldy, Palmdale, and the 15. On the way down you can clean up at the swimming holes.
  _Mt. Baldy¹ via Manker Flats. Some folks use the ski lift and use the Devils’ Backbone trail, but this way is hard (considered one of the 10 hardest dayhikes in SoCal). The hike is steep and exposed but woodsy and you will feel like a mountaineer. Trail starts around 6K” and is roughly 16 miles round trip. The summit is not as nice as Gorgonio.
• Palm Springs Tram¹: for $20 you can start your hike at a gaspy 8K”. Lots of tourists come here because the tram ride and visitor’s center at the top are pretty neato. Venture a couple hundreds yards down into the forest, however, and the crowds vanish, because the next 2 miles of trail wind steeply up into high meadows and separate the wimps from the troopers. Then they table out and you make fast tracks for another couple of miles, and just when you feel like you’re going fast, then there’s that last 2 miles of uphill to the peak. I like this 12 mile roundtrip hike out to San Jacinto summit., but a lot of people fail it on their first attempt due to time. If you take the 9am tram and don’t dawdle on the way up, you’ll be back at your car just around dark. Bring cleanups and a change of clothes if you plan to partake of the fantastic eats in Palm Springs, its more Rodeo Drive than you’d expect. Also note the irresistible outlet shopping off the 10 in Cabazon. Note that the tram gets crazy busy around major holidays, and that the peak has snow (enough for skiing) after mid February. They have an outdoor shop that rents snowshoes and the like.
• San Gorgonio: this is a real mountain with no roads or trams shortcutting you to the top. The Vivian Creek¹ trail is my favorite route to the top at 16 long miles round trip, starting around 6500”. Bring hiking poles, and grimace through the evil first 1.5 miles, which are ridiculously steep, exposed, and generally IMHO ugly. You do this because it gets better from here: soon you come to a meadow area with a creek and bears. Yes, bears. Keep going and the trail gets awesome from here, switchbacking mostly at just the right angle to get you to the final, totally mountaineery-feeling last 2 miles in time for you to collapse in oxygen-deprived agony. If you bend over and stand up real fast, you just might faint, yay. The summit block at ~11,000 feet has all the arid, tundra like décor of a Sierras mountain, and often you’ll meet folks training for big stuff like Aconcagua or Shasta. Most people backpack it but as a dayhike, it’s a real doozie. There are other trails to the summit but this is the fastest one.

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[1] Requires no permit or permit is non-quote, self serve

[2] Can be hiked solo

[3] Requires major permit work, contact rangers

Moles

The outside world is far away though only feet outside these walls

Beaming and hot with the flashes of passing cars

Blowing trees, rising suns

Sweet and green with the smell of lawns baking in the afternoon

As running shoes clump softly by on stained pavement

A haze of smog drifts in from the buzzing freeway and the churning seaport downtown with its oil tankers and banana boats and cruise ships.

I am here in the dark

Brooding, clicking and pointing, scratching and scrabbling

In my box-shaped cube

An abstract concept to the glaring outside world

A mole in a dark burrow

Chewing on roots

Plotting and planning forays into the world

For choice nuts, juicy bugs, perhaps an apple core

Blinking black shiny eyes, passing time

Sending out furtive calls, grunts and squeaks

To the others

As we scurry and coil in these lonely dens

What will become of us at the end of this darkness?

Will we halt and freeze under the glare of all the relentless light and boundless space?

Will we be hypnotized mid-stride

Crushed like possums on the median?

We must pounce and spring with no hesitation,

run with determination,

alert with our wild tails waving

at the very moment the light hits our faces.

Being Wrong About All of This is Fine With Me Too

A couple of weeks ago it struck me how amazing Jack and I can be together sometimes (and by tradeoff, how aweful at other times)… preparing for some visitors, we had spent the whole weekend (him more than me) completely rearranging and cleaning and organizing our house, top to bottom. He emptied out the den and turned it into a lounge using mattresses where people could hang out, read a book, make out, sleep… no more officey cluttery mess. He dumped unwanted books, sorted random crap, and tossed loads and loads of old junk mail and other clutter. Mid-throes, he went upstairs and attacked the bedroom, rearranging the bed and making the entire room seem twice its former size. Suddenly sorting the laundry, putting away our clothes,and just hanging out got way easier. While he grunted and shoved and hoisted, I polished up the new den with fuzzy blankets, pillows, and fabric, vaccumed the whole house, and trucked clutter to proper cubby holes, trash cans, and recycling bins.  By the end of the weekend, we had a whole new house and all our things suddenly seemed much nicer — almost like we had new stuff too. Oddly, for the first time in months we both wanted to stay home rather than venture out to do wonderful things.

Then just today, I had a similar little wow-moment: we’ve been making all sorts of neat things in my new “sweatshop” (what used to be the spare bedroom) and preparing for Burning Man. Its starting to feel like every spare moment and thought is about the upcoming event/vacation, and we can see it stressing out and yet exciting everyone we know who is going. Wonderful things are happening to these people, almost as if the event has pressed some sort of creative “Go” button… folks who I know usually just go to work, party, and maybe go outside once in a while… now have a whole project they are working on that is keeping their minds chugging along like well-oiled machines at all times.

While doing some research to figure out where to find all our amazing Burner buddies at the event, it occurred to me, wow, what amazing thing this is, that so many many many of us shining, wonderful people, from all over the place, are all doing the same thing: spending an exceptional amount of time, energy, and money being terrifically creative and magical and gathering up and modifying and creating all sorts of things to bring hundreds and hundreds of miles out with us into this extreme desert landscape. All at the same time, we will all be experiencing this one-week Mad Max city in the desert, burning our trash, sunburning, and burning off anything we no longer want to spend our time on.

I’d be fine if every precious thing I pack is destroyed by the desert, up in smoke, vaporized, poof. All the fancy costumes, the elaborate camping gear, the checklists and sticky notes and precious things gathered in bins over months and months, the plastic bags from Walmart and Home Deport and Costco… used up, trashed, gone, in a landfill somewhere decomposing. Fine by me. I’d be fine if I even came back to an empty house like that Australian couple who gave away literally everything in their lives so that new things could come in. Totally OK by me.

Despite all this expenditure, I know that this is much more than just some lavish “taking up space” sort of thing. Its not like we’re preparing to just go get drunk on Lake Havasu, or ride ATVs on sand dunes with our cracks showing, or mindlessly cycle up and down a ski lift, or “get away from it all” and hide from the crowds down some long hard empty backcountry trail.This is a totally different kind of a vacation. Its going to take something out of all of us to make it happen. There will be personal sacrifices. There will be precious belongings lost or destroyed. There will be relationships tested and possibly broken. We will see everything we want to, and everything we don’t. Things will not work out. Things will also be miraculous. Every little thing will count.

All for a payoff. There will also be tremendous feats of engineering, artistic breakthroughs and accomplishments and inspirations that would never happen in any other setting, personal discoveries and journeys that could not be accomplished any other place on earth. I’ll be pedaling along on my own with nowhere in particular to go and I’ll find something someone created, a sculpture maybe, and I’ll be standing there in the middle of the Nevada desert, boiling under the desert sun, going, “Wow I never thought of that, now I have to go home and make ____.” Freakin’ awesome.

Forget about doing the same thing over again, its not going to happen. It might be impossible, in fact, for anything to be routine or predictable again… and yet, this is not about “tuning in and checking out,” or being some sort of blissed out love-drunk hippie, or about walking out on the normal parts of everyday life. This is about making all those everyday things richer and more unique, about making the mundane special again. And with all my Virgin Burner freshness, I’d like to think that its not going to happen ever again. I don’t want to be jaded, I like my naivetee.

But I know, nothing is what you think it is, and its never what you expect it to be either. Being wrong about all of this is fine with me too.

Favorite Hiking Gear Linkies

As you have probably noticed, getting into backpacking leads to an abnormal obsession with gear, much like scuba can be. You’ll notice that its very hard to turn hiker’s conversations away from gear when you’re on the trail… its a habit I describe as “backpacker busybody-ing.” I don’t want to support this terrible habit in any way and please, if I start doing it, please stop me! However, I do want to pass on anything useful I have in my bookmarks that might save you money, improve your kit, lighten your load, etc.. so here are the best shortcuts I have:

http://www.steepandcheap.com
This is an evil little spinoff of backcountry.com that sets up one uber-deal on some random thing at a time, and it sells till it sells out. The downside is, you will buy things sometimes when you don’t really need them, just because they are so cheap… and sometimes they’re not exactly the _right_ thing, if you know what I mean.

http://www.spadout.com/wiki/index.php/daily_deals
I luv spadout.com in general. Its a really neato search engine for gear geeks who want the very best price on something very specific. The page linked above, however, summarizes daily awesome deals into categories so it enables you to browse a bit more, rather than just zooming in on the one and only thing you want. They also have some of the very best gear reviews I’ve ever seen.

http://www.campmor.com
The gear on this site tends to be slightly lower-end (like what a boy scout troup might want) but sometimes they have awesome deals. I’ve seen the best prices on clothes and shoes here.

http://www.mgear.com
The gear on this site tends to be high-end and specialized. They are great for really oddball, neato stuff. Sometimes they have uber sales. Just wait till the item has lost that “new kid on the block” shine.

http://www.backpackinglight.com
This is an ubergeeky ultralighter’s heaven. They review and sometimes sell really weird ultralight gear, which is often limited production and hard to find.

http://www.sierratradingpost.com
This is the randomest, oddest site I have. They sell everything from high end to low end, past season to new hotness, housewares to sensible shoes to mountaineering boots to kayaks and the occasional bicycle or canoe. They tend to have extremely low prices so if you’re up for rummaging, you can find some great stuff. Be careful, however, that you don’t get something that is _almost_ what you want because its cheap.

http://www.geartrade.com
This is a real deep dive. Its kind of like if most of the online gear stores took their discontinued, returned, and old merchandise, and got together to make a sort of gear-ebay baby. Individuals can sell used stuff too. You will find _incredible_ deals here, and score big if you find exactly what you want. I picked up a $110 pair of hiking shoes that I _knew_ I wanted (tried them on in a store) for $30; they were a store return and had never been worn. Beware, however, that sellers like backcountry.com do not combine orders so you pay a flat shipping fee on each item.

What a root canal might feel like

OK so I had a “classic root canal” last week. If you’re wondering what a root canal is like, here is my story, but it might be different from yours.

I had a filling that cracked and had to be re-done several times, making the hole so deep that a root canal was inevitable. After a weekend of mind-numbing pain (which I thought was a hangover headache but turned out to be tooth related), I woke on a Tuesday morning in so much pain I literally couldn’t think or problem solve. My dear Jack woke up, struggling to think himself, and finally issued the wise decree, “Go to the Dentist.” So off I went; I was so uncomfortable that what follows was by comparison not nearly as painful.

After anesthetizing (injection high in the gum area), the dentist put this cool rubber ring thing around the tooth to keep all the yuck out of my mouth while they worked. It was hard for me to see around it. He drilled out the filling very quickly, and then used these funny, flexy, wirey thingies to scrub the nerve tissue out of the root canals in my tooth. He showed me an Xray of my tooth (a molar) where there are 3 canals of nerves. These have to be cleaned out and packed with strands of some kind of inert, pink material whose name escapes me. That means I have no more nerve there and its basically a tooth root, on top of which they will overlay a nice, shiny, indestructable crown (once its healed). So after much vigorous scrubbing and some minor drilling that felt like it was in my brain, the new canals were filled with the pink filaments and then a flat, white filling was packed in over the whole shebang to “build up” my tooth to house the eventual crown. The weirdest part was the scrubbing. I see the dentist’s delicate little tweezers go back and forth, getting different size “scrubber” thingys, and then there would be a rubbing sound and I’d feel a little shooken, and then spraying cold water and vaccuming it out, and repeat. This took a long time, maybe 35 minutes. I felt bad for the dentist, it seems like a lot of work. The hygienist put little props up when my jaw got tired so I didn’t have to hold it open any more. I felt like I had 4 hands deep in my head sometimes, scrubbing and rinsing and drilling. The drilling was the second-weirdest, since its so deep in the tooth. I think it is just to thoroughly clean out the root canal and prep the surface for the new synthetic packing material. The drill tips were very small and all the drilling was very short and not that scary “big scrapey” sound you hear sometimes when you’re getting a filling.

So once the area was packed and the “crown buildup” filling was done, then the dentist smoothed the area and I was suddenly done. My mouth was tired and I felt kind of light-headed, but I went to work anyways. As the anesthetic wore off, I could feel my weird, half-finished tooth, all sharp on the edges and flat and kind of grainy across the molar surface. I kind of felt like I’d had major surgery in my mouth, like when I had my wisdom teeth removed. Later on the pain continued, only because I was really messed up and so I had to go on antibiotics. But at least I could think. Yay Ibuprofen!

Here’s the deal

seated at the same desk
at the same job with the same people
who hardly talk to each other
munching candy for a sugar rush
that will hopefully stave off the inevitable afternoon coffee binge
that will keep us from falling into drone sleep before the end of the day

dressing in costumes so we look like what we are supposed to be
desperately trying not to eat those stale donuts
dessicating in the break room next to the coffee we are trying so hard not to drink
the donuts that will add to our pudging waistlines because we sit in the same place almost all day
and we don’t have time to exercise anyways
because if we took enough time to do these things
or do all our errands
or just finish the laundry
or finally visit our relatives in Turkey
or finally organize the garage full of things that we really don’t have time to use anyhows
or just brush the cat once in a while
or get around to redesigning the living room
or the guest room that is always empty anyways because nobody has time to come visit

we might be discovered
our cover might be blown
and we will be exposed for the “non-workerbees” that we really are
and our bosses and our coworkers would see through the false veil for once
and then we might lose this parody of a job
and not be able to afford all these things that we actually shouldn’t have anyways
and don’t really have the time to use in any case

and then we’d have time
to get enough exercise
and do all our errands
and just finish the darn laundry
and finally organize the garage full of things we really will have time to use now
and brush the cat from head to toe maybe a couple times a week
and totally redesign the living room so you can actually sit down and enjoy it with a cup of cardamom tea
and maybe even the guest room, which might have guests sometime if they ever get fired too and have time to come over

and we’d be happy and healthy and we would see sunshine and birds would sing

but then of course we wouldn’t get to keep all those nice things for long

and pretty soon we’d have to go sign up for another parody job so that we can get paid not to do all the things that we won’t have time for
so we can get paid to just keep showing up and then
we can barely pay our bills and then its off to work again

even a hamster on a treadmill can learn to enjoy the round and round

its not that I hate my job, we all can learn to put up with them
its not really that bad, even a monkey can learn to enjoy playing the cymbals
its just that we would really all rather so something else
that’s the nature of work; if you are getting paid to do something
chances are that someone else really doesn’t want to do it

careful with those donuts they are packed with trans fats
have you allocated your 401k properly?
does Bernie in accounting have swine flu?
did I forget to pay for my carbon offsets this month?
is my chair ergonomically adjusted properly so I’m not damaging my spine?
then how come my back always hurts?
and how come my eyes have trouble adjusting to natural light at the end of the day
what’s happening to the pygmys on the other side of the planet?

hey wait a minute
why did we all sign up for this charade in the first place
isn’t the whole point of being civilized so that we can have a better life
but this is a parody of a better life
I don’t see anything better about it

no seriously

standing in the snow waiting for my commuter subway to take me back to work again
wearing that outfit that makes me look like a good employee
the shirt that I wouldn’t be caught dead in at a party
the pants that make me look like somebody’s mom
the shoes that are nice but not too noticeable or dramatic
so I can walk calmly and undetected down the hall to the breakroom
and try not to drink too much coffee
and struggle not to eat those stale donuts as they stare back at me reproachfully

what am I doing here?
when I’d much rather sleep in
fold my shirts in a nice orderly fashion with the fun ones on top
completely sort my socks and underwear by ROYBGV
spend a whole hour doing my hair until I finally get it the way I like it
write something clairevoyant about pygmys on the other side of the planet
cook a meal using only orange things and broccoli
paint a picture of naked people smiling
plaster the entire ceiling with pictures of the places that I want to visit
write a list of the things I want to do in my life on a huge whiteboard in stinky permanent marker
sew a flamboyant cape with a fringe and swoop around on the roof in it
build a fort out of junk mail and christmas lights
practice putting out candles with my fingers
get certified for driving old passenger busses on windy South American dirt roads
perfect my yodeling so people actually enjoy it

maybe this work thing really is a crappy idea and
maybe the other people here in the cold and wind
at the noisy nasty sludgy subway station think so too
and maybe we can all just agree all at once to stop doing this silly thing and
go do something else and to hell with it all

just for a while
wouldn’t it be nice?

Graduation Speech

Welcome to your final day as a college student, and congratulations on your achievements. I am honored to be a part of it, and I greatly appreciate your patience as you stand on the verge of numerous celebrations involving libations, gifts, and accolades from friends and family.

There are only a few specific moments in life that in themselves designate such a radical life change as college graduation; I would consider your conception, age 21, and official retirement to be among those few unique moments in life. When I was asked to speak on this momentous occasion, my first instinct was to assemble a concoction of pithy quotes from people who are more notable than me, and to then send you forth into the world fortified with this information. Then it occurred to me that you probably already ready all the pith you can handle and the last thing you want is more mind-boggling, complex, and intelligent ideas in your already packed minds. So rather than annoy your overstimulated brains, I decided to share with you the only “Big-Thinking” that I could imagine might entertain, delight, and boggle you in new and unexpected ways:

I have chosen take this incredible moment to look ahead at the world as you will alter it.

Now that you have completed higher education, attended all those courses, read all those books, selected a major, researched a career, and pondered all those deep thoughts, it would be natural to assume that you know what you want to be when you grow up.  I remember thinking during my graduation that I had already grown up, and that I was a part of the wonderful world of grownups and all the complex, serious activities that are part of that mysterious world.  In the decade that followed my graduation, however, it became clear that I had barely begun my grownup phase. In all seriousness, graduation begins that inquiry: what does it really mean to be a grown up, and is it all its cracked up to be?

Let us consider, then, what we have always known of the grownup world: grownups do important things that matter to the world and to the people around them. They make careful decisions about life, the planet, and their offspring. They protect, create, instill, and passion. They are the backbone of this our sometimes fragile economy and society, the cornerstones on which future generations build. They vote, they drink, and their lives unfold in all the drama of a Greek play. If these are qualities we consider essential to being grown up, then surely being a grown up means that we must be somehow extraordinary, and that whatever we end up doing after graduation should in some way point towards us entering the ranks of the grownups. Coming from the other side, let me give you a short glimpse into your exciting future.

None of you will do exactly what you think you are going to do: you will carry your fresh knowledge into the world and you will try to deposit it into a respectable career that matches your major, but be assured, sticking to any plan will be mostly impossible (if not mediocre). Most of you, however,  will be blessedly, frighteningly surprised by the very first encounter you have with grownup world.

You will launch into unexpected careers that may have little or nothing to do with what you just graduated from studying; you may become something you never imagined, and looking back (years later), you will marvel at the many curves, ups, and downs of the road stretching into the past.

You will all end up doing things that at this moment may horrify you; allow that even this is part of that inevitable change that comes from stepping into the world of grownups. You will end up doing things that your mother wouldn’t want to see you doing. A few of you (hopefully none of you) will throw it all away, living ordinary, unremarkable, monotonous, and repetitive lives with no thoughts of the Extraordinary or of the great big Future, and for these few, life will dwindle and wither until all that remains is bare existence, taking up space and breathing, consuming resources, milling around on this crowded planet with no particular destination, eating, cleaning, messing up, working, marrying, birthing, buying things, using them up, throwing them away, going places and then coming back, all input with no output, all equations totalling zero. Some of you will take up an extraordinary amount of space, such that your old classmates might never recognize you. I admonish you now, always check that this sad future is not becoming yours. Don’t just take up space, whatever you do. One day,years from now, I can only hope that if this is what you become, you’ll be sitting in traffic, or at the mall, or in front of your TV, or eating a sandwich, and somehow you’ll remember these words, you’ll remember that everyone in your graduating class actually planned on becoming Extraordinary in some way, and you’ll somehow change and resolve to begin making a difference in the world, even if it is only small. That butterfly flapping its wings on the other side of the world still had to begin metamorphosis from a crusty old crysalis.

A few of you, by contrast, will live charmed, rather super lives; you know who you are: you are those lucky few who always seem to be in the right place at the right time, for whom everything seems to come together, the blessed proteges of Karma herself. You will achieve storybook greatness: you will improve life on a broad scale for masses of people; you will set an example to follow for the history books; you will serve your country; you will save rainforests, endangered species, and lives; you will fix widespread problems like hunger and disease; you will be loved, revered, even famous.

Most of you, however, will achieve greatness on a much less obvious scale: you will experience and share great joy; you will discover in yourself unexpected talents and reserves; you will create and inspire in ways that are expressly human; you will believe in yourself, in others, or even in a higher power to a degree you never thought possible. Some of you will be lucky enough to move far across the globe, experiencing more of life and the grownup world than the rest of us, and I hope you’ll send us all postcards.

No matter who you are right now, eventually, you will experience the mundane, the bizarre and surreal, and the knife edge of fear. Your personality, appearance, and daily routine will change dramatically from year to year. Sometimes you will forget who you were, or worse, who you are, or better, you will simply lose yourself completely in what you are doing and that in itself will transform you.  You will try strange foods and substances. You will attempt things that are mentally or physically incredibly difficult, and perhaps some of the time, you will accomplish, overcome, and share your experiences with the world. You will take on too much responsiblity, or not enough. You will become obsessed, or totally unfocused. You will overcome, and you will falter. You will battle illness, sorrow, your spouse, your children. You will love passionately, profoundly, spiritually. You will sustain crippling self-doubt, self-pity, self-loathing. You will have regrets, you will lose hope. There may be days when you can’t look yourself in the mirror. Hopefully, the trials of life will only mold and enrich your character; after all, isn’t it all just AFGE (Another Fucking Growth Experience)?

When it really comes down to it, isn’t that really what this moment here and now is? Only this time, this AFGE is especially wonderful and strange and entirely too exciting to even capture in a graduation speech. Here we all are, in these caps and gowns, experiencing this moment together, and years from now, I can only hope that you remember this moment and all the optimism and idealism and naivetee that made you think that every single one of us is going to become Extraordinary. And maybe, if you all remember it well enough, maybe you will.

No get out of here and go do something extraordinary!

Gear Smackdown: Backpacking Fuel-Miser Stoves

There are basically 2 backpacking stoves contending for the top spot as “the bestest” at fuel economy/weight, cooking speed, and convenience: the JetBoil Personal Cooking System (PCS), Primus ETAExpress. I haven’t found any thorough, accurate comparisons online and people I backpack with keep hypothesizing and opining about which is better … so instead of arguing on the trail or trying to conduct scientific tests when I’m not a scientist, I’ve decide to write down the known, scientific facts (plus my personal experience with both systems) for comparison.

Note: One other stove might be compared to these but really is apples and oranges: the MSR Reactor. While it is a similar stove, its capacity is almost double of these (2L pot) so its really an official group cooking system and should be compared with the 2L Jetboil Helios.

Summary:

• JetBoil wins for best marketing/branding. Besides, its cuter.
• Primus wins for performance.

Jetboil Facts:

• Weight (for entire cooking system: pot + stove + lid): 15oz
• Max power output: 4500 BTU/h
• Boil time (2 cups/half a liter): 2 minutes, 42 seconds
• Fuel Consumption (a max output): boils 11 liters per 100g fuel

Notes: You can boil about 3 cups max, or .75 liters, at a time in the JB. This is OK for one person, however, the typical freeze-dried backpacking meal calls for 2 cups of boiling water so for more than one person, you will have to boil at least 2x at dinner time. You can use other pots on the JB stove but the heat efficiency drops slightly.  Also, the flame is very focused so frying or simmering requires constant watching, stirring, etc.

So, what makes the Jetboil so popular?  Marketing. Yep, sorry folks, its simply more advertising dollars/brains at work. The Jetboil’s water capacity is such that they can say you “cook dinner in 2 minutes,” but actually, that is technically for just 2 cups, which is half the cooking performance of its competitor, which was tested on a full liter.

Primus ETA Express facts:

• Weight (for entire cooking system: pot + stove + frypan/lid + windscreen): 14.7oz
• Max power output: 8500 BTU/h
• Boil time (4 cups/1 liter): 2 minutes, 30 seconds
• Fuel Consumption (a max output): 14 liters per 100g fuel

Notes: The way this stove was tested adheres to the standards by which all backpacking stoves are tested: by boiling a full liter in typical conditions (no wind, at medium altitude/temperature).  The key in comparing this stove to the JB is that the JB is tested at boiling half the standard amount of water since it cannot in fact hold a full liter. Note that the boil time for a full liter is lower than that for the JB’s half liter. Additionally, the Primus has a broader flame, enabling more even cooking for frying and simmering, and it makes other, larger pots fit stably on the stovetop easier than the JB PCS. What is most curious is the overall fuel efficiency: the Primus has almost double the BTUs, which must mean that at max output, it is probably losing some of its efficiency, however, in total it still adds up to this: the Primus uses less fuel to boil more water than the JB PCS (it can boil 3 more liters on the same amount of fuel), which is the key to its winning position. Additionally, the Primus kit includes a 1 liter pot you can fill to capacity and a small frypan/lid (which is almost too small to use but makes a great bowl/plate).

So, why isn’t this stove more popular?  Crappy marketing in the US. Primus is not an American brand and is actually distributed by a third party vendor. Their target market, where they already have some brand recognition, is definitely not the US. They rarely have endcap displays in American camping stores, they do not have the flashy packaging, and its hard to get a look at their whole product line anywhere. You’ll only see one or two of their products at a given retailer, and this alone makes them less brand-recognizable. They also don’t do a very good job of providing specs on their products so most of this info is second-hand from REI or other user reviews.

14ers

I guess this is an addendum to the Life List I posted earlier. Below are the 14ers in CA. Those with “*” are done, those without are star-bellied sneetches.

*Mount Whitney	14,505	California	Sierra Nevada
Mount Williamson	14,403	California	Sierra Nevada
White Mountain Peak	14,246	California	White Mountains
North Palisade	14,242	California	Sierra Nevada
*Mount Shasta	14,179	California	Cascade Range
*Mount Sill	14,162	California	Sierra Nevada
Mount Russell	14,086	California	Sierra Nevada
Split Mountain	14,064	California	Sierra Nevada
*Mount Langley	14,028	California	Sierra Nevada
*Mount Tyndall	14,018	California	Sierra Nevada
Mount Muir	14,015	California	Sierra Nevada
Middle Palisade	14,012	California	Sierra Nevada

Wild by Numbers

Marcy wiped her dusty palms on dusty pants, rubbed her eyes, and blinked, looked again. There they were, still, those numbers, replacing the leaves on all the bushes on the hillside along the hot, dry trail. Hanging in clumps, rustling softly in the hot breeze, just like leaves, but not leaves. 5, 97, 981, 53. These were definitely numbers, all in the same, plain, nondescript sans-serif type, black characters on familiar, dull grey-green backgrounds in leaf-like shapes. She kept walking, not wanting to confess that she was hallucinating something so odd to her hiking buddies, most of whom had been chatting lightly at the start of the hike but since had fallen silent and contemplative. The scrabble of their boots on the caked clay and pebbles was the only sound, but not enough to distract her from this bizarre vision. It was wondrous and terrifying to her all at the same time. Looking down, not thinking, not even trying to make it happen or not happen, it did… in the river-rock sedimentary conglomerate that was showing in bare spots along the trail and underfoot, all she saw was numbers, numbers, numbers. Each stone, its own special number. 17, 23, 9, 105.

Mary had always avoided math. It was a religion she didn’t believe in. She used calculators to handle anything bigger than 3 digits. That she was seeing numbers was contrary to everything she new, it was as odd as a fish walking into a bowling alley. She wouldn’t balance her checkbook, or add up the numbers on her cell phone bill, or estimate her taxes, without a calculator. Numbers were usually dull and meaningless to her, an annoyance she barely tolerated because she had to. But these numbers, these were easy and natural for her. Stone-shaped, leaf-shaped, tree-shaped numbers, numbers clumping in tall copses in the far distance where there used to be a simple stand of trees, numbers towering high to the left a few hundred yards away where there used to be rocky cliffs. These were the real thing, these numbers meant something to her, they were physical and real and everywhere. 1095, 3, 807, 11. Long and tall, these numbers made sense to her, the way flowers and streams and clouds made sense, prime and clearly calculated from the immutable core of the earth. The mystery of math was laid plain, a hard science became soft and alive and real in front of her. A tree made of 11s and 6s wavered in the breeze; of course they were 11s and 6s, how could they be anything else?, that is simply what that tree was, beneath all the color and softness, that is what the tree added up to, was reduced to, that was the hard and soft science of it. There was no question in her mind now, that these numbers, dancing alive before her, spattering the real world like paint on a fence, these numbers made all those unpleasant college courses in calculus and statistics seem even more ridiculously pointless and shallow. This was the heart of the matter, where it all came together, boiled down, added up.

For the rest of the blazing day, 7.6 miles of stiff-legged, mostly uphill walking, Marcy walked in numberland. When her friends stopped, talking, pointing at peaks to climb the following day, at fine green swales of undergrowth, lush with flowers, at glaciers hung in high swaths above treeline, at jagged passes beckoning on the horizon, she would nod, smile “uh-huh,” but she was calculating and counting, adding and subtracting, multiplying and dividing, quietly. Square roots rippled from every footfall, constants streamed from her brow, and Marcy felt like she was seeing, really seeing, the world as it really was for the first time. The earth was more alive than her most vivid memory, thrumming and humming and seizing with integers, performing elegant, complex equations at blinding speed, sending out number after number and swallowing them back in as quickly, as if everything were coated in a simple, perfect logic that had always been there. A spray of columbines on a talus slope burst out in lolling zeroes and ones; she saw 9s and 6s in nodding strands of larkspur that crowded a meadow, and small yellow flowers carpeted a hill in squat, smiling little 5s. Geometric patterns sizzled and eddied along rock faces and riverbeds, roiling into quadratics and polynomials like storms rising from an infinite sea, mountains piling high in rifts and drifts of ever-simplifying variables, solving and re-solving for X and Y. Oddly, it was all making perfect mathematical sense. Aside from the fact that she was seeing things.

That night Marcy was quiet in camp, withdrawing into herself as her tired compatriots cooked their meals and softly mumbled about the next day’s plan to climb some crack system to the summit, hardly noticing her silence, assuming she was tired. After what must have been hours of stargazing (2, 44, 36, 84, 2292), Marcy forced herself to get some rest. The Numbering was so new and exciting and entirely unsettling, she couldn’t bring herself to explain what she was experiencing. Maybe it would pass by morning, some wild reaction she was having to altitude, it had to be. Besides, she was exhausted from the hike. She slept at the edge of rational numbers, drifting madly in and out of expressions like a coefficient in the midst of being solved for pi.

.01, .34, .2368, 2.2035, 5⁴

The next morning, however, the Numbering was still there, on everything, a nerdy numeric coating on every rock and tree limb and patch of heather. It followed her throughout the day, up a canyon and through a ravine to a chute under a towering pinnacle. She concentrated furiously on tying into the rope that would protect her from falling during the day’s climb, as the rope curved and rolled into slithering 3s and 2s and a knot of 753. Concentrating on each move, Marcy took a breath and set about climbing, calling out the usual commands to the other climbers just as always, moving from one granitic 458 to another slab of 235123 carefully and steadily, saving her energy. As the climb increased in difficulty, the math slowed down, moving one equation at a time now. Over the steady clink and tinkle of numbers solving and unsolving for Y, she heard herself breathing deeply, steadily in the thin air, focused now more than ever before in her life. Then she knew, suddenly, and in a panic, what she had to do: she had to run herself all the way to zero.

So Marcy pushed herself to the limit. She suddenly began to climb as hard and as fast as she could, shouting at her belayer to manage, take her off belay if he had to, whatever! She clawed up the 1123s and 324s, the land falling away below her, thousands of feet, all numbers, she pushed and clawed, lept and cried out at the pain. Her friends far below watched in horror as she dragged the loose rope up behind her, ascending pitch after pitch of steep, loose rock, sometimes losing her holds and footing and scrabbling somehow higher, sometimes barely hanging on with a hand or a finger. A tiny figure on the towering massif above them, she lunged and convulsed her way up the steely grey monolith. There was something dreadful and operatic about the whole scene, like something staged or special effects or CGI. Her heart raced, her breath ragged now, she hitched and sobbed with rage and elation and the strangest sadness all together, beaded in sweat that now felt almost cold to her exhausted body, numb to the blinding pain wracking her body. Her fingers bled, nails cracked, skin torn on elbows and knees, shins scraped and lumped with thudding flesh and bone against hard rock. She had never been so tired, so scared, or so altogether sure of something in her life. Her mind raced madly as the numbers wiggled and frayed, blurred together, then re-sorted, like figures on a spreadsheet, the columns reordering and calculating at dizzying speed under her hands. She could see the summit block now, just a few hundred feet above her. Normally, this climb would have taken her all day. She would have been among the last in her team to reach it, methodically, safely picking her way through the route, clipping into every anchor to rest and regroup, carefully managing her rope, belaying her companions, taking her turns on the ascent, calling out the commands like a rock-climbing robot in perfect sequence. But not today. Today she had to do what she had to do. This was different. This was an emergency. Her forearms and calves ached and burned and spasmed, cramps shuddered through her thighs and back, and she knew she was almost finished. She pulled herself up on a ledge of 7s and 2345s, hooked a near-dead hand into a crack the color of a coalmine, and realized, hovering over the sweeping chasm, her companions just colorful specks far below, that she had made the countdown to zero, and at last the spell was broken.