(I’ve titled blog posts like this before. You have to know by now that I’m being a dork. And just in case any actual researchers are reading this, there are no drug spoilers in this post.) “Wanna go take drugs and sleep at 14,000 feet?” Dustin asked one afternoon about a month ago. Because this … More Doing drugs and sleeping high (for science!)
It never ever stopped raining last night. I hoped and hoped that it would do the same thing it had done in Namche and rain itself out so the skies might clear in the morning, but no luck. We dragged ourselves through breakfast and derped around while packing up our bags, but still, it didn’t … More Expedition Poke-Everest, Day 5: we get wet and don’t see any mountains
“Are there rules?” I asked Hobz, imagining how this would have played out if we had arrived to find six people already in residence.
“No pitching your tent inside the shelter,” he said. “That’s about it.” Stories he told us over the next few days would help me understand that, if we had turned up to find the shelter already full, we would have just asked everyone to scoot over and wedged ourselves in, sad little sardines on a wooden shelf. You get real cozy with strangers on the Appalachian Trail. … More Seven Days on the Appalachian Trail, Day 4: rain, moonlight, and sharing pants
We promptly stripped off every piece of clothing we were wearing, wrung five or six cups of water out into the trash can, then hung them up to dry. I then pulled my even-wetter backup outfit out of my backpack, poured about two inches of water out of the bottom of the backpack, and decided to go to dinner wrapped in a bedsheet. … More Seven Days on the Appalachian Trail, Day 1: there should be an ark around here somewhere?
We sat in the car, staring at our tent in bemusement for a few silent moments.
“Huh,” one of us finally said.
Our tent sat in the middle of a perfect circle of standing water, as if it had decided to grow its own moat. It was perfectly centered. I judged the moat’s depth at about two inches.
… More North Cascades National Park, where contradictory things went awry
Thither & Yon 