I'm having kind of a sucky month. I'm busy as a one legged man in an ass kicking contest. I keep forgetting things (like my visa bill, apparently). I keep being ungraceful. I was freaking just walking yesterday and tripped on a ROCK and was laid out on the ground. The chiropractor says I now have whiplash.
I'm pretty much ready for February to be over.
Showing posts with label things that suck. Show all posts
Showing posts with label things that suck. Show all posts
Thursday, February 23, 2012
Monday, January 30, 2012
In which I have a very Monday Monday
Oof. What a crappy day I've had. But first, weekend recap.
DeLee and I drove out to the Ruck Friday night and basically just had a continuously good time all weekend. I do have a desire to change some things about how the Ruck works, but I don't know how to do it while keeping it at the same facility. (Note that I'm not in charge of the Ruck, so it's not my decision to do any of this. I'm just whinging. ) Bears Den is small. The living room is where talks are held, and it also holds the front door, the entrance to the kitchen, and the entrance to the dining room. You can't talk in the dining room without being heard in the living room because there is no door in between. And the kitchen is tiny.
I have a strong dislike for "you're my captive audience and I'm going to preach at you about how you need to act, or how I need your help, or something else you don't want to listen to" sort of talks. This ruck had a LOT of that. I absented myself (mostly solo), but there was no place where several of us could have gone to talk amongst ourselves. (Other than the sex-segregated bunk rooms. I did retreat there on more than one occasion to have conversations with other women.) There needs to be a "hallway track" like there is at technical conferences. If you're there to make friends, or catch up with old friends, you need a space where you can actually talk.
I'd also like more talks that are interesting to me - trail social norms and behavior, gear discussions, techniques to work on your conditioning at home, and trail cooking. If people want to learn about various trail organizations, or how to mark trail boundaries, that's fine. But that's not what I am interested in.
That said, I did have a very good time and I enjoyed catching up with hikers. Oh, and I was Friar Tuck this time! Seeing as how I'm a gearhead and have had multiples of every possible item, I figured I was well qualified to make suggestions on people's gear. We tuckerized four packs, and I hope the hikers took away some ideas on how to lighten their loads.
Sunday DeLee and I arrived back home around 10:30, 11 AM. I spent the afternoon working on moving some hiking gear into the sunroom. A lot remains to be done but I was glad to make some progress.
I plan to get out to see Pluto while it's warm and sunny, maybe tomorrow.
Okay, so my crappy day today. I scheduled an outage to do a system software upgrade to our Pillar Axiom 500. It is our primary NAS server. If you aren't a computer nerd, it's a type of computer that other computers connect to for files. It's kind of like an attached disk drive, except it lives in another room. And all the other computers can see it too.
The upgrade went just fine, until it was done and I was checking the three filesystems on it. They were all offline. I had manually set them offline because I have no way to quiesce activity to them from all their clients. The upgrade wanted to have very little activity on the filesystems. Hence offline. It's what we did for the last upgrade. This time, however, they introduced a twist. The new version of the operating system does not include "online" or "offline" commands. I had no way to online them! Tech support went back and forth for hours. I missed the end of my five hour outage window. Finally, I got a call asking me if they were REALLY offline, or just LOOKED offline? Doh! I hadn't checked that! I took the OS's word for it. They were in fact online and fully operational.
They're coming out with an update to fix the issue. In the meantime, I recommended they revise the installation notes to caution customers not to take filesystems offline prior to the upgrade. Sigh.
While this was going on, I felt a little dry eyed so I reached for my eye drops. As soon as they went in my eye, I felt an intense burning. My eye drop bottle is the same size, shape, and color as my water flavoring bottle. The flavor was orange - hence citric acid. And it's in an alcohol base. Good golly that hurt. I rinsed my eye out thoroughly, used the eye drops, and decided to store the water drops in the fridge from now on. Oy. My eye and eyelid still hurt.
I had other, unrelated technical problems at work today as well. Data not coming in correctly from a spacecraft, software not installing. With the stress of it all I was hungry and tired. I still am. And now I'm going to bed. Good night.
DeLee and I drove out to the Ruck Friday night and basically just had a continuously good time all weekend. I do have a desire to change some things about how the Ruck works, but I don't know how to do it while keeping it at the same facility. (Note that I'm not in charge of the Ruck, so it's not my decision to do any of this. I'm just whinging. ) Bears Den is small. The living room is where talks are held, and it also holds the front door, the entrance to the kitchen, and the entrance to the dining room. You can't talk in the dining room without being heard in the living room because there is no door in between. And the kitchen is tiny.
I have a strong dislike for "you're my captive audience and I'm going to preach at you about how you need to act, or how I need your help, or something else you don't want to listen to" sort of talks. This ruck had a LOT of that. I absented myself (mostly solo), but there was no place where several of us could have gone to talk amongst ourselves. (Other than the sex-segregated bunk rooms. I did retreat there on more than one occasion to have conversations with other women.) There needs to be a "hallway track" like there is at technical conferences. If you're there to make friends, or catch up with old friends, you need a space where you can actually talk.
I'd also like more talks that are interesting to me - trail social norms and behavior, gear discussions, techniques to work on your conditioning at home, and trail cooking. If people want to learn about various trail organizations, or how to mark trail boundaries, that's fine. But that's not what I am interested in.
That said, I did have a very good time and I enjoyed catching up with hikers. Oh, and I was Friar Tuck this time! Seeing as how I'm a gearhead and have had multiples of every possible item, I figured I was well qualified to make suggestions on people's gear. We tuckerized four packs, and I hope the hikers took away some ideas on how to lighten their loads.
Sunday DeLee and I arrived back home around 10:30, 11 AM. I spent the afternoon working on moving some hiking gear into the sunroom. A lot remains to be done but I was glad to make some progress.
I plan to get out to see Pluto while it's warm and sunny, maybe tomorrow.
Okay, so my crappy day today. I scheduled an outage to do a system software upgrade to our Pillar Axiom 500. It is our primary NAS server. If you aren't a computer nerd, it's a type of computer that other computers connect to for files. It's kind of like an attached disk drive, except it lives in another room. And all the other computers can see it too.
The upgrade went just fine, until it was done and I was checking the three filesystems on it. They were all offline. I had manually set them offline because I have no way to quiesce activity to them from all their clients. The upgrade wanted to have very little activity on the filesystems. Hence offline. It's what we did for the last upgrade. This time, however, they introduced a twist. The new version of the operating system does not include "online" or "offline" commands. I had no way to online them! Tech support went back and forth for hours. I missed the end of my five hour outage window. Finally, I got a call asking me if they were REALLY offline, or just LOOKED offline? Doh! I hadn't checked that! I took the OS's word for it. They were in fact online and fully operational.
They're coming out with an update to fix the issue. In the meantime, I recommended they revise the installation notes to caution customers not to take filesystems offline prior to the upgrade. Sigh.
While this was going on, I felt a little dry eyed so I reached for my eye drops. As soon as they went in my eye, I felt an intense burning. My eye drop bottle is the same size, shape, and color as my water flavoring bottle. The flavor was orange - hence citric acid. And it's in an alcohol base. Good golly that hurt. I rinsed my eye out thoroughly, used the eye drops, and decided to store the water drops in the fridge from now on. Oy. My eye and eyelid still hurt.
I had other, unrelated technical problems at work today as well. Data not coming in correctly from a spacecraft, software not installing. With the stress of it all I was hungry and tired. I still am. And now I'm going to bed. Good night.
Monday, January 23, 2012
In which my day is both boring and terrifying
Oh good gravy. Today was a day. I'm not really sure how to describe it, but I'm exhausted. It was the sort of day where you have to snatch a minute just to be able to pee. Or eat. I never did find time to get water, so all I drank all day was my lukewarm half liter of water left on my desk from last Friday. That helped me out with not having the time to pee.
First work was closed until 10. I, of course, had set the alarm early so I could get up and shut down the server room prior to our electrical outage. But before I did that I had to email, text, and phone call people to find out if the outage were really happening, what with the ice and the late opening and the liberal leave policy.
After I got there and had already started shutting machines down, I found out that the person who had to sign off on the last piece of paperwork to allow the work had not actually signed it. A remedy was found for that, and I continued shutting down machines.
The work I was going to do while the power was out didn't happen, because the machine I needed to do it on, broke.
Several machines that weren't supposed to be turned off were, because I was mistaken about where their power came from.
When the power came back on and I started booting things, not all of them came back to life. So I spent six hours standing in the cold aisle (which meant cold air blowing up my pants legs) of the server room, persuading them to boot. Or, alternatively, crouched in the hot aisle, persuading them to boot. So I'm frozen and now my quadriceps don't want to work.
So you will understand when I explain that I'm really tired and I have nothing interesting in me to say today.
Good night.
First work was closed until 10. I, of course, had set the alarm early so I could get up and shut down the server room prior to our electrical outage. But before I did that I had to email, text, and phone call people to find out if the outage were really happening, what with the ice and the late opening and the liberal leave policy.
After I got there and had already started shutting machines down, I found out that the person who had to sign off on the last piece of paperwork to allow the work had not actually signed it. A remedy was found for that, and I continued shutting down machines.
The work I was going to do while the power was out didn't happen, because the machine I needed to do it on, broke.
Several machines that weren't supposed to be turned off were, because I was mistaken about where their power came from.
When the power came back on and I started booting things, not all of them came back to life. So I spent six hours standing in the cold aisle (which meant cold air blowing up my pants legs) of the server room, persuading them to boot. Or, alternatively, crouched in the hot aisle, persuading them to boot. So I'm frozen and now my quadriceps don't want to work.
So you will understand when I explain that I'm really tired and I have nothing interesting in me to say today.
Good night.
Wednesday, October 26, 2011
You go to heck, Wednesday. You go to heck and you die.
Eff you very much, Wednesday. You go eff yourself. You go to heck. You go to heck and you die.
So I guess you're wondering how my day was?
My day started with going into the tiny room that is filled with computers and some kind of undoubtedly toxic grainy black dust. My job was to change the IP addresses of all the computers while somebody else put in a new switch. I lost track of how many people popped into the room to attempt cheerful conversation with me while I was struggling to A) get any effing thing to work, and B) not punch their larynx into a fine paste against their spine. For future reference? When I'm trying to fix things is a really bad time to talk to me. I can think hard or I can talk. I can't do both at once. And when I need to think hard and you make me talk? It stresses me out.
When I stress out is when the bad things happen.
Every one of the machines had something different going on. One had a keyboard in Finnish. The keys were in the wrong places, and some of the keys had four symbols on them. I could only get two symbols to work for any given key. Then, when I finally managed to type in my name and password? IT SWITCHED KEYBOARDS. It thought I was now using an American English keyboard. It didn't say anything to me about it.. it just assumed the letters were on different keys.
The one to its left had a wireless mouse and keyboard, and the batteries in the mouse had died. Also, it had no real GUI interface. It came up with a blue screen and a mouse pointer. That's it.
The next two were basically okay, but although they are supposed to be identical, one thought its mouse was right handed, and one thought its mouse was left handed.
The one on the end had a black screen. I had to power cycle it to get it to come up with anything I could see.
I spent three hours in that room, just changing IP addresses. The guy who had ordered the change stopped by to tell me he hadn't realized it was such a big deal just to change some IP addresses. REALLY? WHEN IT HAD TO BE SCHEDULED SO FAR IN ADVANCE, AND GOT DELAYED OVER AND OVER BECAUSE OF ISSUES? Oh, he's so lucky he still has that larynx.
Also, while I was doing all this, somebody came in with a sticky note with a password on it. Right then, while I was busy and getting crankier by the moment, is when somebody decided was a good time to hand me system administration duties on another computer.. which also needed its address changed.
Once I finally got back to my office, I spent the entire rest of the day trying to iron out problems resulting from the addresses changing. Which meant finding the two small typos in any one of several dozen files, checking and doublechecking firewall rules on each computer and the network based firewall, and wondering why the machine that was running at 1 gig on the old switch was now running at 100 megabytes, half duplex, on the new switch. And of course having many, many collisions. As it turns out? Solaris 9, specifically with the particular network interface this machine has? Doesn't really do network configuration like any other version of Solaris, or unix that I'm familiar with. Which doesn't explain why it wasn't working, but DOES explain why it took me nearly an hour to verify that it was running at 100hd. And, it explains why when I tried to fix it based on the mode average of all the advice I found on google, the machine took itself right the hell offline.
Not that it matters. Not that it was talking to something OUT IN SPACE, OR ANYTHING.
Oh, right. Crap.
So I guess you're wondering how my day was?
My day started with going into the tiny room that is filled with computers and some kind of undoubtedly toxic grainy black dust. My job was to change the IP addresses of all the computers while somebody else put in a new switch. I lost track of how many people popped into the room to attempt cheerful conversation with me while I was struggling to A) get any effing thing to work, and B) not punch their larynx into a fine paste against their spine. For future reference? When I'm trying to fix things is a really bad time to talk to me. I can think hard or I can talk. I can't do both at once. And when I need to think hard and you make me talk? It stresses me out.
When I stress out is when the bad things happen.
Every one of the machines had something different going on. One had a keyboard in Finnish. The keys were in the wrong places, and some of the keys had four symbols on them. I could only get two symbols to work for any given key. Then, when I finally managed to type in my name and password? IT SWITCHED KEYBOARDS. It thought I was now using an American English keyboard. It didn't say anything to me about it.. it just assumed the letters were on different keys.
The one to its left had a wireless mouse and keyboard, and the batteries in the mouse had died. Also, it had no real GUI interface. It came up with a blue screen and a mouse pointer. That's it.
The next two were basically okay, but although they are supposed to be identical, one thought its mouse was right handed, and one thought its mouse was left handed.
The one on the end had a black screen. I had to power cycle it to get it to come up with anything I could see.
I spent three hours in that room, just changing IP addresses. The guy who had ordered the change stopped by to tell me he hadn't realized it was such a big deal just to change some IP addresses. REALLY? WHEN IT HAD TO BE SCHEDULED SO FAR IN ADVANCE, AND GOT DELAYED OVER AND OVER BECAUSE OF ISSUES? Oh, he's so lucky he still has that larynx.
Also, while I was doing all this, somebody came in with a sticky note with a password on it. Right then, while I was busy and getting crankier by the moment, is when somebody decided was a good time to hand me system administration duties on another computer.. which also needed its address changed.
Once I finally got back to my office, I spent the entire rest of the day trying to iron out problems resulting from the addresses changing. Which meant finding the two small typos in any one of several dozen files, checking and doublechecking firewall rules on each computer and the network based firewall, and wondering why the machine that was running at 1 gig on the old switch was now running at 100 megabytes, half duplex, on the new switch. And of course having many, many collisions. As it turns out? Solaris 9, specifically with the particular network interface this machine has? Doesn't really do network configuration like any other version of Solaris, or unix that I'm familiar with. Which doesn't explain why it wasn't working, but DOES explain why it took me nearly an hour to verify that it was running at 100hd. And, it explains why when I tried to fix it based on the mode average of all the advice I found on google, the machine took itself right the hell offline.
Not that it matters. Not that it was talking to something OUT IN SPACE, OR ANYTHING.
Oh, right. Crap.
Monday, May 16, 2011
Why can't horses just go ahead and be invulnerable as well as strong?
Oh for pete's sake. I couldn't wallow in the joy of my vacation for ONE FULL DAY? No. No, disaster had to strike right away.
At first I didn't think it was my disaster, and I was totally sympathetic. I heard through the grapevine that a friend's horse colicked. I tried to get in touch with her but couldn't, so I grabbed a sleeping bag, a pad, some snacks, and some water, and I drove out to the farm to trade off turns walking the horse around. Unfortunately, by the time I got there, the horse was dead.
Yeah, that was a cheerful reunion.
I expressed my sympathies, gave hugs, and decided to go check on my own pony while I was there. I got out a soft brush and started grooming him. In the fading evening light, I admired his sleek new summer coat and thought how good and healthy he looked. And then because it was that time, I got the worming tube out and started to give him his dose. He, of course, resisted a little bit. He threw his head up in that defiant "NO!" horsey posture. As one does. And then I saw it.. a dark area under his jaw.
"Are you fucking kidding me?" is what I thought. But no, no. No kidding. Explodey horse head, round three. Blood, pus, and other yucky things which it was rapidly becoming too dark to see were hanging out in the vicinity of his formerly, if briefly, intact lymph node.
I called the vet. Then I called the vet's cell phone. Then I texted the vet's cell phone. You should be proud of me, I didn't use profanity in any of those attempts.
Best case scenario at the moment is that she'll prescribe a round of a different kind of antibiotics, and they'll work. And no more pointless cultures, because we've tried that multiple times and learned zilch. Though she is of course the expert, not me, so if she really wants to try another culture I'll pay for it. But I'm expecting a big fat zero in the "things we learned from this test" results.
Anyway I was sad, then I was miffed, then I was worried, and now I am waiting to hear back from the vet.
So how was your day?
At first I didn't think it was my disaster, and I was totally sympathetic. I heard through the grapevine that a friend's horse colicked. I tried to get in touch with her but couldn't, so I grabbed a sleeping bag, a pad, some snacks, and some water, and I drove out to the farm to trade off turns walking the horse around. Unfortunately, by the time I got there, the horse was dead.
Yeah, that was a cheerful reunion.
I expressed my sympathies, gave hugs, and decided to go check on my own pony while I was there. I got out a soft brush and started grooming him. In the fading evening light, I admired his sleek new summer coat and thought how good and healthy he looked. And then because it was that time, I got the worming tube out and started to give him his dose. He, of course, resisted a little bit. He threw his head up in that defiant "NO!" horsey posture. As one does. And then I saw it.. a dark area under his jaw.
"Are you fucking kidding me?" is what I thought. But no, no. No kidding. Explodey horse head, round three. Blood, pus, and other yucky things which it was rapidly becoming too dark to see were hanging out in the vicinity of his formerly, if briefly, intact lymph node.
I called the vet. Then I called the vet's cell phone. Then I texted the vet's cell phone. You should be proud of me, I didn't use profanity in any of those attempts.
Best case scenario at the moment is that she'll prescribe a round of a different kind of antibiotics, and they'll work. And no more pointless cultures, because we've tried that multiple times and learned zilch. Though she is of course the expert, not me, so if she really wants to try another culture I'll pay for it. But I'm expecting a big fat zero in the "things we learned from this test" results.
Anyway I was sad, then I was miffed, then I was worried, and now I am waiting to hear back from the vet.
So how was your day?
Wednesday, December 1, 2010
That's enough drama for this week, thanks
The last two days have been just a little too real for me.
First we had to off our cat. Who, admittedly, was only going to live a day or two longer anyway, but it was still traumatic.
Then I got the call nobody wants. The farm owner. "It's about your horse." The dreaded C word. Colic. I drove home, ran upstairs to put on warm clothes, ran downstairs, grabbed a few essentials, and drove like a bat out of hell for the barn. It was pitch black out when I got there. I saw eyes reflected in the field. Sergio had Pluto up and walking, but the horse kept trying to go down. NOT GOOD. I thanked Sergio and took over so he could go inside.
JD and I walked Pluto to the arena where we could turn on the lights and walk him around in a cleared area. And that's what we did for a really long time. A couple of calls to the vet, texts and phone calls to friends, and a lot of walking. Finally Pluto's gut relaxed and he stopped trying to dive for the ground.
Liza was a real lifesaver. She came and got JD. I wasn't thinking too clearly when we left the house or I'd have asked JD to drive a separate car. But, I didn't. So she drove him home, then he got supplies and came back to meet me again.
In the meantime I had put Pluto in Mystery's stall (1)(which was hay-free, unlike Pluto's) and was watching him. I took him out for several more walks, but he was looking a lot better. When JD arrived with food for me, Pluto begged goofily for it. And I'm pretty sure he would have eaten that burrito given the chance.
JD went on home, but I stuck around until eleven per the vet's recommendations. At 10:30 Pluto finally drank some water, which was my last worry taken care of.
As I drove away, Pluto shook his head at me angrily. I'm pretty sure I'm going to pay for locking him up alone at night with no hay. Oh yes. But I don't mind too much.. as long as I still have a horse.
1) A stall which I will be cleaning thoroughly after I let Pluto out. Anybody know where the fresh bedding is?
First we had to off our cat. Who, admittedly, was only going to live a day or two longer anyway, but it was still traumatic.
Then I got the call nobody wants. The farm owner. "It's about your horse." The dreaded C word. Colic. I drove home, ran upstairs to put on warm clothes, ran downstairs, grabbed a few essentials, and drove like a bat out of hell for the barn. It was pitch black out when I got there. I saw eyes reflected in the field. Sergio had Pluto up and walking, but the horse kept trying to go down. NOT GOOD. I thanked Sergio and took over so he could go inside.
JD and I walked Pluto to the arena where we could turn on the lights and walk him around in a cleared area. And that's what we did for a really long time. A couple of calls to the vet, texts and phone calls to friends, and a lot of walking. Finally Pluto's gut relaxed and he stopped trying to dive for the ground.
Liza was a real lifesaver. She came and got JD. I wasn't thinking too clearly when we left the house or I'd have asked JD to drive a separate car. But, I didn't. So she drove him home, then he got supplies and came back to meet me again.
In the meantime I had put Pluto in Mystery's stall (1)(which was hay-free, unlike Pluto's) and was watching him. I took him out for several more walks, but he was looking a lot better. When JD arrived with food for me, Pluto begged goofily for it. And I'm pretty sure he would have eaten that burrito given the chance.
JD went on home, but I stuck around until eleven per the vet's recommendations. At 10:30 Pluto finally drank some water, which was my last worry taken care of.
As I drove away, Pluto shook his head at me angrily. I'm pretty sure I'm going to pay for locking him up alone at night with no hay. Oh yes. But I don't mind too much.. as long as I still have a horse.
1) A stall which I will be cleaning thoroughly after I let Pluto out. Anybody know where the fresh bedding is?
Monday, November 29, 2010
Good advice which you will probably not take*
Internet, I am about to give you some good advice.
If you can avoid it, never move a data center.
That's pretty much it.
Moving a data center sucks in many ways. Such as that it has made me hurt all over. I am going to continue hurting all over until I get to see my chiropractor. And that is not going to be for a while, because tomorrow the move continues. Only now it's boxes. And chairs. And coatracks. Doesn't really matter what, it's stuff that has to be managed. Plus I have to continue dealing with the fallout of the move.
The good news is that I will have put in my 80 hours for the pay period by sometime Wednesday, so it seems likely that I am getting a four day weekend this week. And that's without having used holiday hours for Thanksgiving. So four day weekend PLUS extra paid time off at Christmas. Yay!
And all I had to do is work until I was too tired to think and too sore to walk right.
Anyway, Internet, I wish you all the best. I am going to go to bed now, and likely snore very loudly. I apologize for the inconvenience if you live nearby.
PS I wore my shirt right side out and front side to the front today. Unlike yesterday. I'm starting to wonder if I have some kind of self-dressing disability.
*Because you probably don't have a data center.
If you can avoid it, never move a data center.
That's pretty much it.
Moving a data center sucks in many ways. Such as that it has made me hurt all over. I am going to continue hurting all over until I get to see my chiropractor. And that is not going to be for a while, because tomorrow the move continues. Only now it's boxes. And chairs. And coatracks. Doesn't really matter what, it's stuff that has to be managed. Plus I have to continue dealing with the fallout of the move.
The good news is that I will have put in my 80 hours for the pay period by sometime Wednesday, so it seems likely that I am getting a four day weekend this week. And that's without having used holiday hours for Thanksgiving. So four day weekend PLUS extra paid time off at Christmas. Yay!
And all I had to do is work until I was too tired to think and too sore to walk right.
Anyway, Internet, I wish you all the best. I am going to go to bed now, and likely snore very loudly. I apologize for the inconvenience if you live nearby.
PS I wore my shirt right side out and front side to the front today. Unlike yesterday. I'm starting to wonder if I have some kind of self-dressing disability.
*Because you probably don't have a data center.
Saturday, November 6, 2010
Glad I'm sleeping indoors tonight
It's chilly out today. I'm decked out in high tech fabrics, but not for hiking. I'm going out to ride the horse later. Still, the clothes make me think about hiking. And the cold makes me remember the not so good parts. I can (and probably will) name a bunch of things I dislike about backpacking, and yet I crave it. I'm looking at maps and wishing I could thruhike again. Perhaps enumerating the dislikes will help me be happy with dayhiking and short trips.
In the order that they occurred to me:
Being cold while trying to sleep. This SUCKS. On the other hand, once you get warm it's awesome. But I've spent nights awake because I was too miserably cold to sleep.
Slippery rocks. These can show up anywhere. They sucker me in. They *look* dry and normal, but you put a foot on them and it's like you stepped on a banana peel. Sometimes you know it's slick but there's no other way around (large tilted rocks at the tops of ridges, usually*) so you just hope for the best.
Eating trail food. The gorp and bagels are only fun for so long. Then you want real food.**
Missing your family and friends. Oh lord. This sucks. If you get in with a tight group it's not so lonely, but if you're by yourself all day and all night? Yeah. Miss them bad.
Stinky clothes. Stinky backpack. Stinky tent. The clothes smell good for about three minutes after you wash them, then they reek again. A wind blowing past your armpits can make your eyes water. It's embarrassing to get caught in an enclosed space with non-hikers, because you know they're wincing away.
Nope. Still want to hike. Dang!
In the order that they occurred to me:
Being cold while trying to sleep. This SUCKS. On the other hand, once you get warm it's awesome. But I've spent nights awake because I was too miserably cold to sleep.
Slippery rocks. These can show up anywhere. They sucker me in. They *look* dry and normal, but you put a foot on them and it's like you stepped on a banana peel. Sometimes you know it's slick but there's no other way around (large tilted rocks at the tops of ridges, usually*) so you just hope for the best.
Eating trail food. The gorp and bagels are only fun for so long. Then you want real food.**
Missing your family and friends. Oh lord. This sucks. If you get in with a tight group it's not so lonely, but if you're by yourself all day and all night? Yeah. Miss them bad.
Stinky clothes. Stinky backpack. Stinky tent. The clothes smell good for about three minutes after you wash them, then they reek again. A wind blowing past your armpits can make your eyes water. It's embarrassing to get caught in an enclosed space with non-hikers, because you know they're wincing away.
Nope. Still want to hike. Dang!
 |
| *Kind of like this. |
 |
| ** |
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)