Me Crying, Among Other Things

Great. Now in addition to all the pictures of me hiking naked on the Internet (that I put there myself), there's also video of me crying (while fully clothed). I've mentioned the story from the video on the blog before, and it's one of my favorites. In addition to just being a cool story, I find it really interesting in regards to my motivations for doing long hikes. Most of the time I tell people that I do long hikes to get away from it all, people included (in the Backpacker article, I put it in my typically crude terms and said I wanted to give society the finger, but I digress.) But then when I'm asked what my favorite experience was, it's never "there was this awesome sunset this one day when I was all by myself," it's always starts, "I met this cool guy," or "I met this cool lady," and goes from there. And the same goes for trail running. I love going and getting lost in Tilden by myself, but the comradery at races is awesome, and this even though I typically don't talk to that many people and feel like I'm younger than most other people out there. And I didn't party at all on the AT and was busy doing the PCT fast enough to finish in time for grad school, so I didn't really feel like I fit in, but now I think that thru-hikers are "my people," so who knows. Now I'm rambling.

Remember these awesome student reviews I got a while back? I was always suspicious it was at least partly because I said horrible liberal things like "I'm glad I'm in a union; they're the reason I have health insurance." And now I have a little evidence in favor of that--I got my reviews from last semester, and I was slightly higher than the department average for overall GSI quality.

Good ads. Vote NO on Prop 8.

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