i could’ve easily gotten up and walked away but i didn’t
do the emoji have to breed with the same emoji? how many of each emoji are there?
does every phone have to go through this? what made that one kid’s phone different? or was this same thing going on everywhere which is how the weird emoji showed up on girl’s phone?
what made twitter so special that it could be used as a mount? if kid had evernote would it be a rideable elephant?
there were so many trolls in the hacker part of the phone. how were they all present? are they incarnations of real people who were trolling on the internet? how have they gained sentience?
after just dance got deleted the dancer lady was in the trash and she looked in a bad way. does she have sentience or was she programmed to act that way?
the 👸 acted in many different ways. it seemed like the emoji that didn’t portray emotions were doomed to make puns about their own form for eternity. how was she different? does she also have the malfunction? can it manifest in different ways?
why am i like this tho
there is one bit that i still remember from this viewing. the three main characters arrive in candy crush tm and the meh emoji falls into the game board in place of one of the candies. he then gets crushed and actually dies. then it is revealed to just be the musings of one of the characters about what would happen were the meh emoji to be crushed.
the details before and after the actual imagined violent off-screen death are blurry. the crushing caught me so off guard and grappled my full engagement and still lives with me.
The road out of Casa de Luna was treacherous. When i shipped out the clouds still hung low around the mountains and i foolishly climbed up into them. I was so itchy after a zero in Hiker Heaven and Casa de Luna but i did not know what i was asking for. A few days apart from the sun and man i was getting gloomy.
The trail even tried to provide, with a cozy little cave that i took a meaty nap in after partying to Hollaback Girl, which i’m sure there’s a video of somewhere. The nap didn’t take though, every mile between Casa de Luna and Hiker Town was a struggle.
if my soul had a biome it’d look like this but be like 30 degrees warmer
Thankfully the sun returned to me and i got to dry out all my soaked gear and also just sit in its love. The next morning i got into Hiker Town.
there’s a little cat statue on the roof but the lighting is meh also i’m only okay at pictures
The whole place felt kind of like the fake city from Blazing Saddles. Almost every building had a nasty mattress in it. They had also been fostering a rivalry with another hiker oasis that i don’t remember what it’s called. Vibes in Hiker Town were odd to be sure, thankfully i only stayed for a couple hours. Also i got a mystery box from Scout that was pretty legit.
there are a lot of cats that show up here at night allegedly
Up next was the aqueduct. I’d put in a picture of the elevation profile but i already loaded the next section in my guide and i can’t be bothered. It was mega flat tho, straight through a valley pictured below. Most people opted to night hike that section because of the harsh sun on the valley floor coupled with the 16 mile water carry. I headed out to the 24 miles at around 4.
i had a very good time not walking on this because we ain’t supposed to
We started next to an open aquaduct, moved to a pipe, and then walked along the concrete top of the aquaduct for many miles. The whole time i was walking for pleasure and not for business. I cranked some Carly Rae followed by both Fun albums. I brushed and flossed for a solid .4 miles. I threw on the Doctor and played guitar for a good hour or so. The sunset was behind me so i had to keep hiking backwards which slowed me down a bit, and at 10 i crashed out.
despite their imposing size their voices were high pitched and squeaky
The next morning i entered the valley of giants. We snaked through these beasts as they slowly woke up and turned their faces into the building winds.
joshua trees are legit thoi got to eat in this one’s generous shadow
I took a gnarly 2 hour nap under a small bush at high noon to try to dodge some of the relentless desert heat.
this campground claimed to be a bar and grill, it had seating and an umbrella so that checks out
Yesterday morning i was a gentle 18 away from Tehachapi. After 10 miles i rolled up to Patient Zero smoking in the back of a trail angel named Rachel’s car. They recruited me to stay in town at her place for the night and slackpack the other 8 between there and the next road crossing.
we was in tha back
Of course i did. We watched Two Towers last night and gave out 14 beers on trail today as we slackpacked sobo 8 lovely miles through the largest wind farm in the states. It was real cool but i didn’t bring my phone with me so no pictures sorry instead here’s a dog sitting on Patient Zero
there was rejoicing
pct firing on all cylinders
the cave post-casa was a delightful spark. the hike that day difficult. the following day with big sun and cold wind, perfect for the descent to the desert expanse.
hiker town sure was neat. shoutouts to trail drama i guess. hard considerations to prune that section, so i did lol. i sat outside of one of the mini buildings in the shade during the crushing heat of the afternoon drinking beer with hikers.
the aqueduct made my soul feel large; big big energy
dude i love wind turbines so much. i’m at a loss for words when it comes to how they make me feel to be in their company.
i see you hauser all up in the front seat of the ride.
i’m glad and sad that i don’t have any pictures of just how many giants live in that wind farm valley. i’m only sad that i still can’t put words to what they do to me.
an evening arrival, an improper greeting. leftover dinner, colorful clothing, and a headlamp tour of a forest labyrinth of a tent city.
a cloudy misty morning and the allure of a zero day. my gas station espresso bar latte had scorched milk, that barista didn’t aerate it not one bit. screeeaming
under those canopies i sang and played. the rains pittered and pattered. voices in rounds ‘song about rain!’ ‘song about distance travelled’ like it is right now, this i proclaim
i sang american pie. i replaced the one line with the weird al version as always ‘the battle droids were broken.’ i sang the weird al version next, more hikers singing along that time. luv u monster
recordings from this session also exist. guitar was too quiet. the gadget classic
one year passes – the angels of the moon house announce it is their last year blessing the pct. time’s arrow…
The next day i hit mile 400. Everyone got super jazzed about it i guess since there were 5 signs of rocks and pinecones commemorating the occasion.
Just after that i wound up at Camp Glenwood, this cute little cabin that some cool dads were building for various scout adventures. They gave me a postcard and a beer and some chips and some strawberries. One of the dads talked to me quite a bit about the remote control helicopter scene, the various sizes and danger levels.
some drunk person is gonna have a great time wrecking those antlers
Trail magic wasn’t done there, i ran into a former pct thru hiker named Fancy Pants (he was hiking with pants that had multiple vent zippers that were very impressive) who was cooking up some breakfast another couple miles down. We pigged out on undercooked bacon, eggs coated in bacon grease, and a bunch of pop. I hiked out with a can of coke for the next morning.
I did some work that day, knocking out a good 24. There was cell service for a very long descent in the afternoon so i spent an hour listening to a compilation of Paul Stanley doing crowd banter. The sunset was bomb, but i powered through it to the promised land: there were 3 altars built to honor mile 420.
like the weed number guys thats how many miles we did its the weed number
The most exciting thing about the following day was the pop for sale at a ranger station we passed by. Also the bomb sunset that i didn’t take any pictures of.
also my generic brand oatmeal claims that it’s yummy. it’s okay
Yesterday was fantastic. The first stop was the KoA. We had to stop in to refill water, but they had a little store on location with all kinds of treats. I had a pint of ice cream for breakfast like many other people, and a bunch of hikers piled in and watched Friends in a common area as we ate up. A lot of people chose to stay there for the pool, i foolishly chose to brave the desert heat and move on to a place called Hiker Heaven.
The heat was brutal. My shirt was fully saturated by the time i found an oasis; a tunnel that ran underneath a highway. Graffiti preferred to live on the ends of this passage, but i popped my headlamp and enjoyed some of the lonely drawings who lived in the dark. Also i hung out and played some guitar in the shade and a recording exists of that on instagram.
tunnels rock
The trail hopped into Vasquez Rocks for a beautiful mile up to some more trail magic. Pop and beer and chips and dogs. They also gave us a ride to the visitor center and i got to learn all about the weird rocks.
they were nice people, they rescued all 3 of the dogs that were present
Leads me here, Hiker Heaven. This place is super surreal. All the hikers milling about mixed in with dogs and chickens with some horses and donkeys as our neighbors. Laundry and showers and haircuts, everyone looks brand new and that’s not counting the loaner cotton clothes we’re all wearing. There are truck bed rides to the town for food and booze. I’m rocking a zero here, it’s a very hot day and i ain’t ready to brave some more desert just yet.
this place is super surreal
i ate the glenwood gift strawberries whole, i appreciated the tart fruit as well as the snap of their leafy crowns
shortly afterwards i was passed by a hiker who surely heard me laughing at my podcast doing bits about santa claus vaping
boyo that KoA day was hot like whoah. that morning walking into a KoA in the early morning when the air still had the nighttime bite. the common area next to the shop full of hiker and microwave food smell. the one with all the hikers joking and laughing about gluttony and stench, and ross and rachel.
vasquez rocks was so rad and i should’ve spent more time there. i’m glad i didn’t because it set me up to get to the powerful trio of vortex energy in socal: hiker heaven, casa de luna, and hiker town
magic was only growing stronger through this section it’s true it’s true
This morning i woke up at 4 to watch some SpaceX launch. I slept like rubbish with visions of rocketships playing in my head. Also it was chilly up there i kept getting them cold sweats.
That alarm went off and i didn’t see no ship tho. I had service so i looked up a live stream showing how cool their cool spaceship was flying into space. I was overlooking that valley, i didn’t see any rockets going to space. I’m not sure if this proves Elon Musk to be fake, or maybe space itself is a hoax, but there’s certainly something big going on here.
switchbacks flowed freely the past few days much like elon’s rockets do allegedly
Miles weren’t big tho, i did about 18. Traffic was terrible today, a warm sunny Saturday brought out all the good smelling humans. I saw a handful of tour groups, one of them had to be at least 30 people, two groups of boy scouts, and a number of singles and couples all dressed in super clean cotton. I had to walk away from the campground i almost stayed at because holy cow humans were running rampant.
One of the books i picked up in Wrightwood was an Animorphs book, i hope that reading it before bed will give me animal dreams.
According to a sign, dreamy frogs lived all over a few trail miles today, some kind of yellow beauties. I didn’t see any so their existence is also under review. The environment of these allegedly endangered frogs was being preserved (according to another sign) so i had to take a reroute and roadwalk a highway for a few miles. Cars move crazy fast, huh? I also saw a handful of those weird tricycle cars swoop round them mountain curves.
road hiking sux
When i rolled up to the campground i was eyeballing i was greeted with a legion of boy scouts. So many humans, i froze up and got all panicked, and then i hiked another mile up trail to peace.
-eighteen miles covered not very big- this thru hiking thru hiker ass, slow down boy
i was given a funny trail name anectode when i was hanging out by that boy scout camp and i wish i wrote it down then because it is clouded now. it was a case of mistakened identities, one hiker calling out anothers name but it was one of the outlandish names. daggum i wish i remembered this one.
man i dunno 