Author: neil

Day 4 We spent the entire day laying in our motel room bed, watching TV, movies (Jodie Foster’s “Home for the Holidays”), and blogging. Well, I made two bike runs down and down back up hill for some Black Friday shopping (aka breakfast/lunch from Trader Joe’s, and dinner from Panda Express). I didn’t take a…

Day 3 The hiker/biker camp was relatively packed in the morning, and it had almost entirely turned over to “our” side of the line. Kyle was still there, as well as the younger local “hiker”, and Sean the sleeping-bag guy had returned but was keeping himself invisible. Then we’d added Russell, a “hiker” interested in…

Day 2 Another camper joined us in the dark late last night. “hiker” + “local” + “arrived in the dark” are elements sorting him on the “other” side of the line, but “young” + “ate breakfast at the table” + “talked with us” put him on the “similar to us” side. See, it’s frustratingly difficult…

Day 1 The night passed without incident, and we woke to a clear pre-dawn sky. It was wild to wake up with the tent fabric stretched tight as a drum, which indicates that it had actually dried out overnight rather than getting its normal soaking. Again, no one besides us used the picnic table for…

Last night, I was the last one up brushing my teeth by the picnic table, and suddenly they appeared: five or six raccoons, just on the other side of the table, heading for the food box. The stopped their approach when they saw me, their eyes beaming back the reflected light of my headlamp, and…