The First Quarter

Thanks to everyone who wished us happy birthdays:) For Jess's, we took a "zero" day with our "tribe" (Marc, Liz, Katy, & Jen), who we happened to run into again the day before in Hot Springs. We were able to spend an hour in the natural hot springs mineral water privately owned jacuzzi, which we're pretty sure was absolutely amazing for our bodies, so that expense falls under "health". For Julia's we hiked in the rain, but it was a nice warm rain (and a beautiful day and area) that cooled us after a sweaty morning, and I (Julia) discovered that if you don't wear a rain jacket when its raining, the rain replaces the sweat and you totally don't need to drink OR carry water, lightening the load by like 10 pounds. For dinner that night, Jess took a packet chicken, some crushed oyster crackers, and some honey and fried it with a little olive oil...wow best dinner ever! Also got oodles of goodies from Moms & Dads. PS - Doris/Mom, a pound of Twizzlers is too much!
Rachel, happy to hear from you:) I got your holiday greetings but at&t service SUCKS down here, only local networks get any coverage. But it def made us smile:) & Drew you should fully come hiking with us, forget the Ant Farm! We were so sad when we realized by how short we were going to miss you when we went up last time, but you know how spontaneous we are and how bad at communication we all are, lol. But it was like "Darn, if we had just called we could have worked something out:(...boo." But that's ok; Commune's totally going to happen, the longer I ride this ride called life the more I know that is going to be a destination. The Rat Race is a lie, and life is so much better than that once you leave it where it belongs: In A Town! Leave it to the crazies that feel like a paycheck makes their life worth living. You see them out here: they bring the Rat Race with them and wake up at the crack of dawn, hike till 5 pm ("workin' nine to five, can't get any better, you just move ahead, la da da-da daa da daa da..." dolly parton i'm thinking?) and get to a shelter and spend two hours trying to find cell phone service just so they can call someone and complain about the weather. I know we're all going to seperate corners for a while, get the travelling bug out, get some experience under our belts, but someday, we'll all be tired of wandering aimlessly and want a campfire we can all sit around for the next 50 years or so... sounds like a plan to me anyway;)

So we're almost at the quarter mark. We're at Trail Days right now, a commercialized hiker help-out hot-house, but good for finding people we know. We have once again reunited our tribe, met some new folks to add, and are saying a sad farewell to many that only planned to make it this far, including In Da Wind, who's getting back on her bike and riding to Alaska with her son or some such craziness. People have been dropping like flies since the Smokies; we think it's because they think "Oh the hard part's over, this is going to be cake.......oh wait......no, this still sucks........ forget it, I'm out." We have also come to feel that we recently crossed some kind of invisible transition point. We are no longer "camping" at night and "hiking" is no longer our job... we live outside, and we hike on because staying in the same place gets boring. We're nomads. I think it was because we went a week without showering or laundry and I couldn't take it anymore so took care of those things in a stream. So over two weeks without indoor plumbing of any kind made this whole thing a lot easier someh0w. It's not our "job", it's not just what we "do" for the sake of "doing", we just are and this is how we roll now. When we come to towns, the whole thing just seems bizzare. People watch us as if we're weird, but we know they have to get up for work in the morning. Why? So people can make more money to buy more stuff that they don't need? So they can work off the debt they were fooled into getting by the millionaires in the first place: look at my life, don't you want all my stuff? don't you want this lifestyle? It's been shown in some scientific study that money only buys happiness up to $50,000 because then what you actually need is taken care of: food, shelter (quoting the Time Magazine Doris/Mom sent in our Birthday Package). Past that, it's up to you. You create your own reality, and not with money, but with the way You choose to approach Your life. The people that we're out here with have only reinforced this...belief? understanding of workings of the world? whatever you want to call it. I asked Moe! why real life can't be like this when we were talking about how coincidences often lead to amazingly good things along the trail, and she responded "This is real life. What makes you think that other world is more real than this one?" Here's an example of such a coincidence: On the way to Damascus, the location of Trail Days, we were still south of Hampton so we had to find a ride. There was a hostel on a forest road .2 miles away from the trail, before the main road we were hoping to hitch hike from. Note: this is an hour ride. As we're hiking, we find a sweat shirt on the ground, and we think it may be this couple's we shared a shelter with the night before. We knew they were planning on going to the hostel to get a shower before hiking on to the road to hitch. So when we got to the forest road, Jess dropped his pack, left me with it at the trail, and ran up to the hostel to give back the sweat shirt. They didn't even realize it was missing, and was very excited as it was the only warm thing the guy had. They had already arranged a ride with someone there, and we got to hop on with them. If they hadn't dropped their sweatshirt, we would have passed right by the hostel and had 4 more miles to hike, plus a hour long hitch is hard to find. Quite a "coincidence". Hikers says that what you feed to the trail, the trail feeds back to you. Karma I guess you could say. Or just life. That works too.
Then you get involved with other conversations, like one we got into with Gnarly one night until 5 am (waaay late for hikers). Why don't people just go with that flow? (Jess's trail name, by the way, is now unofficially possibly The Phlo). Can we wake people up, to choose Love instead of Fear? A woman recently asked us if we were packing heat, which some of you may recall we considered before coming out here. Now that seems like a joke! Why choose to be afraid of that one in a million, when the other 999,999 are not only harmless, but are probably perfectly friendly happy people that you could hang out with around a camp fire for hours? And suppose the worst did happen? This is just a ride, so don't ever be afraid, because this is just a ride, and when it's all over, either you'll collapse on the ground shouting "never again!", or your hair will be a mess and your eyes will be a little crazy, and you'll say "let's ride again!" But most "sane" people in this world would say that I'm the crazy one. As Bill Hicks would say "Look at my big bank account and my furrows of worry! This must be real!" And maybe someday I'll have kids and I'll want the house and the security of a steady job and a paycheck and benefits and all that insanity. Or maybe I'll just build a little farm in the middle of nowhere with me, my love, my friends, and a field where I grown my own food. What more would I need for personal happiness?
For the rest of the world to wake up, stop fighting wars, stop with all the poverty and BS that leads people into lives of misery, and realize: This is Just A Ride.

So what have we learned from this first quarter? You tell me.

*My name's The Phlo, and I approved this message.