Work and transition musings
I wasn’t sure how my boss was going to react to me hiking the PCT this year. I didn’t really have the intention of quitting but was prepared to move on if need be. The conversation with him went something like this.
“My wife and I are going to hike the Pacific Crest Trail starting in July”
“How long will you be gone?”
“About 5 months”
“So you probably won’t have service anywhere on the trail?”
“No, not really. We will in the towns we pass through along the way.”
“Oh yeah, you won’t want to do that then. Ok, we’ll have to find someone to do your stuff until you come back”
A lot different than I expected! So as of now, I still have a job. I still think that I should do something else. The business is growing like crazy and is doing extremely well but my position within the company does not facilitate any kind of personal growth, serious skill acquisition or the day to day life in which I desire to live. By traditional metrics, I would be stupid to leave such a job. Fortunately for me, I don’t enjoy living or judging myself by traditional metrics. I think more than anything, it is making me soft with the expected large paycheck every two weeks. I think I would be better off and enjoy things more if I embraced some uncertainty. One of my friends who runs the forestry program said I could hop on for short term work anytime I like and the friend I did the lynx work with started a new job recently and said I can join for some short term field work anytime. Both unprompted. They would be enjoyable and at least in the case of forestry, would cover a substantial amount of yearly expenses. So it isn’t for lack of options. Nor of things to do. I think I have a better grasp on the concept of golden handcuffs now.
In Tim Ferriss’ recent interview with Derek Sivers, they talked a little bit about this theme. The below quote stuck out to me.
Derek Sivers said:
Or there’s another option, which is someone who has played a game for so long. Let’s just say it’s finances. They finally “win” in quotation marks. They no longer need to work to meet their needs, but they have played one game for so long they don’t know what other game to play. And that Paradox of Choice anxiety leads them to continue playing the same game. I know so many examples of people who have won. They’ve won the Oscar. They’ve made a gazillion dollars, done whatever. They don’t have the same love perhaps they once did for that game, but they continue to play it because subconsciously or consciously they do not know what else to do.
So those people, I think absolutely should. Somebody needs to kick them out of the nest, shake them out of their habits. Go do something else.
Cooking without gas
I made a rocket stove out of old tomato cans and am working on making a solar cooker now following
this design. We have a gas stove in our kitchen, and I am planning on doing an experiment in not cooking with gas for ~30 days starting at the end of this month. I think both new cookers, combined with my pressure cooker and maybe a fireless cooker, should provide a lot of versatility and ease.
House projects
I put up the window trim in our house slowly over the past couple weeks and am about to get going on the crown molding. It’s amazing how much better a house can look when it’s finished haha. The only thing that’s technically left house wise is the baseboard but we aren’t planning on putting that in anytime soon. On to improving our bed frame…
PCT
All of our food has been planned out for our resupply boxes and everything has now been purchased. Our mailed boxes comprise about ¾ of the total food on our trek. We elected to go this route to maintain control over our food options and have better choices nutritionally (ie eating real food). I am very happy with the variety and nutritional quality of what we have selected. Our total spending is at about $700 per person for what will be ~3.5 mo of food. From what I can gather, this is low compared to the average hiker. Much of this I attribute to doing things ourselves, from dehydrating beans and lentils to making our own bars to incorporating salmon (that we will hopefully catch in a month). That end cost will increase as we will have to ship out the food via large flat rate boxes at $22.80/ pop. We will be able to fit about 5 days of food per person into each box and will use somewhere between 60-70 boxes total. So roughly an additional $700 some dollars per person. We are planning to shop while in route at big box grocery stores at the remaining ¼ of resupply points that will not have mailed boxes.
Gear wise we bought some primaloft and nylon ripstop (~$70 total) and will be making a double quilt sometime this month. I have been poring over @sky’s posts in his journal about quilt making and he was kind enough to provide some additional pointers. This will be my first sewing project, so we’ll see how it goes!
Over the course of last month, Mrs. Animal and I trolled the used marketplaces online and picked up 5 pairs a piece of some very high-quality used shoes. An interesting note is that women’s shoes on the marketplace seem to be priced about half that of men’s. Not sure if it’s lack of demand or supply or what. But either way Mrs. Animal made out like a bandit, and I ended up spending about $55 per pair including shipping for shoes that retail for $120. Those are the only two items we needed to obtain, otherwise, we will be using gear and clothes that we already own.
Those were really the only things we needed to obtain. We are trying to stay as light as possible since Mrs. Animal’s base weight (all packed gear minus food and water) will be kind of high and constantly increasing with baby animal in tow. As it stands at the moment, Mrs. Animal’s base weight is at 14 lbs sans baby animal and my pack is at 16 lbs. Not bad. Those will be close to the final numbers and will likely change depending on how we allocate gear between us. Baby animal is doing her best to help intensify our training by growing like a weed. She is 90th percentile for weight at 20 lbs, so who knows what she’ll be come July, let alone deep into the fall.
Cost wise we are looking at an estimated $2.2k per person for the 5 months of travel. Most of that is already spent and roughly ¾ of the total is for food/food shipping. We have no intention of spending much time in towns or hotels along the way, only doing so if necessary due to injury. So, with that in mind, we should be spending near 0 once we hit the trail. Overall, not too bad for 5 months. I would be hard pressed to see how someone could go significantly lower cost wise.
Post PCT
We have also been planning out what we are going to do following our hike. Our thoughts have been that we may as well take advantage of our proximity to Mexico and extend our trip southward. So far, the idea has been to travel along Baja via kayak, bus and hiking then hop over to the mainland. We would continue south through Oaxaca and Chiapas then into Guatemala before ending the trip visiting with Mrs. Animal’s family in Costa Rica. A week ago, I received a message from one of my uncle’s stating that he has rented a home for 2 months towards the end of next winter in Porto, Portugal and extended an invitation to all of my extended family to join him and his wife for as long as we are interested. Mrs. Animal and I are very much interested. If we go, we’d like to stay for at least the full 90 days of the Schengen visa, spending most of that time biking or hiking around the continent.
The European Divide Trail has caught our interest and could serve as a good structure for a trip. We don’t have to decide anytime soon and will continue to scheme whether it makes sense to combine both trips and extend our sojourn or just pick one of them or do something else.
