Date: 2015-12-05
To: View Entry
Miles today: 0.0

AT class of 2014 here. Announcing my intent for PCT 2016. I will not be alone. Well, I'll still mostly be a solo thru hiker but, I know that there will be a few familiar AT faces on the trail as well. Which probably isn't news.Hi world, captain obvious is on his merry way!I don't know what my starting date will be but I'm starting to lean towards after kickoff. Right now I'm driving a big rig all over the country for work. Breaking all kinds of stereotypes I guess.The thing is that I'm born and raised in New Jersey. I went to high school in San Diego (San Diego, San Diego where the high school is called San Diego High) and college at UC Riverside. So the AT terrain was not much of a surprise and I've got a pretty good idea of how different the PCT is. I worked as a trip leader at UCR and have done the weekend adventurer type of deal to see the diversity of the west coast. Not to mention how driving a semi truck all over the country kind of gets me around. The Sierras and Yosemite had already blown me away years ago, but trucking brought me to places like Snoqualmie for the first time. Going to new places seems to worsen my wanderlust. I kind of want to live everywhere and nowhere at the same time and can't help staying here and there for a few months in the future.If you're wondering what drove me to truck driving, it was definitely the thru hiking. I needed to get back to work and also wanted to keep moving. It has been a good match for me. A big rig can make due as a great dirtbagmobile except that you're working. Every time I shut down in the New Mexico desert or anywhere with a nice sky gazing vibe, I climb up on top of the 13"6 trailer and cowboy camp up there. The 53ft trailer can make getting to certain specific places problematic though.It is getting quite nipply around much of the country anyway. You read that correctly. Nippy and nipples go together in my world. This weekend is being spent in Salt Lake City, UT to explore around and do some rock climbing as I wait for a service shop to fix a coolant leak. Which is why I've got time to blabber to the Internet about hiking the PCT.It's definitely going to be a different kind of journey in many regards. I now have an idea of how emotional and therapeutic a thru hike is. I mean one month in the mountains is worlds apart from just a weekend adventure. 2000+ miles is another level. Makes me wonder about people who live it for years. Have you ever seen Happy People? A Werner Herzog film about people in the Taiga? Never mind, please go watch it if you never have. Watch everything with Werner Herzog. Every thru hiker can probably relate deeply to one subtly comedic clip from another one of his documentaries. Just youtube "deranged penguin" to get an idea of how my view of the world has profoundly affected my ability to relate to an overly ambitious penguin... Which probably did not live to make anymore baby penguins. You too may also be a deranged penguin. Welcome brothers and sisters. Peace, love, and awkward penguin hugs. Forest Gump relations always welcome of course.I'm not sure what I'm going to make of this next thru hike. I didn't envision another thru hike in the future when I decided to just go for the AT. I guess the PCT will serve as another method to search deeper into myself. I mentioned how sensory deprivation in a floatation tank had changed my life when I was starting my AT journal. I realized that months on the trail is also a form of sensory deprivation. Totally different, but with some key similarities. It seems like forever while you're in it, you forget about all things that don't matter, and you'll end up doing a lot of thinking. The kind of thinking about yourself. Your past, the present, and where you're going. You'll remember things you haven't thought about for years. You return to past traumas and reexamine yourself from another perspective.Anyways, "when you get to the top of a mountain, keep climbing." It popped into my head when I started writing this. I think it's a zen saying. I'm hoping to open myself up more through this upcoming trail journal. There were many details and personal omissions left out of my AT journal which I meant to pour out in another medium. Work and life got in the way. Perhaps more so it was resistance to vulnerability. It's the real work I have to do and it's hard. It's exploring all my faults, flaws, shortcomings past present and future. Not to mention the tricky nuances like protecting other people's privacy.I don't know. I'll try to wrap my head around it some more when I set some time for it. my AT journal is still a mess. I made a move towards rewriting the whole thing with anecdotes from my handwritten journal at craigtsao.wordpress.com but it's just been collecting dust as I've been working over the road.