PCT Day 74 – SoBo Flip – What in the Actual

Zero in Sierra City (mile 1195) – no hiking

Total PCT miles hiked: 1043

Due to our early start Keith (Starman) and I arrived at the Sierras when there was still a lot of snow, and decided it wasn’t safe to attempt a crossing given my skill level.  We elected to flip up to northern California and hike southbound (SoBo) back to where we left off near Lone Pine – giving the snow a chance to melt out. During this flip the PCT milage will be counting down, but I’ll include a tally of our total milage hiked so that you can keep aprised of our progress in a linear fashion. 

I haven’t slept inside a building in twelve days. It’s a strange thought that pushes it’s way to the fore of my mind as we walk into what may be the last open hotel room in all of Sierra City. Within five minutes of being inside I’ve scurried back to the front desk and booked us for a second night. Over the course of our time on the trail I’ve become increasingly comfortable with living outside, and our zero days spent inside have correspondingly decreased. At first I wanted to spend my zero day inside every time I went into town, but slowly it’s increased and now we haven’t slept inside since Burney. But tonight, oh god tonight I want to be inside. I want to go to the bathroom without shoes on, to enjoy the benefits of indoor plumbing and electricity, to lay in a bed and read without the worry of running down my phone. And beyond this, I want to lay in a bed in a room with plumbing and electricity for a whole day – so I will. 

Keith however, wants to watch garbage TV. It’s a past time that I would go so far to say he loves. This penchant for bad TV is a trait that more succinctly marks him as Midwestern than anything else.  Though he will mostly just scroll through his phone while the television whines on in the background, he’s still amped. 

Prior to the trail I so rarely watched television with commercials that I nearly felt comfortable using the word never. Which isn’t to say I lived in a media vacuum, but that I only ever watched the commericals I was helping to make at my ad agency. Netflix, yes. Real TV with actual channels, no. Needless to say this recent uptick in commercial content is alarming. I find my eyes drawn from my book to the flashing box in the corner of the room. A luxury car drives through an indoor cloud while a cool British woman speaks in husky, nearly inaudible, tones in the background. A generically handsome white man in a sleeveless shirt sells a drink called Keto-Punch or something. His visible biceps seems to promise health benefits of some sort, though the ad ends without ever saying what the product does. For one whole commercial break the ads seem to vacillate between diet products and food. Then some delightfully terrible local advertisements, used coffin salesmen or some such thing. Following this all of course is the alcohol ad which are all variations on the theme “drink this, be hot, make friends.”

It’s all a barrage of 30 second mini narratives hell bent on convincing you that if only you bought this product, you too could be sexy and tan, and rich, yeah you’ll be rich too. I can see behind the matrix and yet I understand nothing. Is this what television is? 22 minutes of content paid for by minutes of your life spent watching ads? I feel old. I feel like an old man yelling for kids to get off my lawn. I feel like a judgemental hipster, but geezy creezy I absolutely cannot tolerate watching TV anymore. It’s like my garbage meter has been turned up to 11 and now I’m drowning in a sea of false promises. I feel like a cliche, leave the ad world and then become a negative harpy of disconnection and nay saying. I worry for neither the first or the last time what I’m going to do with my life after the trail. After my tolerance for advertising has sunk so low could I ever go back to that industry? An industry, mind you, that I stumbled into and out of. But one that none the less employed me for four years. 

See, this is why you read books, books don’t cause you to question your entire career path while also selling you a hamburger. Zero days are the best worst thing ever.