8 Hours of Hiking - Better Than 8 Hours of Working

Backpacking and angry alien.

A Better Day.  Hmmm there's an idea.  Simple, but it just dawned on me a couple of weeks ago when I decided to get the hell out of the house and take a hike up a a nearby mountain.  The main driver was the rain storms.  It had been a pretty rainy day with more storms due, and the urge to go walk in the rain over came me.   It just sounded like an adventure.  To willingly allow myself to become soaked.  No cares.  No worries.

I wasn't able to convince any family member to join me.  They just couldn't see the appeal of purposely getting soaked.  They didn't seem to get the idea that it was no big deal.  It was an experience.  We'd just dry out.  We didn't have to be anywhere in our dry clothes.  It wasn't important that our hair be neat.  Bottom line no big deal to be wet.  (Hell if I wouldn't get arrested for nudity, I'd love to have walked naked in the rain).

It was while I was on the mountain top waiting for the next band of thunderstorm clouds to roll in, sitting on an outcropping of rocks, that it dawned on me.  A day sitting in the rain is better than a day sitting in the house.  AHH-HAA.  A Better Day.  These ideas just started flowing, Hiking 8 hours - Better than working 8 hours, Sleeping with snakes - Better than working with snakes, Cramps from workinig out - Better than monthly cramps, A bear in the woods - better than a bear in the stock market, and so on.

These Better Day quips were happy thoughts.  Maybe people would like to buy shirts and shit with happy thoughts and sentiments.  Maybe this is just the idea I need to spark things in my online store.

Those rains did finally come, and it poured and it was fabulous.  I was sopping wet and didn't care a bit.  It was a few days later, after loading pictures of my excursion in the rain to my personal Facebook page, that I noticed the last backpacking pictures I posted were nearly a year ago.  July 2012 to be exact.  No wonder I've been going nearly insane.  I've not been in the out of doors for ever.  I used to get out once a month.  How the hell did that happen?  Well I resigned to correct that, and planned a trip to the Appalachian Trail for the next week.

I did get to the AT, and knocked out 20 miles from Neel's Gap to Unicoi Gap in less than a day and a half.  I did it alone, with two nights of camping, just a lot of alone time.  It did wonders for my mood and sanity.