In exactly one week you will not be hard-pressed to find me squatted over a hole in the earth, loosening my bowels into the fertile ground that is the California desert.
Just one of the many luxuries I have to look forward for the next five months of my time on this planet.
The planning stage started out as fun, but putting together the final pieces has become a bit of a chore. For example, if you don't pay the same amount of attention to the weight of your food as you do to the base weight of your pack, then you undermine the whole “ultralight” philosophy and you eliminate the benefits of saving that weight in the first place (most of my food was chosen arbitrarily without considering its weight whatsoever).
Now that I have moved into the final days, nothing I do at this point will really make that huge of an impact (at least that's my excuse for not doing anything else), but I should remember to mail those resupply boxes at some point.
FINAL PREPARATIONS
Here are a list of the things I will be doing over the course of the next week ease my transition into a life of filth and vagrancy:
- Sleeping outside (and occasionally having someone throw a bucket of freezing water on me during the night, because next to being murdered in your sleep, that's likely the worst thing that could happen).
- Drinking a LOT of water (because apparently it isn't good enough to just start drinking water when you begin to get thirsty on the trail).
- Actually putting all my gear into my pack for the first time ever (don't judge me, it just adds to the excitement).
- Putting that pack on (fully loaded) for the first time ever (again, for bonus excitement).
- And yes, pooping outside (this is actually dual-purpose since it will provide extra bonding with the dog prior to departure).
So what's going to happen when I get dropped off in Campo?
I do plan to make it through at least one day on the trail (nervous breakdown at the trailhead permitting), and hopefully that one day will turn into something like 150 days, but who knows?
so the person with the “bucket” would not be hiking ultralight I guess…..even though a bucket can be usefull in multiple ways: mobile toilet/WC, cover head during rain, catch fish, paint a face on it and call it WILSON so you have someone to talk to…..
Sometimes no amount of weight can discount the utility of a particular piece of gear. The bucket may be the perfect example of this.