Category: wanderlust


Feral Artist Nomad odyssey, part 5: the Ecuador Acquiescence

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November 26, 2025

The plan went kind of sideways. And upside down and inside out, but fun the entire time – and that’s what matters.

The flight to Quito got delayed more and more, to the point where my cleverly planned timeline (landing before sunset) got scrambled and we touched down in pitch darkness. The customs lady couldn’t quite comprehend the concept of somebody flying this far to work for free. (To be fair, my New York sister also had a hard time with that notion.) Fortunately, one of her colleagues had heard of Workaway, and I got waved through.

There were no buses running at that hour, only a $25 taxi to the motel near the bus terminal, and another $25 for the motel itself, once I convinced them a) that I wasn’t a vampire and b) to raise their metal barrier and let me in, eh. Mucho dinero hemorrhage, and within just an hour of my arrival in Ecuador. Ho hum.

Ecuadorian bus terminals take a bit getting used to: there is the Ticket That May Not Be Lost, and a tiny receipt with the gate QR code. Gods help you if you lose either one, eh. My high school Spanish returned surprisingly fast, aided by Google Translate and a pocket dictionary. I spent a few hours waiting for my bus to Manta (the west side of the country) by people-watching (so many vendors!) and staying in close proximity to my two backpacks. There were quite a few cops walking around the terminal, twirling their batons, but why take the chance?

Free pro tip: if you’re traveling across Ecuador, take the night bus, not the day one. The projected 8-hour journey took 11 hours total, largely because of the 40-minute breaks the driver started taking toward the end, when there was only one other passenger besides myself. From Manta (again, past sunset), it was a pricey taxi ride to the beach community of Santa Marianita, and to the guesthouse (which will remain nameless) where I was going to volunteer for about a month.

The place was fairly big and cozy: many hammocks, lots of books, 22 cats, three dogs, a nice 85-year-old lady who owned the whole place, one other volunteer, and a couple of long-term guests. There was also the guesthouse manager, a Scottish-American fellow who used to be a CEO in Colorado…

The five-ish hours of work, five days a week, were mostly easy, until they weren’t: lugging around big bags of gravel (about 80-100 lbs each) without any equipment was no bueno. Painting and varnishing the fences was a bit more fun. The ocean, just a few feet away, was the saving grace. The nearby town of Manta (described in guidebooks as “there is nothing to see here) could be reached by walking to the highway and flagging down a truck for about a buck. (Ditto for the return trip.)

I spent one of my weekends on a trip to Puerto Lopez, a very touristy town where I booked a trip to La Isla de la Plata (aka “The Island of Silver” aka “Poor Man’s Galapagos”) where we all snorkeled (wayyy outside my comfort zone, but fun!) and hiked and admired lots of blue-footed boobies. Those birds are too goofy to be real: they look like cartoon characters that escaped into our world. That tour was worth every penny of the $41 I spent on it, eh.

My volunteer adventure came to an unexpected end after just 18 days. Each Friday, the guesthouse’s owner hosted a restaurant night for all the local expats. Beer, burgers – the works, and for a fairly low price. The guesthouse’s manager utterly lost his cool when faced with a larger-than-normal crowd: instead of the usual 15 guests, he had 25. They were all slow-moving, slow-eating, and slow-drinking pensioners, but he treated it like a national emergency. Consequently, he treated us volunteers as if we were contestants on a British cooking show. He launched many an F-bomb at us volunteers when we couldn’t quite make sense of his rapidly changing plans for fork arrangements. (No, really.)

At the end of the night, when we too feasted on burgers and beer, I very politely asked him not to insult his volunteers again, please and thank you. He reacted by storming off, saying he’d had enough with me, and telling me to leave the first thing in the morning. Right around that time, he also shouted at the guesthouse’s 85-year-old owner. In front of witnesses. He then took off to do some drunk-driving around the neighbourhood.

While I tried to make sense of it all, he sent me a series of Whatsapp messages describing how serious he was and how much he hated me in particular. The room doors in the guesthouse were thin and flimsy… I barricaded my door with furniture and couldn’t fall asleep till 3am. I slept with two kitchen knives by my side: an overkill, perhaps, but when dealing with an irrational agent who had clearly had more than just beer, can you really play it too safe?

Morning came. He disappeared, perhaps unwilling to look us in the face. The guesthouse’s owner tried to assure me I could still stay, but with such limited space, and with no way to avoid the guy, it would’ve been one mighty passive-aggressive environment. I packed up, had my last free volunteer breakfast (bagels and eggs), and left town. I don’t stay where I ain’t welcome. Later, I heard that the other volunteers left soon after me, as did one long-term guest. The owner’s US-based daughter messaged me to get my side of the story. Not sure what happened to that manager, but meh, he’ll get his someday.

I hung out in Manta and (being a smarter tourist this time) took an overnight bus back to the capital, to Quito. Workaway has the option to search for the hosts who seek last-minute volunteers, and that’s how I ended up arriving at a vegan anarchist compound near the rainforest town of Loreto. (Which was another seven hours by bus from Quito.) There were no other volunteers here, just the two hosts and myself.

Their reforestation project was noble. The fruit trees and tropical flowers were beautiful. The sunset was lovely. I even got used to eating only bananas and quinoa, while using leaves for toilet paper. But… One of the hosts (the one I spent the most time around) started making jokes (plural) about genocide, followed by a racist joke I wish I could erase from my mind…

Life is short, and it’s important to be careful what kind of inputs you allow into your brain, your heart, your soul. The people you surround yourself with will always influence your worldview. That wasn’t the kind of influence I wanted… I invented a flimsy excuse (a volunteer meet-up in Quito) and bounced out after just two full days and two partial ones.

With my volunteer plans dashed to hell, I decided to just spend my last two weeks in Quito, at the high-rated (and, at just $8 a night, quite cheap!) hostel: Community Hostel in the historical district. It was, without exaggeration, the best hostel I’ve ever stayed at. The view from the rooftop was glorious, especially at night. The Basicilo del Voto Nacional looked like something from a Disney cartoon when it was lit up in the darkness.

Much partying and exploration followed. Ecuador is not a rich country, and foreigners are advised to stay indoors after sunset (because, ya know, vampires) and to avoid most of the city even by daylight. The hostel was just a five-minute walk away from the presidential palace, but there were three-way knife fights and domestic violence happening right underneath our windows almost daily. We watched, and could do nothing, and stayed indoors.

I write this as I pace the hostel’s rooftop deck, looking at the wide street below, covered with piles of trash and flimsy blankets where the most unfortunate Ecuadorians sleep on the sidewalk. As I write this, a homeless woman is urinating on a palm tree. …now she picked up a stick and started poking the homeless person trying to sleep.

Ecuador is a beautiful country, but (and I say this as an imperfectly informed outsider) its social and structural systems are broken. Crime is rampant. The air is polluted from all the vehicle exhaust. It’s particularly bizarre when one of the many local municipal buses drives past you and belches a giant cloud of black smoke into your face. The only drinking water comes from large water canisters that are delivered daily, by truck, along with metal cylinders filled with natural gas for cooking. Local entrepreneurs drive those trucks starting 6am, each with their own little tune playing at top volume. There is no postal service anywhere in Ecuador as a result of some government shenanigans a few years back: only delivery companies remain.

Ecuador’s nature is beautiful, though – at least the parts that are protected from developers. A two-day trip to Mindo resulted in a ride on a cable car, a nice little hike to several waterfalls, and a visit to a butterfly sanctuary. (I leveled up as a druid when I learned how to lure those giant butterflies on my hands and nose. Huzzah!)

But not all is gloomy. Ten days ago, there was a national constitutional referendum. The government banned alcohol sales for that entire weekend. (Though the ban wasn’t enforced all that well…) There were dozens of armed soldiers all over the capital, prepared for trouble. In the end, the people voted to protect the environment and to keep the US from setting up military bases in Ecuador. No violence erupted. I carry two passports on my person, so I showed only the Canadian one, just to play it extra safe.

This country can be so cheap… There are tourist traps that can and will charge you $15 for a mediocre meal. But there are also cheap local places, like my favourite breakfast diner, where a local grandma cooks only one thing – an avocado omelet. It comes with coffee and freshly squeezed juice, and costs just $2.50. Combine that with the dirt-cheap, overabundant fruit and cheap hostels (mine cost $8 per night for a dorm bed; others cost far less) – and you can live here long-term for very very little money…

Quito is beautiful if you choose to look only at the pretty buildings. Cathedrals, museums, murals, the occasional parade – just ignore the cops beating the hell of a fruit vendor lady who dared to push them back. Ignore the waitress with a knife scar extending from her mouth across her cheek. Ignore all the many, many people who are missing eyes or have broken noses. Ignore the walls upon walls covered with “missing” posters: all genders, all ages. Ignore it all and spend and smile and laugh.

Meanwhile, I’ve made a few buddies at the hostel during my two-week stay. They taught me a few neat tricks about low-cost travel. I’ve also resumed writing my ambitious novel featuring apathetic space aliens – and finished a rather snappy flash story (950 words!), while submitting it and others to anthologies and magazines. Glad I decided to bring my old netbook!

I’m typing this last part in Quito’s international airport at 10:33pm, waiting for the first of my three flights. This airport features the world’s most expensive duty-free store. (If I really do buy those five boxes of wine for $160, do I get to turn that plane into a party plane?) It also sells tiny bottles of coke for $5 a piece. There’s the world’s most puritanical Victoria’s Secret. Alpaca scarves that cost 300% more than my local souvenir vendors charged. (Incidentally, I got an excellent deal on a poncho a few days ago.) I’m munching on a $4 bag of Doritos in protest of this price-gouging.

Weird place, Ecuador… I don’t think I’ll visit it again. I hope the people retake control and make their country more like Costa Rica and less like Russia. They deserve stable, peaceful lives, as do we all.

And meanwhile… My initial plan had been to spend a month or so in a different South American country. (Peru? Argentina?) But a lady friend I’d met at a Montreal party almost two months ago (and have stayed in touch with) invited me to Tokyo, in exchange for symbolic rent, for as long as I want. When the universe sends you that kind of invitation, how can you possibly say no? And so, I found the cheapest airline out there (ZipAir: $238 for a direct Los Angeles-Tokyo flight!), spent a few hours double-checking all the details, and now I’m about to board the first of my three flights.

I’ll spend a total of 22 hours in the air, with a big 24-hour layover in LA, but it’ll all be worth it in the end. Plans change all the time, but my current best bad plan is to hang out in Japan until the film festival season kicks off in February, and then my nomadic odyssey will continue.

Here is to more vagabonding.

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Feral Artist Nomad odyssey, part 4: the Colorado collage

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October 20, 2025

That very specific and unusual sensation when you’re traveling for more than 48 hours in a row (Ridgway, Denver, Quito, Manta) and you’re almost constantly in motion, across state lines and countries and continents and hemispheres. Untraceable and everywhere and nowhere…

Colorado was as fun as it was beauitful. Denver reminded me of Portland, only higher. I didn’t get to spend a lot of time there, but the parts I saw were creative and memorable. I had two days between film festivals, so I stepped wayyy outside my comfort zone, joined the Couch Surfing site (I didn’t even know couches could swim!), and got a free night stay in Denver. Major kudos to Tony, a cool Vietnamese-American guy who let me crash in his comfy attic. Going up and down on a metal ladder made the experience that much more surreal and entertaining.

If you ever travel across Colorado, I very highly recommend the Bustang bus: they accept cash, the buses run on time, and – unlike Greyhound – there’s zero smell.

My Couch Surfing request in Grand Junction didn’t work out, so I got an AirBnB room at the edge of town. The following morning, trying to be a good tourist and sidestepping the road construction, I fell into a ditch and got covered in mud. After a quick detour to the construction site’s portapotty and a very slow-motion clothes change (just like that Deadpool trailer with the phone booth), I emerged in my spare pants. (Later on, a washing machine reatored my jeans and sweatshirt to their original condition.)

That did leave a lot of mud on my boots, though… For the rest of that morning, until my 1:30pm bus to Ridgway, the locals kept giving me the stink eye. Haters.

My phone, which is almost but not quite waterproof, got quite a bit of mud into every single port. It was a bit touch-and-go there, but the phone camera came back to life fast, and the phone’s speaker and microphone went on strike before resuming their duties. One helluva mud ditch, eh.

On the upside, I met my first-ever supervillain-coded person! The locals know her as The Crusher: she collects all their unwanted electronics and gadgets (mostly printers) and then disassembles them. The valuable bits go to industrial recyclers, while the rest goes to the plain old recycling. That’s something I’ve always been curious about (see my 2020 lockdown posts), and it’s beyond exciting to learn someone out there has actually made a business out of it. May your salvage be ever fruitful, Crusher.

I noticed something odd while wandering around the downtown Grand Junction, muddy boots and all. That town of 71,000 people didn’t have a single diner that served an old-fashioned slice of pie. When I asked the locals, they got the “Mandela effect” look on their faces before saying that no, there aren’t any slice-o-pie places anywhere in town. How bizarre. Feels like that’s linked to the disappearance of third space, a la “Bowling alone.”

I settled for a giant chocolate chip cookie at some hippie-themed coffeeshop. It wasn’t bad. The barista was fun and flirtatious.

And then, at last, a bus to Ridgway – a dark-sky town of 1,000 people. They arranged a free hotel for visiting filmmakers, which is almost unheard of in our community. Fun little town. Lots of public art. (But no sliced pie. The mystery deepens!) Great mountain views. A truly dark sky. A stargazing party on a Saturday night: the brightest Milky Way I’d ever seen, and lots of locals with their telescopes, letting the rest of us look at the distant nebulas and planets. (Here’s looking at you, Jupiter.)

The festival itself was… It wasn’t perfect. It had many glitches during the film screenings. Its director was sick and unavailable for the duration, so maybe that was why. The award ceremony randomly got rescheduled and held 30 minutes earlier than scheduled. I hadn’t expected to win, and I didn’t, but it would’ve been fun to cheer for my new filmmaker friendos… As it was, we all sat through a full hour of local improv (they were enthusiastic, but that’s a lot of improv, y’all), after which everyone just got up and silently walked away. That, in and of itself, felt like some postmodern art performance. When some of my new buds explained the actual award ceremony had happened 90 minutes ago, I called them liars until finally conceding that yes, the facts did seem to fit their quaint narrative. Ah well.

But that was on sunday. On Saturday night, my short film’s screening had gone fairly well, and since I was the only filmmaker in attendance for that block, the Q&A section was entirely mine. That’s pretty rare, eh. I took the opportunity to edumacate the small but lively audience about all the cool public domain videos they could use for their own filmmaking experiments. The anxiety of small glitches had gotten to me, so I was in my “talking fast and gesticulating and grinning” mode rather than the “cool and suave foreign filmmaker” persona. For what it’s worth, the audience seemed to understand and appreciate my words. With any luck, I’ll get a do-over next year. Live and learn and improve.

After the non-award award ceremony, I used my political science skillz to corral all the remaining filmmakers into an afterparty at the hotel’s bar. (Great loaded fries!) That experience, with just the six of us sitting and sipping beer and talking about filmmaking, was the single best part of the festival for me. (Though, once again, the locals’ hospitality was wonderful.) We all headed back to bed once the bar closed for the night at 9pm. (Small town, eh.) Much fun was had.

And so my first-ever Feral Artist Nomad odyssey ends. Three back-to-back film festivals, two weeks, many new friends, an offer to crash at a new buddy’s place if I get into the Durango film festival. (I submitted my comedy sci-fi film just ahead of the final deadline. Toes and fingers crossed!)

…sometimes, I go two whole days in a row without thinking about her…

Typing this up on the bus headed to Denver – a long ride, but cheap, and with beautiful views. From there, a red-eye flight to Ecuador by way of Atlanta, and a night at a motel right across Quito’s bus station, and a looong ride to a beach town where my Workaway volunteer hosts await – because to hell with Canadian winters.

But that’s a whole different adventure.

Onward.

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Feral Artist Nomad odyssey, part 3: the Pennsylvania crunch

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October 14, 2025

Such a small world.

The bus that took me from New York to West Reading, PA had two other filmmakers: Vanessa and Kathleen, the co-creators of the wonderful “Five Flights.” We chatted a bit before boarding the bus and then shared an Uber to Marriott’s. (Reading Film Festival provided two free nights to every filmmaker, woot!)

Our names were on the VIP guest list, so the check-in took literally seconds. The organizers gave me a bag of festival swag, two filmmaker badges (alas, I had no companion… but that meant double the drink tickets!), and an XXL-sized T-shirt due to the L-size mix-up. If I ever get a gf who likes wearing oversized shirts as pajamas, this will work great, eh.

After stashing my loot in my posh suite, I joined the first of the three separate filmmaker happy hours that night. In between, there was a 2-hour film block, but I can’t recall what was in it for the life of me.

And so it went the entire weekend: fun films all day long, all the beer and wine we could possibly ask for, and delicious food. By my guesstimate, there were about 40 visiting filmmakers (the local ones didn’t get the free hotel suites), and many new friendships were forged.

I showed off my very first film, “Please Don’t Send Help,” to quite a lot of applause and a fun Q&A with the audience and the event’s host. Along the way, I talked about my technique (making films solely with public domain footage) and trash-talked AI (which was really too easy).

The film block just before mine was “Animation and AI.” Three real animated films, three that were AI garbage. The sole filmmaker from that block who attended the event gave a brave, passionate speech: he’d spent months of his life creating and perfecting his short film, and it was slotted with that slop… The audience gave him one helluva ovation. One audience member actually asked the host to clarify which of the six films were AI slop.

That was a recurring theme throughout the weekend. Lately, AI cultists have been either bribing film festivals to accept their slop or downright spamming their submissions with infinite pieces of AI-generated videos. Each film festival that surrenders and accepts AI adds a bit more legitimacy to those dishonourable thieves. We’ve recently lost Telluride…

As far as I can tell, the Reading fest has added that section for the very first time. (This was their 11th annual festival.) I don’t think they’d anticipated the amount of backlash and anti-AI sentiment they would get. I told the festival’s runner that it would’ve been great if all AI-made (or AI-assisted) films had had a little mark next to them in the program. (It doesn’t have to be a scarlet letter, but that’d be nice.) I’m curious to see if that will happen…

Along the way, during my 55-hour stay in that town, I took very quick trips to see an old firewatch tower, the pagoda built by an eccentric German, and a small but sturdy castle where we had our very last (and small) afterparty on Sunday.

I also took an early-morning walk through downtown: they have so many beautiful murals, so much random street art… There must be something in the water!

I didn’t win any awards (and honestly, wasn’t even expecting to), but on that Sunday morning, I found out that I won the second place in the “Best Comedy SciFi Short Film” category at Brooklyn SciFi Film Festival. My first-ever film festival win – I’m honoured beyond words, and will ride that high for a very long time. (Also, now I get to add “award-winning” to my artist bio – huzzah!)

That Sunday night, after all the goodbyes, and promises to visit one another, and cake, and beer, I stood at the same bus station I’d arrived at, awaiting the bus to Philadelphia for my red-eye flight to Colorado. While waiting there, I realized two things: the “made in Reading” part of the festival was rather enticing, and the area right around the dark bus stop was quite picturesque… That resulted in me jogging around the block (backpacks and all) and filming just about everything on my Android phone. Got about 3-4 minutes of footage out of it: I’ll see if I can transform that into a short urban fantasy film. (For added difficulty, it’d have to be edited entirely on my phone: my computers are in storage in Quebec.)

The bus ride to Philly went well, but I can’t say the same about my bizarre experience with the city’s transit system at 11pm… After the second train suffered an identity crisis mid-ride and dropped me off in a weird-looking neighbourhood, I finally called a taxi. The driver was over-the-top apologetic for the way his city welcomed me. Good guy. Tipped him well.

And then… A night – and not even that – spent at the airport. People – and I use the term loosely – who thought it was fine to play loud videos on their phones at 1:20am as we all waited for the ticket counters to open. A 5am Frontier flight to Denver by way of Orlando, as well as a reminder why I rarely fly Frontier. My backpack cost me $70 since it was a carry-on item. The woman next to me in line was moving, so she had five gigantic (and bright-pink) pieces of luggage. They charged her $900 to check all of that in. She almost started crying… But ultimately accepted their terms.

Such a strange little world.

And meanwhile, a plane was waiting to fly me far away, to the Colorado mountains…

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Feral Artist Nomad odyssey, part 1

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October 5, 2025

The first part of my 2025-26 Feral Artist Nomad adventure is just about done.

It’s Sunday, and I’m enjoying the somewhat fresh air on a bench in the sun by the big bus station, awaiting the overnight bus that will take me from Montreal to New York and will depart in about seven hours. I’m quite sleep-deprived, but also happy with how things have turned out.

The big move on Tuesday, September 30th, was rough – but they always are. The two tall Ikea bookshelves were the hardest part, as usual. Driving the 15-foot Uhaul for three hours is a fascinating experience: it’s the closest that most of us will ever get to handling a tank. Montreal’s narrow streets and potholes were a bit of a challenge, and the truck may or may not have gone almost flying a few times. There were, fortunately, no cops in the vicinity.

It’s odd to know that everything you own can fit into a 5’x10’x8′ storage unit with quite a bit of cubic space left over. It’s secured with two padlocks and a magnetic card. I have no clue when I will access it next.

I spent five nights at the “Auberge Alternative du Vieux-Montréal” hostel, smack in the touristy part of town. Amazingly low prices, and you get used to the snoring of your dorm-mates eventually.

I swear I’m an introvert, but I made myself go out and attend events every night of the week. There was the literary open mic night, where everyone mourned the anniversary of their friend’s death, and where I performed my first-ever public reading of one of my short stories. (Some of the local poets and writers had grade-A material!) There was the weekly local writer meetup where only five people out of ~1,500 facebook group members actually showed up. They were an interesting bunch.

There was the karaoke party with a twist, where I met a fellow traveler, whom I got to know over the 36 hours that followed. My hostel bed probably wondered why I didn’t return. She’s flying back to Tokyo even as I type this. The bite marks make such beautiful mementos.

Exploring the city on foot is fun: always a lot to see, and my mental map of the place is slowly but surely populating. I’ve already found a popular local hole-in-the-wall that stays open till 2am. And a fun little store that sells random discarded Amazon items for a fraction of the price. I had to restrain my inner hoarder.

And now… I’ve put the last of my random and non-essential items into my storage unit (won’t need fancy dress shoes where I’m going) – I’ll start my one-man two-week film festival circuit very very soon. After that, straight to Workaway, probably. My clothes, fancy camera, non-fancy netbook, and harmonica are in my bulging Osprey backpack. My brand new CouchSurfing account has already secured me one couch in Colorado, for an overnight visit to Grand Junction.

Aside from the lack of sleep, I’m as ready as I can be. Let’s do this, eh.

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I self-identify as an adventurer

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September 29, 2025

Being an adventurer means taking all your stuff to a storage unit and embarking on an ill-defined, 5-6 month voyage of film festivals and tropical volunteering…

…while also setting aside one perfectly packed just-in-case backpack for an emergency Pacific Crest Trail thru-hike.

Strategy… Strategy.

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Alternatives and paths not taken

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September 26, 2025

This little town doesn’t want to let me go.

I aim to move from here to Montreal (or at least move my things) four days from now, at the very end of September. And yet… Uhaul is unsure whether it can rent me a one-way intercity truck. The person taking over my apartment lease broke every deadline and will technically move in before her application is fully processed. And the landlord, who outed himself as a xenophobic racist and sexist when I finally cornered him at the sketchy, unmarked office, has made every excuse in the book and blamed everyone but himself for his company’s rather impressive lack of customer service.

Splendid, eh.

I’ll get out of here one way or another, even if that means pulling a cart full of stuff all the way from here to Montreal, but damn, the escape velocity this move demands is really something.

I’ve lived in Quebec City for four years and one month: longer than I’ve lived anywhere since college. Too long…

When, somehow and at some point, I finally stash my things in a nice, heated storage unit in the big city, I will be technically homeless for quite a bit: a few days at a hostel, a couple of big, fancy parties (the kind that only Montreal can offer!), and then I’ll kick off my two-week film festival tour: a daisy-chain of three festivals in Brooklyn, Pennsylvania, and Colorado. The first will involve crashing at my sister’s basement, while the other two provide free lodging to their filmmakers, huzzah! So many new friends, new experiences, new memories to bury the old…

That fortnight-long adventure will end on October 20th, after which (barring last-moment acceptance letters from the last two festivals in November), I’ll have absolutely nothing on my agenda for about four months, which means I’ll step wayyy out of my comfort zone and give Workaway a try. It’s a fun little setup: you find a host, pay for your plane ticket and insurance, work about 20-25 hours a week, and get a free place to stay and free food, as well as tons of natural beauty (or urban hustle, if that’s more your style). I’ve just sent an introductory message to an absolutely amazing farm in Ecuador, and if they actually reply… That’ll be amazing. (Giant-sized turtles! Organic fruit! Perfect night sky!)

And if they don’t, in fact, reply – well, my carefully curated list of favourite Workaway hosts (all based in South America, because these winters are getting to me) will set me up with more adventures.

Sometime around February, I’ll fly back to hit up more film festivals. Over the past few weeks, I’ve applied to about a dozen writer-in-residence openings and grants. (That involved typing up a chapter from my creative non-fiction proposal in record time, and then submitting it literally five minutes before deadline!) Frankly, no idea if I’ll get any of them. The odds are stacked against me, but aren’t they always? Can’t win if you don’t try. I figure that my list of film festival screenings (seven so far, with more on their way!) and published story credits has me firmly in the “emerging Canadian writer” category, and that ain’t nothing.

…but if I do not, in fact, secure any of those coveted writing/filmmaking opportunities, then there’s a very very good chance that, come April, I’ll open up my storage unit, drop off my stuff, pick up a carefully pre-packed backpack (tactics, eh), and fly out to San Diego to repeat my Pacific Crest Trail adventure. Unlike the one in 2022, hopefully it’ll involve a whole lot less yelling at my accountant every few days and a bit more fun. (Might even join a tramily!) In that particular eventuality, I won’t rejoin civilization until late August-ish, or just in time for the 2026 Worldcon. We’ll see.

I’m getting over the big breakup, but – as always – in my own way. For some reason, this month had quite a few deadlines for short story anthologies… So I went ahead and wrote a short story for each of them. All 10 of them. The grand total was roughly 26,000 words. Wordcount aside, this has been the single most productive month of my life, because my brain was in desperate need of a distraction. When you feed your subconscious mind 10 different prompts and tell it to get on it, the end result can be pretty amazing. I followed Charlie Jane Anders’s advice on writing: transmute your feelings into art, let them pass through you, and create something beautiful… Or something, in any case. Realistically, I expect at least three of those stories to get accepted. Almost certainly won’t get all 10. Five or more acceptances would be amazing.

Quite a few of my stories (three? four?) are coming out between now and New Year’s: the publishing industry’s schedule works in mysterious ways. I will, of course, share the links here with all y’all.

In another world, where my luck was a bit better, I would’ve finished the Continental Divide Trail thruhike right about now, give or take. That would’ve resulted in a very very different year… For one thing, my relationship would still be intact, though every bit as doomed. My short story portfolio would’ve been much smaller. I wouldn’t have attended the 2025 Worldcon, wouldn’t have written this essay that’s gone viral, and that, in turn, wouldn’t have opened some rather interesting doors for me… On the other hand, I would’ve had a whole lot more experiences and adventures and new friendos.

On some level, I’m pretty sure that all the stories I’ve written (and sold!) over the past four months have been an attempt to overcompensate, to do something worthy and productive after my much-anticipated hiking adventure ended far too soon. My life is quite a lot different now, because of everything I’ve done since my return from the desert, and my 2026 will be quite different as a result of that.

The other me, the one who (hypothetically) finished the CDT, would be gearing up to do the Appalachian Trail, aka every introvert’s nightmare (it’s where the entire east coast comes to hang out), and would be making a fair bit less art. Maybe. Possibly. Hard to tell for sure.

These last few days of September are filled with giddy anticipation: I want to fast-forward through the remaining time, to jump straight to September 30th, to get it over with, to start my new adventure. The type of giddiness and impatience that every nomad knows…

But meanwhile, I need to get ready for a little going-away party with my local friendos – one tonight, another one tomorrow. A fun way to pass these last few evenings, before embarking on my Feral Artist Nomad adventure of uncertain duration.

And so it goes.

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2025 Worldcon: the Good, the Bad, the Fugly

Filed under: wanderlust, writing — Leave a comment
August 22, 2025

Aaaand I’m back. Just 10 days ago, I typed up the hopeful, giddy post, Onward to Worldcon. In it, I wondered just what kind of cool adventures and experiences I would have had over the following week.

Much has changed.

Short version: many adventures were had. My overall impression of my first-ever Worldcon was positive, and I’ll definitely attend the next one in California. Many fun new friends.

Long version: wild week, eh. I tried to fill every waking moment with new experiences and friends and panels and parties, and I had very very many waking moments, since I slept only about 4-5 hours per night.

Worldcon felt to me like an intricate clock with ten thousand moving pieces. Some of the pieces had redundancies, so if something failed (and I’m sure many things did), we the attendees never found out. It was a monumental event of staggering complexity, and the fact that it went as well as it did is a testament to the combined efforts of all the volunteers. Sincere and heartfelt kudos to you all, my friends.

There’s a lot to process here, and I’m sure random bits and pieces will fall into place weeks and months later. For now, though, here’s a list of the good, the bad, and the fugly.

To start with, the fugly. The essay I posted yesterday, When People Giggle at Your Name, or the 2025 Hugo Awards Incident, has been improbably successful. Over 8,000 blog views within 24 hours, over 1,400 likes and 800 reskeets (yes, we call them “reskeets” – no, we will not change), and so many excellent conversations. That’s more than I could ever hope for. Anyhow, not much else for me to say on that front.

The second fugly aspect was the registration line… My initial plan had been to fly in the night before (Quebec City -> Chicago -> Seattle), crash at my brother’s place, get a 7am bus to the convention center, get my pass, and make it to one of the 9am-ish panels.

Reality interfered. The flight to Chicago got delayed to the point where I had to spend the night at the airport, and didn’t get to Seattle till 9:30am. I raced from there directly to the convention center, big backpack in tow. (Experienced traveler tip: always carry deodorant, toothpaste, and a toothbrush! That cost me five minutes, but it made me much more pleasant to be around, eh.)

I arrived at the convention center at 10:30am. And then… Then I spent almost two hours waiting in the registration line. One of my many, many privileges (of which I’m constantly cognizant) is that I’m physically fit and in good health. Even so, that line almost defeated me. I can’t even begin to imagine what it must have felt like to those who had mobility issues or couldn’t spend two hours surrounded by the loud crowd on all sides.

The convention staff claimed there were some connectivity issues. (They apparently lasted the entire first day, judging by the Discord chatter from those who tried to watch panels remotely.) If there was a backup in place, it must have failed. I was sleep-deprived and borderline delirious, but I swear I heard them ask the folks in line if anyone could join them and help with processing the registration passes.

As we got closer to noon, they made another announcement, telling the panelists with the upcoming panels to step aside for the express line so they wouldn’t actually miss their panels. It was not good… The wait was made worse because my neighbour in line was a) an old-timey Worldcon visitor, with 20+ years of convention memories, and b) incredibly cynical: they kept saying how none of the opening/closing events mattered, etc, etc. Later, during the second hour, my neighbour moved on to describe their daily routine, their preferred type of digital tablet, and more. Unbidden. I nodded and tried to filter it all out and kept promising myself that the day could yet be salvaged.

Finally, at 12:15pm, I finally got my pass with the neat little “my first Worldcon” ribbon and raced upstairs, to find the third panel on my daily schedule.

From what I understand, it’s not always like that. What I don’t understand is what specific cascade of issues caused all that. Later in the day, folks who arrived at the convention center in the afternoon claimed it still took them 90 or so minutes to get processed.

This… kerfuffle, let’s call it that, made me wonder if maybe, just maybe, I ought to throw my hat into the panelist pool for the 2026 convention. I know a lot about several topics, and will gladly contribute my knowledge if they’ll have me. I would do just about anything to minimize any further chance of being stuck in the Line From Hell. (Yes, folks, it was that bad.)

So that was the fugly: the registration at the start and the name-mangling giggling mess toward the end. I’ll intersperse the good and the bad.

Good: the variety of panels was mind-blowing! Hundreds of them, with at least 10 to pick from for any one-hour slot. (Some went longer than an hour.) Some panels were so full that folks sat on the floor (the ones with GRRM and Martha Wells, for example), while others were oddly sparse, like the panel on the future of energy. (It had an excellent mix of experts in the field. One of them gave me their personal email address since they don’t have a blog, huzzah!)

Bad: folks, I get that it was all volunteer-run, but some of the moderators… There were two particularly bad examples. At one panel, the moderator never even showed up. The panelists were three women, who were all published authors, and a 95-year-old man who used to be a UW professor. (If I recall correctly, he may have published something at one point.) The panelists decided to self-moderate. The old man turned his introduction into a bona fide speech. Weird, but okay. When the panelists decided to discuss the panel’s topic (I’m being vague here: no topic, no names), the old man interrupted one of the women and launched into an honest-to-God lecture on the topic, as if we were a bunch of college freshmen. He went on and on and on. I finally stood up and walked out. Quite a few people followed me. I felt so incredibly sorry for those panelists…

The other weirdly moderated panel actually had a moderator. The moderator was a woman, as were all the panelists. (One of them is among my favourite podcasters!) Problem was, the moderator wasn’t sure what her job entailed, and an impatient panelist had to explain it to her. Over the hour that followed, the moderator launched into looooong monologues about her personal involvement with the panel’s subject. She talked on and on, longer than any two (out of four) panelists put together. The audience grew restless. The poor panelists couldn’t hide the impatience and frustration from their faces. Finally, the impatient panelist interrupted the moderator when the filibuster showed no sign of slowing down. Some discussion among the panelists took place. The offended moderator buried her hands under the table, texting or browsing or doing who knows what else on her phone.

Five minutes before the panel was scheduled to end, the moderator finally looked up, realized she missed something, and announced that it was time for some Q&A. The panel went wayyy past the one-hour mark so, once again, I felt like a jerk by getting up and walking away, to get a good seat at the next panel before it filled up. Ho hum.

Good: the panel on navigating AI for writers and editors was excellent, in large part due to Jason Sanford, who made it very very clear that, as a moderator, he would not suffer fools gladly – or at all. He kept the ideologically polarized crowd in check, especially after one of them jeered something in support of the pro-AI panelist. Sanford sounded downright intimidating from time to time, but he made sure the panel stayed on track, he didn’t monologue, and he gave each of the four panelists time to speak.

Neil Clarke, of the Clarkesworld fame, spent most of the hour literally facepalming as a blatantly pro-AI “author” opposite him used every pro-AI excuse in the book, (The other two panelists were a pro-consent, anti-AI professor, and another professor who kept saying how neat it would be to have an AI cowriter…) Neil has been an anti-AI champion with his magazine for years, and he made his point quite clear during that panel. Later, at the awards ceremony, he gave a brief but passionate anti-AI speech when he accepted his Hugo for the best short-form editor. You rock, Neil! Keep up the good fight, eh.

Bad: food and coffee options inside the convention center. It was very very strange to see that the sole coffee stand (and in Seattle, no less!) packed up and left for the day by 5:40pm. With thousands of caffeine addicts milling around, you’d think that the baristas’ overtime wage would’ve paid for itself within five minutes. (Or hey, maybe their boss could come by and take over…) But nope. The overpriced food vendors on the exhibit floor also folded up by 6pm. I more or less had to beg them for the privilege of buying a small bag of chips and a coke for the low, low price of $8. Oof. Oof, I say. (And no, there were no vending machines.)

Good: the 7am coffee meet-ups were excellent. Part of the Fringe program, they were partly a tour of Pike Place, partly a way to make new friends, which we all did. I’ve made it out to just two of those early meet-ups, I think, and the second one ballooned into an awesome one-on-one conversation of humanity and theology as it pertains to sci-fi and fantasy. (“Those aren’t gods – you just recreated superheroes!” Heh. You rock, C.W.) Granted, there wasn’t much to do at the actual convention center before 10am (aside from a few very early panels) because the exhibit floor stayed closed till 10pm, but nonetheless – those coffee meetups were wholesome and fun and edumacational. (If you ever travel to Seattle, touring Pike Place around 7am is a unique experience: it’s empty and devoid of crowds; quite different from the rush hour.)

Bad: you know, I’m actually out of bad stuff – it was overwhelmingly good! The only borderline weird thing was the nature of the big masquerade event. At first, I assumed it was going to be a masked ball. One of the old-timers assured me that was not the case: all were welcome, mask or no mask. After that reassurance, I assumed it was going to be a masked ball, but with mask-less folks welcome to attend and mingle. Welllll, it was actually more of a fashion show. Folks sat in the huge auditorium, while up on stage, cosplayers of all kinds took turns to display their amazing costumes. (Giant squid person – you were a genius!) That was a very different pace and vibe than I’d expected, so I hung around for just 10 minutes before bouncing out.

Good: authors! It was so, so great to finally meet my favourite authors in person. I’d met Matt Dinniman (he of the Dungeon Crawler Carl fame) a few times before, but I kept running into him at the convention, and the two panels with him that I attended were brilliant. A genuinely nice guy on top of being a great author! Mary Robinette Kowal is now at the very top of the list of authors I’ll read once I get through the books on my short-term list. (Geek problems, am I right?) Her live taping of the “Writing Excuses” podcast (with Erin Roberts and Howard Tayler) taught me more about writing than some of the 200-page writing manuals I’d encountered in my journey. In a building full of brainiacs, she stood out by a long shot.

Meeting John Scalzi and GRR Martin was also fun. I’ve been reading Scalzi’s blog for about 20 years now, and it was great to finally put the voice to the persona. (His pink unicorn “Alpha Male” T-shirt was excellent trolling.) Martin showed up 12 minutes late to his own panel, did quite a bit of monologuing, and had to be gently (but firmly) stopped by Scalzi when his monologues got too long. Interesting guy. I was not at the event (autograph signing?) when one of Martin’s extra-toxic fans asked if he could please hurry up and give his series to Brandon Sanderson (who was also present) before dying of old age. Ye gods… That might have been the ugliest fan interaction Worldcon has experienced in years. It felt as if one of the extra-toxic subreddits breached containment.

Good: the Freebie Lounge! That was such an interesting part of the convention… It was located in the corner of the big exhibit hall on the second floor. There were books, books, and more books. Some titles had been brought by authors seeking to boost their recognition: dozens of books, shrink-wrapped and waiting to be picked up. Some authors set up a little autograph table for their freebie books. (Great strategy!) There were a lot of old-timey sci-fi magazines from the 60s and 70s: I snagged a couple, and will devour them at leisure. (Retro sci-fi is quite different from the stuff today, for better and for worse.) There were also the latest issues of today’s top magazines: Asimov’s, Clarkesworld, and Analog.

The local SFF fans helped out by donating books from their own collections, which was unexpectedly wholesome! That’s how I got my hands on four Terry Pratchett paperbacks. (I’m on a long-term quest to acquire every Terry Pratchett novel, but only from thrift stores and/or freebie locations.)

I had to be very selective (limited luggage space, limited shelf space) but even so, I ended up with 11 books, including lots of amazing fanzines! The most unexpected find was the hardcover copy of Seventy Maxims of Maximally Effective Mercenaries by Howard Tayler, creator of the Schlock Mercenary comic. The book is in the format of Art of War (one rule, many commentaries), except that it’s annotated by military grunts and mercenaries from the distant future. It’s beyond funny. Tayler was kind enough to sign it for me when I bumped into him at a panel later that day. (What a guy!)

Good: parties! All in all, I partied for five nights straight – the sixth night was a fun barbecue after a day of hiking near Mt Rainier. (Probably the best yet least attended Fringe event. Only nine sign-ups out of 5,000+ attendees!) I’m an introvert who is very very good at storing social energy, much like a sloth has a hidden reservoir of energy reserves. The convention had a dedicated dry-erase board where different party organizers could promote their events.

A few were somewhere in the city, but most were at the nearby hotel, three or four at a time. The hotel’s elevators couldn’t quite handle all the traffic, and required a key card to use them after 10pm. At one point, our gregarious gaggle of geeks got tired of waiting and just started going up and down the stairs, following the noise on each floor till we found an unlisted (but not unwelcoming!) party. Much fun was had by all, especially at the famous annual Dead Dog Party (disregard the odd name) that was bigger and more attended than all the other parties combined. Huzzah!

Good: friendos! Sooo many new friendos. Many emails were exchanged. Lots of social media connections were forged. At least one epic conversation will continue.

Not bad, but funny: as someone only tangentially aware of Worldcon (this was my first), I’d always heard about the so-called Bar Con, aka the after-panel meetup at the nearest bar, where all the writers would trade lore and tips and gossip, being all cool and writer-y. For some reason, in my mind’s eye I’d always thought it would be a fancy, private-club sort of affair, with posh velvet chairs, relaxed lounge music, and fairly quiet, witty conversations…

Reader, I was wrong. I was so wrong that it’s actually pretty damn funny. (I guess it’s a good thing I didn’t pack a full-on suit in my Osprey backpack!) The bar at the nearby Sheraton hotel had writers, yes, and fans of said writers, and many many other people. Hundreds of them, actually. It was louder than some of the concerts I’ve attended in the past, and that just added to the hilarious mismatch of my expectations and the actual reality.

It was a bit odd when the hotel’s bar stopped serving drinks at the stroke of midnight. That was on Saturday night, no less, right after the awards ceremony, which mercifully ended around 10:40pm. Later on, I heard that that the city ordinance is to stop serving drinks at 2am. Soooo, much like with the coffeeshop, when you make a deliberate choice to stop serving drinks to a giant crowd on a Saturday night… Weird business choice, brah. (I know, I know, Worldcon had no part in it. Just listing my personal subjective experiences.) Nonetheless, I made a couple of new friends in that Bar Con crowd, so all was well.

Good: SFWA events! I wrote recently that I managed to join the SFWA after making juuuust enough money to exceed their associate member threshold. Their members-only breakfast on Friday, followed by a networking reception just before the awards on Saturday, was fun. I did end up accidentally talking to at least one AI apologist (eww. Eww, ewww, ewww.) but the vast majority of them were cool cats. There was an issue with SFWA forums during the convention, so I joined their Discord server (not my favourite platform: bad archival functionality), and made even more friendos that way!

Good: film festival! My short film Please Don’t Send Help screened on Thursday, to the audience of about 80 people. There were approving-sounding face noises. There were no rotten eggs or tomatoes or booing or riots. There was a very small but cozy Q&A at the end (thanks, Shawn!) and at least one person who recognized me and stopped by to chat a few days later. It’s always wild to see something I created on a big screen. What an excellent treat.

Neither good nor bad: my writing streak took quite a hit, and that’s entirely on me. I tried (mostly failed, but tried) to write at least a little bit on my phone’s Notes app every day, and managed to type up exactly 2,183 words. Better than nothing, but not a whole lot, considering I was away for eight whole days. Ah well, it was still progress. Today was the first day when I actually sat down and typed typed typed. The end result: 1,644 new words for my first draft. Not too shabby.

Super-good: sooo much inspiration! I jotted down ideas for at least three new short stories, as well as a sci-fi novel that would actually utilize my degree in political science. (Seriously, it’ll pretty much write itself.) Just gotta finish the current WIP, which has just reached the 55% or so mark… It’s good to have more ideas than you know what to do with! I also took lots of notes on book recommendations (as well as the occasional movie) from all the panelists. My reading list will never ever run dry, and that is beautiful.

And so… Fun event. Not perfect, not terrible. Will come again. Lots of fun free books (the best kind!) for my reading pile. I haven’t checked yet, but I believe the organizers are uploading the panels that got filmed (not all got filmed) and will keep the files available till the end of the year. So much to stream!

A year from now, I’ll be the grizzled second-year Worldcon attendee – to quote a joke, “This isn’t my first rodeo!” I say at my second rodeo.

I’ll see you all there, I hope.

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Losses and wins

Filed under: wanderlust, writing — Leave a comment
June 3, 2025

My desert adventure ended early. I wrote about it in depth on my trail journal. Short version: my legs got several injuries, the trail was a lot less developed than advertised (at least 10% included walking on the side of a highway…), and it was soul-crushingly lonely. It was considered normal to walk 3-4 days without seeing another human being. This year, in particular, there was a shortage of hikers, especially from other countries. (Probably due to the politics and the ongoing harassment of foreign tourists.)

The loneliness bit may have been partly due to bad luck. There was one experienced hiker (she’d done the Triple Crown (hiking all three major trails) twice) who managed to form a trail family of eight people around her by the time she reached the first town, 83 miles from the border. Impressive, that. Others ended up walking outside such bubbles.

The desert was beautiful, though… I’d never seen the Milky Way so bright, not even in the Sierra-Nevada mountains during my PCT thru-hike in 2022. Along the way, I explored the ghost town of Old Hachita – or what’s left of it. Those ruins were some grade-A Wild West Americana.

In the end, I made it 155 miles before calling it quits in Silver City, NM. The downtown Palace Hotel was incredibly hiker-friendly, and there were quite a few of us there. Many were recovering from their own injuries, most of them less serious than my own. It was a bit like a hiker-trash field hospital in that respect. My initial (and very very ambitious) plan had been to do the entire Triple Crown by completing the Continental Divide Trail this year, followed by the Appalachian Trail in 2026. But over at that hotel… Yeesh. Yeesh, I say. Multiple thruhikers (who had saved the CDT for last) I met would complain about how much they disliked the AT, and how they were forcing themselves to do the CDT.

I listened to their woeful laments, and nodded, and sympathized – and also asked myself, “Self, is that what I sound like?”

There comes a point when pursuing an overly ambitious quest becomes not merely eccentric or quixotic, but self-destructive, with not much fun along the way. A lot of that desert section was beautiful, and I met some unique and interesting people, but hiking on the side of the highway, alone, with coal-rolling trucks spewing exhaust in my face… That doesn’t count as a “National Scenic Trail” in my book.

…though to be fair, if my legs hadn’t decided to fall apart (should I have done more ThighMaster exercises beforehand?..), and if it had been just a bit less lonely, I might have carried on, if only out of sheer stubbornness.

Ah well.

The unplanned return back to Quebec was pricey: a flight from Silver City to Albuquerque (a very cheap, very tiny propeller plane; great experience!), from there to New York, and from there, an all-night bus back home. My apartment lease was still good until June 30th, so that’s where I’ve been for the past two weeks. No furniture (still in storage), only my sleeping bag, the contents of my hiking backpack, and a big bag of “welcome home” stuff I’d packed away for easy access. (The initial plan had been to finish the hike, get an AirBnB, and hunt for apartments.)

It makes no sense to hire a moving truck, move my stuff back here, and then move it back to my new apartment (just found one) on July 1, soooo here I am, trapped in the midst of strange logistics. Just an empty studio, a sleeping bag, a few books, my phone, and my laptop. (I use the phone as a hotspot when I need to do laptop-specific things.)

It’s a hilarious parody of a bachelor’s life (though fortunately, my girlfriend was glad to see me back early!), but on the upside, I’ve gotten quite a lot done. I’ve already finished a couple of new short stories, caught up on a lot of reading, and done some other productive stuff. If I’d returned to my TV, gaming computer, and unlimited internet, my productivity would’ve been a whole lot lower, eh.

I’ve got some good news, too. I always juggle a lot of different projects, and a few of them paid off:

My essay “A Hierarchy of Apocalypses” has been published in Phano, making it my first-ever non-fiction sale. (I’m not including my Kindle e-books.) Also, the pixel art the editor had picked to go with my essay is a thing of beauty.

“If Time Travel Were Possible…” (a short story set in my OTTO-verse) has been published in Black Cat Weekly, which also resulted in my first-ever fan mail!

“Murder of the Orient Express” (of, not on!) has been published in Pulp Asylum. The title is a bit of a funny story: a couple of podcast hosts had a blooper moment when they mispronounced the title of that classic novel, and they laughed it off. But that got me thinking… Who would want to kill an actual train itself? Why? And how? And thus this story was born!

…and I have a few more waiting in the wings.

It’s a bit funny: in the short-story biz, an “emerging writer” is defined as someone who has three or fewer publishing credits. I guess that makes me an emerged writer, eh?

One particular cool piece of news is that my short film, “Please Don’t Send Help,” got accepted by the first-ever Worldcon Film Festival! Worldcon is the biggest annual sci-fi convention in the world, and this will be their first addition of a film festival alongside all the author-related events. This year, it’s held in Seattle, in mid-August. I’ll get to attend it for free for one day when my film screens, and it’ll be a fun experience, being there as a sci-fi creator, but not (or at least not yet) a published novelist. Just like with my one-day visit to the New York Comic Con last October, I’ll have to make the most of it!

And speaking of film festivals… I’ve got at least two dozen major film fests I’ve applied for. (Why yes, I do have a problem.) All of them are famous for their hospitality, hard to get into, and/or will get me sponsored by Quebec if I get picked. That’s mostly for the European festivals, but I really like my odds with the Finnish Tampere fest! We’ll see.

If even a few of those festivals accept me (and I submitted four films to each one, to boost my odds), that’ll result in more partying within a single year than in my entire life up to this point. All those submission fees have cost me a pretty penny (even with the carefully timed early-bird discounts), but a) parties! and b) unforgettable experiences and c) possibly new grand adventures stemming from those new connections?, and d) once you get accepted, you usually get a lifelong alumni discount, meaning no more fees ever again.

And so, while my dream of becoming an elite professional thru-hiker has gone bust, the upside is that I’d be able to attend my film’s screening at my dream sci-fi convention (that would’ve been impossible if I kept hiking), and I’ve used all this free time (and utter lack of distractions) to double-down on my artsy endeavours. Let’s see how this plays out, eh?

…there’s a distinct possibility that a year from today, I’ll be completely frazzled, drained of energy, filled with way too many conflicting and overlapping memories of far too many events (what folks in the biz call “the festival brain”), but that kind of fatigue will be a good problem to have – or, as I call these things, #GrigoryProblems

I hope all y’all are about to have a fun summer too!

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Advice for future Pacific Crest Trail hikers

Filed under: wanderlust — Leave a comment
February 10, 2023

I’ve decided to post something useful for all the future PCT hikers: the sum total of my PCT advice. This isn’t gospel, just one hiker’s take on stuff. I hope this helps, and happy hiking!!

  1. If your trail name is just one word, and if it’s a common noun, be aware that others will probably have the same one. I encountered tons of Turtles and Chefs. 🙂 It’s okay to shop around for a trail name. It’s also okay to have no trail name at all. It’s your hike, and no one else’s.

2. You will not survive off hiker boxes alone. It’s a worthwhile goal, but some towns have no trail boxes at all. Also, your diet would be limited to mysterious Ziploc baggies full of unidentifiable powders. Either way, not nearly enough calories.

3. Eat a lot. I promise you won’t gain weight by the time your thru-hike is over. I devoured 4K calories a day, and still ended up losing 18% of my body weight by the end. O_o

4. If you spend a zero day in a campground/resort, you won’t have as much fun as you would with a town zero. There’s just… not a whole lot to do. That’s something I wish I’d changed on my hike.

5. A lot of resorts/stores, especially starting in the Sierra, will not have price tags… VVR is the worst offender – they don’t quite tell you their tiny beers are $6 each. O_o Don’t be afraid to ask for prices.

6. Don’t chug olive oil if your digestive tract isn’t used to it. Yes, that’s the most efficient way to get your calories, but… At least one hiker shat his pants after he started chugging oil. (He will remain nameless hahaha) As life hacks go, this one may have some severe consequences.

7. Send resupply boxes to tiny towns along the trail. After South Lake Tahoe, and basically for the rest of the trail, there’ll be a ton of tiny towns with tiny stores: even when they have price tags, it’ll be ridiculously expensive to resupply. If you’re not sure about a town, look it up with the Google Maps street view, and you’ll see if it has a Safeway or just one tiny-looking store.

8. Send yourself a variety of supplies. A lot of hikers get tired of the food they’d sent themselves in resupply boxes. (I ended up hating peanut butter pretty fast lol)

9. Take tons of pictures and videos. 🙂 Also, this will sound elementary, but use a microfiber cloth on your phone/camera lens. If you forget to do that once in a while, your pics will come out duller than they should be.

10. Don’t carry $50 or $100 bills. (This is especially applicable to foreign hikers.) Most stores on the trail are small, and they usually wouldn’t be able to break you a big bill. Carry an assortment of $1, $5, and $10 bills.

11. Have a secret cash stash in your backpack in case you really need it. Some places (like Hikertown) accept only cash, and there aren’t a lot of ATMs.

12. This one is just my personal opinion, but Platypus-brand water bladders are poorly designed. You can accidentally yank out the main water tube, or they could develop a micro-leak because of all the friction in your backpack… I ended up carrying my water in SmartWater bottles instead.

13. Dudes, this one is for you (women already know this stuff haha) – after you put sunscreen on your face, wash it off before going to sleep… I miiiight have ended up with 4 days of sunscreen slowly getting inside my eyes and irritating the hell out of my eyes for 2 days in the Sierra. Zero stars, would not recommend.

14. Outside your face, sunscreen generally stays on for several days. You can make it last, and still get enough protection from the sun. (If your skin starts turning pink, reapply as needed.) If you sweat a lot, this tip might not work for you, but in my experience, all the trail dust combined with the sunscreen to form a nice protective layer around my legs.

15. Trail magic is amazing, but don’t rely on it or expect it. Less disappointment that way, and you’ll appreciate any and all unexpected trail magic that much more. 🙂

16. If you’re going through the bear country and don’t have your bear can yet (or anymore), hang your food off a tree branch. It’ll take just a few minutes, and you won’t end up with just a can of Pringles (bears *hate* Pringles!) to last you to the next town.

17. Get a small compass, learn how to use it. Phone apps can get accidentally deleted, electronics can run out of power or drown, but it’d take physical force to smash a compass. There are quite a few confusing spots along the trail.

18. Speaking of backups: National Geographic maps are awesome. 🙂 I actually navigated with one (and my compass!) after I fell into Bear Creek just ahead of VVR. It’s a good idea to have non-electronic backups like that.

19. If your phone drowns and stops working, keep it in a ziploc filled with dry rice. That stuff really works! (But not on DSLR cameras. I’m so sorry, Great Dingleberry…)

20. Don’t pack your fears. I’ve seen a hiker who carried a hatchet (he claimed he saw a lot of violent people in news clips about California…), another hiker with a pistol, etc. In the entire history of the PCT, no one died of human violence or animal attack. Leave the fear (and extra weight) at home.

21. Don’t be an asshole – pack out your toilet paper. There was quite a lot of it along the trail… Just yeet it into a ziploc, and into another ziploc, and put it deep into an outside pocket where it won’t touch anything else. It’s as simple as that.

22. Glissading is awesome, but it tends to randomize your gear. Everything that’s not secured to your backpack can fall off – and even if it’s secured, who knows. One guy hiking next to me ended up losing his sock (it was hanging and drying) but found a bottle of water instead. :))

23**. Don’t glissade in short-shorts…** One girl ended up getting named “Road Rash” – apparently, there was quite a lot of damage.

24. After you get a hitch, always – **always** – make sure you don’t forget your electronics and your hiking poles. Those were the top items folks forgot, from what I’ve seen. (Hell, I forgot my own poles at Kennedy Meadows South. 😛 )

25. Don’t start political debates, and don’t join them if some other idiot starts them. Leave the drama and the politics at home. Enjoy the beautiful nature instead. 🙂

26. A small mylar emergency blanket can be super useful. It can protect your exposed skin from mosquitoes when you’re filtering water next to their natural habitat. It can also keep you warmer at night if you wrap yourself in the emergency blanket while inside the sleeping bag. (It retains a lot of the heat your body radiates.)

27. Try to journal. Days will merge into weeks into months, and a lot of small things (and hiker names!) will be forgotten.

28. If you order Altra Lone Peak shoes from their site, keep in mind that they don’t deliver to post office buildings. (Ask me how I know!) They ship by Fedex, so that won’t work out. You can try shipping them to a local trail angel’s house instead.

29. Your feet will expand. Probably by a lot. If you put new shoes in your resupply boxes, plan accordingly, or you might not fit in them.

30. If you have large (and flat) feet like myself, don’t buy synthetic socks. Wool socks expand relatively well, but synthetic socks… My feet went from size 13 to size 16 (yes, really), and when I switched out my wool DarnTough socks for synthetic ones in Bishop, the synthetic socks started biting into the ankle so much that I ended up with so-called “hiker inflammation” aka fluid build-up in the ankle. Keeping it iced and elevated helped fix it, but I still ended up missing quite a few days of hiking. So, either stick with wool socks only, or keep rolling your synthetic socks up/down throughout the day. Keep them from staying in one place.

31. PCT is a very expensive adventure. Plan accordingly. In my experience, by mid-point, a lot of hikers were walking more miles than they were comfortable with because a) they were tight on cash, or b) they had minor injuries and wanted to reach the finish line before they became **major** injuries, or c) both.

32. Don’t be too cool for an ice axe/microspikes. They can save your life, or prevent a major injury. It’s better to have them and not need them… (I ended up using my ice axe when I started sliding off the hard packed snow on the damn Mather Pass. Best investment ever!)

33. Please don’t try trail-running up a mountain in the dark and/or when there’s ice.

34. You’re gonna have to get good at math, or become comfortable using a calculator. When shopping for food in town, you’ll end up doing tons of math to find the best “calories per $” deal.

35. Make sure you have some food variety when you buy food for the next few days of hiking. It can be **very** tempting to just buy a ton of peanuts (800 calories for $1, wooo!) but you’ll hate yourself afterwards. 😛

36. It’s okay if your hiking routine is different than other people’s. Maybe you like waking up at 3:30am and stopping at 5pm, or maybe you’ll get up after dawn and walk till dark. Maybe you want to take 2-hour siestas in the afternoon. Totally up to you.

37. There’ll be **a lot** of fallen trees (aka blowbacks) along the trail. Just mentally brace yourself ahead of time. 🙂 The hike into Idyllwild was basically an obstacle course, and then there were roughly 50-70 miles of blowdowns on the way to Etna… Quite a few in Washington, too. They’ll slow you down, and there’s no escaping them, so just make peace with that fact.

38. There will be loooong stretches without any cellphone reception, especially in the Sierra. Tell your friends/family not to worry. If you use a Garmin GPS thingy, make sure the folks back home know how to see your location.

39. No internet means you won’t be able to do a lot of time-sensitive online stuff. This is a very niche tip, I know 🙂 but if you decide to sell monthly covered calls to nonchalantly sponsor your hike, you’re gonna miss out on a week or two because, again, no internet. Or if you’re selling your house, maybe. Or negotiating with your crappy accountant. Plan accordingly.

40. Be nice. For a lot of regular people you encounter, you might be the first and last PCT hikers they’ll ever meet. You’re a PCT ambassador. Try to leave a good impression.

41. For fuck’s sake, don’t run off without paying. At least one NorCal hostel shut down in 2021 because the owner was heartbroken that hikers kept slipping away in the morning instead of paying for their bed + dinner. According to Guthook, at one point 15 hikers did that as a group in September 2021. Your actions affect not just this current hiking season, but future years as well.

42. When you’re in town, the most efficient calories = buying a bucket of ice cream. 🙂 a 1.5-liter bucket of ice cream = 1,800 calories. I used to just buy it and eat it with a spork on the nearest flat surface. 🙂

43. Trust your intuition. If all of a sudden, you notice that the path looks kinda faint and not very PCT-like, stop and check Guthook. I’m positive that every PCT hiker got turned around at some point. There’s lots of tiny forks you might not notice. It takes just a few seconds to double-check your location, and if you ignore your intuition, you might spend an hour or more heading completely the wrong way lol

44. Learn to use Guthook’s features – especially the altitude display that shows what ups and downs are ahead of you.

45. If you have doubts… You don’t need to be a super-experienced veteran hiker to do the PCT. I sure as hell wasn’t. 🙂 I’d never spent a night outdoors of my own accord (aside from Search & Rescue training earlier), and never hiked for fun, but I picked it up fast and finished the PCT in one piece. Just pay attention and don’t do dumb stuff, that’s all there is to it.

46. Yes, the Timberline buffet really is as awesome as everyone says it is. 🙂 Their strawberry smoothies were amazing!! Don’t skip the buffet, is what I’m saying, or you’ll miss out on an amazing experience.

47. In the Sierra, most bridges are located in the JMT section. Before and after it, not so much. Be **very** careful when crossing creeks and streams. Even a relatively small creek can kick your ass if it’s strong enough. (Damn you, Bear Creek!) Use caution and common sense.

48. Gloves vs mittens. Gloves give you more dexterity (good for setting up/taking down your tent, etc) but mittens are warmer since your fingers are together and share the warmth.

49. If there’s stuff (water bottles, etc) in your backpack’s outside pockets, at some point it might fall off and get lost. If your stuff is secured by a strap, that strap might fail – for example, if you’re navigating a lot of branches while climbing over blowdowns. To make sure you don’t lose, say, your tent poles – secure your stuff using 2 straps. It might still fall off and get lost, but much less likely that way.

50. Carry an emergency tampon. Human bodies can get weird on a giant endurance hike like that: at a tiny highway rest stop, I met a hiker whose period started wayyy earlier than expected. She always used to buy tampons just in time, and none of the other PCT hikers had a spare… She ended up asking all the locals that hiked by. Fun fact: most women who go out for a day hike on a weekday morning are on the older side, so they don’t have spares either. I used to pride myself in being able to help almost anyone, but I was completely useless in that situation.

51. The JetBoil cooking pot&stove combo is more expensive than generic pots, but it’s wayyy more efficient. It really does boil water faster than your basic aluminum/titanium no-name pots. Just make sure you have a lighter or matches to start the flame – it’s not piezoelectric.

52. Nothing wrong with taking multiple consecutive zeroes, but after about 2-3 zeroes in a row, your body will have to readjust to the hiking mode. Keep that in mind if you take a long detour to Vegas, San Francisco, Portland, etc. 🙂

53. Your water filter will **not** help you if the water is chemically contaminated. (Fertilizers, industrial runoff, etc.) If the water source looks/smells funny, try to wait until the next water source.

54. Wildfires in Cali/Oregon start in August. Keep that in mind if you have a late start.

55. If you plan on night-hiking, be aware that you’re sharing the territory with predatory critters. One time, a dude woke me up at 4am because he was **convinced** he was being stalked by a mountain lion. (“Too insistent for a deer, too small for a bear.”) He was just so damn happy to have some human company – I had a quick breakfast and we hiked together until dawn. 🙂 (His strategy was to nap during the day, then walk at night – that was during the heatwave.)

56. You probably won’t finish that large pizza you order in town. 😛 You’ll be hungry, yeah, but those large-sized pizzas are HUGE, y’all. Order a medium, or be prepared to walk around town with a to-go box full of cold slices hahaha

57. Bagels are awesome. ❤ Each bagel is about 220 calories, has 10 grams of protein, and they don’t really go bad. Bagels were my must-have carryout food in every town.

58. New to hiking? Or never hiked in the desert? I did a 3-day “rehearsal hike” and I highly recommend it! I rented a cheap campspot in Potrero through AirBnB, just 5 miles or so west of the South Terminus. (There’s a bus from San Diego that goes there.) It was a really laid-back way to make sure my body adjusted to the climate, humidity, altitude, etc. Also, a great way to get last-minute practice with all your shiny new gear. 🙂

59. Don’t carry huge knives. A small folding knife and/or a tiny flat one-piece metal multi-tool will do just fine.

60. There are many trail angel groups in towns along the PCT. You can find them either through the main trail angel group on Facebook, or if you search for the town name + trail angels. Not every town has them, but it’s a great way to find a free (or cheap) place to crash when you’re in town.

61. Cowboy-camping is indescribably awesome. Hands down one of my favourite parts of the trail. Waking up in the middle of the night, looking up at the stars (and the Milky Way, if you’re lucky) amid the velvet-black background of the universe… There is nothing like it. ❤

62. Leave no trace – carry out all your trash. Yes, that means you’ll have a tons of plastic packaging and food wrappers by the time you reach the next town in 3-5 days, but if all 4,500 hikers started throwing their trash around… Just don’t do that.

63. Electrolytes are your friends, especially during heatwaves. You will sweat **a lot**, and you’ll need to replenish the salt you sweat out. Experiment with different electrolyte powders. Include them in your resupply boxes because PCT-adjacent stores often sell out.

64. Yes, Oregon mosquitoes are as terrible as everyone says. There are literal swarms of them. Pack a head-net: it weighs just a few grams, and you won’t regret it.

65. Take a few minutes to google, read, and understand the symptoms (and treatment) of heatstroke and frostbite. You may end up needing that information in the desert, in the Sierra, and during heatwaves. It could save your life. (Or somebody else’s.)

66. When you’re in town and all the electric outlets are already taken, check the back of the building! Always check the perimeter, y’all. 😉 More often than you’d think, there’s an empty outlet (or more than one!) in the back, out of sight and all yours to use.

67. I already mentioned the blowdowns – mentally prepare yourself for some really frustrating days. There’s a section (near mile 200) where the trail got swept away by annual flooding, so you’ll spend 15 or so miles wandering from one tiny stone cairn to another – no trail, no signposts. 🙂 In the Sierra, especially along the JMT, there’ll be virtually no PCT signage, no way to tell where exactly the path to the summit lies under all that snow. You can’t change that, but you can change your attitude. Just keep in mind that it really is wilderness out there, and not every stretch is easy to navigate.

68. The farther you get from the PCT, the fewer people will know what that is, and hitchhiking might get difficult. When I had to leave the trail to nurse my ankle, I got a ride from KMN all the way to Modesto. (2 hours away.) Coming back, the locals all thought I was a homeless person and not a thru-hiker. 😦 I tried and failed to hitchhike, and ended up spending roughly $150 on Uber and Lyft to get from Modesto to Sonora, and from Sonora back to the trail near KMN. Keep that in mind if you plan to hitch back to the trail from a city 50+ miles away.

69. Have fun out there. 🙂

(Crossposted on my PCT-2022 trail journal)

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Pacific Crest Trail: the aftermath

Filed under: wanderlust — 2 Comments
December 12, 2022

I figured I should probably post this update before the year ends. The 9-month gap between posts is strange enough as it is – no reason to stretch it across 2 years. All is well, and I finished the PCT in one piece. I had to skip a section in Oregon because of wildfire closures, but I’ll come back and finish it at some point in the future.

The whole experience was… strange. And beautiful. And a little dangerous. Sometimes, the trail would try to kill you, but it was so beautiful that you’d forgive it soon after. That’s how relationships work, right? Right?

I walked mostly alone. At one point, I walked through the snowy Sierra mountains for 3 days without meeting a single person. Turns out, dozens of other hikers were deliberately staying 1 day behind me because they wanted to get to the nearby campground resort on the opening night. I had no idea about any of that, so I just kept on walking and wondering what the hell happened to everyone else. Heh.

There were a couple of scary moments… The time I started sliding off a mountain and had to use my ice axe to self-arrest. The time at the notorious mile 169.5 (a hiker died there last year) where I had to make One Perfect Step on an incredibly narrow and ice-covered mountain path. Even with my microspikes and ice axe, that part was sketchy. There was the time I underestimated the strength of the stream current and got knocked over. It wasn’t very deep, but it was ice-cold, and my phone was never the same afterwards. (I walked with just my compass and a backup paper map for the rest of the day. Good times.)

But there was also so, sooo much beauty… I never did see the Milky Way in all its shiny glory, but I’m pretty sure I saw its pale outlines, and that’s good enough. I adopted the routine of waking up at 3:30am (and getting up at 4am, and walking by 5:30am) – I cowboy-camped as much as possible, and seeing all those beautiful bright stars against the black velvet of the sky… It was amazing, each and every time. There were also the giant wind turbine fields of Tehachapi, and miles and miles of ridiculously bright wildflowers, and far too many encounters with wild critters. Shameless deer who would steal anything you put down, and shy and timid young deer, and fluffy marmots, and a blue-hour cougar near the Vasquez National Park, and incredibly lazy birds that might have been related to the dodo… Also, a couple of bear encounters: one of them ate my entire food bag at a certain campsite which will remain nameless. (Mostly because we made a deal: I don’t mention them online, and they pay me back for my lost food, since they’d had zero warning signs or bear boxes.)

I got a trail name, too – about a week in. It was “The Godfather.” I recited the name’s origin story hundreds of times, and it pains me to type it up here yet again, but what the hell: my buddy and I set up camp next to 2 girls who were hiking toward Mexico. We started talking, and the girls started describing their life after college – all the towns where they’ve lived and worked since then. Well, it turned out I lived and worked in all of those towns, or I had family there. We were up to 6 or 7 towns, and it was getting funny, and ridiculous, and a little weird. Finally, one of the girls snapped: “Are you in the mafia?!” My buddy replied with, “Nah, he’s the Godfather!” And then we laughed and laughed and laughed – and I think that girl got better. Heh. Other trail names (off the top of my head) included Oracle, Turtle, Chef, Alaska, Basecamp, Yeti Legs, Socrates, Forklift, No Brakes, Star Camel, etc. Also, if you’re reading this in preparation for your own PCT thru-hike, keep in mind that there are tons of hikers who end up sharing the same trail name. If someone gives you a simple noun like Chef or Turtle (or, gods forbid, names you after a state), make sure to add a cool adjective to it. (See, for example, Rocket Llama from 2013.)

The nature was beautiful. So beautiful… Even the Sierra section, which I ended up hating due to lack of bridges and/or guideposts at the mountain passes, was gorgeous in its own way. I ended up hiking up Mount Whitney (the highest mountain in the lower 48), and that was the most physically challenging experience of my entire life. Toward the end, I had to take breaks every 3 minutes or so. It was worth it, though. So very, very worth it.

Toward the end of the Sierra, at Kennedy Meadows North, I had a bit of a health scare: I thought I sprained my ankle (it got cartoonishly huge), but as it later turned out, that was just plain old hiker inflammation. I’d switched my wool socks for synthetic ones a few weeks earlier, and since my feet had swollen from size 13 to size 16, those synthetic socks bit into the skin and started acting as compression socks. No bueno, eh. I ended up taking 2 weeks off and chilling with my family in Seattle – and that made for a strange intermission that split my trail into the “before” and “after” parts. The same thing happened again in Ashland, but by then I (finally) figured out what was happening, and managed to stabilize my ankle in just 4 days.

It was odd to walk the (almost) entirety of the PCT without any rain… My hike lasted from April 3-September 1, and there were only 2 days with rain – and even then, that was just a drizzle. There were pretty long stretches in NorCal, during a heatwave, where I was chugging my electrolyte water like some land-dwelling fish. I think there were some days where I drank almost 7 liters… (That’s particularly awful since you have to filter all of your own water, and that can take a while.)

I didn’t get to Oregon fast enough to avoid wildfires… There were a total of 3 closures in Oregon, and hundreds of hikers ended up forming a gigantic hiker bubble as we all hitchhiked (or got shuttled) to the next part of the trail. And then, at the very end… I was concerned about new wildfires popping up, so I picked up my pace. Normally, I walked 25-30 miles per day. (Take that, marathon runners!) By the end, I was doing 37 miles per day, walking from 5:30am until the true dark at 8pm. I never moved fast (~2.5-3 mph) but when you walk almost 15 hours a day, that adds up. In the end, that made all the difference.

I was one of the last hikers to touch the Northern Terminus on the Canadian border. I did that around 6pm on September 1. The following day, at 2pm, the Forest Service rangers closed off the last 30 miles of the trail due to 3 separate wildfires that started to spread in that area. (Walking back from the border, there was a section where flakes of ash drifted on the wind… It made for a lot of coughing.) When I made it back to the tiny ranger station 30 miles south of the border, the mood was mighty mixed. There was confusion, there was anger (a lot of hikers were from overseas, and had put a lot on the line to get there), there was free food provided by the amazing trail angel volunteers.

That night, after I caught a ride to the nearest hostel, the mood there was mixed, and more than a little toxic. There were no celebrations, no singing, no fanfares: some of us had walked to the finish line, while others got screwed by fate and blind chance. That was a very strange experience, but maybe that’s just life. There are no perfect happy stories – everything is ambiguous and at least a little bit morally grey. For every 10 selfless trail angels who give you a ride and go out of their way to help you, there’s a store owner in a tiny town, shamelessly robbing you with inflated food prices. (There usually aren’t any price tags.) For every amazing hostel, there is a campground where a power-tripping owner threatens to call the police on an RV resident who throws a free BBQ in our honour. (Rot in hell, Acton KOA’s owner.) It was a mixed bag. Mostly amazing and beautiful, but mixed.

Fun sidenote: I’ve just checked that campground’s reviews. One of the reviews, dated June (a month after my bad experience there), states there are too many homeless people. Heh – I guess they never bothered to ask, or they would’ve learned those were all PCT hikers.

On the definite plus side, I went wayyyy outside my comfort zone with all the hitchhiking I did, and I got to experience the greatest form of travel (in the back of a pickup truck!) a couple of times. Also, I crossed an actual waterfall. Twice. Uphill. The navigation in the Sierra section gets a little wild, what can I say.

There is a whole lot more I can say, but gotta draw the line somewhere. Suffice to say, it was beautiful. Also, I finally proved to myself that my body can cash the checks that my mouth writes. Having returned to civilization, nothing is quite the same anymore. The clean water, and hot showers, and easily accessible food are nice, sure (I lost 31 lbs and ended up at 6’1″ and 144 lbs by the end), but there’s so much mindless consumerism and waste. My heart breaks a little each time when I see all the plastic packaging my groceries are sold in, and shopping malls seem even more ridiculous than they had before. It’s been about 100 days since I returned, and I still dream about hiking. I dream of it a lot. This experience has greatly deepened my thirst for adventure…

Right now, I’m enrolled in a year-long francization course here in Quebec: they promised to make me completely fluent by the time that’s done, so I don’t think I’ll get to hike again next year, but after that… I’m thinking the Appalachian Trail in 2024, and the Continental Divide Trail in 2025 to get my coveted Triple Crown. (In the whole world, only 530 or so people have finished all 3 trails.) We’ll see how things play out when I get closer.

For now, though, you can read my detailed daily trail journal over here (it’s a lot like my daily pandemic journal, only with beauty instead of death), and you can check out the pictures of my trail adventure on Instagram: I go by @hellamellowfellow there.

Cheers, y’all.

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