Day 131: Mile 2049.8 - 2059.4
And today I left Bend and, as always seems to be the case when leaving town, was tired and slow. The former because I was running around trying to get so many chores done the past two days, the latter because, well, I'm just a day out of practice and probably too full on town food. (I've also noticed that the hiker hunger has usually subsided somewhat by the time I get back on trail.)
Brett and Double Snacks came to pick me up at my hotel around 8:30am, and from there we dropped by Life & Time to get breakfast burritos for the road. Because the road was long: about a 3+ hour drive to get from Bend to Olallie Lake. Along the way, we stopped at a another little spot in Madras--Great Earth I think it was called--where the radio played only rock n' roll oldies (and I mean rock n' *roll*: this is music from back when you could still hear the *roll*) where Brett and Double Snacks picked up sandwiches that they would pack out for the trail. From there, it was a long but mostly pleasant drive out to Olallie Lake--one which I mostly missed because I was busy trying to catch up on entries for this blog! But we got out here, after driving the last segments on some narrow gravel mountain roads, parked on the side of the road about 0.1 miles from the trailhead, and got to hiking!
And by hiking, I mean all *three* of us, because Brett joined us today. The plan was for him to hike and camp with us today (done!), then tomorrow Double Snacks and I will continue north on the PCT, but he'll turn around and head south back to the car. Don't worry, though: he'll rejoin Double Snacks up in Washington and they'll get a chance to hike maybe a week together. The plan is for Double Snacks to hike from here to Cascade Locks (which is at the border of Oregon and Washington), then she'll skip ahead to White Pass or possibly further, to meet up with Brett and hike some portions together. This works because Double Snacks has already hiked southern Washington in the past, so skipping is skipping stuff she's already seen. For my part, I'll be going to Cascade Locks then continuing on without any skipping (knock on wood for fires). Will I be able to thus make it to Canada on time, before the weather turns?
No idea: we'll find out!
As for the hiking: nothing all that spectacular today, just a lot of trees trees and more trees. At one point, we were walking a ridge and through a thinner portion of the trees, Double Snacks pointed out what looked to be Mount Hood in the distance, its slopes fading into the smoke in the distance, its features hazed and not sharp and clear.
Instead, I spent most of today talking with Brett, who joined us for today. Tomorrow we'll continue north and he'll turn around and head back to the car, but for today, he hiked with us for about 10 miles as we headed out from (effectively) Olallie Lake.
So this summer, while Double Snacks was hiking the PCT, Brett had planned his own long-distance trip: biking across the country, from coast to coast. And he had been doing it: had gotten through Oregon (which evidently was a large portion of it, somehow: not sure how this works geographically, but that's how it is), and had gotten all the way out to Kansas, when he got hit by a car. Sideswiped. And he remembers not quite believing it had happened when it did, and bouncing right back up afterward (thankfully so, he feels if he hadn't he would still be laying there on the ground). And it seems he got away with no broken bones, just some bruises, and possibly some lingering whiplash in his neck that may need a physical therapist to work out, but the bike wasn't in great shape and the accident ended his trip. He still had time off from work, though, and didn't want to head back immediately, so instead he was casting about for things to do, something to take his mind off the heartbreak of not being able to finish his trip. And he settled on hiking some of the PCT with his fiancee Double Snacks!: a little bit today to get a taste, and possibly some more extensive backpacking up ahead if this goes well.
And it was pretty fun talking to Brett. He's got a scientific PhD, but has had a rather topsy turvy time of it: he started with one group, then halfway through transferred over to another when his first professor left, and ended up on a project that sounded good in the beginning, but ended up being a bit less than interesting. But he got his PhD, and got it on time. And promptly went to go work for a startup, which was fun but incredibly stressful--it's hard when your work over the next couple months will determine whether the company will succeed or fail--and that was too much so then he joined a big company. Which is where he's at now. Brett may have been trained as a scientist, but to hear him talk, he sounds more and more like an engineer. He likes to *build* stuff, rather than to just *know* stuff. (Indeed, he mentioned how in the beginning a field is wide open and PhDs make sense--lots to explore--but after the field is mostly figured out they keep going, delving ever deeper into ever narrower lines of inquiry, and why do we fund this?) And we talked about jobs and work. Is it good to display hyper competence, because then you'll get less support. Can you do true innovation at a big company, or will they just have you do bread and butter stuff and then simply get the innovation by acquiring a small company? Is it worthwhile to move into leadership and management positions, because that's what you're supposed to do, but that also puts you away from doing stuff and building stuff, and isn't that the most fun part of the job? All these questions, these are the questions I was mulling when I left Qualcomm, and we both had similar responses to them. For example, when talking about the company pushing you into leadership positions, he would say, man, you're speaking my language, because he had experienced the same push, and was also mulling whether to take it or to stay and do the fun technical things, but worried about how that might be perceived as a lack of ambition. And in general, we both skewed toward enjoying the technical work and wanting to just be able to focus on it, to learn a bunch of it, and to build things, but also realizing that that's not how companies work. And overall, I could see why Brett would end up at a startup--he has the mentality for it, the "I want to learn all the things" attitude, the "I want to build fun stuff" approach--but I could also see that he had seen the other side of startups, the way you sign your life away for a few years, and he didn't like that. (I don't either, that's why I stayed away from startups up to now.)
Oh, and Brett likes puzzles. We got to talking about PhD programs, and I mentioned the Stanford qualifying exams, and how some professors are famous for their questions. And I posed one of Professor Kovacs' famous questions: do you think a bike light is on continuously, or do you think it's duty-cycled. Well, turns out it's duty-cycled. So here's the real question: what's the duty cycle? And I was about to give the answer when he said, no, I want to figure this one out. And he thought about it. And asked questions, which I tried my best to answer. And thought, and asked, and thought, and asked. And we had a sort of mini quals question scattered throughout the day. I think he liked this one because 1) it involved a bike, and 2) the answer fundamentally depends on biology, and he's a biology PhD. Now this particular question is more interactive--as is the wont of all Professor Kovacs' quals questions--more hands-on experimental, and would have benefitted from having an actual bike light. But for all the limitations of having to just imagine things, Brett did pretty well! He effectively got the answer, taking the hints that I was wont to give, going pretty much as far as you can without having an actual bike light. And he liked the solution, although he swore that when he got back, he would have to try it!
And that was pretty much the day! There was hiking, and probably some views, but mostly I ended up talking with Brett about technical things and jobs and work for a few hours. And I think he enjoyed it as much as I did: it's fun to talk about this sort of stuff once in a while, and more fun to talk about it on a hike, away from it all, without the immediate pressure of it bearing down on you. Brett's a pretty cool guy. They're both very inquisitive and curious--I can't recall how many theories and speculations Double Snacks and I have come up with about trees and mountains and whatever else we see--but they have very different styles: he's more concentrated on doing fun stuff and ends up assuming a lot of risk as a part of that, she's more steady and planned and aware of the long-term. I think they complement each other well and, being my usual positive self, think their upcoming nupitals are but the precursor to a long and happy life together!
-- Bend > Triangle Lake Equestrian Campground > Horse Camp Junction > Trooper Spring > Pinhead Saddle
-- Due to a miscommunication on my part, I have no seaweed and no pork sung for this leg. And, let me tell you, ramen without those two supplements?: it's pretty bland. I can see why people get tired of the stuff. And this is the *good* ramen, too, the Sapporo stuff, not the Top or even Maruchan stuff. But without those two, still, pretty pretty bland. I should be fine--I usually don't care what I eat--but here's to hoping no more miscommunications on my part and that I get the supplements in future!
-- Camping cohorts: Double Snacks, Brett.
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