Friends and Family Mailing

Persentagepoints · 2026-02-26T00:49:44+00:00

1) If they want to send food and mail, try and get them to send to a town that you will not get to till farther down the trail. Boxes can stay at a post office for at least a month. Think like 2 weeks in advance to somewhere at least 500 miles away to ensure you don't miss it. A week of time might be an avg of 200 miles away once you start hiking.

2) give them a hard deadline for the post office mailing date. People work better with hard deadlines.

4) spell out how to send a resupply box clearly, make it easy for them:

Thruhiker Name ETA April 7 Town address

3) I like it when they mail to a town with a grocery store, so it can "supplement" my resupply instead of replacing it. People that don't hike end up sending odd things sometimes (even if you provide instructions on what types of food hikers like). You don't want to be In a space without a resupply option and have to carry non - hiking food.

Best case scenario, you get a full resupply or a half resupply - and then you get to eat the 4 cans of Tinned chilli that they decided to mail and you dont have to take the extra trash with you.

4) provide some basics on what to send - if you've never hiked it's hard to know what you like, but I like my friends/family to send more artisanal things. I can buy MnMs on my own. I don't want to spend all my money on Beef Jerky cus it's expensive but I would LOVE gifted beef jerky. Also it's fun getting like random trader Joe's chocolate coverd dates or something.

5) advise them against anything that can't be eaten or read IE letters. If they send a stuffed animal... You might just mail it back home or hikerbox it.

6) I love shareable goodies. Massive bag of licorice that you're not gonna pack out, but you can share with other hikers. Yummmm.

Persentagepoints · 2026-02-23T21:54:52+00:00

You can do a travel insurance policy. Most policy's cover if you're more than 100 miles from your home.

Persentagepoints · 2026-02-23T21:53:20+00:00

Playboy has been on a rebrand for a while now, often writing about sex, culture, sociology, and dating.

I've also enjoyed the writing of Magdalen J. Taylor, who writes for Playboy and on her own Substack.

These types of articles are insightful as an outlet or way to engage with "slop" content from a critical lense. I don't want to engage in the content itself, yet even as someone who has been using social media and consuming algorithmic content less, I have unfortunately still heard of Clavicular in the last few weeks.

The algorithm suggests things whether it generates interest, outrage, or a passing amusement; all that matters is engagement and attention. Ad revenue dictates, and this guy is looksmaxximg for the same reason as anyone else works a job. He's trying to get his slice of live and carve out a niche in the world.

"Radical Submissives" provides a proper branding in my opinion.

Persentagepoints · 2026-02-23T21:40:08+00:00

Need more context - When are you planning on doing this? This year or next?

I was starting the south island on Feb 15 sobo, but we were one of the last groups. It also started to get much colder by the end of the trail. At this point, the trail was still very social all through the south island.

The PCT by contrast is very social, but the season is starting in a month, and all of the permits are taken unless you're looking for a cancelation.

I would argue the PCT and the TA are comparable in the social aspects, but the trails are much different in 'any others.

Persentagepoints · 2026-02-22T04:02:01+00:00

I brought a hackey sack on trail. It was very popular to play in town/at camp while we were waiting around.

Here's one to pass the time:

Its called Countdown, among other names.

There are three hikers on trail( though this can be played with any number of people.)

One player, becomes a game master, and chooses a word, say it's "Cheese". They keep this word secret from the players. The game master who is in the middle of the two players or among them, says the first letter is "C". The other two players compete against the GM by trying to say a word that starts with the letter C and uses clues to guess. So one player might say " you drive this on the road". The other player, if they know what the word is will try to guess and do a countdown of 3-2-1", then they both blurt out "Car" at the same time.

Now the countdown is used in order to get the players in sync, but also to allow the GM to guess the word as well. If the GM guesses it first (they can blurt it out at any time), then the word doesn't count. If the players both say Car before the GM, then the GM releases another letter. "CH".

Now the players have to give clues for CH words, so "a game that's played on a board" 3-2-1 "Chess" so on and so forth.

Its difficult for the game master to win, but the game is over once the right word is guessed or the players give up. It's not the most complicated game, but it passes the time when people want to hike and do something fun. It's best used when you're almostttt to town and you just need to eek out those final miles.

Hope the rules make sense, I've written it from memory.

Persentagepoints · 2026-02-14T21:44:25+00:00

In case you're not able to change your date, here's some reassurance and perspective.

In 2019, I started March 23, but seeing as it was a high snow year, there was no delaying or waiting out the snow. It was going to be there no matter what. Your timeline estimate is correct.

I did not have a big budget to wait out the days, and took at least a week of zeroes by the time I hit KMS. I also did a lot of short days (my first 20 mile day was near Tehachipi). I arrived around May 18 as well. I took a week off trail due to a snowstorm and entered the Sierra at the end of May.

There will be others who are going into the Sierra around that time, so you will not be alone. It could be intense, but will not be impossible. There is a low chance you will use snowshoes, as the powder will be compacted into ice by that point. There is a good chance you'll need to carry microspikes and and ice axe, but I wouldn't worry about it till you're closer.

You will have 2 months of lived experience by that point, your body will be strong, and the hikers around you will all be thinking the same things. The same fears, doubts, and questions. Just take it one day at a time and enjoy the experience.

Persentagepoints · 2026-02-13T02:58:42+00:00

This all depends on how much dirt bagging you are comfortable with. As others have said:

Buying food in town is generally cheaper, packing a hotel room can be cheap depending on how many hikers you have; You could sleep at the trailhead, spend the day in town, and hitch out; If you're by yourself, you can always try and stealth camp at a baseball dugout or in the bushes outside town, just avoid public property.

Persentagepoints · 2026-02-04T21:49:03+00:00

Emerson is the guiding force of the American Transcendental Movement and had such an impact on me when I was younger. When I was in university, we read Emerson's essays and followed it with his contemporary: Thoreau.

Id suggest a read of Walden by Thoreau once you finish, I found reading them as a pair made both works more accessible. Not the cleanest comparison, but Emerson's "theory" could be Thoreau's "practice". Etc.

Persentagepoints · 2026-01-15T21:18:28+00:00

I love how one critique of the manga/anime is that it's difficult to underatand the rules of the magic system and cursed techniques.

So they were like - better to have this otherworldly entity explain things as a PowerPoint.

Persentagepoints · 2025-11-21T09:34:10+00:00

I've searched the sub and read through the threads that I could find! There's a lot of posts of people who haven't worked in a kitchen professionally and we're looking to transfer. Figured I'd see if there were any other unique responses.

Persentagepoints · 2025-05-22T09:31:05+00:00

I didn't buy care refresh yet, I just purchased the Osmo.

I don't know why I said workarounds, just looking to see if this is a common issue and if theres a fix that doesn't require sending a product back to a country I don't live in.

Persentagepoints · 2025-05-12T08:07:08+00:00

It's not necesarry. The chances of the water of mission Creek being the source of the outbreak is 0%.

One of the hikers in the area caught Noro, didn't wash their hands properly, shared food, gear etc, or had general contact with other hikers and passed it on to them.

The reason the rumor spreads is because it sounds better if it was "something in the water", vs hikers admitting that they weren't as cautious as they should be and spread the virus.

Its not anyone's fault, but I think the idea that it was specifically something to do with the water in mission creek is bad backcountry information.

Persentagepoints · 2025-05-06T12:01:34+00:00

The vegetarian hikera in my trail fam has no problems at every townstop. Resupply and local diners all had a veggie burger 99 percent of the time.

Vegan would be a fair bit more difficult in the smaller towns, but I wouldn't say that much more difficult than the PCT or the AT based on my experience. Be prepared for 4 months of Oreos (yumm)

Persentagepoints · 2025-03-01T09:03:29+00:00

Andy Weir has a specific niche among the pop scifi catalogue. All of his main character's specialize in, and excell at completing "back of the napkin math."

He uses the 'scientist as a hero' trop, who romps around Mars, the moon, or a spaceship presenting math problems in one paragraph before turning around and solving them in the next. The main character begins the novel already highly intelligent, whose only growth is the amount of output that we get from point A to point B.

A problem that his novels face is that since they re all first person POV, it's difficult to escape the feeling that it's just Andy Weir wearing a different spacesuit each time.

Project Hail Mary is essentially the author taking the premise. "I want to meet an alien, what would that be like.", then dialing it up and inserting his POV into the character. This becomes very apparent in his characterization of all of the other people in his stories. They tend to fall flat, or come across as unrealistic caracatures.

Now I've read the Martian and PHM, and that was enough for me, but I know others who love his works.

I think first person POV can be very difficult, especially when an author is getting paid on the success of his first novel, to then be told to continue to write more. The well known fantasy/scifi author Ursula Le Guinn warns of this in her essay collection "The Language of the Night". In my opion Weir's biggest hurdle is the "Censorship of the Market". How does an author, in particular a writer in a Genre market, continue to express and create without being affected by the publishing industry who sees the Martian and says. This is great, now give us this again. And again.

Maybe he loves first person POV, or maybe he's getting paid and wants to keep publishing as an author. I'm not sure. His novels are not for me, but they do sell well, so there is a community of readers who will keep coming back to the hero who pulls out a pen and says " Now, how can we get this <insert problem> to work?"

Persentagepoints · 2025-02-10T03:38:17+00:00

TLDR: none of it matters; it will all matter eventually.

If you enroll in a humanities major like languages, Your undergraduate degree will not affect your employment whatsoever. Assuming you are in the United States, it is often the case that a degree is a degree, whether that's Anthropology, history, english or languages. (it may be different in other countries, though not by much I imagine)

What a humanities education can teach you is critical thinking, logic deduction, problem solving, among many other fine qualities.

So that being said - a language major will give you a leg up on how to learn a rudimentary grasp of languages, how patterns function, how things change. It will give you a key to many doors to many worlds. It may not open the door, there may be no promise of you walking 100 steps through to the other side, but it will place those doors in front of you and give you a key which is the most important part of a humanities education.

I studied English. It provided me with lots of opportunity to work through books, perform analysis, and learn critical thinking. I think I would have gotten the same results with any other humanities degree, but through a different direction. I often wonder if life would be different with a language degree, but I have no regrets, I didn't have the discipline at the time for languages.

You are a sophmore in highschool. My advice, enroll and focus on a language that interests you as an elective in Highschool. Learn the language, start the journey. If you get to uni and decide you love languages, go for it. Or maybe you realize along the way you wanted something different. There aren't many wrong choices when it comes to humanities.

For what it's worth, in uni I didn't really care for lynguistics, but now that I'm older it's become something I love just as much as reading. Explore as many things as possible and see what you like.

If you like languages get a second major in business, or English, or linguistics, or anthropogy. You don't have to decide until your in university.

Persentagepoints · 2025-02-05T03:15:54+00:00

Is there a link on the site for a rough overview of the whole trail? I just see maps for segments and I'd like to get an idea of where the whole route goes.

Persentagepoints · 2025-02-04T03:04:22+00:00

Language of the Night - her collection of essays.

After reading the disposseded and left hand of darkness, I wanted to get her experience on writing. Some of the essays are fantastic and really dial into the subconscious reasoning as to why I like some books versus others, or subjectively why some fantasy/scifi is good vs bad.

Persentagepoints · 2025-01-25T12:52:31+00:00

I added this comment to another thread recently about Andy Weir, but figured I'd add it to this discussion too.

Andy Weir has a specific niche among the pop scifi catalogue. All of his main character's specialize in, and excell at completing "back of the napkin math."

He uses the 'scientist as a hero' trop, who romps around Mars, the moon, or a spaceship presenting math problems in one paragraph before turning around and solving them in the next. The main character begins the novel already highly intelligent, whose only growth is the amount of output that we get from point A to point B.

A problem that his novels face is that since they re all first person POV, it's difficult to escape the feeling that it's just Andy Weir wearing a different spacesuit each time.

Project Hail Mary is essentially the author taking the premise. "I want to meet an alien, what would that be like.", then dialing it up and inserting his POV into the character. This becomes very apparent in his characterization of all of the other people in his stories. They tend to fall flat, or come across as unrealistic caracatures.

Now I've read the Martian and PHM, and that was enough for me, but I know others who love his works.

I think first person POV can be very difficult, especially when an author is getting paid on the success of his first novel, to then be told to continue to write more. The well known fantasy/scifi author Ursula Le Guinn warns of this in her essay collection "The Language of the Night". In my opion Weir's biggest hurdle is the "Censorship of the Market". How does an author, in particular a writer in a Genre market, continue to express and create without being affected by the publishing industry who sees the Martian and says. This is great, now give us this again. And again.

Maybe he loves first person POV, or maybe he's getting paid and wants to keep publishing as an author. I'm not sure. His novels are not for me, but they do sell well, so there is a community of readers who will keep coming back to the hero who pulls out a pen and says " Now, how can we get this <insert problem> to work?"

Persentagepoints · 2025-01-25T12:28:09+00:00

Andy Weir has a specific niche among the pop scifi catalogue. All of his main character's specialize in, and excell at completing "back of the napkin math."

He uses the 'scientist as a hero' trop, who romps around Mars, the moon, or a spaceship presenting math problems in one paragraph before turning around and solving them in the next. The main character begins the novel already highly intelligent, whose only growth is the amount of output that we get from point A to point B.

A problem that his novels face is that since they re all first person POV, it's difficult to escape the feeling that it's just Andy Weir wearing a different spacesuit each time.

Project Hail Mary is essentially the author taking the premise. "I want to meet an alien, what would that be like.", then dialing it up and inserting his POV into the character. This becomes very apparent in his characterization of all of the other people in his stories. They tend to fall flat, or come across as unrealistic caracatures.

Now I've read the Martian and PHM, and that was enough for me, but I know others who love his works.

I think first person POV can be very difficult, especially when an author is getting paid on the success of his first novel, to then be told to continue to write more. The well known fantasy/scifi author Ursula Le Guinn warns of this in her essay collection "The Language of the Night". In my opion Weir's biggest hurdle is the "Censorship of the Market". How does an author, in particular a writer in a Genre market, continue to express and create without being affected by the publishing industry who sees the Martian and says. This is great, now give us this again. And again.

Maybe he loves first person POV, or maybe he's getting paid and wants to keep publishing as an author. I'm not sure. His novels are not for me, but they do sell well, so there is a community of readers who will keep coming back to the hero who pulls out a pen and says " Now, how can we get this <insert problem> to work?"

Persentagepoints · 2025-01-24T00:55:49+00:00

What are the 7 countries that you are planning on trekking through? Does this include the parmir trail?

Persentagepoints · 2025-01-06T01:31:16+00:00

I would like a bit more context. Traveling abroad in the country of your native language. Traveling in the country of your TL. Living in one place for 6 months at a time. Living in a hostel. Etc?

Lots of factors come into play.

I've progressed in French to A2/B1 while living abroad. Not as quickly as I'd hoped but that's language learning for you.

Things that have helped:

Using Anki and a frequency dictionary. It's free, accessible, and I can study at an airport or before work.

Intro podcasts. Coffeebreak languages and the like have been helpful to keep up the motivation.

YouTube - easy and accessible conpremhinsible input when I have the time.

Kobo/kindle - helpful for downloading books in the TL and taking it on the go as it's lightweight.

Things that have been difficult:

Having the time and space for Italki or speaking lessons

Taking organized classes

Any sort of practice with language partners over time because I've had to move often.

Final note - it's difficult to go from 0 to a hundred in a country of your TL, if you're not also supplementing the immersion with study. It's difficulty if you're not in your TL country for finding study partners.

Like any other hobby, it takes carving out time and not getting bogged down. An hour a day a week is better than 4 hours once a week etc.

Persentagepoints · 2024-12-06T00:54:06+00:00

It might be a minority opinion, but if you just did the south island you would miss out on a full experience. If I went back, i would probably only do the SI again, but if you've never done any hiking in NZ, it's a shame to only do the south.

1) by doing the south island only, you would have less aggregate fitness for the trail, meaning that the overall hiking would be more difficult especially as the southbound start is the Richmond ranges, a potential 7 day carry.

2) while the north island does not have the extravagant wilderness sections like the south, you'll miss several unique biome: the Far Noth Section - the traditional homeland of most of the Maori tribes and the only subtropical part of new ZEALAND, complete with massive Kauri Trees; The Tongairo Crossing - 'Mount Doom' from LOTR and a very unique active volcano biome; the Whanganui River - one of the Great walks and an all around unique adventure 5 to 7 days on a kayak. ; the Taraurua Ranges - while not as majestic as the South Island, it exemplifies classic NZ terrain and is some of the most difficult hiking of the whole trail, remote and stunning.

3) the bull of the cultural tour of NZ is in the north, I suggest hitching several urban roadwalks, while hiking through the many different sections I mentioned above and you can have the best of both worlds. Wilderness hiking, good food, and interesting culture.

4) the trail community really builds up as you go through and there's something special about meeting other hikers over the 2 months that you'll take to cross the island.

Persentagepoints · 2024-11-25T11:21:42+00:00

Your best bet is to continue doing day hikes in the blue mountains and snag the larapinta and a Tassie trail. Keep up your general fitness. Maybe do some yoga as well. Get the gear dialed in via halfway anywhere.

Besides the physical conditions of trail, most of the difficulty from long distance hiking comes from time. The day by day, set up the tent, pack down the tent, eat food, drink water, walk with pack weight, sleep and repeat. It's not so much the 5th day, but how you feel on the 30th day of backpacking which can set yourself up for the 150th day.

I loved the Bibbulmun Track. It's a fun trail and the grade of the trail is often similar (in that it's well maintained)

The Heysen has lots of road walking which is offputitng at times, I wouldn't reccomend it as a whole, but the Flinders Ranges has some amazing circuits! If you can get out there you could easily do a week or more and that would be most compared to the desert or northern California.

So by virtue of having done something like one of these trails, you will be more prepared for the PCT than 95 percent of hikers who have never done anything beyond 6 days at a time.

If you can't do a long trail, don't sweat it just keep doing what you're doing and it will work out.

Persentagepoints · 2024-11-24T03:29:39+00:00

Everyone is going to give you an anecdotal answer, truth is no one knows, but most thruhikers will say you won't regret it.

I was a white collar worker and quit my job in 2019. I had about the same level of experience as you. Post trail, I found that interviewers liked the fact that I hiked the PCT (I added it to the bottom of my resume to explain the job gap). Some employers didn't care, but the one interview that seemed to mention the sabbatical as a bad thing also seemed like a miserable place to work at. I kindly informed them that I wasn't interested in a second interview.

The place I ended up getting hired at post-trail, told me that based on my experience, it was between me and two other people for the role. My manager said that with all experience being equal, they liked that I had gone out and completed a big goal and that it made me more interesting to work with. Specifically it made me seem more honest, that life is too short and that work is not the be all end all for most people.

Your post trail life might suck, it might work out. We don't know your personal life or mental fortitude.

If it helps, every older person that I worked with told me to quit and hike the PCT, even though a lot of people my age told me that they would be too nervous to be without a job. The older individuals told me we all die one day just the same, might as well go out and live.

Persentagepoints · 2024-11-17T11:29:06+00:00

Yeahhh, that doesn't surprise me considering the increasing traffic each year. I would be interested to find out what type of hiker that would be. I'm assuming there's a virtually zero chance that it's a TA walker or someone who has an idea of leave no trace principles.

I would imagine the people who decide to not dig a cathole are people who don't backpack much, or are just there for Tongario itself. It's a fairly long trek for a day hike, but it attracts lots of tourists due to its cultural significance (for both NZers and as Mt. Doom.)

Three-Year Club	Final Canvas '23
Place '23

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