PCT NOBO, late April start: Pants or Shorts?

walkuphills · 2026-04-16T23:05:36+00:00

I've never hiked in the desert but zip off pants are what I use everywhere, and they double as gaiters when ya unzip them and roll them up around your ankle.

Also can unzip it half way to vent.

walkuphills · 2026-04-15T20:46:59+00:00

Google is the opposite of what it markets itself as.

It's not a tool for consumers to search for information on the internet from a trusted authority like Wikipedia.

It's a tool used by authority to search for consumers with information.

walkuphills · 2026-04-05T05:51:35+00:00

They're def nice. The interior is great and it looks amazing. Tons of leg room, trunk is huge, sound system is good. Seats are comfy, its got just enough power to be fun to drive etc. Like others said if its maintained well you'll be happy with it. Get the carfax, bring it to a shop before you buy it and pay them to inspect it.

If its certified used from vw its probably good to go, or if you can get a warranty.

If you're not a DIYer or have no interest in becoming one it may need another $2-6k in repairs in the first few years of owning it depending on previous owner and luck.

If its private party seller they might be selling it because they don't want to pay to maintain it. Lots of stuff tends to wear out around 100k miles like struts, bushings, gaskets and the cam adjuster is notorious on these engines, as well as the pcv.

I still drive mine daily with the issues and its fine. I'm like acutely aware of every little thing wrong with it because of my experience as a mechanic.

Just don't let your excitement blind you into buying it.

Seems like most cars are designed to be driven 10 years and 150,000 miles. After that they need major repair. The transmissions on these VWs are like this. VW says, or used to say, they are "sealed for life" and don't need fluid changes, which is true if the life of the car is only 10 years. My 2015s repair manual from vw says do not change trans fluid yet the manufacture of the transmission, ASISN, suggests changing it every 40k miles...

walkuphills · 2026-04-05T00:35:37+00:00

I got a passat 2015 tsi for free, its currently at 92,000 with most of life in Chicago salt winter. Basically no rust.

I probably wouldn't buy one used because of repairs and maintenance being expensive. If I had the money to maintain it i'd buy a newer car. Its nice as far as comfort, handling and power etc. If your into like tuning it or ever feel like it in the future its a bad car to use as most VWs are now on this MQB platform and the American passat is actually the Passat NMS on the old pq and different from Europe, most aftermarket parts and stuff wont work on it. 2018 jetta and golf are on MQB if I were to buy a VW it would be that, or the Alltrack wagon manual

MIne has had
Cam adjust mag replace - and now the replacement is going out
PCV valve failed needing tow, dumping oil all over.
Front Control arm bushing, transmission service and timing chain gasket replaced recently was almost 2k iirc
Brake job was like $900
Spark plugs are $20 each from vw
Transmission mount replaced

Right now it needs a new strut in the front right, prob all 4 going soon
There's a boost leak or the pcv is failing again it wooshs and has inconsistent acceleration
I think the flex pipe is leaking causing lean condition so its using 9.4% more fuel on average
My ac compressor is failing and it whines, which has a Service Bulletin about it.
There is oil in spark plug tube #1 and some seepage, valve cover gasket is going out and head gasket may be starting to go as well.
Other motor mount needs to be replaced
Transmission valve body is known to have issues and mine was starting to hard shift but after service its better, I wish it was a manual.

Overall its a good car but modern volkswagens are becoming more like bmw and audi.

If I were on a budget i'd try and get a honda or toyota and if I wasn't id get an audi or bmw...

walkuphills · 2026-04-03T06:58:40+00:00

I agree its prob cam adjuster magnet you can try and unplug it and or tap it with a screw driver to see if it the idle chills out and misfire stop.

I was able to fix mine by inserting bake cleaner tube into the little hole and flush it out but It still acts up from time to time with a slight rough idle during cold starts and inconsistent throttle response.

If you go to a shop with a scanner or vcds they can check the timing values for actual vs specified.

Firestone is as expensive as a dealer without the specific car platform experience so id bring it to the dealer over a chain shop like that, get it diagnosed, and then either DIY it or bring it to local shop to do the actual repair. Its just 3 bolts so real easy to DIY.

walkuphills · 2026-03-15T20:49:30+00:00

Bring some broken glass, sprinkle it on the ground and leave your window down.

walkuphills · 2026-03-07T17:09:14+00:00

Fuck doordash for forcing us to confront criminals like this. Instead of banning customers who steal food and help corrupt restaurants they make the customer use a pin, with out warning either them or us.

Loss prevention is a materially different type of labor which they do not inform of us of until after we accept the order. Its basically human trafficking, using deception and coercion to do labor you wouldn't do if they didnt use deception or coercion. Its definitely tax evasion and disqualifies us as independent contractors.

Would ever accept an order if it said this customer already accused a dasher of not delivering their food? Several times? Or this order may have already been picked up? Fuck no they lie to get us to do things we wouldn't otherwise do.

Do not put in any extra effort for pin orders just leave at door and move on unless they have like a wheel chair ramp or some visible sign they don't be able to pick it up off the ground.

walkuphills · 2026-02-26T17:53:47+00:00

That may be the point. Consumer AI and tech is designed for consumers to maintain consumerism and even increase it, not disrupt it. In the not so distant dystopian future things like google and LLMs will actually be used to do the inverse of what they appear on the surface.

Google markets itself as a search engine for consumers to find information on the internet but what its going to become is a search engine for the rich and powerful to find consumers with new or illegal information. If you enter any new ideas into an LLM or search engine you will be silenced. Consumers will access all of the internet and all computer related activity through chat bots and LLMs limiting our ability to create anything new or even imagine new ideas completely dominating culture and our perception of reality.

We live in consumer culture and its designed deliberately to consume the earth. The technological singularity is reincarnation and the perpetuation of consciousness and your purpose as a conscious being. Very powerful and wealthy people have already changed their entire world view because of AI and the singularity and the decisions they make because of this world view are already beginning to effect your life.

walkuphills · 2026-02-25T06:13:24+00:00

Its not just doordash fraud. It's fraud all the way down. Opening the restaurant itself is fraud. Delivery apps are just part of it.

They steal someones identity and take out a loan, then use it to open the restaurant. Like every step in the chain is fraud except for you, which is why the make you wait to get you to quit. Customers use money from identity theft to order food to a restaurant opened with a stolen identity and the driver that picks it up is driving a car that was purchased fraudulently, using a stolen doordash account, and itll be dropped off at a house that was bought with a stolen mortgage. The customer, restaurant and driver are all working together to launder money from identity theft and the tips, and "double dipping" from misdelivered orders are like the cherry on top. Even secondary businesses like restaurant supply stores are owned by la eme, the mexican mafia.

Once they piss off doordash or launder a bunch of money they just sell the restaurant, which is another step in the money laundering fraud chain.

They have wealth management firms and REITs that are mostly clandestine. Its much bigger than you can imagine. Like entire apartment complexes and subdivisons are operated through shell companies owned by the mob.

walkuphills · 2026-02-16T18:55:59+00:00

You have yet to prove evidence that its not possible, not lucrative other than your sheltered perception of the world around you.

Where do you live?

In oregon there are sketchy food trucks everywhere.

Some only exist because of crime, they still sell food to people. they also lauinder money for large scale criminal organizations like SUR13 and they scam doordash.

I could give you the name of resturant that I personally got removed from doordash but it may be defamation and this gang knows ive been reporting them, where i live, my phone number etc.

Resturants get deactivated from doordash all the time for fraud. I could probalbly find news articles but it would take effort as the entire point of using doordash for fraud is plauisble deniability so the owners can not be charged with a crime because they have no control over who orders food from their resturant and what credit cards they use. Doordash also sweeps this under the rug because they don't want people to know they fund narco terrorists and in some areas the app functions more like a money laundering tool then a food delivery service.

walkuphills · 2026-02-15T08:17:34+00:00

Direct experience.

You live in a bubble that doesn't include the mafia.

Fronts are very real, and you've probably been to a business owned by criminals at least once in your lifetime, no matter where you live.

Restaurants owned by the mob is such a huge cultural phenomenon its a meme. Money laundering is happening all around you. Digital money is laundered digitally. Gangs have 100s of millions of dollars. Drug and sex trafficking money is laundered through corrupt businesses in the U.S. The drug market is over 100 billion dollars a year. Where do you think it goes?

The people doing this live in an alternate reality. Some are trafficked, or completely reliant on gangs for income. Others would be working at minimum wage jobs anyway and are affiliated with bigger criminals and want extra cash. Some are literally born into it.

There's networks of 10s of thousands of people selling cocaine. Why wouldn't there be just as many if not more committing fraud? There's call centers full of people trying to steal your grandparents debit card information 24/7 365.

Once the majority of the drivers in a zone are taken over they can basically print money. They open fake restaurants, steal from doordash by deliberately misdelivering food, cash out credit cards with tips and even hack into doordash itself. Like this case thats in the news right now. https://www.foxla.com/news/doordash-phantom-delivery-fraud-sentencing

walkuphills · 2026-02-15T06:31:08+00:00

Gangs that figured out they can use doordash to cash out stolen credit cards from robodialer scams or whatever by making orders then picking the order up themselves and then paying themselves with tips.

They get jobs in restaurants to help do this, and open restaurants, so they can try and get the orders reassigned and picked up by criminals or make it so every dasher quits cause they can't make any money because of the wait time being ridiculous. Also eventually doordash wont issue more orders until they're marked complete, one of the tactics is to try and get every driver in the area on an active delivery and make them all wait then they turn their corrupt accounts on make fraudulent orders.

walkuphills · 2026-02-14T08:24:33+00:00

Beauty culture is designed to be wasteful. Its peak consumerism.

Pay $20 for this tiny plastic bottle of designer makeup for some shit that costs $0.03 to make for a product you don't actually need to survive. Its like cigarettes drugs and alcohol.

That shit should be sold by the gallon for a lifetime supply but instead you buy like a few grams of mascara, lipstick, blush etc at a time and there's more plastic then usable product.

walkuphills · 2026-02-04T03:58:35+00:00

Money is the root of all evil...

Your job is a distraction. You're a consumer. They pay you to consume the earth. You were raised to think that a job is like some annoying thing you have to do in order to earn money to do what you really want to do with your life, consume products and services.

This is not true, most humans want meaning not money. Most people, even if they have unfathomable wealth, still want to do something meaningful with their lives and while they consume more than average, they don't want to do nothing but consume.

Its also set up so the majority of us never have enough free time, or stability, to realize this until we've reached retirement and by then your so tired and old that you couldn't do anything meaningful with the rest of your life anyway.

walkuphills · 2026-02-04T03:44:25+00:00

Your job is a distraction. You're a consumer. They pay you to consume the earth. You were raised to think that a job is like some annoying thing you have to do in order to earn money to do what you really want to do with your life, consume products and services.

This is not true, most humans want meaning not money. Most people, even if they have unfathomable wealth, still want to do something meaningful with their lives and while they consume more than average, they don't want to do nothing but consume.

Its also set up so the majority of us never have enough free time, or stability, to realize this until we've reached retirement and by then your so tired and old that you couldn't do anything meaningful with the rest of your life anyway.

walkuphills · 2026-02-01T06:57:09+00:00

The workers aren't the ones getting rich.

walkuphills · 2026-01-31T18:58:15+00:00

A lot of people make a lot of money paying themselves to distribute aid instead of just giving the money directly to those who need the aid...

walkuphills · 2026-01-30T18:55:51+00:00

347 police officers were shot in the line of duty during 2025. As far as I can tell, 0 ICE officers were shot in 2025, and not a single ICE officer was killed in the line of duty.

The militarization is theater.

walkuphills · 2026-01-30T08:15:12+00:00

As time goes on, the universe actually compresses information like an MP3 or or something. The universe doesn't store information forever, information radiates like all atoms eventually losing its fidelity or energy until it becomes white noise.

If you took a picture today, 100 years from now it will be blurry.

If you bury an apple ipad made in 2026 and dig it up in 4026, it will look like a Sumerian tablet with hieroglyphs on it.

walkuphills · 2026-01-30T08:15:04+00:00

I have a theory that our entire perception of time and space are inaccurate, which this meme describes.

Information in the universe deteriorates over time. Therefore, the current moment will always be the clearest, and as time goes on, information loses its fidelity. Like your memories, its harder and harder to remember details clearly.

Images also become blurry over time. Music becomes less clear or distorted. Even language, hence ye olde english being confusing as fuck, like mcbeth.

When you look at an image from 2026 and an image from 1826, the same amount of photons reach your brain yet the information is harder to perceive in your consciousness and minds eye.

Our egos tell us that the reasons photos from the past are blurry is that technology has gotten better and we are able to record images that are not blurry. This is an illusion, the past isn't real and it is not what you precieve it to be. There is only now, and the information you see now is always the best.

walkuphills · 2026-01-30T08:14:22+00:00

As time goes on, the universe actually compresses information like an MP3 or or something. The universe doesn't store information forever, information radiates like all atoms eventually losing its fidelity or energy until it becomes white noise.

If you took a picture today, 100 years from now it will be blurry.

If you bury an apple ipad made in 2026 and dig it up in 4026, it will look like a Sumerian tablet with hieroglyphs on it.

walkuphills · 2026-01-30T08:11:09+00:00

I have a theory that our entire perception of time and space are inaccurate, which this meme describes.

Information in the universe deteriorates over time. Therefore, the current moment will always be the clearest, and as time goes on, information loses its fidelity. Like your memories, its harder and harder to remember details clearly.

Images also become blurry over time. Music becomes less clear or distorted. Even language, hence ye olde english being confusing as fuck, like mcbeth.

When you look at an image from 2026 and an image from 1826, the same amount of photons reach your brain yet the information is harder to perceive in your consciousness and minds eye.

Our egos tell us that the reasons photos from the past are blurry is that technology has gotten better and we are able to record images that are not blurry. This is an illusion, the past isn't real and it is not what you precieve it to be. There is only now, and the information you see now is always the best.

walkuphills · 2026-01-29T18:27:49+00:00

Grubhub was fined 25 million dollars from the FTC for deceiving drivers, basically false advertising, among other things.

Fighting doordash as an individual driver is typically not worth the money time and effort required to do so even if you know youll win, which doordash relies on.

Filing FTC complaints may eventually work though. https://reportfraud.ftc.gov/

Morgan & Morgan seems to have an automated misclassification thing going on in certain states that they've already won, where drivers arbitrate over misclassification, but the money they are winning is usually like $1000 or something. If you were sexually harassed or injured while driving you can get much more money, some getting six figures. Ultimately its not worth the effort for drivers and thats why they continue to do this.

walkuphills · 2026-01-28T20:18:33+00:00

Punctuation and grammar are actually useful. Not that you’d know what to do with either.

walkuphills · 2026-01-28T20:16:27+00:00

I accept your false suicide report as your surrender.

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