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| "If you're not carrying enough weight to cause long-term damage, are you really even hiking?" |
“Yeah, I mean, I guess they’ve always been out here,” says Chris “AT Bozo” Kounkel, “but I used to maybe bump into one once a week. Now every day there’s someone in a shelter pointing out that if you wanted tuna back then you had to carry cans of it, and how he once set a picnic table on fire when his over-pressurized Whisperlite International exploded.”
“Fishn’GaMe” from Connecticut, a current year hiker, agrees. “Yep. Old dudes are out there in droves, all complaining about how crowded the trail is. The weird thing to me is how none of them seem to make the connection between the 80-pound packs they brag about carrying in the ‘90s, and the stress fractures in both feet they complain about having in the ‘90s.”
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| "Even the damn privies are overcrowded." |
One of the contentious issues for old dudes is cell phones and connectivity. “I can appreciate the idea of disconnecting and immersing yourself in nature,” says David “Sarcasm The Elf” Vitti, “but one old dude described having to wait in line back in the day at the pay phone in Damascus to make a two minute call home, with people behind him in line grumbling for him to hurry it up. To me that sounds like fantasy camp for people who like prison, but whatever. Later that night he made a 45 minute call to his grandkids with his flip phone on speaker.”
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| "Even the damn weather is worse than it used to be." |
“And feeds, man, don’t get them started on feeds,” says “Breeze” from Florida. “I rolled up on one with a hiker named ODB and had to listen to him harangue everyone for ten minutes about how much better it was when nobody did nice things for anyone. There was something about self-sufficiency in there at the end, but it was hard to understand with all of the hot dogs he had crammed in his face.”
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| "And these damn kids won't get off of my lawn." |
Regardless of what old dudes are comparing, one thing is clear: the trail used to be much, much better. “Yeah, I’ve been told the trail was awesome at some vaguely defined period in the past, and now it apparently kind of sucks,” says newcomer “Walkingstick” of Crossville, TN. “Which is sort of irrelevant to me, because I have no basis for comparison. But when every story about the abundance of shuttles ruining the necessity of hitching includes the phrase, ‘I didn’t realize how drunk he was until I was in the car,‘ well, it makes me kind of happy I’m hiking now.”
Note: this is, of course, satire, and I have taken liberty with the facts. In reality, all of the old dudes who want to tell everyone that the trail used to be much better are online rather than on trail.
Note: this is, of course, satire, and I have taken liberty with the facts. In reality, all of the old dudes who want to tell everyone that the trail used to be much better are online rather than on trail.
