Showing posts with label tents. Show all posts
Showing posts with label tents. Show all posts

Wednesday, December 23, 2020

Fecal Matters: Four Short Hiking Stories

As this year draws to a close I realize that I only spent about twelve days in the woods, and I was thinking about all of the things I missed most about it: the immersion in nature, the enjoyment of physical exertion in fresh air, the feeling of freedom, the views.  But as I imagine is the case with pretty much everyone, the thing I missed most about backpacking was, of course, talking about poop.

And seeing as I also imagine that you — if you didn’t get out on trail much — missed listening to people talk about poop, I decided it might be nice to metaphorically dig a 6-8” hole and drop some stories in it.  Enjoy!


Appalachian Trail 2000: “The Jewish People Figured This Out Thousands Of Years Ago”


Many of the Shelters in the Smokies now have privies, but there was a time in the not-too-distant past when none of them did, on the theory that dispersed pooping done during the course of the hiking day was a better management plan than concentrating use at a privy that would have to be maintained. Unfortunately that plan didn’t really work all that well, and each shelter ended up with a nearby “Poop Hill” that in some cases seemed uncomfortably close to the water source. And maybe that still would have been okay too, if not for all of the people who decided that carrying a trowel and digging an actual cathole was unnecessary. What you ended up with was a surface dookie minefield at every shelter, replete with white TP warning flags blowing in the wind.

Smokies shelters were generally pretty gross
even without the Poop Hill.

But that’s all background. The important part of this story is that I always carry a book with me hiking. ALWAYS. And I don’t limit myself to short books like a person with common sense would do. I read Lonesome Dove on the CDT (900+ pages). I read Shogun on the PCT (1100+ pages). Reading is such a part of my in-camp routine that I find it difficult to get to sleep if I don’t read at night.

So you can imagine my dismay when, shortly before entering the Smokies in 2000, I had finished a copy of The Deerslayer by James Fenimore Cooper and had nothing to read. Fortunately some well-meaning religious person had left a copy of the Bible in a shelter, and I thought to myself, “well, I’ve never read THAT the whole way through before.”

I suppose it was serendipity that on the same day I experienced my first “Poop Hill” I was up to Deuteronomy in the Bible and came across this passage in Chapter 23:

“Thou shalt have a place also without the camp, whither thou shalt go forth abroad:
And thou shalt have a paddle upon thy weapon; and it shall be, when thou wilt ease thyself abroad, thou shalt dig therewith, and shalt turn back and cover that which cometh from thee:
For the Lord thy God walketh in the midst of thy camp, to deliver thee, and to give up thine enemies before thee; therefore shall thy camp be holy: that he see no unclean thing in thee, and turn away from thee.”

Right there in the Bible: directions for digging a cathole.

And from that point on I did two things: I wrote the text of Deuteronomy 23:12-14 in all of the Shelter Registers until I left the Smokies — with a note that said “God wants you to bury your poop.”  And for the rest of my hike whenever someone asked me where I was going with TP and trowel in hand, I responded, “going to ease myself abroad.”


Pacific Crest Trail 2008: “I Blame This Decision On The Hypothermia I Didn’t Have”

I suffered from a bout of full-blown hypothermia while in Maine in the fall of 2003, and I was (I thought) justifiably paranoid about it in the fall of 2008 as I hiked through a cold and rainy fall season on the Pacific Crest Trail. And so it was that on Day 2 out of Packwood I was hiking alone in a cold rain monitoring myself for the Umbles and doing hand dexterity tests as I hiked. Dreading the idea of setting up my already wet tent in the rain, I briefly considered pulling up short and sleeping in a trailhead bathroom at Chinook Pass before deciding to push on towards my goal for the day: Camp Ulrich at Government Meadow.



Almost slept in a bathroom near here.

Camp Ulrich was the goal because there was a cabin with a wood stove there, and hopefully other hikers. It was 23 miles from Chinook Pass to Camp Ulrich, though, and as I slogged along it started getting dark. My progress slowed as my headlamp bounced ineffectually off a thick fog that set in. I was losing steam fast with about four miles to go and I realized I was getting slightly addled. Not wanting to risk missing Camp Ulrich in the pea-soupy darkness, I decided to bag the plan, set up camp, and do my best to ward off the early signs of hypothermia I felt setting in.

The cold rain continued coming down as I got my tent set up. I got into dry clothes and into my sleeping bag. I cooked in my vestibule. I made a Nalgene hot water bottle that I put in my armpit. And after eating I settled in to sleep wishing I had made it to the cabin while thinking I had made a solid decision not to try.

And then: I had to poop.

My brain still wasn’t firing on all cylinders but I knew I wasn’t going out there in my dry sleeping clothes and I also didn’t want to put the wets back on. Conundrum. Naked? Should I go out there naked? Is that what you do in this situation? I took a look outside and it was sleeting. Suddenly I realized that those stories you hear about finding dead hypothermia victims in various states of undress might be due to them simply needing to poop, and I was not going down like that. So I did the only other thing I could think of:

I pooped into a gallon Ziploc freezer bag.

Somewhere in this photo is a well-hidden bag of crap.
It's like a smelly version of Where's Waldo. 

The next day I rolled into Camp Ulrich early in the morning and called it -- it was a short mileage day but I needed to recover and dry out my gear.  Tex and Karen showed up (I had unknowingly passed their tent in the dark the night before) and they decided to stay as well.  We got a good fire going in the stove, and I am happy to report that as I spread all of my gear out to dry they did not notice — and I did not have to explain — the freezer bag full of poop that I would carry for another 46 miles before getting rid of it at Snoqualmie Pass.


Continental Divide Trail 2012: “The Cow Dung Trail”

"Can I . . . Can I get some of that water?  No?  Okay."

If you hike the Continental Divide Trail you’ll notice that a fair amount of your experience revolves around cows. You hike through BLM land leased to ranchers. You go over and under barbed wire cattle fences. You get water from windmill-driven wells that are there for the moo rather than you. You’ll probably accidentally spook a herd at least once, and you’ll definitely get comfortable with cow shit. Because all of the places you might like to rest are also the places cows like to rest, and the places that cows like to rest are also the places that cows like to poop. I have taken naps laying directly on crap more times than anyone really should.

One of the other things about the CDT is that it’s not always as well marked as you’d like, so it’s not unusual for hikers to occasionally build piles of rocks for the friends behind them at particularly tricky navigational spots. They're not the “artistic” rock stacks made by people with the hubris to think they arrange rocks better than nature does.  They're just helpful and boring directional cairns that are normally pretty unremarkable.

At a certain point you don't even really notice the poop.

Almost out of New Mexico, we were eagerly headed for Ghost Ranch and the cafeteria at Ghost Ranch (which had the food at Ghost Ranch) on a dirt road that we can call that only if we’re being charitable with our definition of “road.”  We had taken a break a few minutes earlier and checked our maps while stopped, so we knew that the trail took a hard right off the road at some point. Eventually we found the turn at a fenceline, but would we have been looking for it if we hadn't just checked our maps?  Possibly, but maybe not.  It was unmarked and a classic spot to build a cairn, but the problem was there were no rocks. At all.  What to do?  We could wait for our friends behind so they didn’t miss the turn. That was certainly a short-term solution, but what about friends a day or two behind? And more importantly, what about the food at Ghost Ranch? Would the food at Ghost Ranch still be there if we waited? Probably, but maybe not. And even if the food was still there, it felt like cutting into Ghost Ranch food eating time was more of a sacrifice than anyone should reasonably expect from us.

So looking around and considering our options, we did what anyone who had hiked through most of New Mexico would think was completely normal: we made a cow pie cairn.

It was a perfect directional marker, because you definitely noticed it. You didn’t have to play the “cairn/not-a-cairn” game that would occasionally happen when you saw a small pile of rocks. No, this was a very tall, very obvious stack of crap. It was either a directional cairn or these were the weirdest cows in all of New Mexico. And thanks to the poop, everyone made it to Ghost Ranch with ease. Where the food was, in fact, still there.


Appalachian Trail 2015: “Proper Planning Prevents Poop Panic Performance”

I have hiked enough trails by now that I am usually pretty good at planning. So it was with both surprise and disappointment that I found myself in Caratunk, Maine waiting for the Post Office to open as my hiking partners walked out of town. We had crossed the Kennebec on the first ferry trips of the morning and had breakfast at Northern Outdoors. And then had another breakfast at the Sterling Inn. Having already hiked 4 miles and with 14.7 still to go, they rightfully didn’t feel like loitering any longer due to me being an idiot. So off they went; I would get my mail and do my best to catch up.

Why did I have a package waiting at the Post Office? I have no good explanation. I had a new pair of shoes mailed to Caratunk despite the fact that I would literally be in Monson the next day (a town where I had a planned zero day). And it wasn’t like I was being clever in avoiding a day the Monson PO would be closed when I got there. I was going to arrive in Monson on a Tuesday. And to add another layer of dumbassery to my decision, the Caratunk PO was only open from 2-4pm.

Later, on the far shore, the phrase "dropping a Caratunk"
would be coined.

So there I was, sitting in front of the closed Caratunk PO at noon, when I started receiving warning signals from my gastrointestinal tract that a pint of ice cream as part of second breakfast had been a terrible, terrible choice. I looked around me and started to sweat. They were doing construction on the building attached to the PO; the workers told me the bathrooms had been torn out the day before.  My last thought before getting truly frantic was “that’ll teach me to take a zero in Gorham.”

I ran around behind the building. Realistically, there was no place to poop without being seen. And reviled. Back around to the front of the building, and now I was desperate.  Desperate enough to do something embarrassing, but something not nearly as embarrassing as pooping my pants.

I went up to a random house and knocked on the door.

You want to talk about Trail Angels? I’ll tell you about a Trail Angel. Because the woman who answered the knock on that door graciously let a random stranger into her house to destroy her bathroom. Granted, it was the half bath next to the garage, but it had a toilet and that’s really the only thing that mattered. I apologized profusely on the way in, and I apologized even more profusely on the way out. She said it was okay, emergencies happen, pay it no mind. I’m sure after I left she Febreezed that room like she owned stock in it.

My hero.

Anyway, I got the new shoes, clocked the 14.7 miles in them before dark, and to this day I still don’t know why I had shoes sent there instead of Monson and ended up having to poop in downtown Caratunk.

The new shoes: KEEN McGuffins.


I like to imagine that woman telling someone that same story right now, about the day she saved a dirty hiker’s dignity and also his pants. As for me, I like the story not only because it’s about how things can go wrong even when you think you know what you’re doing, but also because it’s about the kindness of strangers that is a hallmark of long distance hiking. It’s the sort of thing that reaffirms your faith in humanity, and I think we can all agree that’s exactly what a really good poop story is all about.





Tuesday, March 13, 2018

Hikers Note Dramatic Increase Of Crusty Old Dudes Who Want To Tell Everyone Trail Used To Be Better

"If you're not carrying enough weight
to cause long-term damage, are
you really even hiking?"
Current-year Appalachian Trail hikers have reported a stunning increase in the number of old dudes who want everyone within earshot to know that the trail “used to be so much better than today.”  Whether it’s reminiscing fondly about objectively awful aspects of hiking twenty years ago, or waxing nostalgic for a time that didn’t really exist, large numbers of old dudes are on trail complaining that the trail experience now is easier/more crowded/less meaningful/full of people younger than them.

“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.”

"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.”

"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.”

"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.  







Sunday, March 8, 2015

Appalachian Trail: The Sheltered Life

“We have all known the long loneliness and we have learned that the only solution is love and that love comes with community.” -- Dorothy Day

“. . . And to tolerate that community, you should probably bring earplugs.” -- Shane O’Donnell

For those unfamiliar with the Appalachian Trail, it’s a National Scenic Trail that runs from Georgia to Maine, and unlike many other trails it has shelters every eight to ten miles or so.  Some people prefer to use their tents while hiking the AT; other people enjoy using the shelters.  There are many designs, but typically they’re three sided structures with a roof, a sleeping deck, and mice.

Mice trying to get to your food, mice sleeping on your face to keep warm, mice doing Olympic-level gymnastics.  I swear, sometimes in a shelter it's like Cirque de Soleil-Down-For-Five-Minutes-And-You're-Covered-In-Mice.  But shelters can be fun for people who aren't looking for a solitary experience, and they're a great option in terrible weather.  And later in the season there are fewer mice around as the shelters get completely overrun with enormous black snakes.

Many first-time long distance hikers are unfamiliar with the sort of communal living that happens in the shelters along the trail (and the associated smells and noises), so I decided it would be a good idea to put together some thoughts on shelter etiquette and some observations on:



Living The Sheltered Life

In the words of House of Pain, “pack it up, pack it in, let me begin”
. . . by also telling you to pack it out.

I don’t care what it is, whether or not you think it’ll burn, or if you think someone else might use it.  If you don’t want it anymore it’s trash, and it isn’t any heavier than when you left town with it.  Here’s a handy way of figuring out if you should leave something behind at a shelter:
hold the thing in your hand and say to yourself, “should I leave this behind?”

The answer is always no.

Note: if the thing you’re holding in your hand is poop, we need to have an entirely different discussion.  And your trail name is now “Poop Hand Luke.”

All softball played inside the shelter must be slow pitch only.  This should go without saying, but most hikers today aren’t carrying helmets with them like they used to.

Some people become very comfortable with taking their clothes off in front of others in the shelters.  If you need to disrobe, announce that you are about to do so.  This will give some people time to avert their eyes, and other people time to adjust the settings on their cell phone cameras.

If your trail name is “Spain,” walking up to the shelter and yelling, “I claim this shelter in the name of Spain” is funny twice.  Maybe three times.  Then you need to get a new thing. 

Some Thoughts On Music:
Most people enjoy music.  Most people do not enjoy listening to people learn how to play music.

All harmonica playing should be confined to the privy.

Only one tuba solo per evening.

If you play Wagon Wheel every night for two weeks because it’s the only song you know, it’s entirely possible that someone is going to use your backpacker guitar to make a fire.

Looking at the section above on music, I feel like I haven't properly expressed my feelings about hamonicas, so I'll just add this: there's a reason they let people in prison have them. 

Talking to another shelter-dweller face to face is admittedly confusing and somewhat terrifying at first.  Are you supposed to make eye contact?  What do you do with your hands?  And how are you supposed to signal your tone or emotional state without emojis?  But if you put the electronics away every once in a while, it’s something you can get used to and even occasionally enjoy.  Also, if you’re not binge-watching Peaky Blinders you don’t have to carry a solar charger that’s not going to work anyway.

Walking on the sleeping deck in boots is only acceptable if they have clear heels filled with goldfish.

Drugs: drug use in the shelters is sometimes a controversial topic, but ultimately it’s about respect and discretion.  If you absolutely must do drugs, have some consideration and do it out of sight of your shelter mates.
Nobody needs to see you cramming your face full of Ibuprofen every morning.

Try not to be too annoyed with that first time hiker who wants to talk about his eight-pound base weight and how you’re carrying all sorts of things you don’t need and how you’ll never finish with a pack that heavy.  He’s been researching his gear for a year now and he’s just excited because he finally has the chance to use it.

Plus, he’s quitting next week.  So you won’t have to put up with him for long.
Earplugs: light, small, and solve most
shelter issues (with the exception of
the earplug-eating mice).


Complaining will not prevent the Orchestra Of Bodily Functions from launching into an all night performance.  The best you can do is try to get to sleep before it starts tuning up.  And bring earplugs.  And maybe one of those nose clip thingies swimmers wear.

“The shelter isn’t full until everyone is in” does not apply to the guy who shows up in the rain and announces that because he decided not to carry a tent someone already in the shelter has to get out.

Showing up late:
If you show up after dark at a shelter and everyone else has already bedded down, it’s best to accept up front that there’s absolutely no way to get yourself settled into the shelter without making noise.  No matter how quiet you try to be, you’re going to sound like a blind guy wandering around in a poorly organized wind chime factory.
So whatever you decide to do, do it fast.  Get in there if you must, but consider the quieter option of just cowboy camping next to the fire made of backpacker guitars.

Getting up early:
I understand completely if you’re all annoyed that the other people in the shelter think “Hiker Midnight” is a joke about how early hikers fall asleep instead of being some sort of quiet hour rule.  But clomping in the shelter and banging your gear around at 4:30am is going to make people hate you regardless of how justified you feel in punishing them via early morning passive aggressive retaliatory noise.

Please Purell your hands before touching anything else after mouse juggling.

And finally, if you’re hiking with your dog, maybe just stay out of the shelter entirely and set up your tent.  I know you love your dog.  I might even love your dog.  But if your dog gets someone’s stuff wet or grabs their food or accidentally rips their sleeping bag or pees on anything, it won’t matter that “he’s never done that before,” someone is going to try to eat your dog.

And let’s be honest -- sooner or later someone is probably going to try to eat your dog anyway.  It happens all the time.  But if you keep it away from the shelter they’ll at least be doing it out of hunger rather than spite.  And they might express regret afterwards and say something along the lines of, “geez, I’ve never tried to eat someone’s dog before.”



Saturday, September 21, 2013

Things Hikers Sometimes Do, Chapter One: Seam Sealing A Tent

If you’ve never bought a tent, or you’re the sort of person smart enough to only buy tents that are factory seam sealed, you may be unaware of how the process works.  The following describes my experience, with an added bonus product review.  Enjoy!

Retrieved from the trash for this photo.

I realized that I am car camping and going to festivals often enough that having a large heavy tent that I don’t really care about makes sense.  If you’ve ever bought a large cheap tent, you’ve probably discovered that they usually aren’t seam sealed.  Which means that regardless of how waterproof the fabric is, sheltering inside one in a storm is much like expecting to stay dry from the rain while inside an enormous spaghetti colander.  And no, that doesn’t make any sense.  Selling a tent that won’t keep the rain out seems willfully obtuse, like selling a car that doesn’t have tires.  I mean, I only expect two things of a tent: keep me dry, and don’t spontaneously combust while I’m sleeping inside it.  That the manufacturers seemingly don’t care about the first thing kind of makes me question whether they care about the second.

Anyway, what this means is that if you don’t want your large cheap tent to be like Gene Hackman’s house in Unforgiven, you’re going to have to seam seal it.  So off I went to the store, and rather than buy Seam Grip (which I know works), I picked up Gear Aid’s Seam Sure Water Based Seam Sealer.  Why?  Well, it was a dollar cheaper, and I also liked that because it was water based I
  1. wouldn’t smell like I’d been building model airplanes all day and
  2. wouldn’t once again set myself on fire while having a smoke immediately after seam sealing.

 Now, the thing about seam sealing is that I don’t like doing it, but it’s a relatively minor and short annoyance, much like Lil’ Kim or a prostate exam.  Still, if I can find a product that makes the task easier, I’ll take it.

 Gear Aid’s Seam Sure Water Based Seam Sealer is not that product.

In fact, I can say without reservation that this product is the worst hiking or camping product I have ever bought.  Ever.  It is far too watery and has a bottle applicator that absolutely doesn’t work if what you’re trying to do is get the product on the seams and not anywhere else.  After attempting to coat part of one seam there was sealer everywhere.  The floor.  The mesh.  The back of my neck.

If you want to know what using this product is like, call a friend and have them come over.  Then mail me $6.99.  Then fill a glass with Coke and have your friend stand above that glass with head pointed downward and mouth open.  Now try to throw Coke upwards into his mouth.  Here’s what will happen: very little of the liquid will end up where you want it, everyone will be sticky and disappointed, and someone who doesn’t deserve it will have $6.99 of your money.  Same with Gear Aid’s Seam Sure Water Based Seam Sealer.

The design of this product runs so counter to its stated purpose that I initially thought that something extraordinary with my particular bottle was to blame.  Perhaps some factory worker pranked me by filling it with deer ejaculate?  Dunno.  But on the whole I think it’s just more likely that the product is crap.

If you’re wondering if Gear Aid’s Seam Sure Water Based Seam Sealer actually works, I don’t know.  Maybe it’s incredibly waterproof and you’re drier than Churchill’s martinis.  Maybe it doesn’t work at all, and your tent doubles as a wading pool.  Or maybe it’s somewhere in the middle, like coating the seams with peanut butter.  You probably stay relatively dry, but there are mice absolutely everywhere.  I’ll never know, because I was so annoyed with it that rather than take it back for a refund I threw it in the trash, and then, worried that it might infect other things in my house that actually work, took that trash out to the curb.

Then off to the store to buy some Seam Grip, which unlike Seam Sure comes not just with the bottle applicator but includes a small brush.  Also: it’s the right gel-like consistency.  Also: the mere thought of it doesn’t make me angry.

Seam sealing is tedious.  And time consuming.  You’re essentially painting the seams while getting high on seam sealer fumes.  And because you’re high on seam sealer fumes, you will miss the one seam that actually needs to be sealed.  Which will invariably end up being directly above your head when you’re sleeping.  Which you’ll discover a month from now when it’s pouring rain.

But back in the here and now your seam sealing technique will change dramatically from the beginning of the process to the end.  At the beginning, you’re being pretty painstaking.  Carefully painting the seam, not using too much, wiping up that bit that spilled on the tent floor.  But the further into the seam sealing you get, it becomes progressively more important to be finished than neat.  Or even dry. You’re slapping gobs of that stuff all over the place.  You’re the Jackson Pollock of waterproofing.  The paper towels you were using to clean up earlier when you cared are now stuck to your lower back and shoulder.  Which means two things: you are most likely going to run out of seam sealer before you finish the job, and you are almost certainly going to get the tube of seam sealer stuck to your hand.

So it’s off to the store for another tube of Seam Grip, driving carefully so as not to get the "tube stuck to it" hand attached permanently to the steering wheel.  Then back to the yard and inside the tent, where, although it’s counterintuitive, you really should have started with the seams around the door.  Because now you are so ready for the whole thing to be over that you are pretty much done with the small brush, which in any case is currently stuck to the back of your leg.  You’re mainlining it now, going directly from tube to seam.  And if you’re not careful (and trust me, you’re not careful) there is an excellent chance that you are going to seam seal the door zipper shut, and possibly be forced to live inside the tent forever.

Which is not to say that you’re too stupid to figure out how to escape from the tent.   But at the very least we definitely know you’re not smart enough to buy a tent that is factory sealed.

Freedom regained with only minor damage to tent and ego, it’s into the house to wash up and pry off all of the stuff that has been stuck to your body for the past couple of hours.  The seam sealer will resist all attempts to “please for the love of god just get off of my hands,” and shortly thereafter, while typing up a piece about seam sealing, your left ring finger will get stuck to one of the keyssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssss