Primitive and modern outdoor skills

Newly on the road

2013-05-17

I'm not feeling particularly technical right now, and I very much do feel like sharing this experience. So this will be a significantly less technical post than most of mine.

I'm currently sitting outside of a five guys on route 80 a bit south of Sacramento. I used to go to five-guys in college back in Pittsburgh, but it's been years since I've been to one, I didn't even know there were any out here. Seems fitting somehow, though I'm not sure why.

This morning after a shower I put the last of my belongings in the truck, emptied the trash, locked my apartment, and left the keys in my landlords mailbox. At work I gave a bottle of mead to some coworkers as a thank you and wrapped up a few tiny tasks. I ate lunch with a couple of coworkers where we chatted about random things like politics, war history, and told funny stories same as usual. After lunch and a quick "see you later", I went to a quick exit interview where we went over a bit of paperwork, and I was escorted out of the building.

So... here I am. My keyring has 2 keys on it - one for the truck and one for the truck's cap.

Emotionally today has been an interesting ride. Work was pretty relaxing, and surprisingly normal. As I walked out of the building though the whole thing definitely hit me. I'd just given up the two places I'd spent most of my time for the last couple of years. I drive to the mountains all the time, but driving out of Mountain View felt very different. I wasn't leaving home or anything, I don't really get attached to specific buildings and things in the same way many people do, but when I came back to mountin view I knew I'd be a visitor.

Thinking about it now I don't feel that way actually. When on the Appalachian trail previously I found that rather than no-where feeling like home everywhere did. I got attached to the forest itself, the rocks, the trees, the general feel of the place. I've lived in the bay area now, and the bay area will now be familiar only fading in familiarity as the place itself changes through time.

The weirdest part is the old "I forgot something" feeling. Occasionally I get a jolt "where's my work ID?" or similar. But I *can't* have forgotten anything because everything I have is in this car. I felt like this when I left for the airplane to fly to Georgia to hike the AT, but I'd completely forgotten how that felt until now.

I tried writing this post on my kindle, but it turns out my kindle can't load blogger for some reason. I can still use it, I'll just have to use the email gateway feature of blogger if I want to write posts that way. So, instead I'm currently writing this on my laptop which has a broken battery so it's running of the inverter powered by the truck. I definitely need to experiment more with options for blogging. I'm using vim and intend to post this sometime later.