#I also met a friendly squirrel but you already saw photos of that

[artemistorm]

Here are some photos from my hike. There were tons of fallen trees that were cleared from the path. The log bench tree has a diameter of 4.5 ft (1.5m) so very big and very old. The stairs were cut straight into the bedrock of the summit of the mountain. The view from the top was very wildfire smokey so you couldn't see the distant mountains.

[dansnaturepictures]

21/09/2020-RSPB Titchwell Marsh and Wells Woods: 9 different photos to those tweeted Monday evening in this set

After another fine morning taking in the beautiful grounds of the bungalow we are staying in, where I took the first two pictures in this photoset of a view around and flowers, and the beautiful Norfolk countryside around Little Snoring near Fakenham whilst getting ready and heading out today we came to one of my favourite places and the opening location of my first ever visit to Norfolk early in the April of 2013, one I had heard of beforehand and anticipated the RSPB’s Titchwell Marsh. I had really looked forward to going here again this time. And we picked a corker of a day to visit this beautiful coastal location, it looked stunning in the very blue and sunny conditions it was really very nice to take in the lovely landscape once more today. Obviously last week we had the heatwave at home and the question was would we get anything like this in Norfolk so I am so glad I experienced a hot day in Norfolk. Even if it’s in September, it just gives you a great holiday vibe being out in this weather especially on a Monday I find. I took the third, fourth and eighth pictures in this photoset of views at Titchwell today.

As we walked down to the coast looking over either side of the path it soon became clear we were onto a very high calibre day’s birding with so many species seen and strong ones at that. It was special to see a handful of Bearded Tits in the reedbeds getting great views of them, always fantastic to see these twice in a year these were my first seen since some at Farlington Marshes at home on 2nd January. Very special moments with these birds on the way to and back from the coast. You can’t come to Norfolk and not see a Marsh Harrier and in the stronghold for this bird I also got as a year tick this year at Farlington on the second day of the year, we saw all the waders go up and there above them was a Marsh Harrier a great one to see. Another strong bird for the area especially of recent days is a Ruff and we saw loads today. We got some great views and it was especially cracking to see one right beside us which I tweeted a picture of which I was quite proud of in the lagoon where I had seen one the first time I came here an abiding memory of that day in fact so it felt very good to see a Ruff again in similar circumstances. A bird I have a strong admiration and respect for.

Two of one of my favourite birds the Great White Egrets with Little Egrets was a nice imposing and delightful sight on the lagoon. I took the seventh picture in this photoset of the Great White Egrets. It was very nice to see Golden Plovers flying over as well as Avovet shown in the fifth picture in this photoset which this reserve is so famous for and how I first ever heard of it and another of my favourite birds the Shelduck. Cetti’s Warbler a bird now on my B list of favourites and one of my favourite bird calls made a nice soundtrack at the reserve today. I also took the sixth picture in this photoset of one of many lovely Lapwings to see today.

It was also such a good general nature reserve vibe today with lots of nice people met to speak to at a safe social distance all enjoying a very nice day to be out in as well as a range of other wildlife about including Common Darter dragonflies. On the way up we also saw a small deer briefly in the marsh. I had wondered about Chinese Water Deer as I knew they are around in this part of the world. We didn’t think much of it until on the way back reaching the same spot a man said there was a Chinese Water Deer around it had disappeared from view at that point. But after thanking him for the information about it we had our mind on it and a google search allowed is to match up and confirm it was a Chinese Water Deer. This was a brilliant moment and one of my standout points of the day. I had seen a new mammal species for me and a pretty special and beautiful one too. I had known of these and been fascinated by them for ages and here I stood having seen them it struck me what perfect habitat for them I was looking over. I was so thrilled to have seen this mammal yesterday a new bird seen for me the Brown Shrike at Warham Greens and today a new mammal it was amazing to have seen it. I love my deers with three of the species among my favourite mammals now and seen this geographically restricted and elusive species meant I’ve now seen all six species of deer whether native or not that you can see in the wild in Britain - red, roe, fallow, sika, muntjac and now Chinese water - which made me feel great. I also heard it making a noise quite a high pitched one which was nice.

At the coast here getting onto Brancaster beach as the fourth photo shows as I remembered from last time it looked really pretty in a sunny day. Like a cup of tea before we left Titchwell we indulged in some typical holiday activities relaxing on the beach. It was also great to see some waders on the beach particularly interesting seeing Curlew and Black-tailed Godwit and a Bar-tailed Godwit too where I don’t often see them at home right on the shoreline alongside Oystercatchers. We then left Titchwell and I left with a great impression of the well-known reserve once again a few special place I thoroughly enjoyed the few hours here today.

Like Marsh Harrier you can’t visit Norfolk without looking at a windmill and it was nice to see and photograph one from a lay-by as well as some beautiful views in the middle of fields a landscape shown in the ninth picture in this photoset I tweeted the one of the windmill itself on the way to our next stop today.

Our next stop was Wells Woods a view there the tenth picture I took today in this photoset where we searched for two or three more rare birds but in truth we didn’t leave enough time so we may come back later in the week. We did get to see what a beautiful lake, wooded, grassy, friendly and holiday vibed area by the coast so some different habitats perhaps to what we have seen in Norfolk already it is, great to be there at the approach of twilight with the sun lowering nicely it did look really beautiful. Wells-next-the-Sea already has been a wonderful, beautiful and friendly and welcoming place to take in and enjoy this holiday I have loved driving though it already seeing lots of people enjoying their holidays and memorable buildings as well as a horse sculpture in the sands area on the seafront there. So it was nice to translate that into a walk there and some pictures and birds seen. The standout bird was a lovely couple of Little Grebes I got very close to in shadowy conditions as the sun was lowering. A great end to a fantastic day out in Norfolk again.

Wildlife Sightings Summary: (Titchwell) My first ever Chinese Water Deer, three of my favourite birds the Great White Egret, Little Egret and Shelduck, Avocet, Lapwing, Oystercatcher, Black-tailed Godwit, Redshank, Turnstone, (interestingly all strong birds at the first reserve I ever visited in Hampshire Titchfield Haven, and among the first birds I ever saw in my birdwatching life aged 9 and 10 which I always think of when thinking of Titchwell due to the similarly in names and it does remind me of it here habitat wise), Bar-tailed Godwit, Dunlin, Ruff, Common Sandpiper, Curlew, Golden Plover, lots of nice Teals, Shoveler, Gadwall, Moorhen, Greylag Goose, Grey Heron, Marsh Harrier, Black-heeded Gull, Herring Gull, Woodpigeon, Starling, many Pied Wagtails again there are a lot about here, Speckled Wood, possibly another Wall Brown butterfly after yesterday, Common Darter, other dragonflies possibly Emperor and a hawker they flew so fast it was hard to tell, Grey Squirrel and heard Cetti’s Warbler. (Wells Woods) Lots of Goldfinches and Long-tailed Tits which was nice, Robin, Woodpigeon, Herring Gull, Mallard, Little Grebe and Comma butterfly.

[rafaelthompson]

10 Minutes With Janice Nadworny: Part Two

We continue our interview with the co-director of Food 4 Farmers, a nonprofit battling food insecurity in coffee-producing areas.

BY CHRIS RYAN BARISTA MAGAZINE ONLINE

Photos courtesy of Janice Nadworny

In the first part of our interview with Food 4 Farmers co-director Janice Nadworny, we learned about her journey through the world of Wall Street before entering the nonprofit world. In today’s second and final part of the interview, we talk to Janice about Food 4 Farmers’ growth over the past decade, what they’ve learned from operating the nonprofit, and much more. For additional reading on Food 4 Farmers, check out the June + July 2020 issue of Barista Magazine, which features an interview with Marcela Pino, Janice’s fellow co-director at Food 4 Farmers.

Janice (far right) with Marcela Pino and Fatima Ismael, general manager of Nicaragua coffee cooperative SOPPEXCCA.

Chris Ryan: Once you entered the coffee world, what was your path to co-founding Food 4 Farmers? 

Janice Nadworny: I joined Grounds for Health in 2008, just before the financial meltdown, and witnessed the staying power of coffee. The coffee industry was so resilient compared to others because people need their caffeine, no matter what. I had no clue how big this universe was, but it was at that intersection of social and economic justice, and financial markets. I saw a tremendous potential for coffee to affect significant, positive change for some of the world’s poorest economies, where millions of farming families had been left out of decades of global wealth accumulation. 

What if those 100 million coffee producers could earn a bit more, and thrive along with coffee companies? I saw coffee as an industry with the potential to change the world.

Though Grounds for Health was a good place to learn, I’m a consultant at heart—I’ve never liked the hierarchical structure at most organizations. I like big, messy problems to solve. So, I left in 2010, and was approached by Rick Peyser and Marcela, who offered the messiest proposition ever—to create a new NGO from scratch, with no deep pockets or angel investors, to work on food security in coffee-growing communities—in a way that reflected what farmers wanted.

Can you give a bit of a snapshot of the last 10 years with Food 4 Farmers, and the philosophies the organization has developed and followed?

We began our work in 2011, right as the short film After the Harvest was shown at SCAA Expo. It was funded by Green Mountain Coffee Roasters and explored the prevalence of food scarcity among coffee-farming families. Ultimately, it left a lot of people feeling overwhelmed and helpless.

Here was specialty coffee, thinking that coffee could solve the problem. What’s more, believing that investing in coffee would fetch farmers a higher price, and deliver a decent livelihood. All those assumptions went out the window. If coffee can’t be the only answer to the problem of poverty, what else could the industry do?

Because the people who grow it don’t own enough land to make it work economically, our organization came in with another way: intentional, strategic, long-term farm diversification to supplement coffee. We felt that this would give farming families enough food and income to stay together, on their farms, growing coffee. It’s counterintuitive to think that farmers don’t have enough food—they’re the ones who can grow it. But if they’re growing coffee instead, they can’t make farming work.

We looked at previous work done by other organizations. Most plug in a solution, train the community—either families or organizations—then exit, declaring victory. After they leave, much of the progress is lost. We talked with cooperatives about this, and heard back that expertise is often embedded in the NGO rather than the community, and the focus is often on implementation, rather than developing local expertise to manage sustain, and grow the work independently. We decided to focus on this gap.

We developed a community diagnostic to determine the root causes of inadequate livelihoods and identify assets or resources already in the community that could be formalized and scaled to address specific challenges. Co-ops and families would lead the work, [and] we would co-develop tools, curricula, and business planning resources.

At the heart of our work is adult education. Once a farming community chooses its strategies—gardens, beekeeping, cacao, basic grain production—we find skilled local training organizations to plug in the technical knowledge they need. Our roles are facilitators, guides, and auditors. I like to refer to us as underpaid consultants. We work FOR the co-ops.

Janice (second from right) and Food 4 Farmers co-director Marcela Pino (far right) with Lucas Abelardo (center), beekeeping specialist for Mexican cooperative Cesmach, and other members of the co-op, at Cesmach’s coffee nursery. Food 4 Farmers runs a beekeeping program at Cesmach to help coffee farmers diversify their incomes.

Where does Food 4 Farmers work, and how have those organizations been impacted?

Our first partners were two organizations we knew from our previous work: SOPPEXCCA in Nicaragua and Cesmach in Mexico. Then, Root Capital hired us in 2014 to work with Maya Ixil in Guatemala, and we got a grant from Progreso Foundation in 2015 to add Nuevo Futuro in Colombia and continue with Cesmach on a beekeeping venture. 

With each partner, we analyzed the community-context to see what pieces were universal across programs, and which ones were unique. SOPPEXCCA and Nuevo Futuro wanted to add school gardens to reach more families, and target students as leaders. As kids learn to grow and eat healthy foods, they bring that advocacy home to their families and affect change from within. So, we developed pilot programs with them. SOPPEXCCA now has school garden programs in five schools, serving 500 students and their families.

Now we work with six cooperatives in four countries with the ability to reach 40,000 people—the families of co-op members—and they have the potential to impact their communities of several hundred thousand people. The co-ops and farmers are building a path to independence, better food systems, and are finding ways to take care of themselves and each other when crises like this pandemic strike.

Janice shows off a find from one of her mushroom-hunting trips.

Finally, can you tell us a bit about your interest in mushroom hunting, and your other interests outside of coffee?

I’m obsessive about mushrooms (as probably everyone who’s met me knows). I’ve been foraging for several years, since my husband and I moved to a place on 12 acres in a rural area of Vermont. Our trail cam catches bobcats, coyotes, porcupines, northern flying squirrels, beavers, weasels, fishers, turkeys, and lots of other critters in our neck of the woods. 

I’m also trying to eliminate every blade of grass and plant pollinator-friendly gardens, reintroduce native plants, and have added lots of veggie gardens to share with people who don’t have access to fresh, healthy food. I’m also learning to save seeds and preserve crop diversity—also to share with others. I start seedlings to get me through the long Vermont winter, and give away hundreds of veggie starts, strawberry plants, and herbs. I love to see what amazing and beautiful things people are growing, eating, and sharing with their community. I think we need to find a better way to do business to include everyone, so all can thrive.

The post 10 Minutes With Janice Nadworny: Part Two appeared first on Barista Magazine Online.

10 Minutes With Janice Nadworny: Part Two published first on https://espressoexpertsite.tumblr.com/

[samanthasroberts]

Hunting Bigfoot: 4 Things You Learn Chasing Fiction

I recently moved to a snowier, woodsier part of the world and noticed one day while taking a shortcut home that Bigfoot probably lives near me. There are a lot of trees and foreboding areas that look like the sorts of places in which gentle folk like me are made into the forest brides of beast-men. But how could I know for sure?

If there’s one thing I’m good at it’s finding the worst bar in any given town and making it my own. I easily located this town’s scruffiest bar that featured dead animals mounted on walls, and in no time had found no less than one man who claimed that he had heard from someone several years ago that there was a guy who saw Bigfoot around here once. Hot damn! A solid lead!

On the promise of picking up his bar tab and also returning to the bar later and picking up more of a bar tab, I got this guy to join me on a hunt in the woods. Now, you may be asking, “Felix, did you just pay a drunk stranger to take you into the woods alone?” And to that I say: You forgot that I got him to bring a gun.

This is Dan. He’s loaded with beer and ammunition!

#4. Drinking Outdoors Is Fun

My new friend Dan isn’t the sort of man who appreciates small talk, pop culture, or me. But I bought road beers and we were pretty much set to have an adventure. We drove about 20 minutes out of town to a massive swath of forest that Dan told me had a big lake somewhere in the middle of it and was the place some people said Bigfoot had been spotted. Already it had grown from maybe one guy to some people. I was super psyched.

In preparation for our journey, we packed not just beers but several snacks, an emergency flare (lest Bigfoot abduct us while a helicopter is flying overhead), and outdoorsy crap like a compass, a small hatchet, some matches, and a mickey of whiskey.

I’m not much for hiking but luckily neither is Dan, so we were in the woods for a solid 15 minutes before we stopped to have a drink. Our brew of choice was a fine Canadian ale known as Flying Monkeys Smashbomb Atomic IPA. I bought it solely based on the silly name, but it was actually pretty fantastic and I solidly recommend it for all your Bigfoot-hunting needs.

It’d be better if there were actually monkeys serving it, but other than that, A+.

Dan and I had a good sit in the woods, during which Dan proceeded to tell me about his younger days in a biker gang and a variety of related activities I won’t relate here, because I’m dumb but not that dumb. This was some secret-keeping beer we were having, and Dan may not have been the best tour guide in retrospect, but here we were, in the woods, with a gun. A gun and stories of Dan using a pool cue to destroy an entire room full of men in the most brutal, Deadpool ways possible. I’m glad I met this strange fellow.

Several beers later and Dan and I were having a pretty decent time, still within sight of the road. But alas, this was no joke expedition … or, well, it was, but I was still looking for Bigfoot. We had work to do.

#3. Losing Yourself Is Easier Than Finding Bigfoot

We set out in a direction I will call straight ahead. I know we packed a compass, but it was packed and, honestly, would it have made a difference to know if we were headed north or east? How could it have? We were looking for a legendary man-ape.

Dan told me as we walked that coyote activity in this area has been very much on the rise lately. There’s just a huge population of them. I’ve never seen a coyote outside of a Warner Bros. cartoon and was having a hard time reconciling my image of a cartoon wielding an anvil with an actual wild dog that probably has rabies tearing open my scrotum. Dan assured me they rarely attack humans unless they’re starving or in large groups, then, without missing a beat, added, “Or maybe not.” I almost forgot Dan is not a woodsman, merely a fellow drunk I met at a bar, and I am about as much an expert on what we’re doing as he is.

“I eat a lot of Jack Link’s, though.”

We stumbled upon a number of tracks that could have belonged to Foot, but definitely not Bigfoot, unless I have been grossly misled regarding sizing in this matter. Most were probably squirrels and assorted other woodland turds, but there were definitely some deer tracks as well, and in my mind that was close. The bigger the animal, the closer to Bigfoot. If we found moose tracks we’d be pretty much where we needed to be.

We trudged on through snow-covered underbrush, slightly tipsy and with no clear direction. Dan had brought with him a 20 gauge shotgun, which he said would probably work for taking out Bigfoot if we got him to stand still long enough. I’m no gunsmith and assumed any shotgun was probably good for blowing a Bigfoot’s leg off, until Dan told me this was his rabbit-hunting gun. He had a license only for small game this year, and he wasn’t going to get fined by bringing a higher-powered rifle into the woods when it wasn’t season for hunting something like elk. Dan had no faith in our expedition. Although he did point out that, if we shot Bigfoot with the 20 gauge it’d probably slow him down enough for some photos, so I should be fast with my phone and snap a pic or two. Maybe see if he’s down for a selfie.

#2. Winter Is Stupid

The worst time to do anything is winter time. According to my phone, it was about 4 below zero. For you Celsius types, that’s 20 below. Why the hell would Bigfoot be out in this silly-ass weather? Even bears have the intelligence to hibernate. Bigfoot should be snoozing under a pile of tarps in an old fishing cabin.

There was a brief moment when I encountered a smell that could be best described as unwashed skunk vagina somewhere out in the woods. I heard a rustling in the underbrush, and I thought we might be on to something. For those who doubt the veracity of my claims, I have photo evidence:

Got wood? Ha ha ha! Ha ha! Ahhh …

Like all good photos of Bigfoot, this one mostly requires you to be as drunk as I was when I took it and to have a lot of faith that I know the sight/smell of Bigfoot’s dick when I see it. But for real, do you see that in there? I know it looks like a twig, but I ask you, what do you think Bigfoot’s dick would look like? Probably a big, veiny twig, right?

Before I string you along anymore, I’ll let you know that was a twig. Bigfoot’s dick, even if it is twig-like, is probably attached to a Bigfoot and not a tree like this one was. But did you feel the suspense there for a second? Now you’re living in my world. The world of a Bigfoot hunter!

#1. Bigfoot Is Not Real

Let’s assume for a moment Bigfoot is real, the title of this section notwithstanding. He’s generally considered a “he” right? Not to point out the sex so much as the singular. There’s just one. Bigfoot’s a lone wolf, him and his veiny twig-dick, wandering the woods and stealing forest brides and whatnot. Most Bigfoot sightings have been in Washington state, California, and Oregon. He’s basically a West Coast kind of guy. I’m on the East Coast, so right away my chances are pretty pathetic. Sure, New York and Ohio have some sightings, but so does Russia. Point is, I’m in the wrong neighborhood, and I’m looking for one guy. One big, hairy guy who makes a point of never being found, because no one’s ever found him. Do you know what the odds are of me finding him?

I actually calculated the odds on this for you, in case you’re not good at these complex, veiny equations. Keeping in mind the time of year Bigfoot is most often sighted in these various locations, as well as the time of day and methods used for tracking Bigfoot and the actual odds of me finding him here, at this time, were fuck no. Fuck no I can’t find Bigfoot, because he’s not real.

Consider that humankind has found the coldest natural object in the entire universe, fossils from the first living veiny beasts on Earth, that stupid affluenza kid, and numerous missing plane crashes. If there were a race of hairy man-beasts populating the Pacific Northwest or anywhere else in North America, there would have been some kind of definitive evidence proposed by people who are not named Bubba or Cooter.

Dan and I finished our beers in the woods. We found one track that was probably mine.

Size 11 … ladies. Or guys who want to buy me shoes.

I also found a frozen turd that really made me laugh but the picture turned out pretty blurry due to my laughing as I took the photo. It wasn’t a Bigfoot turd, probably a raccoon or something. Still, that’s hilarious to me.

Dan decided he’d had enough of being in the woods with me, and I couldn’t blame him. I’d mostly wasted our day and provided little to no purpose for our journey other than the laziest attempt ever to discover a cryptozoological legend. Fortunately, that made my attempt just as relevant as anyone else’s, because come on. What would be a “serious” attempt at finding Bigfoot in 2016? Some kind of thermal-imaging drone and satellite tracking? That seems like an expensive prospect for a big fatty waste of time.

Dan called his wife to pick him up once we got back to the road. She seemed like a nice lady who could fight me and win with little effort. Neither of them offered me a ride. As I watched them drive off, I wondered if perhaps Bigfoot was now watching me from the trees and feeling a kinship with me as I, too, was now alone. But of course he wasn’t, because remember, he doesn’t exist. He and that veiny dick I’ve been asked to keep writing about are full-on fiction. No, the only stranger watching me from the woods was a friendly serial killer or public wanker.

I wondered why it is that so many people seem enamored with the idea of Bigfoot. Is it the mystery? The idea that, in a world of smartphones and WiFi and driverless cars, we could have somehow overlooked a man-beast living right under our noses? Possibly. Mostly, I think, it’s what I like to call Dorf Contrarianism. This is the idea that a stupid person will dig in like a tick when confronted with something they feel threatened by, in an intellectual fashion, telling them they’re wrong. The person doing it may not be trying to intimidate our Dorf, or even patronize them or talk down to them in any way, but that is how Dorf perceives it, because Dorf is not smart enough to know why it’s happening but is smart enough to know they’re being corrected. And they don’t like it. So they outwardly refuse it so thoroughly they must embrace the very opposite. They must hunt Bigfoot, simply because he is not real. They must drink that moonshine because it could make them go blind. They must fuck that cousin even if the baby’s going to always be leaning a little to the left. Such is the contrarian nature of Dorf. And that’s what keeps Bigfoot alive.

Check out other mythical monsters of lore and bull crap in 5 Myths That People Don’t Realize Are Admitted Hoaxes, and fear the shelled back of The Beast of Busco in 7 Monsters That Bigfoot Hunters Are Too Scared To Believe In.

Subscribe to our YouTube channel to see why ghosts are definitely real in 6 Most Eerily Convincing Ghost Videos On YouTube – The Spit Take, and watch other videos you won’t see on the site!

Also follow us on Facebook, and see if you can find Bigfoot in the comments. We hear he’s a fan.

Source: http://allofbeer.com/hunting-bigfoot-4-things-you-learn-chasing-fiction/

from All of Beer https://allofbeer.wordpress.com/2018/03/14/hunting-bigfoot-4-things-you-learn-chasing-fiction/

[jimdsmith34]

Hunting Bigfoot: 4 Things You Learn Chasing Fiction

I recently moved to a snowier, woodsier part of the world and noticed one day while taking a shortcut home that Bigfoot probably lives near me. There are a lot of trees and foreboding areas that look like the sorts of places in which gentle folk like me are made into the forest brides of beast-men. But how could I know for sure?

If there’s one thing I’m good at it’s finding the worst bar in any given town and making it my own. I easily located this town’s scruffiest bar that featured dead animals mounted on walls, and in no time had found no less than one man who claimed that he had heard from someone several years ago that there was a guy who saw Bigfoot around here once. Hot damn! A solid lead!

On the promise of picking up his bar tab and also returning to the bar later and picking up more of a bar tab, I got this guy to join me on a hunt in the woods. Now, you may be asking, “Felix, did you just pay a drunk stranger to take you into the woods alone?” And to that I say: You forgot that I got him to bring a gun.

This is Dan. He’s loaded with beer and ammunition!

#4. Drinking Outdoors Is Fun

My new friend Dan isn’t the sort of man who appreciates small talk, pop culture, or me. But I bought road beers and we were pretty much set to have an adventure. We drove about 20 minutes out of town to a massive swath of forest that Dan told me had a big lake somewhere in the middle of it and was the place some people said Bigfoot had been spotted. Already it had grown from maybe one guy to some people. I was super psyched.

In preparation for our journey, we packed not just beers but several snacks, an emergency flare (lest Bigfoot abduct us while a helicopter is flying overhead), and outdoorsy crap like a compass, a small hatchet, some matches, and a mickey of whiskey.

I’m not much for hiking but luckily neither is Dan, so we were in the woods for a solid 15 minutes before we stopped to have a drink. Our brew of choice was a fine Canadian ale known as Flying Monkeys Smashbomb Atomic IPA. I bought it solely based on the silly name, but it was actually pretty fantastic and I solidly recommend it for all your Bigfoot-hunting needs.

It’d be better if there were actually monkeys serving it, but other than that, A+.

Dan and I had a good sit in the woods, during which Dan proceeded to tell me about his younger days in a biker gang and a variety of related activities I won’t relate here, because I’m dumb but not that dumb. This was some secret-keeping beer we were having, and Dan may not have been the best tour guide in retrospect, but here we were, in the woods, with a gun. A gun and stories of Dan using a pool cue to destroy an entire room full of men in the most brutal, Deadpool ways possible. I’m glad I met this strange fellow.

Several beers later and Dan and I were having a pretty decent time, still within sight of the road. But alas, this was no joke expedition … or, well, it was, but I was still looking for Bigfoot. We had work to do.

#3. Losing Yourself Is Easier Than Finding Bigfoot

We set out in a direction I will call straight ahead. I know we packed a compass, but it was packed and, honestly, would it have made a difference to know if we were headed north or east? How could it have? We were looking for a legendary man-ape.

Dan told me as we walked that coyote activity in this area has been very much on the rise lately. There’s just a huge population of them. I’ve never seen a coyote outside of a Warner Bros. cartoon and was having a hard time reconciling my image of a cartoon wielding an anvil with an actual wild dog that probably has rabies tearing open my scrotum. Dan assured me they rarely attack humans unless they’re starving or in large groups, then, without missing a beat, added, “Or maybe not.” I almost forgot Dan is not a woodsman, merely a fellow drunk I met at a bar, and I am about as much an expert on what we’re doing as he is.

“I eat a lot of Jack Link’s, though.”

We stumbled upon a number of tracks that could have belonged to Foot, but definitely not Bigfoot, unless I have been grossly misled regarding sizing in this matter. Most were probably squirrels and assorted other woodland turds, but there were definitely some deer tracks as well, and in my mind that was close. The bigger the animal, the closer to Bigfoot. If we found moose tracks we’d be pretty much where we needed to be.

We trudged on through snow-covered underbrush, slightly tipsy and with no clear direction. Dan had brought with him a 20 gauge shotgun, which he said would probably work for taking out Bigfoot if we got him to stand still long enough. I’m no gunsmith and assumed any shotgun was probably good for blowing a Bigfoot’s leg off, until Dan told me this was his rabbit-hunting gun. He had a license only for small game this year, and he wasn’t going to get fined by bringing a higher-powered rifle into the woods when it wasn’t season for hunting something like elk. Dan had no faith in our expedition. Although he did point out that, if we shot Bigfoot with the 20 gauge it’d probably slow him down enough for some photos, so I should be fast with my phone and snap a pic or two. Maybe see if he’s down for a selfie.

#2. Winter Is Stupid

The worst time to do anything is winter time. According to my phone, it was about 4 below zero. For you Celsius types, that’s 20 below. Why the hell would Bigfoot be out in this silly-ass weather? Even bears have the intelligence to hibernate. Bigfoot should be snoozing under a pile of tarps in an old fishing cabin.

There was a brief moment when I encountered a smell that could be best described as unwashed skunk vagina somewhere out in the woods. I heard a rustling in the underbrush, and I thought we might be on to something. For those who doubt the veracity of my claims, I have photo evidence:

Got wood? Ha ha ha! Ha ha! Ahhh …

Like all good photos of Bigfoot, this one mostly requires you to be as drunk as I was when I took it and to have a lot of faith that I know the sight/smell of Bigfoot’s dick when I see it. But for real, do you see that in there? I know it looks like a twig, but I ask you, what do you think Bigfoot’s dick would look like? Probably a big, veiny twig, right?

Before I string you along anymore, I’ll let you know that was a twig. Bigfoot’s dick, even if it is twig-like, is probably attached to a Bigfoot and not a tree like this one was. But did you feel the suspense there for a second? Now you’re living in my world. The world of a Bigfoot hunter!

#1. Bigfoot Is Not Real

Let’s assume for a moment Bigfoot is real, the title of this section notwithstanding. He’s generally considered a “he” right? Not to point out the sex so much as the singular. There’s just one. Bigfoot’s a lone wolf, him and his veiny twig-dick, wandering the woods and stealing forest brides and whatnot. Most Bigfoot sightings have been in Washington state, California, and Oregon. He’s basically a West Coast kind of guy. I’m on the East Coast, so right away my chances are pretty pathetic. Sure, New York and Ohio have some sightings, but so does Russia. Point is, I’m in the wrong neighborhood, and I’m looking for one guy. One big, hairy guy who makes a point of never being found, because no one’s ever found him. Do you know what the odds are of me finding him?

I actually calculated the odds on this for you, in case you’re not good at these complex, veiny equations. Keeping in mind the time of year Bigfoot is most often sighted in these various locations, as well as the time of day and methods used for tracking Bigfoot and the actual odds of me finding him here, at this time, were fuck no. Fuck no I can’t find Bigfoot, because he’s not real.

Consider that humankind has found the coldest natural object in the entire universe, fossils from the first living veiny beasts on Earth, that stupid affluenza kid, and numerous missing plane crashes. If there were a race of hairy man-beasts populating the Pacific Northwest or anywhere else in North America, there would have been some kind of definitive evidence proposed by people who are not named Bubba or Cooter.

Dan and I finished our beers in the woods. We found one track that was probably mine.

Size 11 … ladies. Or guys who want to buy me shoes.

I also found a frozen turd that really made me laugh but the picture turned out pretty blurry due to my laughing as I took the photo. It wasn’t a Bigfoot turd, probably a raccoon or something. Still, that’s hilarious to me.

Dan decided he’d had enough of being in the woods with me, and I couldn’t blame him. I’d mostly wasted our day and provided little to no purpose for our journey other than the laziest attempt ever to discover a cryptozoological legend. Fortunately, that made my attempt just as relevant as anyone else’s, because come on. What would be a “serious” attempt at finding Bigfoot in 2016? Some kind of thermal-imaging drone and satellite tracking? That seems like an expensive prospect for a big fatty waste of time.

Dan called his wife to pick him up once we got back to the road. She seemed like a nice lady who could fight me and win with little effort. Neither of them offered me a ride. As I watched them drive off, I wondered if perhaps Bigfoot was now watching me from the trees and feeling a kinship with me as I, too, was now alone. But of course he wasn’t, because remember, he doesn’t exist. He and that veiny dick I’ve been asked to keep writing about are full-on fiction. No, the only stranger watching me from the woods was a friendly serial killer or public wanker.

I wondered why it is that so many people seem enamored with the idea of Bigfoot. Is it the mystery? The idea that, in a world of smartphones and WiFi and driverless cars, we could have somehow overlooked a man-beast living right under our noses? Possibly. Mostly, I think, it’s what I like to call Dorf Contrarianism. This is the idea that a stupid person will dig in like a tick when confronted with something they feel threatened by, in an intellectual fashion, telling them they’re wrong. The person doing it may not be trying to intimidate our Dorf, or even patronize them or talk down to them in any way, but that is how Dorf perceives it, because Dorf is not smart enough to know why it’s happening but is smart enough to know they’re being corrected. And they don’t like it. So they outwardly refuse it so thoroughly they must embrace the very opposite. They must hunt Bigfoot, simply because he is not real. They must drink that moonshine because it could make them go blind. They must fuck that cousin even if the baby’s going to always be leaning a little to the left. Such is the contrarian nature of Dorf. And that’s what keeps Bigfoot alive.

Check out other mythical monsters of lore and bull crap in 5 Myths That People Don’t Realize Are Admitted Hoaxes, and fear the shelled back of The Beast of Busco in 7 Monsters That Bigfoot Hunters Are Too Scared To Believe In.

Subscribe to our YouTube channel to see why ghosts are definitely real in 6 Most Eerily Convincing Ghost Videos On YouTube – The Spit Take, and watch other videos you won’t see on the site!

Also follow us on Facebook, and see if you can find Bigfoot in the comments. We hear he’s a fan.

source http://allofbeer.com/hunting-bigfoot-4-things-you-learn-chasing-fiction/ from All of Beer http://allofbeer.blogspot.com/2018/03/hunting-bigfoot-4-things-you-learn.html

[adambstingus]

Hunting Bigfoot: 4 Things You Learn Chasing Fiction

I recently moved to a snowier, woodsier part of the world and noticed one day while taking a shortcut home that Bigfoot probably lives near me. There are a lot of trees and foreboding areas that look like the sorts of places in which gentle folk like me are made into the forest brides of beast-men. But how could I know for sure?

If there’s one thing I’m good at it’s finding the worst bar in any given town and making it my own. I easily located this town’s scruffiest bar that featured dead animals mounted on walls, and in no time had found no less than one man who claimed that he had heard from someone several years ago that there was a guy who saw Bigfoot around here once. Hot damn! A solid lead!

On the promise of picking up his bar tab and also returning to the bar later and picking up more of a bar tab, I got this guy to join me on a hunt in the woods. Now, you may be asking, “Felix, did you just pay a drunk stranger to take you into the woods alone?” And to that I say: You forgot that I got him to bring a gun.

This is Dan. He’s loaded with beer and ammunition!

#4. Drinking Outdoors Is Fun

My new friend Dan isn’t the sort of man who appreciates small talk, pop culture, or me. But I bought road beers and we were pretty much set to have an adventure. We drove about 20 minutes out of town to a massive swath of forest that Dan told me had a big lake somewhere in the middle of it and was the place some people said Bigfoot had been spotted. Already it had grown from maybe one guy to some people. I was super psyched.

In preparation for our journey, we packed not just beers but several snacks, an emergency flare (lest Bigfoot abduct us while a helicopter is flying overhead), and outdoorsy crap like a compass, a small hatchet, some matches, and a mickey of whiskey.

I’m not much for hiking but luckily neither is Dan, so we were in the woods for a solid 15 minutes before we stopped to have a drink. Our brew of choice was a fine Canadian ale known as Flying Monkeys Smashbomb Atomic IPA. I bought it solely based on the silly name, but it was actually pretty fantastic and I solidly recommend it for all your Bigfoot-hunting needs.

It’d be better if there were actually monkeys serving it, but other than that, A+.

Dan and I had a good sit in the woods, during which Dan proceeded to tell me about his younger days in a biker gang and a variety of related activities I won’t relate here, because I’m dumb but not that dumb. This was some secret-keeping beer we were having, and Dan may not have been the best tour guide in retrospect, but here we were, in the woods, with a gun. A gun and stories of Dan using a pool cue to destroy an entire room full of men in the most brutal, Deadpool ways possible. I’m glad I met this strange fellow.

Several beers later and Dan and I were having a pretty decent time, still within sight of the road. But alas, this was no joke expedition … or, well, it was, but I was still looking for Bigfoot. We had work to do.

#3. Losing Yourself Is Easier Than Finding Bigfoot

We set out in a direction I will call straight ahead. I know we packed a compass, but it was packed and, honestly, would it have made a difference to know if we were headed north or east? How could it have? We were looking for a legendary man-ape.

Dan told me as we walked that coyote activity in this area has been very much on the rise lately. There’s just a huge population of them. I’ve never seen a coyote outside of a Warner Bros. cartoon and was having a hard time reconciling my image of a cartoon wielding an anvil with an actual wild dog that probably has rabies tearing open my scrotum. Dan assured me they rarely attack humans unless they’re starving or in large groups, then, without missing a beat, added, “Or maybe not.” I almost forgot Dan is not a woodsman, merely a fellow drunk I met at a bar, and I am about as much an expert on what we’re doing as he is.

“I eat a lot of Jack Link’s, though.”

We stumbled upon a number of tracks that could have belonged to Foot, but definitely not Bigfoot, unless I have been grossly misled regarding sizing in this matter. Most were probably squirrels and assorted other woodland turds, but there were definitely some deer tracks as well, and in my mind that was close. The bigger the animal, the closer to Bigfoot. If we found moose tracks we’d be pretty much where we needed to be.

We trudged on through snow-covered underbrush, slightly tipsy and with no clear direction. Dan had brought with him a 20 gauge shotgun, which he said would probably work for taking out Bigfoot if we got him to stand still long enough. I’m no gunsmith and assumed any shotgun was probably good for blowing a Bigfoot’s leg off, until Dan told me this was his rabbit-hunting gun. He had a license only for small game this year, and he wasn’t going to get fined by bringing a higher-powered rifle into the woods when it wasn’t season for hunting something like elk. Dan had no faith in our expedition. Although he did point out that, if we shot Bigfoot with the 20 gauge it’d probably slow him down enough for some photos, so I should be fast with my phone and snap a pic or two. Maybe see if he’s down for a selfie.

#2. Winter Is Stupid

The worst time to do anything is winter time. According to my phone, it was about 4 below zero. For you Celsius types, that’s 20 below. Why the hell would Bigfoot be out in this silly-ass weather? Even bears have the intelligence to hibernate. Bigfoot should be snoozing under a pile of tarps in an old fishing cabin.

There was a brief moment when I encountered a smell that could be best described as unwashed skunk vagina somewhere out in the woods. I heard a rustling in the underbrush, and I thought we might be on to something. For those who doubt the veracity of my claims, I have photo evidence:

Got wood? Ha ha ha! Ha ha! Ahhh …

Like all good photos of Bigfoot, this one mostly requires you to be as drunk as I was when I took it and to have a lot of faith that I know the sight/smell of Bigfoot’s dick when I see it. But for real, do you see that in there? I know it looks like a twig, but I ask you, what do you think Bigfoot’s dick would look like? Probably a big, veiny twig, right?

Before I string you along anymore, I’ll let you know that was a twig. Bigfoot’s dick, even if it is twig-like, is probably attached to a Bigfoot and not a tree like this one was. But did you feel the suspense there for a second? Now you’re living in my world. The world of a Bigfoot hunter!

#1. Bigfoot Is Not Real

Let’s assume for a moment Bigfoot is real, the title of this section notwithstanding. He’s generally considered a “he” right? Not to point out the sex so much as the singular. There’s just one. Bigfoot’s a lone wolf, him and his veiny twig-dick, wandering the woods and stealing forest brides and whatnot. Most Bigfoot sightings have been in Washington state, California, and Oregon. He’s basically a West Coast kind of guy. I’m on the East Coast, so right away my chances are pretty pathetic. Sure, New York and Ohio have some sightings, but so does Russia. Point is, I’m in the wrong neighborhood, and I’m looking for one guy. One big, hairy guy who makes a point of never being found, because no one’s ever found him. Do you know what the odds are of me finding him?

I actually calculated the odds on this for you, in case you’re not good at these complex, veiny equations. Keeping in mind the time of year Bigfoot is most often sighted in these various locations, as well as the time of day and methods used for tracking Bigfoot and the actual odds of me finding him here, at this time, were fuck no. Fuck no I can’t find Bigfoot, because he’s not real.

Consider that humankind has found the coldest natural object in the entire universe, fossils from the first living veiny beasts on Earth, that stupid affluenza kid, and numerous missing plane crashes. If there were a race of hairy man-beasts populating the Pacific Northwest or anywhere else in North America, there would have been some kind of definitive evidence proposed by people who are not named Bubba or Cooter.

Dan and I finished our beers in the woods. We found one track that was probably mine.

Size 11 … ladies. Or guys who want to buy me shoes.

I also found a frozen turd that really made me laugh but the picture turned out pretty blurry due to my laughing as I took the photo. It wasn’t a Bigfoot turd, probably a raccoon or something. Still, that’s hilarious to me.

Dan decided he’d had enough of being in the woods with me, and I couldn’t blame him. I’d mostly wasted our day and provided little to no purpose for our journey other than the laziest attempt ever to discover a cryptozoological legend. Fortunately, that made my attempt just as relevant as anyone else’s, because come on. What would be a “serious” attempt at finding Bigfoot in 2016? Some kind of thermal-imaging drone and satellite tracking? That seems like an expensive prospect for a big fatty waste of time.

Dan called his wife to pick him up once we got back to the road. She seemed like a nice lady who could fight me and win with little effort. Neither of them offered me a ride. As I watched them drive off, I wondered if perhaps Bigfoot was now watching me from the trees and feeling a kinship with me as I, too, was now alone. But of course he wasn’t, because remember, he doesn’t exist. He and that veiny dick I’ve been asked to keep writing about are full-on fiction. No, the only stranger watching me from the woods was a friendly serial killer or public wanker.

I wondered why it is that so many people seem enamored with the idea of Bigfoot. Is it the mystery? The idea that, in a world of smartphones and WiFi and driverless cars, we could have somehow overlooked a man-beast living right under our noses? Possibly. Mostly, I think, it’s what I like to call Dorf Contrarianism. This is the idea that a stupid person will dig in like a tick when confronted with something they feel threatened by, in an intellectual fashion, telling them they’re wrong. The person doing it may not be trying to intimidate our Dorf, or even patronize them or talk down to them in any way, but that is how Dorf perceives it, because Dorf is not smart enough to know why it’s happening but is smart enough to know they’re being corrected. And they don’t like it. So they outwardly refuse it so thoroughly they must embrace the very opposite. They must hunt Bigfoot, simply because he is not real. They must drink that moonshine because it could make them go blind. They must fuck that cousin even if the baby’s going to always be leaning a little to the left. Such is the contrarian nature of Dorf. And that’s what keeps Bigfoot alive.

Check out other mythical monsters of lore and bull crap in 5 Myths That People Don’t Realize Are Admitted Hoaxes, and fear the shelled back of The Beast of Busco in 7 Monsters That Bigfoot Hunters Are Too Scared To Believe In.

Subscribe to our YouTube channel to see why ghosts are definitely real in 6 Most Eerily Convincing Ghost Videos On YouTube – The Spit Take, and watch other videos you won’t see on the site!

Also follow us on Facebook, and see if you can find Bigfoot in the comments. We hear he’s a fan.

from All Of Beer http://allofbeer.com/hunting-bigfoot-4-things-you-learn-chasing-fiction/ from All of Beer https://allofbeercom.tumblr.com/post/171848317867

[allofbeercom]

Hunting Bigfoot: 4 Things You Learn Chasing Fiction

I recently moved to a snowier, woodsier part of the world and noticed one day while taking a shortcut home that Bigfoot probably lives near me. There are a lot of trees and foreboding areas that look like the sorts of places in which gentle folk like me are made into the forest brides of beast-men. But how could I know for sure?

If there’s one thing I’m good at it’s finding the worst bar in any given town and making it my own. I easily located this town’s scruffiest bar that featured dead animals mounted on walls, and in no time had found no less than one man who claimed that he had heard from someone several years ago that there was a guy who saw Bigfoot around here once. Hot damn! A solid lead!

On the promise of picking up his bar tab and also returning to the bar later and picking up more of a bar tab, I got this guy to join me on a hunt in the woods. Now, you may be asking, “Felix, did you just pay a drunk stranger to take you into the woods alone?” And to that I say: You forgot that I got him to bring a gun.

This is Dan. He’s loaded with beer and ammunition!

#4. Drinking Outdoors Is Fun

My new friend Dan isn’t the sort of man who appreciates small talk, pop culture, or me. But I bought road beers and we were pretty much set to have an adventure. We drove about 20 minutes out of town to a massive swath of forest that Dan told me had a big lake somewhere in the middle of it and was the place some people said Bigfoot had been spotted. Already it had grown from maybe one guy to some people. I was super psyched.

In preparation for our journey, we packed not just beers but several snacks, an emergency flare (lest Bigfoot abduct us while a helicopter is flying overhead), and outdoorsy crap like a compass, a small hatchet, some matches, and a mickey of whiskey.

I’m not much for hiking but luckily neither is Dan, so we were in the woods for a solid 15 minutes before we stopped to have a drink. Our brew of choice was a fine Canadian ale known as Flying Monkeys Smashbomb Atomic IPA. I bought it solely based on the silly name, but it was actually pretty fantastic and I solidly recommend it for all your Bigfoot-hunting needs.

It’d be better if there were actually monkeys serving it, but other than that, A+.

Dan and I had a good sit in the woods, during which Dan proceeded to tell me about his younger days in a biker gang and a variety of related activities I won’t relate here, because I’m dumb but not that dumb. This was some secret-keeping beer we were having, and Dan may not have been the best tour guide in retrospect, but here we were, in the woods, with a gun. A gun and stories of Dan using a pool cue to destroy an entire room full of men in the most brutal, Deadpool ways possible. I’m glad I met this strange fellow.

Several beers later and Dan and I were having a pretty decent time, still within sight of the road. But alas, this was no joke expedition … or, well, it was, but I was still looking for Bigfoot. We had work to do.

#3. Losing Yourself Is Easier Than Finding Bigfoot

We set out in a direction I will call straight ahead. I know we packed a compass, but it was packed and, honestly, would it have made a difference to know if we were headed north or east? How could it have? We were looking for a legendary man-ape.

Dan told me as we walked that coyote activity in this area has been very much on the rise lately. There’s just a huge population of them. I’ve never seen a coyote outside of a Warner Bros. cartoon and was having a hard time reconciling my image of a cartoon wielding an anvil with an actual wild dog that probably has rabies tearing open my scrotum. Dan assured me they rarely attack humans unless they’re starving or in large groups, then, without missing a beat, added, “Or maybe not.” I almost forgot Dan is not a woodsman, merely a fellow drunk I met at a bar, and I am about as much an expert on what we’re doing as he is.

“I eat a lot of Jack Link’s, though.”

We stumbled upon a number of tracks that could have belonged to Foot, but definitely not Bigfoot, unless I have been grossly misled regarding sizing in this matter. Most were probably squirrels and assorted other woodland turds, but there were definitely some deer tracks as well, and in my mind that was close. The bigger the animal, the closer to Bigfoot. If we found moose tracks we’d be pretty much where we needed to be.

We trudged on through snow-covered underbrush, slightly tipsy and with no clear direction. Dan had brought with him a 20 gauge shotgun, which he said would probably work for taking out Bigfoot if we got him to stand still long enough. I’m no gunsmith and assumed any shotgun was probably good for blowing a Bigfoot’s leg off, until Dan told me this was his rabbit-hunting gun. He had a license only for small game this year, and he wasn’t going to get fined by bringing a higher-powered rifle into the woods when it wasn’t season for hunting something like elk. Dan had no faith in our expedition. Although he did point out that, if we shot Bigfoot with the 20 gauge it’d probably slow him down enough for some photos, so I should be fast with my phone and snap a pic or two. Maybe see if he’s down for a selfie.

#2. Winter Is Stupid

The worst time to do anything is winter time. According to my phone, it was about 4 below zero. For you Celsius types, that’s 20 below. Why the hell would Bigfoot be out in this silly-ass weather? Even bears have the intelligence to hibernate. Bigfoot should be snoozing under a pile of tarps in an old fishing cabin.

There was a brief moment when I encountered a smell that could be best described as unwashed skunk vagina somewhere out in the woods. I heard a rustling in the underbrush, and I thought we might be on to something. For those who doubt the veracity of my claims, I have photo evidence:

Got wood? Ha ha ha! Ha ha! Ahhh …

Like all good photos of Bigfoot, this one mostly requires you to be as drunk as I was when I took it and to have a lot of faith that I know the sight/smell of Bigfoot’s dick when I see it. But for real, do you see that in there? I know it looks like a twig, but I ask you, what do you think Bigfoot’s dick would look like? Probably a big, veiny twig, right?

Before I string you along anymore, I’ll let you know that was a twig. Bigfoot’s dick, even if it is twig-like, is probably attached to a Bigfoot and not a tree like this one was. But did you feel the suspense there for a second? Now you’re living in my world. The world of a Bigfoot hunter!

#1. Bigfoot Is Not Real

Let’s assume for a moment Bigfoot is real, the title of this section notwithstanding. He’s generally considered a “he” right? Not to point out the sex so much as the singular. There’s just one. Bigfoot’s a lone wolf, him and his veiny twig-dick, wandering the woods and stealing forest brides and whatnot. Most Bigfoot sightings have been in Washington state, California, and Oregon. He’s basically a West Coast kind of guy. I’m on the East Coast, so right away my chances are pretty pathetic. Sure, New York and Ohio have some sightings, but so does Russia. Point is, I’m in the wrong neighborhood, and I’m looking for one guy. One big, hairy guy who makes a point of never being found, because no one’s ever found him. Do you know what the odds are of me finding him?

I actually calculated the odds on this for you, in case you’re not good at these complex, veiny equations. Keeping in mind the time of year Bigfoot is most often sighted in these various locations, as well as the time of day and methods used for tracking Bigfoot and the actual odds of me finding him here, at this time, were fuck no. Fuck no I can’t find Bigfoot, because he’s not real.

Consider that humankind has found the coldest natural object in the entire universe, fossils from the first living veiny beasts on Earth, that stupid affluenza kid, and numerous missing plane crashes. If there were a race of hairy man-beasts populating the Pacific Northwest or anywhere else in North America, there would have been some kind of definitive evidence proposed by people who are not named Bubba or Cooter.

Dan and I finished our beers in the woods. We found one track that was probably mine.

Size 11 … ladies. Or guys who want to buy me shoes.

I also found a frozen turd that really made me laugh but the picture turned out pretty blurry due to my laughing as I took the photo. It wasn’t a Bigfoot turd, probably a raccoon or something. Still, that’s hilarious to me.

Dan decided he’d had enough of being in the woods with me, and I couldn’t blame him. I’d mostly wasted our day and provided little to no purpose for our journey other than the laziest attempt ever to discover a cryptozoological legend. Fortunately, that made my attempt just as relevant as anyone else’s, because come on. What would be a “serious” attempt at finding Bigfoot in 2016? Some kind of thermal-imaging drone and satellite tracking? That seems like an expensive prospect for a big fatty waste of time.

Dan called his wife to pick him up once we got back to the road. She seemed like a nice lady who could fight me and win with little effort. Neither of them offered me a ride. As I watched them drive off, I wondered if perhaps Bigfoot was now watching me from the trees and feeling a kinship with me as I, too, was now alone. But of course he wasn’t, because remember, he doesn’t exist. He and that veiny dick I’ve been asked to keep writing about are full-on fiction. No, the only stranger watching me from the woods was a friendly serial killer or public wanker.

I wondered why it is that so many people seem enamored with the idea of Bigfoot. Is it the mystery? The idea that, in a world of smartphones and WiFi and driverless cars, we could have somehow overlooked a man-beast living right under our noses? Possibly. Mostly, I think, it’s what I like to call Dorf Contrarianism. This is the idea that a stupid person will dig in like a tick when confronted with something they feel threatened by, in an intellectual fashion, telling them they’re wrong. The person doing it may not be trying to intimidate our Dorf, or even patronize them or talk down to them in any way, but that is how Dorf perceives it, because Dorf is not smart enough to know why it’s happening but is smart enough to know they’re being corrected. And they don’t like it. So they outwardly refuse it so thoroughly they must embrace the very opposite. They must hunt Bigfoot, simply because he is not real. They must drink that moonshine because it could make them go blind. They must fuck that cousin even if the baby’s going to always be leaning a little to the left. Such is the contrarian nature of Dorf. And that’s what keeps Bigfoot alive.

Check out other mythical monsters of lore and bull crap in 5 Myths That People Don’t Realize Are Admitted Hoaxes, and fear the shelled back of The Beast of Busco in 7 Monsters That Bigfoot Hunters Are Too Scared To Believe In.

Subscribe to our YouTube channel to see why ghosts are definitely real in 6 Most Eerily Convincing Ghost Videos On YouTube – The Spit Take, and watch other videos you won’t see on the site!

Also follow us on Facebook, and see if you can find Bigfoot in the comments. We hear he’s a fan.

from All Of Beer http://allofbeer.com/hunting-bigfoot-4-things-you-learn-chasing-fiction/

[terkaznebes]

Oh Canada!

Oh Canada, you fantastic piece of land. This was hands down the best holiday of my life. It had everything - the most inspiring nature, scenic routes, camping and cooking on the stove, bears, elk, friendly chipmunks, crystal clear lakes, hiking and the most wonderful and handsome man that I have ever met.

Upon our arrival we have picked up our rental car - Grand Cherokee Jeep, this is important as we were planning to punk in it the entire holiday. It was big enough to sleep four and I could never complain that it wouldn’t be comfortable. We also bought a few necessities like a blow up mattress in Wallmart. Luky’s friend who lives in Vancouver lent us the rest of the camping gear and we were ready to go.

Day 1 We woke up in a residential area on top of a hill with a pretty view and drove to the nearest picnic area in a forest, next to a little creek. I cooked scrambled eggs and ground my coffee in between the tallest pine trees and I honestly couldn’t be happier because fuck, I love this so much! I can’t explain it how much. I remember packing up our tent with my friend Kirsty somewhere on a cliff on the Isle of Skye while it was pouring down rain and I had to smile because for some reason, this is where I am in my element. Or when you are a few miles away from the Chilean bofrder in Patagonia after you have camped next to a volcanic lake, totally freezing your butt off but trying to save petrol and waiting for them to open the border, aaah memories. Anyway back to Canada. On the way to the wine region Okanagan valley we bought some blackberries and cherries that of course were fantastic. In Osoyoos we had a little swim and I was thinking that the lake was amazing but a little cold, but I had no idea what was yet to come. Stopped for a little wine tasting at a Lonely Planet recommended winery La Stella. In Pentincton we jumped into the Skaha lake because why not? And stopped to sleep somewhere past Vernon.

Day 2 Again we were lucky enough to find a charming place for breakfast near Sicamous next to yet another lake (yes there will be a lot of lakes in my story). All I can say about this - nothing like scrambled eggs, coffee and a little bit of skinny dipping before the village wakes up. We stopped for coffee and lunch in Revelstoke, to use their slogan: The Gateway to some serious Mountains. And they had good coffee: Phil&Sebastian, obviously we bought the beans. Made a few stops on the way and finally made it to Alberta. Since it was already late we decided just to have a peek at Moraine Lake and do some hiking in the morning. It took as a while to get there as there was some serious traffic. The amount of tourists scared me a little bit. However the lake and the view was spectacular. The type of view poets write about. The amount of people did spoil the atmosphere a little bit, but I still couldn’t get over the mountains in the background, the serious blues of the water and the mirror like surface. Dinner right there on a picnic table, a few squirrels thought they would get some but they didn’t.

Day 3 Super early morning, but it was worth it. We drove straight to the infamous Lake Louise and I can understand why. Given the early hour there was only a handful of people with us and the atmosphere was great. Red Canadian canoes on the lake, slightly cold and misty. I wish I could canoe on the lake as well, but for $75 per half an hour, I think I will wait until I can stay in the Fairmont hotel behind it for a week without going into debt. There was nobody on the hike to Lake Agnes, except for the chipmunks which made me feel like a Disney Princess, however I soon as they found out I will not feed them, they quickly abandoned me, those ungrateful creatures. We hiked all the way to the Little Beehive where it was just us and the view. Similarly on the Big Beehive, where we shared the nature with a friendly american family who took some photos of us and let us use their hammock. We continued to the plain of Six Glaciers which I do not recommend at least not if you have seen a glacier already because the way there was full of people, the view was nothing special and it just took forever. We finally made it back to the lake which now was as full as Times Square on New Year’s Eve. I quickly navigated through the asians with selfie sticks as I didn’t want to spoil my experience. I know that these world wonders have to be shared, but it’s so hard as it completely ruins the atmosphere of the nature. I fear the day you won’t be able to be alone in the mountains. As much as I try to avoid thinking about it, the ever growing population and rise of Chinese middle class sometimes fills me with dread. On our way to Calgary we stopped for some coffee and pick me up snacks in Banff and spent the evening with Luky’s family. It was nice to have a proper Czech dinner in North America and I really enjoyed it.

Day 4 We pretty much faffed around Calgary (I love that phase - to faff around, it’s my favourite British phrasal verb.) and we had a coffee tour that our friend arranged for us, guess what? It was at Phil&Sebastian, Luky clearly knows good coffee when he sees it. The coffee was great, the venue was unique and original and the roasting process interesting and our guide Javaid really friendly and cool. After we had to rush off for a dinner at a Japanese restaurant with the family. Lukas went to watch his cousins hockey game and I did some serious route planning and writing taking advantage of the wifi connection.

Day 5 After breakfast, and some solid faffing around, we finally left the beautiful and comfortable house to our even more beautiful and comfortable vehicle and continued to Canmore, which I loved! A cute little mountain village with designer shops and craft beer. Yes, the Czech in me finds it extremely important to try local beers whenever possible and if the sun is shining. Since it was over thirty degrees we rented a stand up paddle board from a guy who was like: Czech people!!! I was just surfing with my friend Jirka yesterdaay :D We made it to Banff and went to see the most spectacular hotel that I have ever seen - the Banff Fairmont Hotel, I can just imagine what the atmosphere must be there like in winter. Instead of lounging there with a whiskey glass next to a fire place like it should be done, we ate some cereal bars in the back of the car. It was actually so much fun. I don’t remember what we were laughing about the whole time but we really were laughing so hard that people who walked by smiled and said hi. After a few viewing places which I cannot recommend due to crowds we made it to Lake Minnewanka for the sunset and my oh my, could this be more beautiful? The lakes, the daring forests that grow all the way to the tops of the mountains, the green tea we were drinking the slight chill of the evening. What an atmosphere, which was only enhanced by a group of goat we took a selfie with. We also saw our first herd of elk by the road.

Day 6 We had our breakfast at the exact same place and set for a hike where we saw some marmots, a lots of squirrels and heard some rock avalanche, which was extremely loud as we were alone on the top. Lukas made me ring the bear bell with no break as it really was in the middle of a forest. We spent the rest of the day chilling out in the car with the booth open to the view of the lake and mountain, which is my favourite combo. After we continued to the Icefields Parkway, which probably is the most picturesque road I have ever seen, I mean talk about a road trip. It winds down slowly in between glaciers, mountains, endless forests and lakes. We stopped at one and jumped right in, this lake wasn’t featured in any guides and thank god for it as we were able to enjoy it in peace while munching on Canadian blueberries. We found a perfect spot for dinner next to a glacier river and it was such a romantic moment. With the sunset, the river, I feel like I haven’t lived without him. Like all my other travels meant nothing because he wasn’t there. As we drove away at dusk a brown bear just casually walked across the road, luckily there was no traffic so I was able to stop but all we saw close up was his bear bum hahaha pun intended. It’s such a rare experience to see this massive creature in its natural habitat. The place we chose for the night was a parking lot at Saskatchewan Crossing, which was close to perfect because they had draught beer in a typical Canadian pub.

Day 7 This day started with making friends with a massive grizzly bear. We stopped on a side of the road to pee… I mean to take photos and as Luky was going down with the camera suddenly he yelled no no not going there, there’s a bear! And there really was, we followed him for couple of meters and took a few photos until he disappeared from the view but man oh man how exciting! The hike I chose for the day Valley of the Five lakes was everything and more. Jumped into lake number one, water was great. It was even better in lake number five, clearly nobody wanted to do the full trip, we were completely alone and I didn’t bring bathing suit anyway. There’s something extremely liberating about swimming naked. I need my own lake. Or just cross the boarded to Germany, I mean they might have a few things wrong going on, but they love their nudist beaches for a reason. Although I must say it was somewhat repelling seeing an elderly german man frying a sausage next to his sausage on a shore lake close to the Czech border. Oh the summer of 2016, I will never forget. After the refreshing swim, I cooked lunch while lounging in a massive wooden Canadian chairs next to a wild white water river under the shade of trees before entering Jasper. Apart from having a local draught ale, going on a historical walking tour and chilling out in the hot springs we didn’t do much for the rest of the day.

Day 8 We woke up to a gloomy atmosphere as the smoke from the BC fires has made it to our location. Never the less we went for a forest walk after breakfast (which a goat tried to eat) along an enchanting river to the source of the springs. The forest smelled amazing and the forest floor was soft and again I felt like I was in a disney movie. We sat on a log chatting. We drove to Maligne lake and did a small hike around Moose Lake, no moose to report around the lake as they were hanging out at the parking lot later on, still pretty cool. We cooked dinner and slept right there.

Day 9 As we woke up, we set out for a hike to Bald Hills, after about a 20 minute of walking we decided naah let’s just not today and we turned around and walked back to the car while making several jokes about how the people walking up think that we are already coming back from the top. Turns out, it was the best decision anyway as it started to rain heavily about 20 minutes later. I bought some supplies including red wine and roast chicken, which we ate right in the car escaping the rain. We spent the rest of the day driving about 700km. The only thing to report was excellent coffee in a wooden hut across from the information centre in Clearwater, BC and an even better brownie. Also a stop in a town called Cache Creek, which was almost a ghost town due to the fires that have been in the area for over two months. Lady in the Inn, where we asked for directions, told us that she hasn’t seen blue skies for almost the whole summer. She also told us that the road we wanted to take was closed so we had to take a detour, which was anyway interesting and a bit post apocalyptic. I still enjoyed drinking my Okanagan valley wine from a tin cup. We finally stopped at a campsite past Lillooet, had some baguette, salami and wine for dinner and went to sleep.

Day 10 We drove to the hike called Joffrey Lakes, three absolutely stunning turquoise blue, ice cold lakes that we walked to through an enchanting forest trail. Finally we made our way to Whistler where we made a rash decision to book a luxurious hotel for the night. With jacuzzi, sauna, a sun terrace with mountain view, red wine and a fire place - no regrets.

Day 11 We spent the morning in the hotel and it wasn’t until lunchtime when we finally made our way to town, we had some poutine for lunch and watched downhill racing. The town was buzzing, a really posh place, the Aspen of Canada. After we have had enough we walked to a train wreck in the forest across a little wooden bridge. We set out for Vancouver but not until after I bought the coolest Whistler Blackcomb t-shirt from Roots - made in Canada believe it or not! The reason why we drove to Vancouver was that Luky’s friend told him that we can go onto a helicopter ride as she had two free places. Unfortunately thanks to the horrible traffic we didn’t make it, but we saw the helicopter. At least we made the sunset next to the Lion’s Gate Bridge. Quick visit to Wallmart a dinner at Wendy’s and suddenly it was late at night and we made it to Luky’s friends house. We all had beers together and chatted for a few hours, which was really nice.

Day 12 Late night and an early morning, not the greatest combination but again it was so worth it. We drove to Squamish and hiked up to Stewamus Chief, which is the second largest monolith after Yosemite. It was a pretty much a vertical hike and my stomach is still a bit sore today. The views and the rock were spectacular. We walked up so quick that I was sweating through my eyelids. Obviously I couldn’t sit on a plane like this for twelve hours so I needed some sort of “shower”. There was one and only lake on the way so I jumped in it and even managed to shampoo my hair. It was so cold that passing by Chinese people actually took photos of me. I don’t know if I told you this yet, but I am pretty hardcore. Just the perfect combination of tough but girly :D it’s true, you can’t make this up. The very last thing we did was to have lunch at a fancy little restaurant Olive&Anchor in Horseshoe Bay and off we drove to the airport. After returning the car, Luky’s colleagues picked him up and drove to Pentincton where they will be working for the next two weeks. I spent about three hours at the airport, which didn’t seem that long as Vancouver was one of the slowest airports. Only for check-in and security it was nearly an hour and a half and getting a sub in Subway another half an hour. Air New Zealand btw is a shitty airline. I know that airplane food is not great, however I never had an issue eating it and I can’t count how many flights I have been on, but Air NZ food was disgusting. I actually bought snacks for the way back and I wouldn’t touch their scrambled eggs with a ski pole. And it wasn’t just a coincidence because this was the case for all four flights. Next time it will have to be Air Canada. And yes there will be a next time, Canada is just to spectacular to only spend two weeks there.

Arrival to the Gold Coast wasn’t half bad either, 25 degrees, cloudless sky, fresh breeze. Yes please, remind me of this whenever I complain because I really have nothing to complain about. Thanks to jetlag I spoke to Dominika, my mom, my dad, Radek and Misa. I went for a morning swim today and really enjoyed it. Had a coffee with my former flatmate Lilly chatting on the beach and to beautifully wrap up the day I got a little drunk on sangria at a Mexican restaurant with my pretty colleague Kate. Now, can I just go back to Canada please? Thank you!