#zero days

[pcttrailsidereader]

Excerpt from 'Walking Home'

I happened to meet Rick Rogers and one of his hiking partners in 2018 near Dove Springs in southern California. My friend Billie Robinson and I were headed toward Walker Pass. We had set up camp near an abandoned mine site when Rick and Cool Breeze passed by. Turned out Rick was from the same county Billie and I are in northwest Washington. That was a fun coincidence. Fast forward to 2023. A friend shared a book about someone's PCT experience entitled 'Walking Home'. As I began reading I noticed that there was something familiar about the author. Reading further I was sure I had met Rick. I looked back at my journal from the section where I had met the fellow from Conway and sure enough, there he and Cool Breeze were. I was intrigued and finally got in contact with Rick after meeting him several years ago.

Most hikers on the Pacific Crest Trail take zero days in towns every week or so to resupply, wolf down some easy calories, and just plain laze about to let their bodies recuperate and recharge.

Moving through nature at foot speed mile after mile creates its own reality, and it’s easy to feel more at home there than in any other.  Zeroing in town, everything looks artificial, or alien, with people and machines doing unnatural and incomprehensible things.  It can be disorienting for some and their thoughts and behavior can be affected.  And some hikers, especially those fragile of mind, should just never zero, even when they resupply.  Stopping can be just too weird for them… ]

Zero Days In Oregon

I had to stay put and kill a couple days in Medford while I waited for my lightweight tent and sleeping bag that my wife had mailed. I would be relieving my backpack of the heavy tent and sleeping bag that I had carried the 800 miles I’d walked since she had mailed them to me in Chester.  Also going was the bear can I’d carried through 450 miles of it.  From here north, fully half the weight I carried on my back would be gone.

I’d rented Medford’s best thirty-dollar-a-night hotel room.  After a look inside, I decided to splurge for an extra amenity, so went to a nearby hardware store and spent another four dollars on some painter’s plastic to drape over the bed.  I put my sleeping bag on it and sat down.  A small TV was perched atop a dented microwave that in turn sat on a cigarette-burned corner stand next to the window.  A cheerful TV newswoman was cautioning her viewers to stay indoors, as breathing the wildfire smoke outside was a serious health risk. I sat on my sleeping bag and plastic drop cloth, and contemplated the newswoman’s warning, while simultaneously trying to discern the origins of the stains on the walls of my room.  As a civilized person of discernment, I realized that all risks are relative, actually.  I went outside for a walk.

The next two days, while I waited for the mail to bring my lightweight gear (and for the antibiotics to calm my bladder down), I made little adventure walks around town.  The built environment, as much as could be seen in the smoke haze anyway, seemed grimier, and somehow deficient compared to the trail’s scenery.  The geometry of the sidewalks and walls was simpler, more planar, and lacked the curves and fractals that my eyes had grown accustomed to seeing.  Their colors too, especially in the smoke haze, were less interesting.

Still, there were some landmarks of interest.  Shopping Cart Island was among my favorites. There was a bike path along the creek and greenway that formed a sort of border zone between a shopping mall on the one side, and an industrial park on the other.  A bridge connected the two, and it had a wide sidewalk bordered by a low guard rail. It was easy to lean over to watch spittle slurp down to the creek. 

Apparently, the homeless people that lived in the thickets beside the bike path in the greenway took shopping carts from the mall’s parking lot and brought them back with them.  It would have been rude to leave their shopping carts on the bike path in front of their camps in the thickets, so instead they thoughtfully threw them off the bridge and into the creek below. 

The shopping carts had strained plastic bags and odd articles of clothing from the creek, and these partially submerged accretions were covered all over with scum and algae.  They had made a sizable island in the creek’s sluggish current, and the disturbance spawned semi-predictable patterns of spinning little whorls.  Dropping a globule of spittle into one of these took real perseverance.

That night, I had a phone conversation with Monica. Back home, she was having some trouble with subcontractors, and at one point told me that she wished I was there. I did too. There, on the painter’s plastic alone in my creepy hotel room the Trail adventure wasn't much fun, and it was difficult to see what novelties I had to look forward to.  I’d walked nearly fifteen hundred miles already, and I was pretty sure I’d gotten the hang of it by then.

“Look, I have a rental car,” I said.  “I could be home tomorrow and just put an end to this now.”

“Well, I just sent your stuff in the mail,” Monica said.

“I’ll just call them and have them send it back.”

“No, you can't do that.”

“Sure I can.  Easy-peasy.”

“No, I mean you can’t quit.  What would you tell your son if you just quit halfway through?”

“Halfway through?  I’ve walked the whole length of California.”

“Your goal was to complete the PCT,” Monica reminded me.  “California is only two-thirds of it. If you quit now, you'll have a hard time explaining it to Matthew.  Besides, he’s looking forward to finishing the trail with you when you get to Washington.”

“Hmm.”

“Not to mention that you will regret it as soon as you get here, and you would continue to regret it for the rest of your life if you come home now.”

I held the phone but didn’t talk into it.  Monica doesn’t enjoy silence, and neither can she abide indecision.

“I don't want you coming home any other way than by walking.  Don't come home,” she said. “I don't want you here.”

My next room, in Cascade Locks, had a number of things that the Medford room hadn’t, like a door for the bathroom for instance.  But it lacked those special features of interest that can make a stay so memorable.  Missing was the Rorschach mold pattern in the shower stall, and the cigarette burns on the bedside table.  And the light switches and the doorknobs didn’t have those layers of grime accreted to them that leave your hands feeling conveniently greasy and moisturized after you’ve touched them.

It had a nice view though, across the street towards the post office, with the Columbia River as backdrop.  There’s not a lot of land between the single row of buildings fronting the main street and the river behind them, but there is some, and most of that the PCT hikers have claimed for free camping.  They’ve named it, actually, calling it Shrek’s Swamp.

There was a great old-fashioned place for ice cream near the post office, and while I was there nursing a root beer float, I watched a guy wearing an oversized white button-down cotton shirt and a denim kilt walk into town.  He had a large leather sling bag on his back, carried with a single strap of macrameed jute rope worn across his body.  He was balding, had a scruffy red beard and freckles, and looked to be on the verge of an unpleasant sunburn.

Lately, I had seen a lot of people that had spent a lot of time outside, and he was a guy that looked as though he’d spent a lot of time outside.  He wasn’t a through-hiker, though.  His sling bag and strap were more suited for thumbing rides than for carrying gear over long distances, and he wore woolen socks in sandals.  His clothes showed wear, but somehow, subtly, not in the same places as hikers’ clothing.   

He was looking down as he walked, and it looked to me like the freckles on the top of his head were larger than the ones on his face. This didn’t make sense, because over time I thought, the skin on his face should have stretched more than the skin on his skull, so that his face freckles would have been bigger than his scalp ones.  I decided that I must have misjudged them at first glance. 

But as he came abreast of me, and I was making more careful observations, he must have felt my eyeballs on him because he stopped briefly to shake off my gaze with a quick stare-down and a curt nod.  I nodded back to acknowledge that I would return to minding my own business and let him see my eyes slide off of him and back down to the root beer float in my hand.

I went back to my room, stripped down, and put on my rain gear.  Everything else, I took to the hotel’s coin-op laundry.  I went back to my room again to wait, but with nothing on underneath, rain gear gets sticky and uncomfortable.  I took it off, so was sitting on the bed naked when I heard a ruckus outside.

I stuck my head out the window and heard shouting.  “Hey, this is for PCT hikers only.  You’re no hiker.” 

Then another voice, “Yeah.  This isn’t a homeless camp, so beat it, Scuzzy.”

I saw the denim kilt guy come back out onto the street from between two buildings.  Apparently, he’d tried stopping to rest in that area the PCT’ers used for free camping, Shrek’s Swamp, and some of them didn’t like it.  They were chasing him off with hurled threats and insults.

Even though he was already retreating, the first voice yelled again, louder, “And don’t come back again either, loser!”

That didn’t seem fair to me.  I mean, they didn’t own the place, and they weren’t paying anything to camp there either.  Maybe the guy was dressed a little funny, and maybe was homeless even, but really- his situation wasn’t all that different, materially, from the lifestyle we through-hikers had been living since spring.  Those guys needed some perspective, needed to look within themselves to find some tolerance and understanding.  I decided to illuminate them.

“Hey!  You’re all a bunch of losers!” I yelled towards the Swamp.

“What?  Who said that?”

I leaned farther out the window.  “I did,” I yelled back.  “You’re all a bunch of squatters, a bunch of freeloaders, a bunch of dirt-bagging, monkey-butts.”

“Oh yeah?  Why don’t you come down here and say that?”

“I would, but I don’t have any clothes on!”

“You what?”

“Yeah, you heard me.  You’re all dirt bag camping for free, and I have a hotel room.  I paid for it, and I have a TV in here.”

“So?”  The voice I was anonymously yelling at didn’t seem all that impressed, and I realized that paying for a TV wasn’t something that necessarily inflicts a through-hiker with jealousy.  If I wanted a shot to land, I’d need to communicate something that would.

“AND, I have a bathroom door!” I added.  “And YOU DON’T!!”  I pulled my head back inside and closed the window, confident that my point had been made, and sat on the bed again naked and alone, and watched the little television in the little room that I had paid for. 

But it was golf, and it was boring.

To read Rick's book 'Walking Home' follow this link:

Walking Home; Common Sense and Other Misadventures on the Pacific Crest Trail  by Rick Rogers

A Zero in Tehachapi

[lalalunamoth]

It's again.

[teaboot]

As someone who grew up with "I'm not going to praise you for doing what's expected of you; that's not being good, that's doing the bare minimum" I want to encourage you to celebrate every little thing you can. Everything that takes energy and effort should be appreciated and you're allowed to be happy about trying.

[airplanes924]

Books I've Read in 2024

Number 36

Zero Days by Ruth Ware

[bookcoversonly]

Title: Zero Days | Author: Ruth Ware | Publisher: Scout Press (2023)

[secretmellowblog]

People who try to analyze what happened on Tumblr on November 5th, 2020, often really overstate how much it was actually “about” Supernatural. As someone who has never been in the supernatural fandom ever but dID join in on the hysterical destielposting—it was really more about the stress of the pandemic and the 2020 presidential election.

The two biggest Youtubers I’ve seen try to dissect “what happened that November 5th” in video essays both weren’t American—- and I think that explains why they both tried to explain the hysteria primarily via analyzing the Supernatural fandom/the original show, rather than through the lens of the election. And while those videos are cool, valid, informational, and make lots of really well-considered interesting points— I can tell you that me and almost all my mutuals had literally no knowledge or interest in the fact that “oh supernatural had made nods at the ship in the past but the creators were adamant that I wouldn’t be canon” or etc etc etc etc. the first time I learned about any of that context was way later, watching videos where people claimed that fandom history context (that I did not know anything about) was the actual reason for the hysteria.

But the reality is that people latched on to the Destiel stuff because it was a piece of big useless inane zero-stakes fandom news in a time when we were desperately waiting for serious high stakes election news. We were latching onto a “positive “ piece of inane stupid fandom news in a time of great stress, with all the desperation of a drowning man who latches onto whatever piece of wood will keep him afloat.

The core of the hysteria was that Americans (who make up a huge chunk of tumblr’s userbase) were currently glued to their laptops watching the live presidential election vote counts come in. These vote counts were taking an extended amount of time due to the pandemic causing high numbers of mail-in ballots, resulting in a constant state of Election Day Stress for multiple days straight.

This was also during the height of the Pandemic. People had predicted Trump’s presidency would be bad; no one had predicted it would be this apocalyptically bad. No one had predicted pandemics and lockdowns and hospitals overflowing with bodybags. remember Trump spreading Covid lies and conspiracies?? There were so many Qanon conspiracies about democrats being Satanic child traffickers who had to be put to death, and coup threats were mounting from the right wing side. It seemed like this election was a choice between ‘centrist democrat’ and “apocalyptic right wing conspiracy theory authoritarianism,” in the midst of pandemic conditions that people feared would never ever improve— and it seemed like a close election.

Another major point was that Trump voters were more likely to be antimaskers/Covid deniers, while Biden voters were more likely to take the pandemic seriously— so Biden voters were more likely to send in mail-in ballots instead of risking the in-person voting crowds, which meant their ballots would take much longer to count. And so, in many state electoral vote counts, it would initially seem like Trump was very far in the lead— only for Biden to slooooowly build up an agonizingly small lead as the mail in ballots came in, and then defeat Trump at the very end.

So you’re just watching these news sites giving live election updates, refreshing the page every 2 minutes to see if you’re going to live under a spineless centrist democrat or a literal Qanon Dictatorship. And then you go on tumblr to distract yourself, and there’s more election posting, and more agonizing over the votes, and more stress and despair—-

And then it’s been days and we’re right at the crucial tipping point where it’s anyone’s game and the next few hours will determine whether Trump will win, so you need to keep your eye on the vote count, because the next hours will determine the future of the pandemic and your country and your plans for your entire life—

And then stupid Destiel becomes canon! And it becomes canon in the silliest way possible!

If Destiel had become canon at any other time, it would have been a big goofy tumblr celebration? But we wouldn’t have gotten the insane explosion of hysterical interaction.

The entire core of it was the contrast between the inane meaningless stupidity of fandom news vs the actual stressful election news you wanted to hear! It really is best conveyed in that meme where Castiel says “I love you” and Dean indifferently responds with a piece of important election news.

It’s about the contrast between the low-stakes inanity of fandom and the massive life-destroying stakes of a terrifying election. There really was no reason it had be Supernatural specifically, except that Supernatural was a thing everyone knew basic things about from dashboard osmosis— it could’ve been any other equally huge silly fandom ship news about a ship everyone *knew of* but might not necessarily be invested in (ex. Stucky becoming canon, Johnlock becoming canon, Kirk/Spock becoming more canon somehow, etc etc etc.)

I think it’s true that people who weren’t paying agonizingly close attention to the American election news got swept up in it, and that non American Supernatural fans also were extremely excited for purely fandom reasons — but the entire reason it blew up to an unprecedented degree was because of that core of stressed out terrified Americans glued to their computers watching election results and suddenly receiving stupid fandom news instead, and deciding to just hysterically parodically hyper-celebrate this absurd useless zero-stakes news.

I think it was also all elevated by the fact that, as I said before, this happened at the crucial “tipping point” of the election where the next few hours would determine the winner. The fact that Biden began to slowly develop a lead in the hours after made it feel, hysterically, as if the hours after Destiel became canon was somehow the turning point where he began to win; so celebrating Destiel felt like celebrating that slow turn towards victory.

The tl,dr is that it’s so important to Remember the Fifth of November …..in preparation the inevitable hysteria that will happen in the presidential election on November 5th of next year. XD. Personally I’m rooting for Johnlock or Frodo/Sam to somehow become canon in the eleventh hour right before the democrats win

[nordinor]

Book Review - Zero Days by Ruth Ware

Ruth Ware has entered the world of hacking, and I was a bit surprised by the direction of this book. And I’ll admit to almost not making it out of the first chapter before giving up on it, but I am glad I finished it. Zero Days follows Jack, a woman who breaks into secure buildings for a living to test the faults of security systems. When her husband and business partner is murdered and she is…

[corkinavoid]

DPxDC "Pick Me Up"

The stream goes live on the first day of the school year. It's the usual song and dance - mad laughing, threats, poor jokes, terror, and about thirty kids huddled together in a classroom behind Joker's back. Tim recognizes it as one of the Gotham Academy classrooms. Dick can't imagine the horror those kids' parents must be feeling right now. Jason jokes about middle school traumatic experiences. Damian is feeling very justified for skipping classes today.

Bruce, all suited up in his Batman garb, is making his way to the Academy as fast as he possibly can. Those are kids.

Gotham is once again anxiously kept on the edge of their seats, watching as Joker decides to interview the kids on their learning experience so far. Something about leaving a good first impression on the new generation or some other bullshit. Most kids stutter over their words - it's true that Gothamites are way more composed when facing life-threatening events, but those kids are only fourteen or fifteen for the most part. They are not old enough to keep their cool in the face of a murder clown.

That is, until Joker points his camera at one of the girls. Black hair in a high ponytail, blue eyes without a trace of fear, a slightly displeased, even bored expression on her face. She looks straight into the camera, not even waiting for the laughing madman to finish his question, and deadpans:

"I don't think I like school. Pick me up, please."

Joker sputters.

"Not so scared, I see," he sneers, and, in the next moment, a comically large gun painted in purples and greens is pointed to the girl's forehead, "How about now?"

The girl scrunches her nose and makes a so-so gesture.

"It's kinda meh," she admits, "Like, yeah, points for style, but you know, size doesn't matter. It's all in the technique."

Dick snorts over the comms. It's a bad time for laughing, sure, but the phrase caught him off-guard. This is not what you'd expect to hear from a teen, and definitely not something you'd expect anyone to say to the Joker. Jason's comms are muted, but Barbara knows he also laughed a little.

"Technique, you say?" Joker hisses, pressing the gun closer to the girl's head, and she winces, leaning away from it, almost as if she is disgusted by the touch.

"Yeah, I mean, guns are not that scary anyway. What are you gonna do with them, blast my brains all over the floor? Been there, done that," the girl shrugs, "Kinda nasty, but overall, it's just like slime, only sticky." She pauses and looks to the side, seemingly lost in thought, "Huh, maybe we should have added Borax to it. Or was it baking soda?.."

"Listen here, you little brat," Joker's fingers catch the girl's chin, and his voice becomes sickeningly menacing. Bruce is almost there, just two more minutes. Tim is already grappling onto the wall.

But none of them get to finish.

"Put your dirty fingers away from my sister," a low, cold, and even in a way that speaks of barely contained fury, voice comes from out of the screen.

The camera spins, like whoever is holding it turned really fast, and everyone watching the stream sees a fairly normal guy standing by the window - a turtleneck and ripped jeans, same black hair as the girl, same blue eyes... Wait, they are not blue.

And that's not a guy.

The camera falls down to the floor, and there are a lot of panicked screams coming from the broadcast now, but none of them sound like children's voices. It's the screams of adults, of grown-ass men, and later, someone even claimed they heard Joker's scream among them, too. The picture on camera glitches a few times, and the angle is awkward, but everyone still gets to see how shadows in the room morph into eyes, wide open and green, and how the darkness grows sharp teeth, countless grinning mouths that don't belong to any faces.

Screams turn into gargling and then to quiet whispers, filling the ears of all those listening with countless words in languages they don't know.

Red Robin turns off the recording and looks to that same guy from the levestream, sitting across him on the couch. The guy - Daniel, or Danny, as he introduced himself - looks him in the eyes and raises an eyebrow.

"Okay, and?"

"How did you do it?" Tim asks for the third time this evening. Danny blinks.

"Did what?" He asks, completely incomprehending. Tim groans. He's been trying to get his answers, any answers at this point, from the guy for thirty fucking minutes already. So far, he's got nothing. Danny, whoever the fuck he is, proves to be the most annoying human being on Earth.

"Seven people in a coma, including Joker himself, with no physical injuries and none of the children remember a thing! How?!" He demands, and a girl's face peeks from around the corner:

"I remember!"

Tim snaps his head at her, "What do you remember?"

The girl pauses, blinks, and looks to Danny. Then shrugs, "My brother picked me up from school."

Tim drops his head down and breathes out in frustration. He can't force the information out of civilians, he is a vigilante, not a mafia.

"Would it make you feel better if I promise not to do it again?" Danny asks, and his voice is way too innocent for Tim to believe him. He raises his head to look the guy in his shameless, amused eyes.

"I hate you."

"Thanks," Danny grins.

[briefbookreviewsuk]

Brief Book Review - Zero Days by Ruth Ware

A Brief Book Review of Zero Days by Ruth Ware .

Published as a hardback in the United Kingdom on 6th July 2023 this is another great thriller from the pen of Ruth Ware. The main character Jack ( Jacintha) and her husband Gabe are Pen testers - i.e. penetration testers who test both physical and cyber security of large organisations.

Jack returns from a failed mission to find Gabe murdered and swiftly finds that she is the main suspect . This leads to a race against time as Jack endeavours to find the real killer and ensure that she is not next on the list....

Check out my review :

[lanzatank]

obsessed w this fanart, saved it from 2022 tcctwt n still can't find who made it

[blogthefiresidechats]

My other order....

I ordered these other books online as well, however, I ordered these from Books-a-Million. I used a gift card that I got for my birthday to purchase the following books. The books showed up at my house this past Friday. I know what you’re thinking…….I need to get reading!

[cherylmmbookblog]

#Blogtour Zero Days by Ruth Ware

It’s a pleasure to take part in the Blogtour Zero Days by Ruth Ware. About the Author Ruth Ware is an international number one bestseller. Her thrillers In a Dark, Dark Wood, The Woman in Cabin 10, The Lying Game, The Death of Mrs Westaway, The Turn of the Key and One by One have appeared on bestseller lists around the world, including the Sunday Times and New York Times. Her books have been…

[nemkero]

uncle ekko

[mbvalentines]

kmfdm really ended school shootings with this one

[sainttandre]

"so um andre's naked so i'm gonna go meet him"

"naked?"

"yeah i'll be naked with him"

there was NO reason for him to say that

[wolfythoughts]

Book Review: Zero Days by Ruth Ware

A new widow puts her professional penetration testing skills to work to discover who really killed her husband when she realizes she’s being framed for the crime. Summary:Hired by companies to break into buildings and hack security systems, Jack and her husband, Gabe, are the best penetration specialists in the business. But after a routine assignment goes horribly wrong, Jack arrives home to…