Yesterday evening I participated in my second Virtual Ruck with the Western Chapter of the American Long Distance Hiking Association. Given the current state of the world and the fact that most of us wouldn’t have otherwise been able to interface with one another safely the online nature of this get-up was actually super cool. I mean, it still happened and people from all over showed up.
Better for me personally, given my lack of speech, I wasn’t left there tapping into my phone so some stranger wouldn’t hear text-to-speech at their booth. From my perspective it was almost like the good ol’ days when people treated me like another person instead of a nuisance. Don’t worry I’m not bitter.
We had time for two break out sessions. I attended a dehydrated food class with the very fine folks at Food for the Sole and a MYOG class lead by Livio Melo of AllMansRight. I enjoyed both conversations and got a lot out of both of them, but I’m eager to try some new things in my dehydrator now that Julie and Henry Mosier shared a little of their experience with me. It’s just possible that I’ll be heating up a bag of lovingly prepared 두부조림 and 김치 trail side real soon.
The highlight of the night was the afterglow, when we split back off into breakout rooms and just talked. Suddenly, I found myself within a small gathering of happy people who were genuinely interested in what everyone else was up to. That was so freaking cool. Only thing that was missing was a fire.
ALDHA-West’s next one is supposed to be early next month and I’m really looking forward to it. I really can’t say thank you enough to the people and companies that help make these things possible.
FeetForBrains 