Today I landed at San Francisco International Airport today for a little trip. Being hungry I stopped by the Burger King in the terminal. And below the menu board is this sign:
1% EE BENEFITS SURCHARGE APPLY TO ALL MENU ITEMS
Hmm…
What’s Up With That?
I was home for a couple days in between some trips and caught the opening ceremonies. What has happened to the Olympics?
Athletes took a back seat to queens and rock stars… sigh.
So I was looking for the Track and Field schedule on the official 2012 Olympic Website, but it is not listed as a sport. If you look at the 2012 Schedule and Results page, you will find a sport named “Athletics.” If you click on Athletics, you will find that that sport is Track and Field. So Track and Field is athletics. But are swimmers not athletes? That sport is listed under Swimming.
I grew up in the 1950’s and entered adulthood in the late 1960’s. As a kid I drove my parents crazy. I guess it was the “generation gap.” As I moved through adulthood I became more conservative than my parents, although I do not classify myself as a conservative or a liberal. Independent would be most correct, but some would say objectivist is more accurate. Use whatever label you want, it doesn’t matter to me.
So when I look around at Gen X and Y, I am often perplexed. It must be that Generation gap thing.
Occasionally I am going to post about things that perplex or confuse me; and it seems that it comes down to the culture of the younger generations versus my world-view. The posts will be sporadic, random, rambling, and satirical.
Wasn’t Satire some sort of existentialist French philosopher? Well, however he was or wasn’t, it doesn’t matter. Maybe Mr. Satire never existed. Maybe the name is a pseudonym for Mark Twain, Chevy Chase, Aristophanes, or even Al Gore. Hopefully it was Alfred E. Neuman. But I am not going to worry about it.
Like many people, I have been storing and sharing my pictures on a photo sharing Website. It is convenient and quick… if you do not add comments, tags and other stuff. I have been uploading pictures to Webshots for a few years. Eventually I ran out of free space and had to pay a yearly fee for more storage.
Now I don’t mind paying for the service, but it irks me that I have to read all the ads on a site I pay to use. Today I noticed that my albums have generated 1,275,883 views. That seems a lot to me and since I am paying to bring some of the traffic to Webshots, I feel I shouldn’t have to pay for a service and have to look at advertisements. Heck, I am not against ads. Who knows, someday I might put some on this site, although I have no idea how one would go about doing that or if you can really make any money.
The other thing about Webshots is that my albums don’t really tell a story, other than each album is based on a specific subject or a trip. So people don’t really get the flavor of what was behind the pictures. That is part of the reason why I create this site. So I hope to eventually transfer all the pictures here on PopUpBackpacker.com with a story or report to accompany them before my next Webshots bill comes due. If I can do that, I will delete all those pictures and close the account.
When I was researching on how to build a website, I read that the “About” page is the most important page. That seems funny, I never click About unless I am an unhappy customer trying to get a hold of someone to resolve a problem. But what the heck — here goes. I have never built a website before, so this is a learning experience.
So I was checking out some backpacking blogs and many people start out with their trail name.
My trail name is… wait a second. I don’t have a trail name.
Well it seems that a lot of backpackers have a trail name, especially those who do long hikes and interact with a lot of people on the trail. I don’t do that. I mean, I don’t interact with a lot of people on the trail, and actually I try to hike where there are no other people. But I have done many long hikes. Besides trail names like Monkeybutt and Half-a-brain don’t appeal to me.
My name is Nick Gatel. That is it. No middle name and Nick is the official name on my birth certificate. Nine letters total. I like that. Sort of like ultralight backpacking, shed anything you don’t need.
I started backpacking back in the 1960’s. Since backpacking wasn’t popular, it was difficult to get anyone to go with me. So I usually hiked alone. After a while, I figured out it was the best way to backpack.
I camped a little bit with my friends in high school. It was fun, but backpacking was more enjoyable. When my kids (Nicole and Joe) were born we started taking each of them camping when they were 6 months old. The reason I took them camping instead of backpacking was because they couldn’t walk yet. When they got older, I took both on some backpacking trips, but family camping was more fun. So we camped several times every year, to include our yearly two week vacation, and I continued my solo backpacking trips.
Don’t have any of those things. This site is for my own pleasure and a place to share with my small circle of friends and family. I have two main hobbies; camping with my wife, Joyce, and backpacking. This is what I enjoy doing and I try to spend 100 days a year doing them. I have many other interests, but these are the main ones.
Probably going to be whatever I feel like writing about. Sure there will be camping and backpacking stuff, but whatever strikes me as funny, serious, outlandish, etc. will probably end up here.
Like I said earlier, my family and friends are the audience. There may be others with similar interests who might want to read this once in a while. I added an RSS thingy and a subscription doohickey, so if you are interested you can play with those. There won’t be buttons for Twitter, Facebook, Like, or similar ilk. I don’t understand the hoopla over that kind of thing. They seem like big black holes that suck up time. And time is a valuable commodity to me. I save time just like I save money, so I can spend my inventory of saved time for important things like camping and backpacking.
Also there are no comment pages, contact or feedback forms, email me page, or any other way to contact me. The reason is; I have no desire to communicate with complete strangers and could care less about the opinions of others. Seems to me that these contact media would be another thing to suck up valuable time. If you already have my email address then I probably value your thoughts.
I see that others who have sites about backpacking or camping do a lot of gear and product reviews. As a matter of fact, some have so many reviews that I don’t see how those folks can find the time to go out and use them. Fortunately both my backpacking kit and travel trailer are completely dialed-in, and don’t need any tweaking. So there is not a whole lot to review and there won’t be much new stuff in the future. But I do have an accumulation of 50+ plus years of camping and hiking stuff, so I may occasionally take a trip down memory lane and share some of it.
I don’t know how often I will post here. So far this seems pretty simple to update. But if it takes much time to maintain or administer the site, I’ll take it down. Again, the time thing.
Anyway that is About it.
This is my first post. I am a lucky man because I have figured out why I exist… to live a Good Life. For me The Good Life is my family, productivity in my work, camping in my popup (tent) trailer with my wife Joyce, and backpacking.
The best camping is somewhere in the “boondocks” alone with Joyce, and the best backpacking is hiking solo. All simple stuff, and all of it rewarding.
This blog is really for my family and friends only. But as I document The Good Life, I realized that other folks with similar interests might like to read about what I do. There are no comment pages here, because I really don’t care what others think about my life.
Life is like a long hike. It is just a series of small steps, that when placed end-to-end, becomes an epic adventure.
I hope you enjoy the journey as much as I do!
– Nick
