There were a lot of bikers in camp and I feel bad for not remembering all their names, especially the older folks. Ethan took off and Madi and Grant were delayed waiting for a package in West Yellowstone, but Jon, Christian, Hamish, Angus, Brandon, Ed, and I formed a large under-thirty contingent in the cyclist camp. Brandon is a high school physics teacher in Chicago and an excellent cook, and Ed is a 17-year-old student of his. Both of them were just biking around Yellowstone for fun. Ohio Mike and maybe 6 more cyclists represented the over-fifty demographic. I think some of the racers, Alvaro, and Alicia were the only cyclists I've met between 30 and 50, besides a few edge cases (Bart is something like 47, Brandon might be a little over 30, etc). Apparently, child-raising age kind of precludes big adventures unless you're Alvaro and Alicia.
The big event today was leaving our stuff in camp, cycling to Firehole Canyon, and swimming in the heated river. Christian, who's sponsored by basically every bike company as far as I can tell, couldn't go due to issues with his tires. Interestingly, his tire sponsor is WTB, the same company that made the two tires that split on me early on. Anyway, Jon, Hamish, Angus, and I went on without him, and had fun setting bad examples for all the tourist children by fighting our way up the current and jumping off ~20ft rocks into the warm river.
Back at camp, it sounded like Christian had a fun time of his own. I think Christian would agree that he can be kind of a dick to normal folks, but he said that the people who gave him a ride were so nice that even he couldn't make fun of them. They waited while he got his tires and gave him a ride 16 miles back into the park, assumedly 32 miles total out of their way.
Most of the day was just spent chatting, which I facilitated with a box of firewood. Ohio Mike shared a story about chasing a bear that raided his drink mix powder and stole his PB&J sandwiches. Hamish, an industrial/organizational psychologist, talked about the differences between the US and UK academic systems, and the problems he saw in each. Angus talked about wanting to be a perpetual bike tourist. Brandon and Christian discussed being a high school teacher. Jon talked about astronomy and astrophotography. On request, and I need to emphasize that it really was requested, I gave an impromptu lecture about basic transistor functioning, the advantages of a FinFET structure, and why I'm excited that FinFETs have finally become the standard for CPU and GPU chips. Jon and Hamish actually appeared interested and asked a bunch of followup questions.
Later, Jon and I went for a walk. We discovered that the nearby river had some miniature hot spots, saw some nice scenery, and met a few other campers. We spotted a camp with a slackline set up, decided that only hippies have slacklines, and assumed hippies would probably be friendly. They weren't at camp, so we wandered a bit farther until we met two Katies. The Katies seemed happy to meet someone else their age without 5 kids in tow, and invited us back for beers later. We talked with the slackline camp first and found that they weren't hippies at all, but were a very nice family that knew about cycling and invited us to stay with them in Indiana if we end up on the Northern Tier route somehow. It's not impossible that I'll switch to the Northern Tier after Illinois, I suppose.
After returning to camp for warm clothes, we went back to The Katies and talked for a while over Shock Top beer and a bottle of cheap gin I'd been carrying for far too long. The Katies were most recently from Colorado, aged 26 and 27. They had decided to go out and do something adventurous every year around this time in order to experience life instead of sitting around like a lot of their friends. I admired their initiative, and gained a little respect for myself when I realized that I was demonstrating that same quality just by being there. I also admired their friendship -- they kept implying that they were weird and had a silly sense of humor, but it seemed like the kind of weird that would make everything, even tough situations, enjoyable when they were together.
The Katies hadn't established a system for differentiating themselves, so one Katie declared herself Little Katie. Other Katie decided that meant she was Big Fat Katie. Neither of those descriptors seemed appropriate, so I think we settled on Little Katie and Just Katie. Good and evil were never established in the way that the Aris had done. Side note: I have since discovered that both Aris decided they are Evil Ari, so its back to the drawing board there. I think other people don't find it as important to differentiate themselves from others with the same name. I guess it's a personal issue, considering my famous name conflict.
Little Katie was a school psychologist and Just Katie was a neonatal nurse, which led to a lot of interesting discussion about nature versus nurture and education. Though I don't think Little Katie would describe herself this way, she was quite graceful in indulging my personal questions about life after grad school and finding meaning outside of work, both of which have been on my mind for a while. Overall, I was probably a little overexcited to meet them, which made me a little self-conscious, which made me more awkward and more self-conscious in the kind of positive-feedback loop that many nerds are familiar with. I was very eager to talk to people my age and at a similar place in life, but I'm concerned I dominated the conversation with prying questions and half-baked ideas. If it bothered them, they didn't show it, but I imagine they're also used to that kind of thing from guys. They kept throwing new logs on the fire, so I hope that means I wasn't too annoying. Maybe I can give myself a break for not being very socially active for the past month. Either way, Little Katie gave us a huge bag of homemade trail mix when we left. She said that she was disappointed with the batch, but it was salty, and that was enough for me.
Jon and I returned to the tent city that was hiker/biker camping at something like 1 AM. Overall, it was pretty good for a zero-mileage day.
Here's a panorama of tent city, which a ranger said was the most cyclists they had had in three years. I set up my green rain tarp, center, just to fit in:
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