cellini's Diaryland Diary ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Occupation: Badass That was quite a week. I hit it out of the park at the St@te Department and then stepped off of the proverbial cliff with the hike to the 0uter B@nks. I've already written one article about it and I'm about to write another. So I'm not going to summarize the whole thing right here. Suffice to say that it was exhausting and totally worthwhile. But I beat the shit out of myself on the way home. I had to get back in time to write and submit my article about the trip before the end of month deadline and I pushed myself way, way too hard in order to do that. With 60 or 70 pounds on my back I shouldn't have tried to do a 14 mile stretch in 5 hours. It was hot and sunny on my way back, too. I got badly sunburned on my legs (I remembered to put sunblock everywhere else), I developed horrible blisters on both feet; something on the inside hurts really badly in my right foot inside of the arch; my back is extremely sore; and I have deep lacerations on my hips and shoulders where the straps of the pack cut into my skin. I fucked myself up really badly. I feel more damaged than I ever did even in Outward B0und. And there was nobody waiting for me to give me a back rub. Which is very, very sad to me. But I turned the article in to the magazine on time and the editor loves it. They also love my photos -- which they should because I am extraordinarily good at getting very close to wildlife, what with my hunting experience. Never mind that the reason why I could give them a shot of a sea turtle from 12 inches away was that the turtle had just had the back half of its body bitten off by a bull shark. Dude wasn't going anywhere while I got into focus. But I got a shot of the front of it that makes it look like its just squinting and having a rest. In all seriousness, they intend to run that photo in the magazine and they have no idea that the critter was dead when I took the photo. I haven't lied about it -- they just haven't asked me about the details. I think this is fucking hilarious, of course. I'm not getting paid anywhere nearly enough for this, though. I still lose money on that trip until I can sell a longer article to another magazine for at least $400. Through the whole trip I was really good about stopping to get video and do narration/video diary type shit. But the sound of the surf ruined about 60% of my audio. I'm not sure that I can salvage this at all in terms of editing a video documentary of the trip. Arriving in C0rolla I had an incredible sense of accomplishment I set out to do something really crazy that nobody in living memory was known to have done. More importantly, I kept my word. I told everyone in sight that I was going to hike from Virg1ni@ Beach to the 0uter B@nks of NC and I followed that shit up with action. It felt like stepping off of a cliff when I started the trip, but I did what I said that I would do even though what I said I would do was totally fucking crazy. I really like being that guy. And I really like knowing now that this shit didn't end when I wrapped up the new book. Again and again I've set off on what would be the trip of a lifetime for most people, proving myself against the elements. The more I do this, the less I feel like I even need to talk about it in person. I have almost nothing left to prove. 8:04 p.m. - 2012-05-02 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
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