April 28, 2026. New campsite. Panoramic view of the cliffs and peaks of Zion and beyond, plenty of firewood, content to be here for a few days. We took a walk yesterday and found an even better spot a bit further down. We may move to that one today, still deciding.
It was bittersweet saying goodbye yesterday to the few remaining campers and the spot that had been home for 22 days and 21 nights.
The nicotine vape experiment is going as expected. I've woken up feeling off the past couple of days. I'm going to have to walk away. I can't play with it. It's not aligned. Three weeks of puffing on the stupid thing and here I am at the familiar intersection: use my brain and walk away, or bury my head in the sand and pretend it'll resolve itself. It began with lighthearted curiosity watching friends, and then slowly the stakes increase before your eyes. The barrier to use isn't there with these things. The tech is strong, it tastes good, it feels good for a moment, it has LED readouts and animations and charges via USB-C. I can see clearly how kids in their formative years get absolutely hooked.
The initial stages of giving up nicotine are like the early stages of a breakup. You realize this is not right for you. But you keep bargaining because you want it to be right for you. It's not. And it never will be. You can keep bargaining. But it is not going to change the outcome. Cut your losses and walk away clean while you can.
This is so reminiscent of what I went through recently with Instagram, Facebook and the news. I identified that my usage wasn't intentional, that I was grabbing for them before I consciously realized what I was doing. I worked through it and alleviated the problem. And now, whack-a-mole, here's the same thing in a different form. Same same but worse for you.
A plan came together for the next leg. Shannon and I are headed the same direction so we're going to travel together for a bit. We stay here through Friday, then it's a run into St. George for Costco, about an hour and a half each way, and then we push toward the Four Corners region of Colorado. Friday will be a big day.
I've started shipping packages to a friend's house in Telluride. I don't know how long it'll take me to get there, could be three weeks, but I'll have a little Christmas waiting when I arrive. The past few weeks have been the biggest shipping debacle of my nomad life. I remember telling people not long ago that I'd never had a problem receiving packages. I can no longer say that. I learned what I needed to learn though, and I don't see it happening again.
The hard drive saga continues. The package that was reported lost turned out to have been returned to the seller. They refunded me but said they couldn't reroute it to a new address. So the dispute is resolved but I still have no drive. Best Buy in St. George doesn't have what I need. The question now is whether to send it to Telluride and wait three weeks, or find an Amazon locker somewhere along a route through some very sparsely populated country. I want to solve this Friday.
I'm down to the bottom of my supplies. Plenty of egg whites left but I rarely reach for those. One meal's worth of cheese remaining, and I'll miss it when it's gone. It's one of the better perks of keto.
Bugsy has taken over drone duties entirely. I got great footage of the van coming down a tiny dirt road through rugged country on the way here, and some sunset shots of the new camp and the vistas. The old drone's only remaining use case might be high winds.