Trail name...
Humpty Dumpty
Originally Posted by rocketsocks
Trail name...
Humpty Dumpty
AKA Mr. E. Coli.
"I haven't been everywhere, but it's on my list." - S. Sontag
Slightly off topic, but I don't see performing on the street as begging. Holding a sign or simply asking for handouts is begging.
I, personally, won't attempt a thru-hike until I have saved enough money to do so. If I run out of money before I get there... well, I can't say for sure what I'd do until the time comes. It's my understanding that a thru-hike changes a person, and after several months on the trail will I have the same ideas I do now? Who can say?
Agreed.
One enterprising young man was preparing group meals at hostels earlier this hiking season. He'd buy the ingredients, and allow people to "buy in" to join the meal. It was kind of awesome actually, got a nice community vibe going, hikers from various age groups and such all came together for a nice evening. When asked how much it cost to buy in, he said $5 to $10 depending on what you can afford, but pay me after. $5 covered his costs exactly, $10 made him about a $100 profit. The meal was excellent, everyone was feeling great, I suspect most people gave him $10. I figured based on how much time he spent shopping and preparing the meal, he made about $25 an hour. Not a bad deal considering that people were pitching in to help with the prep and cleanup. A nice little way to fund your hike. Value for value.
The same can more or less be said for busking... as long as you're not busking at a captive audience.
Begging is just using guilt to take advantage of the generosity of suckers, then offering nothing in return.
Classic!!Every backpacker I know is a beggar---we're all begging to hike and camp on public land (or not so public), we're all begging Miss Nature to give us rain to survive---and even the food we buy is eaten with the teeth and digestive systems not really of our own making. Try humping up a mountain trail under load without oxygen (or lungs) and see how far you go.
In the many years I spent on and around the AT, I often times carried a clarinet and/or wooden recorder and hitched to various trail towns to play street music for cash money. Here's a pic of me pulling some street music for cash back in 1982. Begging? Sure, why not? (And check out the pack I lived out of for years---North Face external).
In those years I always dumpster dived for food and thought it a major sin to let it get thrown away and left to rot.
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I've bought dehydrated food in bulk...never again...I get sick of the same crap after 2 days....gave away new unopened #10 can of MH lasagna at MTR last year...rather starve than eat more if it!!!!
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today = 8 bags of chocolate chocolate chip chip's ahoy, 4 bags of megastuff oreo's, 5 pounds of apples, 5 pounds of potatoes, 2 pizzas still in their boxes, 3 boxes of wheat thins, and 8 boxes of nature valley granola bars.
keep wasting america!
and i'll keep eating.
Reminds me of the time, true story, when I dived behind a grocery store whose power went off and they threw out all their frozen foods---the dumpster must've had over $10,000 worth of food going to waste. Only in America would it be illegal to give this food away (insurance reasons or whatever).
But I was much more particular than cliffordbarnabus---No junk food, no ice cream (found plenty of it slowly melting), no cakes etc. And no meat since I'm a vegetarian. But beaucoup grapes and veggies and cheese and yogurt and bread and cantaloupes and all else.
Then the idiot-store owners started locking up their dumpsters and god only knows how many billions of dollars worth of food has gone to waste.
Bolt cutters
paper clip
After you pick up trash and garbage carelessly thrown out of a dumpster so "frugal clientele" can find culinary delights, sleep the night away, or use it to crap in, it doesn't require a degree to figure out locking out those who do that is not a bad idea.
Just sayin. Who are the idiots.
Question---Have you ever dumpster dived? It sounds like you have never taken the time to recycle these food resources. I never carelessly threw out trash from a dumpster just so I could get to the food. Sleep the night away? What, inside a dumpster? That's just being way left-field. And taking a crap inside a dumpster? What kind of crowd do you run around with? Not one of my friends or myself has ever taken a crap inside a dumpster. That would be like s******* where you sleep.
It sounds like you're put off by the idea of scoring free food and/or disgusted by the thought of climbing into a smelly dumpster. But it's a time honored backpacking technique for those Elite Hobos on town visits who know the wisdom of getting food that would otherwise be destroyed. Once loaded up from a righteous dumpster haul I'd carry my heavier pack back out to the woods and keep hiking.
DUMPSTER STORIES
** I got a college degree in music and clarinet performance before I dropped out and starting living out of a pack in 1980. Then began my true dumpster-diving glory years. In 1986 I was scrounging thru a rural dumpster and yes found a wooden Hopf recorder (like a flute) in a case with a fingering chart and learned to play this recorder and ended up playing Bach on the thing in an Episcopal church during services. God wanted me to learn how to play the recorder.
** One time I scored a watermelon out of a dumpster and squatted next to my backpack eating it when a cop drove up and demanded to see my ID. I was sitting on the ground and remember his shining black gun belt with the bullets etc. He looked at the ID and I asked him, "Do you want some watermelon?" and he shot a mean glance and got in his patrol car and drove away. I guess I had no outstanding warrants.
** Winter time is the best time to go dumpster diving and so I was hiking to my stealth camp outside of Boone NC but first wanted to stop at a local grocery store dumpster. It was snowing hard and the dumpster was full of snow with the jewels below in refrigeration mode (good eating!) and my pack was on the ground and I was deep inside the dumpster gathering food. I slowly pulled myself out of the box wearing my pinhead-looking wool watch cap covered in snow just as a police Jeep suv went by with 3 cops inside. Our eyes met as they slowly drove past on the icy road and they couldn't believe the sight of me at 0F climbing out of a dumpster. Fun times.
Oops, forgot this great Dumpster story---
** Me and my backpacking buddy Robbie were headed up a creek trail but first stopped at a grocery store dumpster on the way. Robbie was seriously homophobic and expressed disgust at anything to do with the subject of homosexuality. Wouldn't you know it but once at the dumpster and standing on the side shelf looking in we found that someone dumped their entire porno collection into the box and it was all pornographic magazines depicting yes gay male sex. Such titles as "Young Meat" and "Black Inches" and hundreds more. Robbie's head turned beet-red and I thought it was going to explode.
Last edited by Tipi Walter; 07-19-2016 at 11:38.
To each his own.
"The woods are lovely, dark and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep."
AND, to each his own imagination. amazing thing, the internet and public forums, people can make up whatever they want. some are a bit more subtle, others not so much.
Basically, a bum is a bum is a bum. Leaches on our productive society.
(for the record, IMHO, dumpster diving is not being a bum, begging is being a bum)
Just so you know
About 30% of ALL food that enters grocery stores eventually gets thrown away.
And it has NOTHING to do with food safety, or lawsuits.
The expiration date on canned food, for example, is not for safety or nutrition -- canned food that is 110 years old has been opened and found to be COMPLETELY safe to eat, and still high in nutritional value.
http://outdoorselfreliance.com/100-y...d-safe-to-eat/
The expiration date is related to how the food LOOKS.
Companies don't want customers opening their cans and seeing something that has less than optimal looks, texture, or taste.
Thus, grocery stores simply toss the cans.
Similarly, stores toss their fruits, vegetables, and baked good WAY before they go bad -- simply because food that is SLIGHTLY off-color or hardened will cause the customers to think the stores sell spoiled or moldy food.
Thus, it's not safety or lawsuits -- it's the fear of lost customers -- that causes stores to throw away so much.
How do I know this?
When you get involved in distributing surplus food to people who simply ask for it, for as many years as I have,
https://www.facebook.com/arthur.gunt...17616938393263
you learn a few things.
Last edited by GoldenBear; 07-24-2016 at 08:19. Reason: Better phrasing
...and this is why I keep comin' back, always a pleasure to read the comings and going of Tipi Walter. You should write a book dude!
ooh, almost forgot...
Answer: Being off-put is not really the issue, as I am one of those who cleaned up after people engage in their dumpster diving hobby.
Early in my working life I worked at a grocery store in a small city. One of my chores was to keep the area around the dumpsters in the back neat and clean, which there was usually trash strewn about. I quickly learned about dumpster denizens and their habits. Suffice to say, I saw a lot that year.
Near the end of my tenure, a fellow who looked like Moses after his 40 years in the desert came boiling out of the dumpster one morning when we threw a mess of meat scraps from the butchers waste pan. It got real ugly after that, which at about 17 years old was very impressionable. The owner found a padlock (I guess God didn't want people in the dumpster), got some chain and locked the lids down, ending the problem.
My point being, for a business to lock up a dumpster someone has to cause a problem. While it may not be you, it was someone with the same hobby but not interested in replacing what they pulled out to make their discoveries. I'm sure the DD Society feels differently, but the idiot is not the person who decides to lock up the dumpster as opposed to paying someone to clean up around it routinely. The lesson being, don't make a mess of things and few people would even know you have been around.
Where in the world are you getting this stuff??!!
" Of all the paths you take in life, make sure a few of them are dirt. "
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