I fifth wheeled with two of my friends and their new people to Bagby hot springs south east of Portland. It was beautiful out, grey and greens, harshness and mystery.
My lungs handled the hike fairly well. I was disappointed that the exercise triggered my asthma, but on the other hand, I kept a faster pace than I might have else. I’m very impatient for my new lungs.

There were a couple of people being slow getting out of the tub that we wanted to use. They seemed like people that moved around a lot, and maybe didn’t have a settled place that they live. Collectively, once they had left we all called them “hippies” and I felt like an Eisenhower Republican and super uncool. I try to only care about people breaking “the rules” (a concept that does not itself seem that useful) when it is harming myself or others, and it left a bad taste in my mouth to talk shit about people that were a little obnoxious but otherwise were nothing but nice to me.
The last time I went to Bagby, I greatly enjoyed being naked in public, but the chemistry of this group was different.
On the walk back down to the trailhead and our car, I listened to Frank Zappa’s “Montana” from Over-Nite Sensation. It was pretty special to rock out to that as dusk overtook the forest. I played the track later in the car, but I think it was too weird.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=smZA9Jv3qH0
The drive back to Portland took a while because the fog was thick on the ground, and road conditions called for slower speeds. We went out to eat once we got back to the city, but it was one of those situations where prolonged exposure to the same people leads to everyone hating each other, and so the meal was quiet.
Sometimes the known is an acceptable substitute for the good. At least in food.
I ended up falling asleep for an obnoxiously useless amount of time, waking up around midnight. I worked up my courage to arrange a hookup with someone from the internet, but they flaked out and I got irritated because I think of myself as the party that’s entitled to the flakiness, and this was an inversion of the natural order of things.