And here’s the full-resolution money shot 
I wonder whether he’s still alive and occasionally get the urge to go back out there and spend a few nights in the old spot, but then I start thinking about how I’d need a new tent, and all the expense of the misc equipment and the discomfort and think better of it.
16 months living in a tent like a feral was enough for me for one lifetime thnx.
16 moths in a tent? what were you doing? (apart from integrating with the wildlife)
Having a mid-life crisis moment 
I’d broken up with a 5-year woman in Adelaide and the idea of just moving out into some empty palce on my own just seemed fucked, shitty and claustrophobic.
At the time I was watching Bear Grylls and Survivor Man on TV and said to her "I’m gunna do that then"
She said it was the dumbest idea I’d had yet, so I said "Fuckin’ right then!!" and started reading-up and collecting what I needed, googling places and found that here was the only place with rainforest that’s accessible really without a 2 hour drive: straight down the cliff-face the Giant Staircase gets you into the valley.
Never been camping before in my life, but you learn super-fast: I’d start with 3 nights down there, come up and get a room in town while I reconfigured shit, then go back down… eventually I got it to 11 nights down and 3 up to restock, wash everything, sleep in a bed and eat like a pig before going back out another 11 nights and I found anymore than 11 nights I started getting mentally weird from the continual isolation.
3 nights in town was enough to get everything done including recharging the 150,000mAh worth of battery packs I had to keep my phone and camera charged, buy and pack food for the next ‘outing’, buy anything else I might want for the next trip all that.
11 nights was the sweet spot where I’d start missing humans a bit, but not too much, but enough to want to come back up again.
Then I checked rainfall etcetera to make sure the geography and climate would be to my liking - which after years in Adelaide meant ANYWHERE cool and without those fuckin’ horrid sweltering summers - Blue Mountains won!
Packed, left whatever I couldn’t carry there and left on a greyhound bus.
A flight would’ve been cheaper, but I had half an ounce of a-grade plus a sandwich bag full of magic mushrooms and didn’t wanna lose them to a flight, so the bus it was.
I love that Da Momma popped in to show us how happy she is …We miss you 
very happy to hesr yiur doing so well
I love the fact I’ll be rockin’ up for work this week in over $500 worth of new clothes - all my favourite shit and the only thing I didn’t buy new were the boots but I’m fussy about those too and the Scarpas I like would’ve set me back an additional $450, which is going overboard just for a presentable work outfit.
I did tell her I’d be there all sparkly new this week though and it’s a reasonable price to pay to look better than everyone else AND be more comfortable doing it.
As long as you are not taking anything from the Vape budget…
Never.
It’s an investment in further expansion of said vape budget 
I was actually just thinking Capella French Vanilla is very distinctive… unmistakably THERE in the mix…
I additionally love, that with this little Voopoo Drag X Plus and the new 21700 batteries I can vape at 75W all day and not run outta power…
That’s not chain vaping, but neither am I trying to conserve battery charge.
I also love the mod and that new Gene chipset is instant-fire plus really doens’t seem to care when the battery’s at half level: it still delivers that 75W without breaking a sweat.
While I’m at it, I love Cracker Barrel Special Reserve and Mainland Vintage Tasty cheeses.
And I will love these little MTL drippers if they ever fn ship my order…
My favourite tobacco: Old Holborn: an English tobacco I bought a pouch of today because I can now without any risk of it sticking.
No really, I KIND of feel like I’m cheating in a way, but I’ve demonstrated to myself several times over the last few months that I can buy smokes, smoke them and be perfectly content to return to vaping when they’re gone.
It’s like because I’m more invested in vaping now, I genuinely don’t feel ANY loss when I can’t smoke so I buy them occasionally, smoke a few days, then go back to vaping.
And as I’ve just mentioned to someone else: if I’m going to buy real tobacco I may as well buy the one I really like as opposed to buying a 20 pack of Pall Mall or some other shit I never would’ve smoked when I was a ‘smoker’.
I don’t FEEL like a smoker though, even while smoking: I feel definitively like a vaper who has decided to treat himself to some actual tobacco.
So true.
While I certainly wouldn’t recommend new vapers who’ve just come off the smokes to follow suit, I think once you’ve got into vaping enough there comes a point where you’ve crossed that line and tobacco just no longer has the pull over you it once had: at that point, it’s really just like yeah, ‘treating’ yourself here and there, since you know you’re perfectly happy - certainly more comfortable now - switching back once the combustibles are gone.
Course there’s plenty of new vapers who probably couldn’t do that without going all out and returning to being ‘smokers’, but those of us who’ve been at it long enough really don’t need to fear being lured back into the evil analogs because they just don’t have the power they once had.
Anyhoo: bedtime - goodnight people.
Yeah I ended up keeping a very detailed online photo diary of the entire thing: that’s primarily why I’d take so many battery packs out with me each time - I’d write updates to my site every few days with pics of everything and towards the end was writing 20,000 words per month and taking beautiful photos with a little Nikon wifi compact I’d bought for that purpose.
Reception out there was always rubbish and only possible at all with a Telstra sim card, but I managed by writing and editing my entries as smooth as silk before dumping the whole entry in one post update though photos frequently took multiple attempts to get uploaded 
At the start, I knew absolutely nothing at all about camping, hiking or writing.
By the end I was pro enough that I could’ve easily organized other people getting their shit together to come out with me and frequently had tourists in town ask to come out with me, but the thought of my solitude being fucked by someone else and having to put up with each other for 11 days and nights straight didn’t appeal to ne at all, so I never even considered taking anyone out there.
I learnt how to write very nicely too with all that time it there just thinking of the best way to convey the various happenings, and that skill set improved alongside my camping and hiking abilities.
In the beginning I’d just write quick, shitty little diary style entries in a book with a pen saying which trails I’d found and taken and what I had for lunch or dinner.
By the end, I was writing epic journal entries in a story-based format that read like a live updated continuing novel painting how everything felt instead of just “12:03PM: big lizard walked past.”
So it was kind’ve a dual 16-month crash course in camping and an extended creative writing sojourn and I can still whip up some pretty nicely written copy now that paints the visuals and emotion of anything, though there’s generally no need online.
I love that on the first day of the second week, the “on-trial” is over…
Just gotta fill-out the boring forms and give them back to her in the morning.
And, just after posting the above I get an email telling me the second vape mail has herbb shipped: so all three orders are moving towards me 
Once of those packages is new contact lenses rather than vape related, and I heave no idea HOW but after ordering last night at 9:00PM those contacts actually arrived and were ready for collection at 8:00AM this morning…
I left my wallet with photo ID at home of course so couldn’t collect but I am still baffled how it shipped after hours AND got to Katoomba Post Office before it even opened?
That’s under 12 hours.
Love that.
I also love the fact that this new supervisor clearly loves me: not like that, but she’s obviously warm and cracks jokes and is there in the hotel all day alongside the cleaners - where all the supervisors I’ve had in other jobs have dropped in once every now and then to inspect and grade your work or drop off a new vacuum cleaner.
This ‘occasional visits’ dynamic means you really don’t want to see that supervisor and even if you get along okay you see them so rarely that you never really feel relaxed with them.
Instead now I’ve got this tiny chick with a little lisp who is there enough for all the cleaners to see she’s got a personality and vise versa.
Down in the trenches getting her hands dirty with the rest of us, she is.
the smell of rain on concrete
WOOWOO!!
Yes, and… rain generally: except being stuck in it for extended periods, I don’t even mind walking in it
My turn to be rushed…
Gotta pickup contacts, get a disabled toilet and shove em in before I start…
Gee, our possums don’t look like that! They’re gray, not a lavish sable color.
Your possums aren’t the real deal, but some manner of rodent that people dubbed “opossums” for… because “Massive rat with rabies” didn’t sound as cute or cuddly, perhaps
Real Possums are marsupials like kangaroos and koala bears (which are NOT… yeah god THEY DON’T EVEN LOOK LIKE BEARS let alone fall into that family).
For the record, Koalas stink like a bucket of week-old piss and have nasty, dirty, wirey fur and are SO lazy that climbing a single tree branch is a full-on marathon event for those fuckers - just don’t you be thinking all those cute photos of cuddly koala bears are even in the same postcode as reality 
And then there’s the godamn devil eyes: fark… they got fucking evil looking eyes - make me wanna punch a koala in the face just thinking about them…
Koalas really suck and have no place in this thread, but too late now
And while New Zealand has proper-legit Brushtail Possums, they shouldn’t: they were introduced from here and went completely outta control ape-shit and are now a pest species NZ can’t get rid of
Why didn’t those selfish arseholes give us some kiwi birds even? In exchange for the possums…
What da fuck right?
And your dog 
4:08PM just as I’m finishing my dinner shopping I get a text saying my mail has arrived: good thing I didn’t go home earlier that would’ve been locked away until Monday!
And of these, Bavarian Cream is the ove I’m most interested in since everyone on earth seems to have it and the caramel smells great…
The Cola I only bought because now I’ve got VTA Fizzy Sherbet I just HAVE to try them together.
@Lucas_James_Holden might be interested to know that the Black Cat for Pipe smells fucking amazing - not like blueberry, nor like tobacco but some strange, sweet scent that’s similar to those if you’re looking for their smells, but if nobody told you there was blueberry and tobacco in it, you probably might pick the tobacco but not any fruit.
I was right to click Add to cart based solely on the sexy looking snarling panther 
This panther…
Additionally: though I haven’t wicked or tried the only dedicated MTL RDA I’ve ever seen online, I’m pretty sure it’s going to be a lovely tank…
Lovely tanks since I got two while they were 40% off and sold out in every color but black, which is fine black matches my new drag x plus as well as the all-black work clothes I’ve gotta wear.
AND my black smartwatch.
I can tell the tanks will be lovely based on the quality and thought gone into the design, the machining, the multiple airflow options (that ship set to feel like a nice MTL already) the depth of the juice well (deepest I have ever seen on any dripper) and that weight… it feels heavy for a tiny 22mm tank.
Oh and yes yes, I know there’s probably heaps of tiny MTL drippers on the market and I’m sure Fasttech sells more than their own share of em: by “only MTL dripper”, I mean accessible on a mainstream vape site that’s not a 6 week delivery from some obscure corner of the planet - only 22mm RDA I have ever seen on any Australian site most certainly.
That wider bottom is just the beauty ring and I just slipped it on for the pic.
Course I have to coil and wick it so I can take it to work tomorrow for sneaky bathroom vaping (which I haven’t been busted doing thus far and today I started doing my own rooms so there’s fuckall chance I’ll be getting caught now, if I didn’t when I was doing training WITH someone else ), so I’ve gotta get the contacts out to be able to see the tiny little deck to build.
And wash my clothes, and hang em to dry, AND shower AND shave AND have dinner, which I’ll get done first I spose.
Most of the huge 1’ x 1’ parcel box was full of the sink-full of those lovely little bottles - the ones @muth calls ‘cosmos’: got 30 x 15mL and 10-15 x 60mL of em because they are just so fucking cute and retro looking I have gone off Chubby Gorillas completely since feeling these ones.
