Remember Erik the Invisible Hiker? The trail seems to be mellowing him, if this post is any indication:

As we walked along the aqueduct a group approached from the rear which turned out to be Sage, Burning Man, Tony, Nadine and their dog. We decided to organize an impromputu hiker race by drawing Start and Finish lines in the dirt as we passed. We then stood at the Finish line and, after placing bets on the winner, began cheering for our hikers. When they reached the Start line and realized what was going on Sage broke out running and won the race, winning the bet for me since I had chosen her. This led to a series of increasingly strange bets being placed throughout the night including which side of the road the dog would poop on first. Then Bull found a CD in the dirt which lead to a guessing game to determine what it was, I chose random songs from my MP3 player to guess at, then played a game where we tried to link actors together through movies they starred in.

I camped right on top of the aqueduct with the sound of thousands of gallons of water rushing below. This was one of my favorite days on the trail yet and it had nothing to do with the trail itself. The kind of goofy, carefree interaction with people I had tonight is what I have missed since becoming an adult, when everyone started acting so serious all the time.

Erik was like the king of all seriousness in his blog posts before the hike started, so it’s good see him kicking back.