 All right, thanks everyone for coming and sorry we couldn't fit more people in. By way of introduction, my name is Tim Burke. I'm Vice President of Linux Engineering at Red Hat. And I'm going to talk about a little walk in the woods I did. And I'm going to try to relate it. It's not just a travel story. I'm going to try to give some lessons on how this can apply to being a better engineer, a better programmer, a better tester, a better person really. So before we get into that, have you ever heard of the book called All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten? And really what that means, raise your hand. Who's ever heard of that book? A lot of the people. And what it shows is that it's often like the little simple things that really make people more effective. And so that's really all I'm going to be talking about is little simple things that this helped me learn. So before we get into the talk, it's not everybody knows what the Appalachian Trail is. It's a really rugged hiking trail through mountains in the United States. It travels for 3,500 kilometers or 2,200 miles. And it's in the woods. There's no restaurants. There's no hotels. You carry everything, your tent, your backpack. And every year, about 20% of the people who start the hike complete it. So this hike took me four and a half months to complete. So that's not for everybody, just to be out in the woods that long. But it's really all about how do we succeed? How do we set goals? So not everybody's going to do something like this, and that's not what I'm going to try to convince you. What I am going to try to convince you is that every one of you can set goals for yourself. Everyone can do special things if they want it hard enough and if they're willing to put the effort into it. So let's talk about how this dream began. So I've been hiking all my life in the mountains. But it's mostly day hiking. You just drive your car up to the mountains, you hike, and then you come home. And so this picture is taken in the White Mountains of New Hampshire in the United States. This is actually part of the Appalachian Trail. It goes over these mountains. So this is one section. And so I would hike there a lot. And so it was a dream of mine to hike the Appalachian Trail. And who wouldn't think, wow, that would be awesome. I want to do that. That's cool. And dreams are really great because dreams allow you to challenge yourself to grow. But dreams are, if you don't do something about it, they're just fantasy. They're just dreams, right? And so everybody can dream and say, yeah, I'd like to do that. That looks like fun. But if you don't make the first step and do it, you'll never realize a dream. And so the only person who's going to help you set a goal and do a goal is yourself. And so most people think, I couldn't do that. But you could set other goals because your life is really important. And it's really important not just to go through it and not think. This is kind of a morbid thought. But one quote that I like is that, I don't fear death. I fear an unlived life. So this is really about living. So this is a picture of my daughter and I. So the other thing that was cool is my daughter did half of the hike with me. She did 1,000 miles of it. So it was a really great experience to be together. And so when you're trying to set these goals, usually you're not the first person who's ever done it. And so there's other people who can help you. You can learn. You can research things, which is really cool. So you never have to do it alone. And when I was hiking for many years in the White Mountains of New Hampshire, I would see other people who were through hikers, people who were doing the whole hike. And I would think, wow, they are so cool. They are my heroes. They are really special people. And then I thought about it. And it says, what made them special? What do they have that I don't have? That they took the first step, that they did it. And you can all have goals. You can all have dreams. But if you don't take the first step, you'll never get it. So it's really about it takes courage to do that. I mean, I had never hiked for more than a week. But you know what? There's not much difference between a three-day hike and a four-month hike. And so a lot of these goals, if you can do something small and just keep working at it, you can build on it. And that's the same with your career. You get skills and you just get build on them and just develop more skills. In the next thing, you'll be adding EBPF to the kernel or something like that. So it's something that everybody can do. But if you have a dream and you want to set goals, I would assert that if you have an easy goal, it's not worth doing. Seriously, I'm about big goals, set some hard challenges. Because I really believe in no pain, no gain. I think that people grow through their experiences. So if you're developing a project and you start to add more features to it, you're going to learn every time. And you just get better and better and better. And so set goals that you can slowly and incrementally accomplish, but know that a real goal that you're going to grow for, it's never easy. And I'll tell you, this is a picture. The first three weeks when I was on this hike, it was raining and about the same temperature as it is outside now. How many people yesterday, when they had to go out and stand at the food truck, were unhappy? Raise your hand. I was. It sucked. I didn't like that. But picture being out there for three weeks with that, but it was raining. It wasn't really raining yesterday. But what I knew was those first three weeks, you never know what the weather's going to be. And what I said was, can you imagine how pathetic or lame or wimpy it would look if I quit in the first three weeks? That would be bad. And so I knew it's like, I can't come home and tell people I only made it three weeks. Well, it's the same thing. If you set a goal for yourself, maybe the first three weeks are going to be the hardest part. And don't quit in those first three weeks. Just keep going, because that's what it takes to achieve goals. So how did I prepare to be in the woods for four and a half months? And most people think, well, I must have hiked a lot. That's the best. That's what the training is all about. It's the hiking. It's like, no. That was not what the training was about. The training was about not hiking, honestly. So it was things like, how do, what am I going to eat? Trying to do some homework for that. Or if you looked at the reason why most people failed on this hike, wasn't because they weren't capable of hiking. It was because of other things. Like, they didn't prepare like, they didn't have, they had troubles back at home. Like, they had pets that they were worried about, or kids that they were worried about, or they didn't have enough money saved up. So my point is, it's often the non-obvious things that prevent you from reaching your goal. And this is, I think, important for work goals. Because a lot of people think that, hey, some people ask me, because I'm Vice President of Linux Engineering, people might say, hey, I want to do that. How do I succeed to get to that job? And it's usually not the best programmers who grow into that. It's people who, for example, are good communicators. So for all your jobs, it doesn't matter whether you're a tester or a developer, if you can't communicate well with other people, you won't be able to really succeed. So often people think, if I get smarter or more technical, that's the best path to grow your career. But it's really how are you good at coordinating things? Are you good at planning with other people? Are you collaborative with other people? And do you, when you talk with other people, do you listen as much as you talk? So it's like those kind of things that I call blind spots that most people, when they want to advance to the next level or get a promotion, it's usually not because of technical skills that prevent their promotions. It's how well do they cooperate, play well with others. It's really more important than people think. So planning, those of you who know me know that maybe Steven will vouch, no, Steven's worse than me on this. So in my career, I will microscopically plan every single detail. And Steven's even more proficient at that than I am. But if you looked at, for a four and a half month hike, you can't plan every day because you don't know how the weather's gonna be, you don't know. Some people try to plan like on day 30 I'm gonna be here and on day 60 I'm gonna be there and 90 I'm gonna be there. So I knew my tendencies was to over plan, but for this hike, what I realized is to do that, it's not possible. So my whole point here is that sometimes when you want to achieve a goal, you have to try things differently to be able to step outside into the unknown. Before this, my longest hike was a week. So I didn't know what a week and a day would look like. And so you have to be able to have faith in yourself and confidence to say that what you've done before, if you stretch it and grow and try new things, that you'll succeed more than if you just keep doing the same thing all the time. And so the other thing is so, but there are other people, some people who went on this hike and said, who had little hiking experience and they did no planning, people like me and Steven were over planners, there are some people who are under planners. So basically know your tendencies and know basically what you need to do just enough to succeed at a goal. So then if you want to achieve a new goal, you have to build a scenario to make that happen. So for example, in this case, because I was a manager of a large team, what I had to do was spend a lot of time, I planned for this trip several years in advance by working with my team and people around me to make sure that everything would still get done at work. And you know what, some people said, they said, aren't you afraid to leave your job because of two things. One, they might say, we didn't need him anyways because we did just fine. And two, what if they said, this smarter people have sort of filled in the gaps and sort of done that and some people fear that. And I think that's, I welcome that because I think we always need stronger leaders and we always need people to do more things. So if you want to do something different in your career, try to grow other people to help them sort of fill in the gaps so that you can do something different. And just so it's not just, goals are never just about you. That's my point. It's like, even though I hiked this from the beginning to end, there was so many people involved, friends who helped out, people at work who did, you know, kept Red Hat going. And it's so other people benefited and grew from this trip. And so I came back and the team did just fine without me. And so what that means is that there were other people who continued that and grew in that stuff and I could focus on other things. So it's like, there's plenty of challenges, plenty of goals, so don't feel that you always have to do the same thing because help other people to do that and have the courage just to try something different because you never know how it's gonna turn out. So you might think that it's, this was all about just the beautiful scenery or some people think it's just being alone just to get out in the woods, just be away from people. And that's part of it. But what I really realized was that the people involved were half the fun because we shared experiences, we learned from each other. It might be like, you know, a lot of the talk on the trail was what's the, are there any restaurants in like the next town that you might go through? Because it was, we were, we didn't have a lot of food. You had to carry your food maybe, you would go through a town like every three days, three to four days, so you'd have to carry all your food along the way. So you were constantly hungry and you were constantly dirty and smelly. And so this is my peers out on the hike. The other thing I really liked about this hike was I called it a classless system. And by classless I mean we were all grubby hikers. There were no vice president hikers. There were no like associate engineer hikers. We were all just smelly hikers. And I like just being, I just, even at Red Hat, I just consider myself one of the people on the team. And if I'm helpful in this, I'm better at this than I used to be at riding device drivers. So I think we're all better off this way. But how do I relate this to work is things like we didn't know it. Even though we were all individually hiking, we together, we were important to each other's success because we taught, we learned things from each other. Like, hey, how to, you know, someone might be cooking something that was interesting or someone might know what the next, what was coming ahead, what the next section was like. So it's the same thing with developers. It's help each other out and know that you're not there alone so that someone else has probably done something similar. And I think a lot of times engineers are, they just wanna sit there and type all day and not talk to anybody, right? And so the important things I see here is they wanna relate to your career is that talking and engaging with people is more important than you think because the more you can communicate and talk with people, the more impact you can have. You can do big team projects, you can get more done, you can be more effective and understand what the users need or want. And so just try not to, you know, just be on your keyboard all day. And also just things like coming here to dev comp, right? You see other people in the hallway, the hallway track, or you go to the parties and you talk to them, it's that's more, you don't realize it when you hear, right? But when you go back home and think about it, yeah, it's like I've made connections to these people, I know them, and so we're part of a community. So instead of being smelly hikers, you're smelly developers, but you smell together and it's all good. So as I mentioned, on the trail, because you had to carry all of your food or and you had to get water, we got water from streams. So there was, so you were constantly hungry because you couldn't possibly carry enough food to end. So, but there were these people, volunteers, who did what was called trail magic. So trail magic is people would sometimes leave food or drink, usually by roads or someplace convenient so that just free for hikers. And sometimes you could get this, you could get it today and maybe tomorrow you would be lucky, but sometimes you could go three weeks and you would, there'd be nothing, right? So it was unexpected. And so here's an example, this was cooler and there were sodas in it or drinks. And drinks like sodas were really special because you're never gonna carry something like that because it's too heavy, right? So it was really cool. And so they're just, people just generosity and kindness and usually you don't know who left them there. They're not looking for a thank you, they just wanna help and be part of a broader community. And if you took one of these bottles out of that cooler, it doesn't mean that you're weak or anything like that. It means that someone cares about you. So how can I draw a work or a technology analogy to that? Is ever since that trip, and I'm not gonna like ask you to pledge like Dan Walsh did, but I have set a personal goal that I have succeeded in ever since. And that is that every week I do trail magic at work to at least one person, usually more. And no, I'm not leaving sodas or food on people's desk. That's not what I do. But what I do is I look on things like, this red hat, this a million mail lists or someone you might have seen in a meeting that you think that someone could use some help or you see someone maybe even not behaving, not being a good team player. And so sometimes what I'll do is I'll send someone an email, I was like, hey, I have an idea. I know you're trying to do this project and did you think of trying it this way or asking someone that or I'll come up to someone in the hallway after a meeting and say, hey, that was a great presentation. You really did a good job. I especially liked this point. You're really good at that. So it's just encouragement or advice. It's sharing and a teamwork. And it's really easy to do, right? It doesn't cost me anything. But now it's a habit that I have. At first it was like, okay, have I done it this week? Have I helped anyone? And it only takes a minute or two, right? I'm not talking about big things. And it helps some other people know that they're not alone on the trail, that you're there with them, maybe you've done it before and you can help them and just know that more people succeed when others help them out. So if there's one thing, an only one thing you take away from this talk is do trail magic once a week for someone small, right? That's all, okay. So other thing, so this picture, so the trail would sometimes come by right through towns, which is awesome because you could just go to restaurant or sometimes take a shower. But other times you would have to hitchhike. Do we know what hitchhiking means? You try to like wave cars down and get a ride. So this is me in the back of a pickup truck going into town and there's in the back, that's probably like cow crap in the bottom of the truck, but that's fine. So, but the thing is, is that there was some people on this hike who were only, the only thing they cared about was finishing, right? So remember, most people take six months to complete this and they were like, oh, I'm not making as much progress as I need, I need to go faster or they're really like, they're over analyzing and they're overthinking the situation. And sometimes if all you think about is the finish, whether that's when the release is done or something like that, if all you think about is a goal that's far away, you kind of can miss the views or miss the celebrating with your team members, the small milestones along the way. And so what I want to point out here is that it's important not to just be like heads down, just work, work, work, just sometimes congratulate other people for finishing something or just say, well, this is cool, we're halfway there because if you're doing something, if it takes six months to finish something, and if you only think like, oh, I've got six months and now it's like, I've got five months and 30 days and I've got five months and 29 days, it kind of sucks, right? But just take it slow along the way and know that over those six months, you're gonna learn new things, you're gonna grow and you're gonna meet new people. So have some fun and it'll be so much better. Don't carry what you don't need. So this is the backpack that I would have and so in that would be is a tent, a sleeping bag, a cooking stove, all the clothing I would have, all my food. So you can see it's not a lot of stuff and so what I thought was gee what, because the heavier your bag is, the harder it is, so it's really all about getting small and less and so it's really amazing what you can live without. Like I would think like, oh, am I gonna miss my cars or I'm gonna miss my wife or I'm gonna miss other stuff. It's like, yeah, you do, sort of, but it shows that you don't need a lot to be happy. And so what does that have to do with work? And so I think it's really important to differentiate must have things that are nice versus what you really need and so I'll give some examples. One I like to say is sometimes you need to go down to go up and so I say that as part of leadership training so I'll give an example. I've had some managers and this is the same for engineers. You could be an engineer on a team and you could be the expert on something, whatever you're the best at. And you might do that for several years and then you might wanna do something different, grow, stretch, but sometimes you might say, hey, I was the expert over here, I had a lot of respect, I'm super awesome over here, everyone thinks I'm great. If I come over here and do something else, I'm not gonna be the expert anymore. Somebody else will know more and so I'm gonna lose some of my cred or power or and it's the same with managers. Some managers say, hey, I've managed this team for a long time, I've got 50 people in this team, I wanna do something different but if I come over there, there's only 20 people because it's smaller, I'm learning something. And to me, that's fine because when I say go down to come up, it's like maybe you have to leave being the smartest guy in the room to get somewhere else but know that a lot of people see your careers are not being narrowly focused in just one thing, right? It's really a lot of the people who are strongest know multiple spaces or multiple different technologies and so don't be afraid to leave something of comfort, something that you're big and go to something that you're small because that's really, because in through your whole career, maybe you'll become more of a generalist, maybe you'll become more of an architect by knowing more areas so don't be afraid to do that. Resilience, so you can set up all the plans you want but know that things aren't always gonna go exactly how you plan them. So this was an example. There were some, like shelters or lean twos along the trails. So they were usually like a, it would have a roof and three walls so like one of the walls would be open exposed and so the only time I would sleep in one of those when if it was like raining really a lot, right? And because the reason why you don't wanna stay in one of these shelters is because people snore so loud you cannot imagine and they're full of mice and so you have mice crawling over your face and your sleeping bags. You just get used to that but they chew your socks and stuff like that. So you try to avoid that. So this isn't just in one of those shelters and this is people hanging all their wet stuff that's just trying to drip down a little bit. So you're gonna have some rainy days in your career you know you're gonna break the builds you know people will knack your patches you know your manager will try to get you to do compliance training I mean there'll be all sorts of all sorts of things and so know that there's gonna be some of that stuff but again this goes back to the beginning slide it's like no pain no gain it's you know you try to set goals there will be know that there will be challenges and difficulties but know that you grow through those and it's like you know if you can handle one rainy day then if it's like rains for three weeks you'll be fine too and so a lot of this stuff too is that you know you try to succeed at it the people who succeeded on this hike are people who only had the commitment that they will do today and they will come back tomorrow that's all you need to commit to right is I'm gonna keep going today and tomorrow and if you can keep doing that it builds on it and like I said before any real goal is if it's easy it's not worth doing and you'll grow your skills through these challenges. So this is a picture on the summit this is the end of the Appalachian Trail and it was a really exciting moment and then what right what happens after that well so I came back to work some people didn't think I would come back but or maybe they hoped I didn't come back but I told people I was coming back so you always do what I was saying so this was pretty cool I came back and this was my office when I came back set up with tents and stuff like that and I really felt I was really happy with this experience and it really showed that you know I could be exceptional and that you could be exceptional too if you wanted to do it I really enjoyed the experience and I think that my team grew as well because they got to do other things to help fill in the blanks so when I came back they were people who from Red Hat and other places who helped me out along the way like there was one person he contacted me before I went on the hike and he said hey the trail goes right by my house why don't you stay at my house when you came through so I did and this is someone I never met before and his wife took this smelly hiker into their house and they were awesome so it was just like I was very thankful to them I was thankful to the people at work for stepping up and you know making me because I wasn't worried about Red Hat I really wasn't but Red Hat did fine and the thing I'm doing I then did which I hope I'm doing right here is to encourage other dreamers because we all can succeed if we want it hard enough and if we put in the effort and so what I talked before about what makes a good goal like what's a challenging goal to me so these are my ingredients for I think what makes a good journey or what are good goals I like goals that not everybody has done if everybody's done it it's not so interesting for me I like goals that not everybody could do or it's more like I think it's the first one because pretty much everybody could have done this hike but not everyone has but I like goals where you don't know the outcome like I didn't know if I was gonna succeed but I will say on the trail I never had any doubts that I would finish I was never really tempted to quit which was cool but it was hard there were days that were unpleasant there were days when you were covered in mosquitoes, bugs but I wouldn't change a thing but I like goals that have I like long-term goals, passion, perseverance so I think everyone in their career can set whether it's obtaining a master's degree or whether it's learning a new skill often these take time they're usually never easy but you can all do it so some people might think so what's next like so I came back from that hike I worked for three years almost and so I just announced this week or was it last week? I'm losing time but and I just announced that I've got another goal that I'm setting for myself so this goal this is gonna be a bicycle goal that I have and so what I'm gonna be doing is I get this new bicycle I bought it last year and I put some bags on it so I've got clothing and tent and some spare tires, right? so you and at this point I've only done one bike trip in my life I've done a three-day bike trip last summer so I've done my experience is one bike trip that's what I got so what can I do with three days worth of biking experience? why don't I cross the United States? so that's what I'm gonna do so this is a 8,000 kilometers or 5,000 miles because I figure if I can do three days it's like what did I say? you do today and you do tomorrow, right? so if I can do three days I can do three months what could possibly go wrong, right? and I'm not a real biker I don't know a lot about bikes I'm not very mechanically proficient but and I don't know what I'll encounter along the way but I'm not afraid to try and that's the thing set your goals don't be afraid to try but there's other people I can talk to so I'm gonna be starting this in early May of this year and so I'm going across the country starting on the East Coast and going across to the West and then my daughter lives in San Francisco so I'm gonna stop at her house that's the plan we'll see how it goes what is the gump trip? what's that? forest gump trip yeah, exactly so to me success is a journey, not the destination so hiking the Appalachian Trail was not about just the finish line, the end it was about enjoying the trip all the way and so I hope with you and your goals and your career that you can set ambitious goals that you know that you can be special if you want to be if you're willing to put in the effort and you can accomplish special things if you want and so enjoy the ride enjoy your career because I'll just try to I'm making this up but it's like a career that let's try to think about this a career that you don't challenge yourself and grow is not a career worth living I worked for 35 years I did different things and I think I'm better for it so that's what I encourage you guys challenge, grow and help each other out along the way and enjoy the journey so thank you okay so let's open up for questions I don't know if we have a microphone or if it's a small room I just repeated what you said alright okay the question was did I do it alone or as a group? I did it alone I started alone because for a couple reasons it's very hard to find like somebody who's willing to take four and a half months off from work to do something that's number one number two it's really hard to find somebody who's going at the same pace that you are because if someone's going too slow it doesn't fit or too fast you can break so I went alone and but what I found was that as I hiked there were you saw like over the first two weeks there were people who were like doing the same pace you would see them like at the end of the day at the campsite and so sorry there was another guy who we were going at the same pace so we basically did the first half of the hike together you know so I met them along the way but I didn't know going into it and then but there were other people that you would see so it wasn't just the two of us it was you know but you would meet different people and then my daughter did most of the second half of the hike with me which was really special and so for the bike trip that I'm doing I am going with another guy who and he's someone that my first day out of college my first day on the job I was worked with him so it's just you never know who you who you end up with which is good because he's a bicyclist he knows how to fix bikes and I don't so that's all uh... no I won't this is uh... this is my last uh... dev comp and you might say why uh... I love bruno I spent six months in bruno uh... bruno is an awesome place but I'm retiring from redhat uh... at the end of april and uh... why uh... to do more journeys that's why people said you know what's what's your retirement plan my plan is to play outside that's all there is to it some lessons from along the journey that's what the whole talk was about uh... but let me try to think hiking hiking detail uh... okay uh... sub-hiking details well this is a given example does this work I thought that when I went on the hike that I would learn a lot about cooking because it's all do you think they'd be experts there and so but you know what everybody was so tired from hiking all day and that nobody wanted to spend any time cooking so uh... this is why I'll teach you my entire trail uh... menu so and then we had um... so this is what it all came down to it was it was every meal every dinner was one of these and one of those and you know what it was tasted great because when you're out there even your shoe would taste good so that's something learned no no okay that's a that's a good question so this is actually so this was a short trip this was a three-day trip I have that what I'm gonna have is two bags this is one bag is only one there's two but I went on this trip I joined uh... some friends I know they were going across country last summer and I joined them for just three days of it and they had a lot more stuff than I'm gonna bring because what I learned was when I hiked the Appalachian Trail I had two two sets of clothing the one I was wearing and the other one that's it and so but these other bikers that I saw they had like four sets of clothing and they had one guy had he had like an iPad and he had his phone and he had like a solar panels and he had uh... batteries that were huge all this stuff and so I have I have not tried yet to pack my equipment into these bicycle bags but I know that I'm gonna have plenty of space like most of the most bikers have difficulty to you know thin out to carry less I know like how little you can succeed with so I'm not worried about I'm gonna be carrying less than most bikers and I'm gonna be happy with that okay I'll try to relay that question so I said you know I've done one week hike and so what's difference between one week in four and a half months uh... let me think about that first off uh... I bought specialized equipment so in order to get really lightweight gear they don't sell that at stores it's like niche or it's like boutique it's like you have to go online and like these forums there it's special lightweight backpacks it's special lightweight sleeping bags it's that was one thing that was different was the gear but aside from the gear uh... there really is no difference like I would if I knowing now with this experience if I was going on a one week hike I would take the same gear that I took on the four and a half month hike so there was because you have so little stuff there's so little luxuries that uh... so my lesson there now is that if I did a one week hike I will be carrying less than I used to carry before I've learned how little you can get away with yeah so the question is are there any luxuries I carried everybody carried luxuries something different so I'll tell you my daughter she had one of the most special luxuries my daughter really likes coffee I don't drink coffee but she loves coffee not only does she like so on the trail like some people have these packets it's called like vaya they said powder coffee powder mix that's that's the most like some people that's the most that some people had my daughter had this thing it was about this big and it was uh... a grinder you grind the beans and then it was a pour over you pour the water and drips the coffee we would be at days like way out in you know days out in the woods it's quiet and there will be other people at the campsite and she would get out her coffee grind you know which is loud and people think wow is that real coffee you know they were like and so she was and she would share and she was she was just very popular that was her luxury my luxury let me think what did i have uh... i had a pillow case uh... i didn't bring a pillow but i had like a a soft uh... cover that i could put smelly clothes in and use that as a pillow i had uh... what else did i have oh as you saw in the other picture i had an umbrella in the in the early part but i ended up getting rid of that because it was too it was too heavy it just wasn't worth it so that was a luxury i got rid of uh... i swear i had a luxury but i can't remember what it was uh... yeah i don't know like probably nothing much no you know what i would have for luxury this was uh... i like uh... salsa chips so whenever i would stop in a town i would have coming out attached to the back of my bag would always be a bag of salsa chips when i head into the woods so that was a luxury okay so yeah this is the question was what during the trip was i disconnected from the internet and other forms of social contact so uh... i did carry my cell phone with me uh... but it was an airplane mode most of the time because you didn't have reception most of the time i would come through a town like every three days so i like posted on facebook uh... called my wife text whatever uh... and i would like download when i was in town i download podcasts from uh... you know listen to along the trail uh... but so yeah i was somewhat connected like occasionally when you were on like a mountain that had reception but that was rare so usually you were disconnected and that was that was fine that was just part of the experience and you know what it was just like i was kind of happy to be away from listening to donald trump stupidity so it wasn't bad alright so one last question then we'll be out of town so were they like special people that i learned from or like was i inspired by certain sites i was i was inspired every day along the hike it was just you know well not every day some days were crappy and raining all the time but just picture you know this was special being at the end of the day sitting on like a uh... rock overlooking like the whole valley with my daughter cooking dinner like as a dad you know that's a special time and so there's a lot of that but in terms of special people uh... i had never i had met through hikers people who had hiked the at who were doing it in new hampshire so they were helpful there were some people that i do rock climbing with who had done it before and they were helpful to help like show me uh... tell me about the special uh... equipment that you might buy or to help me to get rid of stuff i didn't need so there are a lot of inspiring people uh... there were people other people like at work who had accomplished great things so there was a lot there was no one person that was a great community thing that inspired me alright so with that i think we've used up the time so i hope you've uh... you can set your own goals i hope you can do some trail magic for other people that you work with and i hope you know that you can be special too thank you