[pct-l] Thief

[Jim Serio <jim@rollercoaster.com>]

Was doing my weekly journal browsing and caught
this in Rob Bedichek's journal:

http://bedichek.org/robert/pct/progress.html

--
One sad thing happened at Red's Meadow. I ran into
another hiker who I had met earlier at Vermillion
and who seemed like an ok guy. His trail name was
"Junkyard Dog" and is from the east coast. I was
looking at his shirt, which said "Master Baiter",
and was thinking that was a dumb thing for a
23-year-old to wear. He thought I was looking at 
his stolen PCT sign (which I hadn't seen). He said 
he didn't think the forest service should be nailing
things into trees -- a lame excuse for stealing
government property. I told him that in the winter,
we depended on those signs high up on the trees to
find the trail. He stood by his rationale. I told
him that the trees weren't hurt by having something
nailed to them and in in case if he didn't like it,
he should write a letter, not steal the signs. It
saddened me that I was in the company of people who
would screw up the very thing that so many of the 
rest of us were trying to preserve and improve. While
I and others cleaned out fire pits, picked up litter,
and carried it many miles on our backs to make the 
forest a little cleaner, Junkyard Dog was ripping us
off.
--

Kinda sad that Rob's calling it quits. Anyone
want to speculate what the number 1 and 2 causes
of leaving the trail are? I'd guess feet problems
and depression (or some sort of other emotional
issues).

Jim
--
Jim Serio
Producer, World of Coasters
"Doing the PCt in Y2K"
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