Heaps O Swollen Cumulosity

Cumulus Cloud...

(1) Literally a pile of cloud, a mound, a heap, a dump, like a huge white dropping hanging in the sky over your head, suspended as if by magic.

Only they don't wander alone, these clouds. They always occur in herds.

Think herds of turds.

Big giant white ones, just itching to break open and dump everything they have right on your noggin.

So always wear a hat.

(2) A dense, white, fluffy, flat-bottomed cloud with a cauliflower-like rounded top and a well-defined outline, caused by a thermally unstable air mass ascending into the deep infinite blue sky to an altitude averaging 2 miles (3.2 km), but sometimes overshooting the target altitude and continuing to rise ever more rapidly until they explode into lightning, thunder, hail, tornadoes, cats, dogs, mice, wolves, and rain that falls hard enough to remove both the paint and the primer from that 1947 Ford pickup truck you are hiding under out in the pasture, which works well enough until the Lightning Targeting Subsystem finishes calibrating itself, and like the Death Star frying planet X, it strikes out at the simple minded hubris that inspired you to go trespassing in the outdoors.

Hah! Fool! ZZZZZap!

(3) A large white puffy cloud that develops through convection.

On a hot, humid day this pushes moisture-heavy air upward until the temperature of the air drops, resulting in condensation and towers of cloud which can then develop into cumulonimbus clouds, the ones with the really heavy artillery.

In this case it might help if you have along a member of your party that you don't really need. An expendable. Like on every Star Trek episode. You know a few, the people you've never seen before who fill up the back of the shuttle when all the bigshots go down to the surface of a strange and spooky planet to poke around.

Those people in the back are the ones that disappear into big cracks that suddenly form in the ground or who get eaten by odd life forms with a hitherto unknown and perversely unpredictable taste for low-ranking humans in uniform, or some itinerant mechanical gizmo that wobbles by and, apparently solely for the purposes of idle amusement, crushes a few.

Offer up one of those to the sky gods and see what happens.

But it probably won't work because cumulus clouds are actually among the most intelligent of clouds and are not easily fooled, especially by people of your caliber.

Nor are they immensely amused by those who try to fool them, so keep your wits about you.

Keep in mind too that ultimately you are in a game you will lose no matter how many times you seem to escape death.

So perhaps you should give up now, while you still have all your fingers and toes and enough of your brain cells left to make rational decisions possible, and go elsewhere, out of sight of cumulus clouds.

 

---

Have anything worth adding? Then try sosayseff@nullabigmail.com
Me? Finishing my 17th year of staying indoors, under the bed.

 

Etc...

so says eff: sporadic spurts of grade eff distraction
definitions: outdoor terms
fiyh: dave's little guide to ultralight backpacking stoves
boyb: dave's little guide to backpacks
snorpy bits: nibbling away at your sanity
last seen receding: missives from a certain mobile homer
noseyjoe: purposefully poking my proboscis into technicals

Buzzard Bait

(1) A poorly-prepared hiker, or one who is injured or sick, who requires emergency help or else will be eaten by birds.

(2) Ultralight backpackers, as viewed by jealous and unbelieving conventional backpackers, the assumption being that since ultralighters are not in pain, they can't possibly be carrying enough gear or food, or whatever, and therefore will perish. Soon. So very soon now.

This is belied by figures such as Brian Robinson and Andrew Skurka, who each used these techniques to safely hike thousands of miles in a single year and set records for distance and speed.

And completely avoided all flocks of ugly nippy birds.

 

---

Have anything worth adding? Then try sosayseff@nullabigmail.com
Me? Never really liked birds all that much. And now this...

 

Etc...

so says eff: sporadic spurts of grade eff distraction
definitions: outdoor terms
fiyh: dave's little guide to ultralight backpacking stoves
boyb: dave's little guide to backpacks
snorpy bits: nibbling away at your sanity
last seen receding: missives from a certain mobile homer
noseyjoe: purposefully poking my proboscis into technicals

Ax Me Anything (Hardware Edition)

Ax...

(1) To pose a question, but it's best not to push this too far. (See example, below.)

(2) A big knife-like thingy used for gross whittling exercises. Uses large muscle groups.

(3) Shaving instrument handy for rough first approximations or executions.

(4) Toy good for cutting off fingers.

(5) Heavy metal tool on a stick.

Normally this sort of implement is used to hack at things for various reasons, as in chopping up deadfall found on trails, or while constructing log bridges, water bars, and so on, but when misused these implements become known as "axes of evil".

The stick part is called the "handle". (Dig it.)

The place where the stick fits into the metal part is the "ax hole". (Ditto, sort of.)

Etc.

(6) Sounds made by a famished backpacker finally able to sit down to dinner after a 14-hour, 30-mile day, only to discover that the food is inedible. But it still has to be eaten in order to fend off death. (Pronunciation guide: Singular, ack. Plural, acks.) Generally, any sound which is the opposite of yum.

Sometimes the acking noises are caused by too many bugs in the food, but backpacking being what it is, backpacking meals can never have too many bugs.

If people ack at bugs in food it's a sure sign that they have slim credentials and haven't been on the trail long enough to need protein and vitamin supplements, so acking that progresses to retching is likely to result in revocation of one's backpacking license.

(7) Also known as "axe". (If words containing just two letters are too hard for you.)

 

Example: "Go ahead, ax me a question," said Ed, for the 37th time that day, which is what prompted Sue to finally reach for her ax.

A single-bit ax has one sharp edge and a double-bit ax has two of them, so with the latter you tend to realize more quickly when one has bitten you, as in Ed's case, though he soon began thinking of other things, and then didn't do much of anything for, like, forever mostly.

Sue later went on to become an ax for hire and brought peace to many more relationships. (After first finishing her hike.)

 

---

Have anything worth adding? Then try sosayseff@nullabigmail.com
Me? Guess.

 

Etc...

so says eff: sporadic spurts of grade eff distraction
definitions: outdoor terms
fiyh: dave's little guide to ultralight backpacking stoves
boyb: dave's little guide to backpacks
snorpy bits: nibbling away at your sanity
last seen receding: missives from a certain mobile homer
noseyjoe: purposefully poking my proboscis into technicals

Zipper Pull

Pull It, See What Happens.

 

(1) The amount of political, economic, social, or personal influence that your zipper has on the world. If you're laughing at this, then you are not famous and your very own zipper (and anything near it) has no pull. Loozah!

(2) A competitive and frantic backpacking sport, but played solo. It's just you pitted against that entire package of fig newtons you ate two hours ago. Good luck, because losing that race isn't funny. To you.

(3) That little dangly thing hanging off the zipper which you pull on as the first step in the process of bleeding your lizard, or which you pull on to cut off the draft after you've finished with the lizard stuff. NO — it's the little dangly thing ON THE ZIPPER, not the other little dangly thing.

How it works is the zipper pull is attached to the "slider", which is the part that pulls together the nasty "teeth", which are in turn attached to the "zipper tape", which is sewn into your pants, which is why it's all so solid and can get such a firm and unforgettable grip on you if you don't pay attention to what you are doing and how you are doing it. (It's like a sort of mechanically-operated IQ test.)

So, pulling on the zipper pull is a process that aids in causing many unfortunate accidents that could never occur when buttons ruled the earth, even if people were just as careless way back when.

(4) What allows you to get snugly and securely wrapped in your sleeping bag when you're tired and cold, and then when you wake up in the dark, having to pee like crazy, the thing that jams and keeps you snugly and securely locked in. Good luck with that.

(5) That deeply tingling feeling you get in the pit of your stomach when you step off the platform and go shooting down the zip line, especially if you discover, one or more microseconds too late, that only one end of the zip line is actually firmly attached to anything. Also known as The Ultimate Gravity Experience.

 

---

Have anything worth adding? Then try sosayseff@nullabigmail.com
Me? Being extra-careful lately.

 

Etc...

so says eff: sporadic spurts of grade eff distraction
definitions: outdoor terms
fiyh: dave's little guide to ultralight backpacking stoves
boyb: dave's little guide to backpacks
snorpy bits: nibbling away at your sanity
last seen receding: missives from a certain mobile homer
noseyjoe: purposefully poking my proboscis into technicals