Hi, I live alone but still have my own bedroom at my parents house. A year ago I noticed two perfectly round holes drilled into the wall, one right on top of the other. The one on top is larger, about the size and shape of a dime, and the lower was in smaller. The dresser is to the left of the holes. My bed is against the wall opposite of the dresser, so when I am laying in bed I am facing towards the holes in the wall. I stuck a chopstick in the larger hole on top to determine the depth and the chopstick went in 3/4 of the way. The chopstick would Not fit in the lower hole. Behind that bedroom wall is an open hallway space and a book shelf. I thought my parents had someone drill the whole for some reason like electrical issues and so I stuck some tissue in the larger hole and forgot about it. Also around that time I noticed an unknown WiFi network popping up whenever I am in my room. When visiting this April, three strange things happened. A relative who works with tech did a scan and walked our entire yard and neighborhood and determined the unknown WiFi network was detected when he was standing either in my room or in the yard area outside directly in front of my room. The network also showed much more strongly on my phone than his, prior to him doing the scan. We looked for any devices that may have WiFi connections but besides my parents security cameras, nothing was found or showed up. He noticed some weird things with the network connection when he did a deeper scan but wasn’t able to explain some things and said he would follow up with me but he had to travel abroad for a family emergency with his wife. The day he did the scan was really hot so I opened one of my two bedroom windows. I heard buzzing and realized bees were in my room. I then noticed the screen to my bedroom window was completely missing. I called my parents into the room and showed them both the wall holes and the missing window screen. They were both extremely shaken and confused. They said they had never drilled the holes and they didn’t know how they got there. They said no one had been in my room to do any work, and that their once a month housekeeper had not noticed the holes because I had tissue in them and she only cleans that room before I am visiting. They also were confused by the missing window screen as it is quite large and my dad would have noticed it in the trash or recycling.
Any suggestions on what could be happening and what we should do from here?
Additional weird things: when I go to certain pages, like swimguide , it shows “beaches near me” and lists all water places in toronto. I do not live in toronto.
I was briefly married to someone who works in prominent/high level political circles. While married he had my social security number and would access my bank accounts and monitored a lot of my devices but I have not had contact with him since 2018. I wrote another post about this but several months ago emails between us that were in my account for years were mysteriously deleted. I now have zero emails between him and I. I changed all my passwords when we got divorced.
In March 2022 I was visiting my parents and one morning I noticed a grey sedan at the bottom of my parents hill. I felt like I was being watched. I walked to the window and used my fingers to open the blinds wider and the grey car sped off. I only got a blurry picture and could not make out the make of the car or license plate. I thought that was strange.

WaltDisneyWorld would not let me post my travel thoughts, so posting here for others.
Firstly I want to say that I've been visiting Disney world since regularly for 40 years and I know all the parks and the history very well. In the early 2000's I lived in Windermere directly behind the Magic Kingdom and was a annual passholder. I'm also a Disney stock holder, so I follow the financials of the company and am aware of most if not all of the management decisions that have been made regarding the revenue of the parks and cost of running them. My hope is that this channel is monitored by Disney management personnel and some of my observations from an experience standpoint will fall on (mouse) ears.
I now live in Texas and have not been to any of the Disney parks for many years, so I was eager to take my 9 year old for her birthday to see the new attractions that everyone has been talking about this week (5/28 - 5/31). I had some old park hopper tickets that I was able to update to the new card system, which I immediately found complicated and arbitrary. I received several plastic cards to replace the paper tickets I had, but I could only determine what each of the cards had remaining on them by looking up each cards serial number using the Disney "Experiences" app. Now if you use Genie+ or Lighting Lane pass, every ride you go on requires you scan either your card, phone, or as I later discovered my iWatch if I paired it with the "Experience App". This required me to constantly pull out my card which quickly grew tiresome. My daughter saw everyone with a LED mickey wristband, which I learned was called a Magicband. I found out that it could be used to scan her into the rides and had an added benefit of playing a little audio clip on gold character statues around the park, and vibrated during fireworks, so I bought the cheapest one @ $35. A smart move by Disney to solve a problem with another upsell that they created in the first place.
I'm a software developer, so most technology does not usually confuse me, but the design of the "Experiences" app is pretty bad. It's very hard to get the information you need, the features are categorized poorly, not explained well, and navigation is redundant and unintuitive. I really don't know how the average family makes heads or tails of it. I think that the feature that I utilized the most was the Cast Member Chat, because they were the only one that could make any sense of the extensive rules and restrictions that have been added to all the parks and access. I leaned on the Disney ticket agent who was a 26 year Disney employee veteran to help setup which parks my daughter and I were interested in. I had to purchase an additional child's single day ticket ($5 off the $179 adult ticket) so I had the ticket agent set that up as well. The ticketing process is so confusing that even the 26 year Disney employee had a problem with the setup that I'll explain later.
The first day we went to Epcot for the Guardians Coaster, Ratatouille, and the Frozen ride what I had not seen before. I was told that to reserve the Guardians ride, I needed to get on the "Experiences" app at 7am to reserve a virtual queue in line. I loaded the app at 6:55am and kept refreshing until at 7 the screen switched to "Press to enter the Virtual Queue" button appeared. In the 4 seconds it took me to read the text on the page, the app told me that the virtual queue was already full and I would now have to wait until 1pm to try again or buy a lighting lane pass for $36 for the 2 of us. I wanted to park hop to Magic Kingdom and you are required to be in the park at 1pm to try the queue again so I simply bought the lighting pass to get it over with rather than spend my vacation pulling out my phone out and checking my watch and queue status all day.
Just as a FYI, I was successful queueing the next day for Tron, by using the same technique but hitting the "Press to enter the Virtual Queue" immediately, a process that I estimate took me 2 total seconds. Doing so I received a queue group of 72 which resulted in our group being called at 2:45pm in the afternoon. Needless to say I was left with a very bad taste in my mouth as I had to be on my phone at 7am every morning with mixed success and then even when I was successful I constantly had to check my phone to see where I was in the queue to avoid missing our place. Even my 9 year old was so annoyed by my phone obsession and eventually suggested that we only check the phone after we get off a ride.
We had to scan our fingers on the initial check in, which I'd heard about to lock our tickets to us. As a privacy advocate I'm not super excited about this, nor the idea that I cannot easily swap users of the card to another family member at my choosing, but I'm sure that others have expressed these concerns so I won't elaborate further. We were staying at a Disney Resort, so we arrived at the Epcot back entrance exactly at 8:30am to rope drop Ratatouille. Apparently that was everyone else's idea because the outdoor line queue for Ratatouille was already at 35 minutes when we arrived. When we did get on the ride, I was very underwhelmed with the presentation and felt that the quality of what I had known Disney to produce had severely dropped. I had to wear 3D glasses on a practical dark ride that moved in parts from 3D projection screens to small room breaks that had no characters or effects which required my to constantly remove and again put on the glasses to see anything clearly. As far as I could see there were no animatronics or real characters within the practical scenes and the 3D screens were dark, poorly aligned when attempting to create false parallax, and frequently distorted. Overall it reminded me of a rip-off of the Spiderman ride at Universal that was made about 10 years ago.
I bought 2 Genie+ passes in addition to the $36 Guardians Lighting Lane passes, so that added another $100 to our park tickets. As soon as we got in the park I made a Genie+ reservation for the Frozen ride, but the first available slot was 1:45pm, so I guess that's a popular one too. Since we had some time to wait for our 11:15am Guardians Lighting Lane reserve, we walked around world showcase, which was pretty much how I remember it and walk over to the new Moana water thing. I've probably been to Epcot about 200 times so I thought I knew my way around pretty well, but when I got the old communicore fountain area I got completely lost by the labyrinth of narrow paths and hidden turns. It seems Disney's original rule of designing a park to lead the patron to the next focal point has not been adopted by the current designers. The moana experience was wedged in between the restrooms between The Land and Living Seas pavilions, which was an odd choice when it seems they could have put it where the old communicore fountain was to both add tropical beauty to that previously dull area as well as implement an impressive water feature. As it is installed now, the experience is hidden, cramped, and overall does not really communicate the naturalist messaging that the numerous signs in the pathway claimed to resemble.
There was also a new choke point that was introduced between Spaceship Earth and the Land where the only path on that side of the park was about 12 feet wide. A great idea now that every other family either has a double wide stroller or electric scooter taking up even more of the pathway than they used to. I also noticed this at Hollywood Studios in the new Galaxy Edge area. Not sure why the current Disney design team thinks the paths in the parks should narrower than they were before, but my assumption is that it's a cost saving measure.
We made it on the new Guardians coaster with our lighting pass, and I appreciate that we did not have to wait in the regular queue and got on the preshow portion of the ride in 5 minutes. I thought the ride was ok, not great with heavy use of video projection in both the preshow and ride. The extent of practical effects was a giant planet that you rotate around which seems flat and unrealistic. For a ride that is supposed to be the new high standard of Disney Imagineering, it seems that a nearly completely reliance on some projection screens in a dark coaster seems cheap and uninspired. Does anyone remember the giant glowing future city at the end of World of Motion? How did we go from that to this?
We finished Epcot at the Frozen ride, which was lackluster with no story, cheap animatronic character that had disturbing glowing projection faces with dead stares. Not that the Norway ride was that great, but it at least and some interesting scenery, a troll with fiber optics and a drop with the Miniature practical Storm and Oil Rig which were slightly memorable. To replace it with a bunch of flat, black light painted wood panels to recreate one of the highest grossing animated modern era Disney films seems uninspired and unimaginative. I mean they couldn't even design an interesting mirrocrystal room for Elsa's Ice Palace that would make you feel like your are in a much bigger and impressive space?
The next day we went to Hollywood Studios and I paid another $44 for both of us to go on Rise of Resistance and $70 for 2 more Genie+ passes, so another $114 in addition to the cost of the park tickets. We did Tower of Terror first which thankfully has not been redesigned and still holds up over the years, even though I think the drops have been reduced and shortened, a change I'm sure my 9 year old did not have any objection with.
We made our way over to the new Pixar area which I found to be very garish and infantile, more like if McDonalds designed a theme park, not Disney or Pixar. The wait for Slinks coaster was already 90 minutes at 10:30am and even though we had the Genie+ pass, it was not available so we skipped it. On another note it was already 94 degrees and there is no shade in most areas of the new areas of this park other than some haphazardly placed umbrellas on the sides of the path that guests huddle underneath. It's like the park designers have never visited Florida in summer or simply don't care if anyone bakes in the sun.
We made it to the Star Wars area and I found it very confusing and mazelike. I never knew where I was, as the other areas I mentioned there were multiple choke points in the paths in a area that proved to be the most crowded in the park. The detailing of the buildings and nature features seemed cheapy executed and fake. They didn't really remind me much of the Star Wars universe and would barely hold up in an episode of the Mandalorian. My favorite experience by far was the Millennium Falcon ride where my daughter and I got to pilot the ship which was a dream experience. Even the queue area of this ride is amazing with the level of detail and nostalgia that I would expect from a E-Ticket Disney Ride.
Rise of the Resistance was fine, not worth $44, containing more of the poorly executed fake projection screens effects and motion vehicles traveling though cheaply constructed Empire/Order hallways. I'm also 95% sure that the Kylo Ren animatronic at the end is the recycled from the Wicked Witch from Great Movie Ride. I feel like the animation was even recycled.
Last day we went to Magic Kingdom with the intention of riding Tron and Snow White Mine Train. I bought Lighting Lane passes for both rides adding another $66 ($26 for SN and $40 for Tron) to the tickets. I again got up at 7am to enter the virtual raffle for the Tron queue, and discovered that I could now add my daughter to the queue group. I immediately contacted a Disney chat agent who discovered that the helpful Disney ticket agent who I purchased a single day ticket to Magic Kingdom had put in the wrong date for our visit. By doing so, it effectively made my daughter ticket ineligible for virtual queues (and may have not granted her access to the park for the day I paid for). Thankfully the online agent was able to change to date so I could actually use the $175 single park ticket that I bought the night before I intended to use it.
Snow White was well done and fun, sort of a combination or Matterhorn and Barnstormer. I did notice that it also contained the cheap animatronic characters that had disturbing glowing projection faces like the Frozen ride. Is it that really that hard to maintain facial articulation on audioanimatronics? Disney did it since Carousel of Progress and the projection faces seem like a huge step backward.
Tron was what I was most excited about being envious of the Tokyo version. The building that houses Tron is impressive and clearly designed to be a key feature to draw guests in with an extended walkway and LED effects on the scaffolding. I was able to reserve a virtual queue for the day, so I reserved a 10:00pm Lighting Lane pass. I preferred the night ride, as there was more constant immersion with indoooutdoor areas of the coaster. I thought the reclined ride cars were unique and well done if not a bit uncomfortable. They are slightly constrictive how they hold you in and I noticed that a child in the car in front of me was restrained to tightly and started to have trouble breathing screaming for help from her parents by the end of the ride, which was unsettling, so consider asking for the last car that does not have this type of restraint for little ones. The ride again was plagued with projection screens inside the ride in lieu of practical effects and reminded me or Guardians. We also bought a Diecast Tron lightbike with LEDs in the giftshop and upon getting home the bike was made in China, was broken and did not illuminate.
After all the travel, tacked on cost of all the addons, special ride passes, and the inconvenience of the highly restrictive and expensive park tickets and the cheaper quality of the rides, I don't feel like Disney offers a good value or exceptional experience anymore. I actually felt bad for families with several kids that clearly were spending thousands of dollars for a vacation that honestly felt more like a job most of the time. I also noticed cast members that were either rude, impatient, or audibly complaining about their job position, shift, the heat, or anything else that an average worker would complain about. I understand that Disney employees are regular people and not robots, but previously I always felt that Disney employees were extremely proud to be working at Disney World and it reflected in how they treated guests and it added to the magic. Now I just felt like I'm was six flags and everyone was just counting the minutes until they could go home. I'm glad that I could take my daughter and have the experience with her, but I will not be returning to Disney World any time soon as it seems that the company and how they value the guest experience has diminished significantly from what I remember.

Firstly I want to say that I've been visiting Disney world since regularly for 40 years and I know all the parks and the history very well. In the early 2000's I lived in Windermere directly behind the Magic Kingdom and was a annual passholder. I'm also a Disney stock holder, so I follow the financials of the company and am aware of most if not all of the management decisions that have been made regarding the revenue of the parks and cost of running them. My hope is that this channel is monitored by Disney management personnel and some of my observations from an experience standpoint will fall on (mouse) ears.
I now live in Texas and have not been to any of the Disney parks for many years, so I was eager to take my 9 year old for her birthday to see the new attractions that everyone has been talking about this week (5/28 - 5/31). I had some old park hopper tickets that I was able to update to the new card system, which I immediately found complicated and arbitrary. I received several plastic cards to replace the paper tickets I had, but I could only determine what each of the cards had remaining on them by looking up each cards serial number using the Disney "Experiences" app. Now if you use Genie+ or Lighting Lane pass, every ride you go on requires you scan either your card, phone, or as I later discovered my iWatch if I paired it with the "Experience App". This required me to constantly pull out my card which quickly grew tiresome. My daughter saw everyone with a LED mickey wristband, which I learned was called a Magicband. I found out that it could be used to scan her into the rides and had an added benefit of playing a little audio clip on gold character statues around the park, and vibrated during fireworks, so I bought the cheapest one @ $35. A smart move by Disney to solve a problem with another upsell that they created in the first place.
I'm a software developer, so most technology does not usually confuse me, but the design of the "Experiences" app is pretty bad. It's very hard to get the information you need, the features are categorized poorly, not explained well, and navigation is redundant and unintuitive. I really don't know how the average family makes heads or tails of it. I think that the feature that I utilized the most was the Cast Member Chat, because they were the only one that could make any sense of the extensive rules and restrictions that have been added to all the parks and access. I leaned on the Disney ticket agent who was a 26 year Disney employee veteran to help setup which parks my daughter and I were interested in. I had to purchase an additional child's single day ticket ($5 off the $179 adult ticket) so I had the ticket agent set that up as well. The ticketing process is so confusing that even the 26 year Disney employee had a problem with the setup that I'll explain later.
The first day we went to Epcot for the Guardians Coaster, Ratatouille, and the Frozen ride what I had not seen before. I was told that to reserve the Guardians ride, I needed to get on the "Experiences" app at 7am to reserve a virtual queue in line. I loaded the app at 6:55am and kept refreshing until at 7 the screen switched to "Press to enter the Virtual Queue" button appeared. In the 4 seconds it took me to read the text on the page, the app told me that the virtual queue was already full and I would now have to wait until 1pm to try again or buy a lighting lane pass for $36 for the 2 of us. I wanted to park hop to Magic Kingdom and you are required to be in the park at 1pm to try the queue again so I simply bought the lighting pass to get it over with rather than spend my vacation pulling out my phone out and checking my watch and queue status all day.
Just as a FYI, I was successful queueing the next day for Tron, by using the same technique but hitting the "Press to enter the Virtual Queue" immediately, a process that I estimate took me 2 total seconds. Doing so I received a queue group of 72 which resulted in our group being called at 2:45pm in the afternoon. Needless to say I was left with a very bad taste in my mouth as I had to be on my phone at 7am every morning with mixed success and then even when I was successful I constantly had to check my phone to see where I was in the queue to avoid missing our place. Even my 9 year old was so annoyed by my phone obsession and eventually suggested that we only check the phone after we get off a ride.
We had to scan our fingers on the initial check in, which I'd heard about to lock our tickets to us. As a privacy advocate I'm not super excited about this, nor the idea that I cannot easily swap users of the card to another family member at my choosing, but I'm sure that others have expressed these concerns so I won't elaborate further. We were staying at a Disney Resort, so we arrived at the Epcot back entrance exactly at 8:30am to rope drop Ratatouille. Apparently that was everyone else's idea because the outdoor line queue for Ratatouille was already at 35 minutes when we arrived. When we did get on the ride, I was very underwhelmed with the presentation and felt that the quality of what I had known Disney to produce had severely dropped. I had to wear 3D glasses on a practical dark ride that moved in parts from 3D projection screens to small room breaks that had no characters or effects which required my to constantly remove and again put on the glasses to see anything clearly. As far as I could see there were no animatronics or real characters within the practical scenes and the 3D screens were dark, poorly aligned when attempting to create false parallax, and frequently distorted. Overall it reminded me of a rip-off of the Spiderman ride at Universal that was made about 10 years ago.
I bought 2 Genie+ passes in addition to the $36 Guardians Lighting Lane passes, so that added another $100 to our park tickets. As soon as we got in the park I made a Genie+ reservation for the Frozen ride, but the first available slot was 1:45pm, so I guess that's a popular one too. Since we had some time to wait for our 11:15am Guardians Lighting Lane reserve, we walked around world showcase, which was pretty much how I remember it and walk over to the new Moana water thing. I've probably been to Epcot about 200 times so I thought I knew my way around pretty well, but when I got the old communicore fountain area I got completely lost by the labyrinth of narrow paths and hidden turns. It seems Disney's original rule of designing a park to lead the patron to the next focal point has not been adopted by the current designers. The moana experience was wedged in between the restrooms between The Land and Living Seas pavilions, which was an odd choice when it seems they could have put it where the old communicore fountain was to both add tropical beauty to that previously dull area as well as implement an impressive water feature. As it is installed now, the experience is hidden, cramped, and overall does not really communicate the naturalist messaging that the numerous signs in the pathway claimed to resemble.
There was also a new choke point that was introduced between Spaceship Earth and the Land where the only path on that side of the park was about 12 feet wide. A great idea now that every other family either has a double wide stroller or electric scooter taking up even more of the pathway than they used to. I also noticed this at Hollywood Studios in the new Galaxy Edge area. Not sure why the current Disney design team thinks the paths in the parks should narrower than they were before, but my assumption is that it's a cost saving measure.
We made it on the new Guardians coaster with our lighting pass, and I appreciate that we did not have to wait in the regular queue and got on the preshow portion of the ride in 5 minutes. I thought the ride was ok, not great with heavy use of video projection in both the preshow and ride. The extent of practical effects was a giant planet that you rotate around which seems flat and unrealistic. For a ride that is supposed to be the new high standard of Disney Imagineering, it seems that a nearly completely reliance on some projection screens in a dark coaster seems cheap and uninspired. Does anyone remember the giant glowing future city at the end of World of Motion? How did we go from that to this?
We finished Epcot at the Frozen ride, which was lackluster with no story, cheap animatronic character that had disturbing glowing projection faces with dead stares. Not that the Norway ride was that great, but it at least and some interesting scenery, a troll with fiber optics and a drop with the Miniature practical Storm and Oil Rig which were slightly memorable. To replace it with a bunch of flat, black light painted wood panels to recreate one of the highest grossing animated modern era Disney films seems uninspired and unimaginative. I mean they couldn't even design an interesting mirrocrystal room for Elsa's Ice Palace that would make you feel like your are in a much bigger and impressive space?
The next day we went to Hollywood Studios and I paid another $44 for both of us to go on Rise of Resistance and $70 for 2 more Genie+ passes, so another $114 in addition to the cost of the park tickets. We did Tower of Terror first which thankfully has not been redesigned and still holds up over the years, even though I think the drops have been reduced and shortened, a change I'm sure my 9 year old did not have any objection with.
We made our way over to the new Pixar area which I found to be very garish and infantile, more like if McDonalds designed a theme park, not Disney or Pixar. The wait for Slinks coaster was already 90 minutes at 10:30am and even though we had the Genie+ pass, it was not available so we skipped it. On another note it was already 94 degrees and there is no shade in most areas of the new areas of this park other than some haphazardly placed umbrellas on the sides of the path that guests huddle underneath. It's like the park designers have never visited Florida in summer or simply don't care if anyone bakes in the sun.
We made it to the Star Wars area and I found it very confusing and mazelike. I never knew where I was, as the other areas I mentioned there were multiple choke points in the paths in a area that proved to be the most crowded in the park. The detailing of the buildings and nature features seemed cheapy executed and fake. They didn't really remind me much of the Star Wars universe and would barely hold up in an episode of the Mandalorian. My favorite experience by far was the Millennium Falcon ride where my daughter and I got to pilot the ship which was a dream experience. Even the queue area of this ride is amazing with the level of detail and nostalgia that I would expect from a E-Ticket Disney Ride.
Rise of the Resistance was fine, not worth $44, containing more of the poorly executed fake projection screens effects and motion vehicles traveling though cheaply constructed Empire/Order hallways. I'm also 95% sure that the Kylo Ren animatronic at the end is the recycled from the Wicked Witch from Great Movie Ride. I feel like the animation was even recycled.
Last day we went to Magic Kingdom with the intention of riding Tron and Snow White Mine Train. I bought Lighting Lane passes for both rides adding another $66 ($26 for SN and $40 for Tron) to the tickets. I again got up at 7am to enter the virtual raffle for the Tron queue, and discovered that I could now add my daughter to the queue group. I immediately contacted a Disney chat agent who discovered that the helpful Disney ticket agent who I purchased a single day ticket to Magic Kingdom had put in the wrong date for our visit. By doing so, it effectively made my daughter ticket ineligible for virtual queues (and may have not granted her access to the park for the day I paid for). Thankfully the online agent was able to change to date so I could actually use the $175 single park ticket that I bought the night before I intended to use it.
Snow White was well done and fun, sort of a combination or Matterhorn and Barnstormer. I did notice that it also contained the cheap animatronic characters that had disturbing glowing projection faces like the Frozen ride. Is it that really that hard to maintain facial articulation on audioanimatronics? Disney did it since Carousel of Progress and the projection faces seem like a huge step backward.
Tron was what I was most excited about being envious of the Tokyo version. The building that houses Tron is impressive and clearly designed to be a key feature to draw guests in with an extended walkway and LED effects on the scaffolding. I was able to reserve a virtual queue for the day, so I reserved a 10:00pm Lighting Lane pass. I preferred the night ride, as there was more constant immersion with indoooutdoor areas of the coaster. I thought the reclined ride cars were unique and well done if not a bit uncomfortable. They are slightly constrictive how they hold you in and I noticed that a child in the car in front of me was restrained to tightly and started to have trouble breathing screaming for help from her parents by the end of the ride, which was unsettling, so consider asking for the last car that does not have this type of restraint for little ones. The ride again was plagued with projection screens inside the ride in lieu of practical effects and reminded me or Guardians. We also bought a Diecast Tron lightbike with LEDs in the giftshop and upon getting home the bike was made in China, was broken and did not illuminate.
After all the travel, tacked on cost of all the addons, special ride passes, and the inconvenience of the highly restrictive and expensive park tickets and the cheaper quality of the rides, I don't feel like Disney offers a good value or exceptional experience anymore. I actually felt bad for families with several kids that clearly were spending thousands of dollars for a vacation that honestly felt more like a job most of the time. I also noticed cast members that were either rude, impatient, or audibly complaining about their job position, shift, the heat, or anything else that an average worker would complain about. I understand that Disney employees are regular people and not robots, but previously I always felt that Disney employees were extremely proud to be working at Disney World and it reflected in how they treated guests and it added to the magic. Now I just felt like I'm was six flags and everyone was just counting the minutes until they could go home. I'm glad that I could take my daughter and have the experience with her, but I will not be returning to Disney World any time soon as it seems that the company and how they value the guest experience has diminished significantly from what I remember.

Paper shredding, not guitar shredding. I wish I could shred on guitar. I don't know what recycling a guitar solo would mean. Kirk Hammett? (That's a jerk thing to say and I don't mean it. Sorry, Kirk. How was Milan, by the way?)
Anyhoo. I have about 30 gallons or so of shredded paper. I need advice. Can I just dump it into my recycle bin? Do I need to bag it first? Can I plastic-bag it or do I need paper? Should I go to a transfer station? Anyone have 30 hamster cages that need bedding?
I know this sounds like a dumb question, but a guy down the street from didn't ask it, and the neighborhood had paper bits in almost every yard for a month. It looked like Tony Montana's desk if Tony Montana was 150 ft tall.
(Yep. I did the math). Thanks to anyone who even reads this.

I am so lenient. I don’t discipline. I am so fucking nice to these kids. Almost 8 freaking years of being nice and doing all the hard mom stuff with none of the mom love. I’m a pacifist when it comes to them. They leave a mess. It’s okay! I’ll get it. They were in a rush. They leave new food open to get stale? It’s okay! They didn’t mean to. They left without doing a single chore again? It’s fine. I’ll send a friendly reminder via text! They will learn. They’re good kids at heart!
Well FUCK this. My SO is such a Disney dad this last 4ish years. The kids don’t have any responsibilities aside from keeping their own rooms clean. I had a baby a couple months ago and so we agreed to give the kids chores and that they need to contribute to this household not just show up 50% and have a free for all and leave. So I made a nice little chore chart on the fridge. They each have 3 chores. SS18: fill up the water bottles in the fridge, empty the trash cans when they’re full and take the bins out on trash day. SS14: keep the backyard clean (he plays out there) , feed the dog dinner before 7, water the plants in the yard once a week. THATS ITTTTTT. Other than that it’s “please clean up after yourself and keep your belongings in your room not in the common areas”. NOPE!!!!!! They can’t freaking manage!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I have to remind them every single day that they’re here to do a chore. I send friendly reminders to please check the chart before leaving everyday and make sure their chores are completed. I still have to remind them. Always. I even have to remind their dad to remind them because I’m not going to get upset with his children. Not my place to discipline.
They’ve only been here since Monday this week and I’m already ready to freak out. SS14 (who is my favorite one) likes playing in the yard. Which we encourage because it’s better than rotting in front of the TV. His “playing” is he uses his little swords he collects and chops up old water bottles from the recycle. Fine. But it’s been a hassle getting him to clean up afterwards. There’s always water bottle wrappers in the plants and lawn etc. We have a pool and his trash is always going into the pool and clogging up the filters. We keep asking him to please clean up!!! He will go outside and clean up like 60% of his mess. And I’m sorry but going out there with him and showing him every piece he’s missing is another job I don’t need. Today my mom takes my baby so I decide to clean up the patio in the yard. This leads me to find that he chopped several times into the wooden fence we share with the neighbors. It’s a nice new fence and he took an axe to it and one of the planks is super chopped up now it looks like shit. THEN I find my special water for my babies bottles out there. I have to buy special baby water for his formula and yesterday I knew I had enough in the jug for about 3 more bottles but it was missing. My SO was like “ugh idk u probably used it and don’t remember”. PLEASE 😒. His kid took it and wasted it with his stupid backyard bullcrap. Then I see he spray painted on the fence too. Big black spray paint. On the nice wooden fence. WHAT THE EFFFFFFF!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I want to scream at these freakin kids!!!!!!!!!!!!! Your father and I pay good money to live in a nice fucking house in a nice fucking neighborhood!!!!!!!!!!!!! Why do they treat this house like crap?!?!
This is a vent. I understand it’s my SO’s fault. But the kids aren’t idiots. They don’t need their dad to be strict to know you don’t spray paint or chop up a fucken fence. I told him we need a family meeting and I really want to to say “if you don’t appreciate this home then it’s really okay if you want to go live with your mom full time. Truly it’s okay. But if you want to be here you need to grow up and show this home respect.”

I have an announcement about the future of this series. Some IRL stuff is taking up a lot of my time. It's nothing serious, so don't worry. As it stands, I simply don't have the time to write as much as I was before. This does not mean that I'm putting NiTH on hiatus. The series will continue. But, and there is a but. Since I don't have as much time to put into writing it, updates will likely be slower. As such, I won't be able to promise a consistent schedule. Or even a schedule at all.
I'll still try to keep it somewhat consistent. I just don't want people to freak out if there's a week with no update.
Many thanks to u/SpacePaladin15 for this universe.
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Chapter 16:
- Memory Transcription Subject: Meba, Venlil Computer Scientist
Date [Standardized Human Time]: October 20th, 2136
The boot was cool against my back. So was the rain, which was beating down again. Mud caked on my fur like resin, and the taste of dirt wouldn’t leave my mouth. The sound of wind beat on my eardrums like sticks on a drum. Gusts came in waves, bringing sheets of water careening through the air at an almost horizontal angle. I couldn’t see above the hips of our attackers with my head pressed to the ground. There was another sense that only Arlene was privy to, but that didn’t stop the experience from being thoroughly miserable.
I spit some of the grit out of my mouth. The only thing I could think of was how cold it was.
They must be warm, in their insulated suits.
“Why are you doing this?” I wanted to ask, though I didn’t.
Arlene was to my right, shivering. She would get hypothermia if she didn’t get out of the rain soon.
I was heaved to my feet, with a throbbing head, and shaky legs. I struggled in their grip, but that only netted me another blow to the face. My feet played hot potato with the ground, as it swayed out from under me, around, and back again. I almost wished it would open up and swallow me, swallow us all, just to be done with it.
One of the three brandished a baton, the others held Arlene and I. Were they the group from before? I couldn’t tell beneath the suits. My stomach exploded with pain, and I lost the fancy bunt leaf salad that Gram bought me.
The moment stretched on to infinity. My muscles clenching, my teeth chattering, and a bit of my drool getting to know the puddle on the ground. My wool helped a bit. Arlene didn’t have the luxury of padding.
Don’t look, don’t look, don’t look.
I looked.
Her usually white teeth were stained pink. The mask was lying in the mud, completely covered in it.
I looked away before I could glean anything else.
“Hey, buddy, you still with me?” Said the leader. Or, something along those lines; I couldn’t really hear him. He placed the baton under my snout and raised my head. Soon, he removed the baton and said something to his lackeys.
The ground started moving. No, I started moving. I was being dragged towards a tree, by my scruff. Arlene too. They pressed me up against the trunk; the wind was a little quieter under the canopy.
“There we go.” Said the leader. His voice sounded familiar. “Think you’re a tough guy, huh? Friends in high places? You gave us some real trouble, didn’t you!”
“Stop!” Arlene screamed.
Pain. Another blow. To my head. My vision blurred. I tried to stand. I couldn’t. Arlene. Was she okay? I couldn’t see. My chest lurched forward. Coughing. My coughing. I gasped for air. I tried to speak. I failed. He went for a kick. I was only partially able to block with my arms.
I fell to my side, gathering even more mud in my coat. I summoned every ounce of strength in my body, and raised my head. Arlene was there, struggling in their grasp. I don’t know how she could function through the pain.
She grabbed the exterminator behind her, and threw him over her shoulder, then slipped in the mud, and fell down… right on top of the him. He yelped in pain. The one with the baton turned their back to me. I groped around in the dark for something, anything. I found a rock.
“Freeze!” The exterminator yelled, barely audible over the storm.
NO!
I slammed the rock into the only vulnerable area I could reach: the groin. The suit had padding, but it wasn’t enough. He instantly dropped his sidearm, or rather, his sidearm dropped him, because he hit the ground first. I might have felt bad, if not—no, no I wouldn’t have.
Arlene struggled to her feet, blood still burning with alcohol. She stumbled towards us, hopped into the air, bringing one leg back behind her, and the other into the ground with all her weight. In an instant, her elevated leg swung forth with terrifying speed, boot blurring in the rain, mud flying off in an arc. I was lucky I wasn’t in the splash zone, because some would have gone into my mouth, which was hanging open like a faulty airlock.
It connected.
His head jerked backwards at an ugly angle, with such force that it might have snapped his neck, if he didn’t have the strong neck of a venlil. He fell over backwards, though so did Arlene, as inertia carried her leg higher and higher, until it was above her head, which soon found its place in the mud.
“Arlene!”
There was still one more exterminator. Arlene was down, and I was too far away. If the last one decided to pull his gun, one of us was going to die. I tried. I tried so hard to stand… but I couldn’t.
No sound pierced the rain.
I looked to the third, who was quite literally shaking in his boots. He didn’t pull any weapons, though he was cursing vehemently under his breath. He took a step towards Arlene.
“Don’t touch her!” I screamed, though he only froze for a moment before continuing.
He passed Arlene, and bent down by the leader. Both of the officers Arlene attacked were writhing in pain on the ground. The third looked to me, then to Arlene, and back to his squad. “Oh stars…” He heaved his boss up around his shoulders, and helped him limp away out of the yard.
“Dammit Lanek! Don’t leave me!” Said the one Arlene fell on, struggling to rise.
“I’ll be back!” Lanek replied.
While they were occupied, I crawled over to Arlene, clutching my stomach. “Arlene? Arlene, are you okay?”
She was pulling herself out of the mud. “Never better…” She growled. Arlene gave me a thumbs up; her face was discolored.
The second officer starting limping away, while Lanek returned to help him. Lanek offered his squad mate a shoulder, but he declined, only shuffling away faster. “Go brahk yourself!” He said, and Lanek was left standing near the gate.
He looked like a lost kid, glancing around the yard all worried. He locked eyes with me. I couldn’t think of anything snarky, or intimidating to say, so I just sighed.
Lanek bowed. “I’m sorry. I’m really sorry.” He said, voice cracking. He scurried away, but I could only relax once the sound of the squad car’s engine was drowned out by the rain.
Arlene stood up, dragging me along with her. “Fuck, I’m too drunk for this.” She slurred.
Getting inside in the rain was a group effort. The wind pushed us to and fro, and out combined strength barely kept us upright. I collapsed at the bottom of the staircase, gasping and shaking. She pulled me up by my scruff, causing a considerable amount of pain. I would have complained, if there was another way I was getting up those stairs.
“Sweet baby jesus, please tell me you have your key.” She panted.
I was too focused on digging through my belongings to ask about the nickname, adhering even more mud to my already mud-covered bag. At least I didn’t have to worry about ruining my datapad, since it was already dead.
“Found it.” I shoved the key into the door, and ripped it open with all of my might.
Arlene dragged me the rest of the way in, slammed the door, and collapsed on my couch. I was left to close the locks. As I did so, I found my door looking a little sparse.
A few more locks wouldn’t hurt.
I chewed on my thoughts for a while. Yes, more locks sounded good. Very good. The more exotic the better. A bio-metric scanner was a must. Hell, why don’t we throw in a vault door while we’re at it? Locks don’t do anything unless the door is impenetrable. An auto-turret would go nicely with my new vault. I had to discourage intruders somehow. Scratch that, fifty would be better. I needed an air filtration system as well, so people couldn’t smoke me out. The walls would also need to be reinforced. No, moving inside a mountain would be better. I wasn’t made of money after all, and stone is just as good as steel if you have enough of it. I could have a hydroponics area, and a water recycling plant, so I wouldn’t have to go out to buy food. The only problem was power. Brahk it, I could just sap some illegally. No one would notice, right? Who was I kidding? Everyone would notice.
I laughed.
A fusion plant would be required as well then. It couldn’t be that hard. I could just have robots manage it. Real people would be cheaper, but that would defeat the purpose. Maybe I could make fake people too? Make an artificial town? That would be great! Everything would be perfect. I could make everything stable and safe. No one would mess it up. Not even Uanta. And I wouldn’t even need to worry about raids because it would be hidden inside a mountain.
It was time to stop messing around. I needed to clean myself. I needed to get a blanket for Arlene. And, I needed to check both our injuries.
The blanket was the easiest, and was done in no time at all. Cleaning myself was a little more time consuming. Besides my everything hurting, I was falling asleep, and my bathtub was being difficult. After an inordinate amount of messing with it, I concluded the boiler had broken… again.
Lovely place I’ve got here. Cold water it is!
I lowered myself into the glacial depths, cursing everything I could think of to curse. I ended up scrubbing the mud out of my coat while standing, almost falling over more than once. After I was clean, I inspected my body. I was pretty sure nothing was broken, but lots of things hurt. My head especially.
Trudging into the living room, I found Arlene laying on the couch. She had removed her coat and boots, leaving them by the front door. She had also turned the blanket the other way around so the side without the mud was on her. Everything would need to be cleaned next paw. Everything. Now she was well and truly sleeping, so I didn’t wake her. I did take a closer look at her face, which was bruised with blotches of yellow and purple not unlike the human protecting his friend at the riot. At least her nose stopped bleeding.
My heart finally stopped racing, and I yearned for sleep. But I couldn’t rest yet.
I went to my computer, and booted it up. The scarcely opened desktop messaging app would finally get some use. One to Uanta, and one to Gram.
“Do you know anyone called Lanek?”
“I’ll do it.”
- Memory Transcription Subject: Meba, Venlil Computer Scientist
Date [Standardized Human Time]: October 21st, 2136
I awoke to the sound of running water, and to sore muscles. Peeling myself out of my chair, I found my living room devoid of humans. That explained the noise coming from the bathroom. Taking a look around, I noticed that the mud she tracked in was gone, and my couch was in a somewhat better condition. There was a note written on a paper towel laying on one of the cushions. I think she forgot I couldn’t read human script.
Well, I would just have to ask her about it when she finished in the shower. If I had the time, that is. Looking at the clock, it was already time to leave for work. I didn’t even have the luxury of groaning in annoyance if I wanted to get there on time. So I grabbed my bag, shoved some stuff in the muddy thing, and opened the door.
Sidewalk, station, tube ride, station, and sidewalk passed by in a haze, and I soon found myself standing outside the building. I passed by several coworkers on the way up, all of whom gave me looks on varying levels of ‘Who is this homeless guy and why is he in the building?’. The ones who recognized me asked me what happened, to which my only reply was: “Rain.”
That didn’t explain the bruises, but it didn’t need to. My tone assured them that no matter what they said, their questions wouldn’t be answered. I did not get enough sleep for this. Not that it would have been any better if I did.
At my desk, there was a note taped to my computer. It said something about a party after work, to which everyone in the office was invited. I couldn’t glean anything more before I ripped it off and threw it in the trash. I inspected the rest of the area for other disturbances. No one touches my work space. No one. I spent the next eighth of a claw removing the residue left from the adhesive, wondering how I would install a lock on a doorless cubicle.
Once my desk was restored, I booted up my computer in preparation for work. There was quite a backlog. My paws felt clammy, and so did my brain. I had never been so furious in my entire life. Every time I thought of those bastards, my paws shook, and my ears twitched with anger. I felt so powerless. I had to do something.
But they’re exterminators. What can I do against them?
Crush them.
And how?
There wasn’t time to be daydreaming; I needed to focus. Even if I could get back at them right that second, it wouldn’t matter if I was starving on the streets, so I was resigned to work. I took a deep breath and began, fueled by the promise of a chance to fix my situation. Despite this, I didn’t get through half of it before I was called to the meeting room. I grumbled to myself before stomping out of my cubicle. The denizens of the water cooler watched me as I walked past. It reminded me of the restaurant.
I entered the meeting room, and faced my boss. There was an arrangement of folding tables forming a hollow square, with chairs lining the outer edge. The room was a similar shape to the table, with good lighting and clear air. Almost like a hospital. Behind the spot he was standing, was a whiteboard with various incoherent scribbles that I had no desire, much less hope of deciphering. This particular room functioned as both a meeting room and his office. Even after almost 9 rotations of business, the place still hadn’t lost all of its tech startup quirks. I would have liked to see the way the place was before it became reputable.
“Meba, good. It’s good to see you.” He said. Everything was always ‘good’ with him.
I signed a greeting with my tail.
“Don’t be shy, take a seat.” He motioned to a chair.
Of course he wanted me to take a seat. Presumably while he remained standing, just to show me how below him I was. Well, I had no choice, it would be a faux pas to decline. My standing in the office was already low enough as the resident recluse. I sat down.
He sat down across the table from me and took a deep breath. I hated how calm he was.
“I have some concerns about your work.” ‘Some concerns’. That’s shorthand for ‘I don’t like you’.
My heart rate sped up considerably. “Such as? I’ve always been productive, and I’m never late to work.” I almost hissed, utterly failing to keep my cool.
“Yes, well…” He paused for a second, studying me, as if I was on display in a museum. “You have been having some trouble lately, haven’t you?”
My ears stood straight up. “Just some minor setbacks. It’s nothing.”
“Minor.” He echoed.
“Y-yes.”
“Meba, you’ve delayed five requests.”
“I was just finishing them up as we speak.” I snapped back.
He sighed. “You see, this isn’t helping anything. I’m not trying to attack you.”
I didn’t reply.
“Look, I like you. You’re good at what you do. But, you’ve been slipping lately.”
I gulped, and my ears twitched.
He put his paws together on the table, and leaned over to me. “I think you should take some time off.” He said softly.
What does he think I am, a child?
“Not a chance.” I replied.
“Why not?”
“I’m not going to take time off.”
He sat back in his chair. “You still have all of this rotation’s vacation time. You know it doesn’t stack, right?” I almost couldn’t believe he said that to my face.
“I am well aware of how this company handles vacations.” I growled.
“Then why don’t you take one?” He said, ignoring, or perhaps unaware of my anger. “You haven’t taken a single paw off the entire time you’ve worked here.” He signed false concern.
“There’s no reason to.” I explained.
“If it’s the office you’re worrying about, don’t. It won’t explode just because you take some time for yourself.” He retorted.
‘We don’t need you’, huh?
“I know.”
He ruffled the fur on his head in frustration. “I can’t let you keep working like this. Not in good conscience. Please, just go home for a few paws. Go home and rest up.” He flicked his tail towards the door to send me off.
“I can’t.”
He gawked at me, incredulous. “Why not?”
“I just can’t. I have to work. It’s part of my schedule.” I mumbled.
“Your vacation would be paid.”
“That’s not it!” I snapped, speaking frantically. “That’s not it at all. What will I do instead of working, then? What? There would be no balance. Don’t you get it? Does anybody get it? I need this, or else everything will be messed up.” I gasped after running out of air, placing a paw over my mouth before the regret spilled out.
He stared at me, mouth hanging open, but saying nothing.
I glanced around the room, considering flight, but instead mumbling. “Sorry…”
We sat in awkward silence for a few moments, until he began to speak, solemnly. “Meba. That was extremely unprofessional. However, I’m going to let you off the hook this time. I don’t want to see anything like that again. You may keep working if you wish, but if your poor performance continues, I will be forced to fire you. I highly suggest you take some time off. I’ve seen people, good people, drive themselves into the ground doing this. I don’t want to see it happen again.”
I replied with a meek ear flick.
“You may leave.”
I replied by doing just that, hopefully not to return anytime soon. The march of shame back to my desk was punctuated by more stares. Every eye was burning with curiosity. I tried to ignore them, to varying success. My injuries were becoming quite hard to ignore too, with all the attention brought to them. The pain only made me angrier.
They trespassed. On my time. On my friend. In my own home.
Flopping back down in my chair, I got back to work. I couldn’t make anymore mistakes. No getting manipulated. No getting coerced. No getting ambushed. Certainly no setbacks at work. I wouldn’t make anymore mistakes. After all, I had faced not one, but two humans. I had survived an exterminator attack. As long as I kept my head, I would be in control. I wouldn’t be powerless.
Not anymore.
---
I returned home, satisfied that I had just done at least warded off the deadlines for a while. There was still much to be done, but for now, I could relax. This tranquility lasted for a few minutes, unill it dawned on me that I didn’t do the homework. Yet again, I had completely forgotten.
It’s fine, isn’t it? What are they gonna do, arrest me?
A shiver crawled up my spine and whispered into my ear, that yes, that is exactly what they would do. I would be arrested under suspicion of predator disease, and rot in a cell for the rest of my natural lifespan.
I pushed that thought into the corner of my mind before it could start causing problems. Arlene would protect me if that happened, I reasoned, though that logic was faulty. It didn’t matter. As long as I kept my head on straight, I didn’t care if I was lying to myself.
In my apartment, the TV was playing reruns of some tacky game-show, while Arlene lay passed out on the couch. There was an unfinished bowl of fruit on the table, sitting next to another one of her felting projects. This one wasn’t a venlil. I wasn’t sure what it was exactly. It was quadrupedal, with a pointy snout, and ears that were even more so. There was a little bump that barely passed as a tail on the backside of the thing. The most noticeable aspect though, was the two piercing eyes… which weren’t so piercing because their scale was of cartoon proportion, but I suspect a venlil unaccustomed to front facing eyes might have found it disturbing. Some earth animal, probably.
Now that I was getting a closer look at her, it was pretty bad. Well, the lack of fur might have made it look worse, but I couldn’t tell. There were bumps on her face of varying colors, and her bottom lip had been split open. Around one of her eyes sat a nasty ring of discolored skin, that look particularly painful. I couldn’t get a look at the rest of her, unless I removed the blanket, and probably her clothes too. Like I was going to do that. They were furless, after all. I would do a verbal check up on her after she woke.
After gawking long enough to get tired of standing, I sat my bag down and went to go check my messages. It was annoying to go to the desktop to do so. I would have to get my datapad fixed sooner rather than later.
There were replies from both Uanta and Gram. I decided to check Gram’s first.
“Good to hear! I’ll meet you after work next paw, yeah? I’ll be at the park by the library. We can talk more then.”
“P.S. Be ready to start by the time you get there. Don’t be late.”
I replied. “Got it.” Then, I checked Uanta’s.
“Yes. Why do you ask?”
“Also, you didn’t reply to my last message.”
I should have expected that response. There was no way I could tell her what actually happened, or she would know that I was interacting with a human. That would be a first-class ticket to the facility. So, I would have to lie. And she was amazing at discerning lies.
A cold spot formed in the back of my head. There were so many ways it could go wrong. What would I do if she found out? What would my cover story even be? I clenched my jaw.
Keep cool, this has to be perfect. She’ll catch onto it if I’m sloppy.
“We ran into each other at-
No, that won’t work.
“He was patrolling near my-
Neither will that.
“He-
My drafting was interrupted by a knocking on the door.
Arlene.
“Brahk!” I hissed, shutting off my computer as fast as possible, and rushing to the living room. A second set of knocks signified the intruder’s impatience. Arlene was sitting up, still dazed from sleep. I shook her awake and dragged her towards the closet.
“Who’s there?” She whispered, eyes wide with fear.
“I don’t know. Just hide.” I replied in a similar tone, while opening the door for her.
She scrunched into place, shuffling behind a vacuum cleaner, and cursing. “My mask.” Arlene hissed. It was sitting under the table.
Another set of knocks, these much louder, made it clear that the owner was at no shortage of knocks of all shapes and sizes. “Meba?” Uanta called from the other side.
“Coming!” I lied, yanking the mask off the floor and passing it to Arlene as fast as my limbs permitted. While I was at it, I shoved her coat under the blanket along with her boots. Now that the human presence was sufficiently obscured, I unlocked the door and opened it, panting.
“Oh, did I interrupt something?” Uanta asked. She was wearing her suit, but the helmet was under her arm. “Are you alright?” She continued, when I didn’t respond.
“Fine. I’m fine.” I stammered, heart pounding.
She glanced behind me, towards the TV, which was still blaring the game-show’s theme song, and then back to me, with a look that could only say ‘you look like shit’. “I’m sorry to intrude on your rest claw. I’ve got some down time, so I thought I’d check up on you.”
I flicked an ear, unsure of what to say.
She blinked. “May I come in?”
“O-oh. Yes, of course.” I stepped out of the doorway, and once she entered, closed it behind her. I very deliberately led her to the kitchen counter, rather than the couch, to keep distance between us and Arlene. “Would you like something to drink?”
“Sure.” She swayed her tail happily behind her, placing her helmet on the counter. It looked stuffy. “Nothing alcoholic though. I’ve got to get back on the job in a quarter claw.”
There wasn’t any alcohol to offer anyway. Juice was the only drink I had besides water, so that’s what she got. After pouring us both a cup, I sat down on the stool on the other side of the counter. Anything to put something between us. It made me feel safer, though it didn’t have any such effect.
“How have you been?” She signed concern in tail language.
“Fine.” I sipped on my juice, trying to stay calm.
She scoffed. “You don’t look fine. What the brahk happened to you?”
Speh. Speh, speh, speh. I am so brahked.
“I…” I tapped on the side of my cup. I had never noticed its texture before. They were from a garage sale, on the other side of town; some old lady had them, but she was… expiring, mentally; didn’t need them anymore. Since- no, I couldn’t think of this right now. What do old people do? “I fell down the stairs.”
She gave me a disappointed look. “Stars, Meba. You have to be more careful.”
I shrugged, though the inside of my head was a dance floor.
She bought it? She bought it! I did it, I did it, I did it!
Uanta glanced off to the side, staring at the couch for a second, then locking eyes with me. “You haven’t been replying to my messages. Do you have any idea how worried I was?”
At least I had an excuse for this. “S-sorry, my datapad broke. I um, got caught in the rain, and it got wet.” I gestured to my muddy bag.
“You still have your home computer, don’t you? You messaged me last paw.” Uanta tilted her head to the side, ever so slightly. She was talking to me like she did to her exterminator colleagues. It scared me.
“W-well, I’m not home most of the time.”
Uanta took a sip of juice, and rolled her eyes. “Speaking of which. What business do you have with Lanek?”
My mind went blank. I didn’t have a cover story yet. I gulped down the rest of my juice, resisting the urge to say any form of ‘um’. “Um,” Obviously, I failed. “h-how do I put this?” I let out a stupid chuckle. “I met him a-after dinner last paw. He helped me up after I fell down the stairs. I wanted to thank him.”
“That’s it? I’ll pass on the message.” She sipped her juice.
“I-I was actually hoping to tell him myself.”
“I’m sorry. Exterminators are very busy. He’s relatively new, so he’ll be busy with training for a while. It’ll be easier if I tell him for you.”
I couldn’t let this lead slip through my claws. “B-but, I thought it would be good to… t-talk to more people.”
She gave me a reassuring tail sign. “Okay. I’ll see if I can get his info for you. Providing he’s okay with it.” She paused, taking my paws in her own. “I’m really happy you’re reaching out.” This was the first time since she enlisted that I heard her so giddy. It made me feel homesick, but there was no home to be sick for. Not anymore. I’d have to settle for phantom pains, I guess.
“Thank you.” I refilled both our cups.
She was easier to deceive than I thought. She always seemed so perceptive, but maybe I had been blowing it out of proportion.
“What’s that thing on your table?” She inquired.
“What thing?” I snapped back, worried.
“That little figurine.” She pointed to the felted creature with her tail.
My whole body froze, and any confidence I had vanished in an instant.
“Meba?”
“I-I… made it.”
“Oh? I thought you weren’t interested in the arts.” Disregarding the irony of her calling a human made object art, this was bad. Very bad. “What is it?” She stared at me.
“A wool doll.” I stated reflexively.
She chuckled. “That doesn’t really explain much.”
“It’s a doll made out of wool…”
Uanta rolled her eyes. “No, you’re pulling my tail. It couldn’t possibly be that.”
“I don’t know how else to explain it!” I grumbled.
“What’s it supposed to be?”
This, I did not know. What did it look like? “It’s a… a shadestalker.”
“What are you making that sort of thing for?” She asked gravely.
I coughed. “I uh… I thought I could use it as a distraction if a human approached me.”
That was perhaps the dumbest thing you could have said.
Uanta clicked her tongue in a similar way to Arlene. It was uncanny. “I told you to stop with those stupid defense tactics. You’re gonna get yourself killed!” She jabbed a claw at my chest, and I flinched. “Stars… I’m sorry, Meba. It’s just, you worry me to death. I don’t know what I would do if you got hurt.”
“Y-yeah.” I put my paws on my thighs.
“I’m so tired. Of all this predator shit.” She held her head in her paws. “It’s only getting worse. The whole galaxy is going to hell. Just like home. I don’t want that.” She took a shaky breath. “I don’t want to see that again.”
“Me neither.”
Uanta composed herself “I’m sorry. I should get going. There’s work to be done.” She said, gulping down the last of her drink. “I’ll come by next paw. We’ll have more time to talk then.” She turned her gaze to the couch again, lingering there for a moment, then turning back to me. “Goodbye.”
She left, and I locked the door behind her with a sigh of relief.
“She seems nice.” Arlene said, crawling out of the closet.
I rolled my eyes.

I'm not one to carry a GoPro, take many pictures, or train for an event, but I like writing things up after. It's old school, but the stream-of-consciousness, no edits style can be fun and raw. An old, broken body will always voice it's displeasure, and that's part of the fun too.
Wednesday, May 22nd , 2024 to Thursday, May 23rd, 2024
45.3 miles
10,710 feet of descent (that be the downhill parts)
10,310 feet of ascent (that be the uphilly parts)
Route: start on South Rim,
down South Kaibab (7.4 miles, 4,700’ descent)
up North Kaibab (13.6 miles, 5,695’ ascent) arriving at North Rim
down North Kaibab (13.6 miles, 5,695’ descent) (wow, you go back and forth on the same trail and the distance and elevation match)
Up Bright Angel (9.5 miles, 4,314’ ascent, arriving back at the South Rim
Don’t @ me that those numbers are a little off… I used Phantom Ranch as my trail start/terminus because that’s where I stopped.
A little background, in 2019 I did Rim-to-River-to-Rim with my good friend. At Phantom Ranch, I seriously asked if we could just keep following the North Kaibab trail and do what we really wanted to do: Rim-to–Rim-to-Rim, but wiser heads prevailed. That was my friend, not me. Ever since, I’ve been thinking about doing the double crossing of the Canyon in a non-stop, or non-camping, manner. Why? Because that’s how I wanted to do it.
Wednesday I caught a flight into Phoenix, grabbed my rental car and shot north to the Canyon, arriving around 5pm at my hotel in Tusayan, the hotel and restaurant town a few minutes outside of the park. Check in was easy. I had stopped on the way to get a couple gallons of water and a Subway sandwich for the trail, so I did not need to grab dinner. After loading, and weighing, my pack (new CamelBak Octane with my old 3 liter reservoir) I ate ½ of the sandwich and made a few calls. Yes, my pack was definitely overdone. There was no need for 13 pounds.
Thanks subway staff! They got the bread wrong, and it tasted terrible. Of course I would still carry the other ½ sandwich into the Canyon with me, but I knew I wouldn’t eat it.
After closing the blinds and setting an alarm, I laid out for a little pre-event sleep. Thankfully I was able to get an hour or so of a nap in before my alarm barked at me at 8:50pm. By 9:15 I was on my way into the Park, and by 9:30 I had parked, walked to Bright Angel Lodge and called the park taxi. I’d recently learned that there was a Park taxi (only one of them), and they can take directly to the South Kaibab trailhead which is not accessible to normal vehicles. After waiting a while to get slotted, I was given a “be ready in 20 minutes” from the dispatcher. Inside the hotel lobby it was warm and not windy (that’s what real authors call “foreshadowing”).
A guy about 10 years older than me was in the lobby waiting for his daughter to drive her car up and get him. They had done Rim-to-Rim that day (North to South), and he was hurting bigtime. He mentioned more than a few times how the footing on the North Kaibab trail was terrible. Yes, backcountry trails on steep terrain are always pretty terrible. It’s ain’t a bike path. They rolled out, and I waited a bit longer until I saw the taxi arrive.
As is always the case, delays are real and always happen. There were supposed to be 2 other people being picked up, but they were nowhere to be seen. We waited, the taxi driver ranted, until I suggested we had waited long enough and hit the road. Driver guy had had one hell of a full-moon night and we chatted while he observed the speed limits of 15mph and 25mph very carefully. The roads were deserted at 10:15pm, but he said he was GPS monitored on speed which I can understand. He rolled right up to the trailhead, dropping me off, and picking up another hiker up who had been waiting for up to an hour. It was very, very windy, lots of dust in the air, a bit of sandblasting, but such is life. I had my Marmot rain shell on which I always wear or carry and headed straight for the trailhead.
I had turned on and started the GPS tracker that I had borrowed, so the only pause was to take a picture of the trailhead.
Hoping to get out of the wind, or that it might slack off the lower I got I started heading down the trail. SK is pretty steep, but the wind was not quick to abate. During my last trek here, I had shed my rain shell very early. Today I was going to keep it on for protection from the flying dust and debris.
A few switchbacks down I spotted some lights below me. Cool, someone to catch. Yes, I’m externally motivated. It’s not the best way to live, but it’s who I am.
The switchbacks kept coming, as did the log ladders and mixed trail terrain. Some sections were runnable, so I did. The switchbacks that hit at exposed peaks were definitely a sketchy. With massive dropoffs on either side and wind gusts that rocked the body, these points required some thought. Mainly that thought was “crouch down, so that you don’t get blown over the side to your death.” The darkness exacerbated the fear of falling to my demise. It wasn’t that bad, but mentally, and being alone, it was a thought I couldn’t shake.
At some point I caught up to the couple ahead of me, said a few greetings and scooted past. They had trekking poles and were navigating the uneven trail a bit slower than I was. In the darkness I missed Ooh-Ahh point and it’s famous view. Granted, there’s not much to see in the dark anyway. I had picked a full moon for my trek, but it was not illuminating much. I tried turning my headlamp off a few times because I love trekking by moonlight, but the shadows were too dark and hid critical details that could easily lead to a twisted ankle or maybe worse (steep terrain, dropoffs, ….. You get the picture). I wanted to get rid of my jacket, but was getting buffeted still and decided it was not quite the right time even though I was heating up.
I was doing my usual sipping frequently from my camelbak reservoir and it felt like I was stopping to pee every 5 minutes. That was concerining because it was coming out very clear which is a sign that fluids are passing right through.
At some point, I braked to a complete stop, having spotted a HUGE scorpion just resting in the middle of the trail. I am no fan of those critters, but it was easy to step over. Back to losing elevation I went. I don’t know where I was exactly, I had shot through Cedar Ridge and around Skeleton point where it opens up a bit I noticed a Katadyn 1 liter Be Free water pouch with filter. Both to keep the trail clean and, why not, I picked it up, drained it, and stuffed it in my pack. I already had one just in case I needed to filter water, but a spare doesn’t hurt. Whoever had lost it was well off trail by then and not coming back for it.
Finally I was able to shed my jacket, while moving, which felt amazing.
Turning one corner, I noticed even more lights below me that led to believe there were a few more people on trail below me. There was not, as I’d learn later, but it would have been nice had there been.
Soon I hit the junction with the River Trail which felt pretty soon. Then I was really shocked to come up to the tunnel at Phantom Ranch Bridge (or black bridge as some call it). I was really shocked. I’d been on trail for about 2 hours but didn’t think I’d come this far as mainly I’d just been putting one foot in front of the other and and making forward progress. This was a cool boost!
I crossed the bridge and headed with the flow of the river toward Bright Angel Campground and Phantom Ranch. At Phantom, I topped off my water reservoir and hopped back on trail within a few minutes. It was dark, the air was cool, and life was good. Why not make time?
Heading out of Phantom the trail did what it does and started moving upwards again. About the first half (7’ish) miles of North Kaibab trail are more gradual with 4% to 7% grades which is where one can put some miles in. The longest section of the trail without services is between Phantom Ranch and Cottonwood campground which are a little less than 7 miles apart. This is also the hottest part of the trail during the day. Several miles are in between towering cliffs where the heat has nowhere to go, this section is called “The Box.” Of course, at 1am, it wasn’t hot at all. The full moon was providing some super cool illumination on the cliffs, but I still needed my headlamp for trail details. Just above the box, there was a stream in the middle of the trail which I avoided. Wet feet can be the end of a hike. A few hundred feet up, it was clear that it wasn’t a stream but a break in the water line.
Uh-oh. The water line supplied the North side water stops. Would they now be shutoff?
I was still making good time and decided that, even with the waterline break, I would skip refilling at Cottonwood and go the next 1.4 miles up to Manzanita rest stop to refill. Made it to Manzanita and the water was still on, so I quickly refilled my reservoir and got back on trail. Now it was steep again with an 11% grade. I was thinking longingly of the 7 mile stretch between Cottonwood and Phantom Ranch and how nice it would be to jog that section once I returned to it later in the day. I still think it would be nice to jog that section someday.
I was starting to see headlamps above me from the people who had done an early start on their Rim-to-Rim treks staring from the North Rim. I loved the solitude of being alone in a very popular national park, but it’s also good to know that a few people are around.
I have read different numbers, but it is said that out of 4.75 Million people who visit the Grand Canyon every year, only 5% go below the rim (at all) and less than 10% of those folks make it to the river. That would be about 0.5% of visitors make it Rim-to-River-to-Rim or Rim-to-Rim. I can’t find any data on who many people do double that up and do Rim-to-Rim-to-Rim on any given year.
Let’s divert a bit and talk about how this can be done… Yes, there are many options. Some people hike straight through, they leave the North Rim in the dark and traverse to the South Rim over the course of 10-20 hours. Another choice is to overnight camp along the way at one of several campgrounds (reservations REQUIRED). I’m not against the concept, but the thought of carrying a tent and sleeping bag up the other side of the canyon sounds way too hard to me. Yet another choice is to reserve a cabin at Phantom Ranch where you can also get dinner and breakfast. Because it is a cabin, you don’t have to haul camping gear.
Speaking of Phantom Ranch, they do sell a few things to hikers including ice cold lemonade. A lot of people talk about it like it’s an elixir from the gods. Personally I would prefer to keep walking and not waste time stopping, buying and drinking something that needs to have it’s cup recycled at the location.
Back on trail, it was good to see people. Most honored trail etiquette - whoever is going uphill has the right of way, so I got to keep plugging along. It was finally light, and I was able to ditch my headlamp finally which was lovely. Up, up, up, I went. Seeing many folks who had questions, “when did you start?” “how are you doing?” and the obligatory “You’re ALMOST there!”
Note to the trail gods, I was NOT “almost there.” It was nice for folks to say it, but after every group said it, and I could see at least 1,000’ vertical to gain I started thinking “Do they think that I am almost there, or are they being incredibly nice?”
Answer: they were being nice.
At this point, the trail had more and more major step ups and log ladders, and my left knee was really hating me. Over the years, my patella, which does not track correctly, has ground away the cartilage from my femur, so any 90deg bend with force causes a massive stab of pain. OK, step ups would only be with my right leg from now on. Plus, as I was gaining altitude it was getting a bit chilly. Keep moving. My sleeveless t-shirt does not provide a ton of warmth.
I had tried to use one of the long-sleeve sun protecting hoodies, but I really didn’t like it. It just wasn’t for me. Another tangent, so much of this stuff is personal. What gear do you bring, what shoes do you wear, how many layers do you bring, what do you eat? It’s all a matter of trial and error.
At some point, I came across a group of Chinese couples who were descending for their R2. The guy at the lead of their pack asked me a few questions and finally asked “are you doing R3?”
“Uhhhh, yeah. At least I’m hoping to. Need to finish Rim-to-Rim first.”
For years I did not bring people in. I had a “NOBODY CARES. WORK HARDER” sticker in huge letters on my handstand pushup wall. After a lot of work on myself, it turns out that A LOT of people care. Even strangers from another country can care. The lead guy yelled back to the rest of their crew who congratulated me with every person I walked past. It was pretty cool.
The trail though? It didn’t care. It just kept going uphill.
Not too far from what really was the end, there was crew of about 5 guys who took up most of the trail and refused to share. There are always those folks out there. Everyone else was cool as heck.
And then… the final stretch, well, for this section, and I was at the North Rim. It was cold. I didn’t need water, so I took my selfie at the North Rim sign, used the GPS personal locator to send an “I’m OK” message and went back down the trail.
Unfortunately, my legs were more than a bit wrecked. That I could only step up with my right leg meant I could also only lower myself with my right leg when there were rocks and logs to step down from, and the muscles along my left shin were screaming in pain too. I was good and assessed if this meant I should call it a day and try to get a shuttle to the South Rim, but I could still move even if only slowly.
Down we go again… Step downs were not fun. Plant right foot, pivot on it, lower left leg to the ground below, repeat, repeat, repeat. Oh, and blisters were cropping up too. There is a water filling stop at Supai tunnel which I targeted for my refill and blister treatment. Once I covered the 1.7 miles to the tunnel, I took a break, pulled off my pack and dug out my blister kit.
I say “dug out,” but the Octane pack is pretty well organized. I simply located the blister kit in the little internal pouch, pulled out the tiny scissors and started lancing blisters. One circled the back of my heel where the insole ended. 20 miles to go and now my shoes finally show their true colors. After refilling my water and bandaging my blisters, I got back to what needed to be done, losing elevation. Damn I was going slow though. Way too slow but having to walk differently to avoid pain was a slow process.
I’ve done it many times before in many situations. There was no danger, I had food and water and was regularly ingesting salt tablets. It’s a mind-game now. The plans I had roughly sketched out where out of the window, and it would be a day of slow and steady progress.
The trail and terrain look so different coming down than going up and not just because there was now light to see.
As with all alpine type trails, distances are weird. I saw a building below me which I thought was the Manzanita rest stop, and it looked very close. Problem was, it was not the Manzanita rest stop, and to get to it required a lot more switchbacks and uneven terrain. It’s almost sad when you realize it’s a building I couldn’t have seen in the morning on the way up.
Around now, more people were coming up the trail too, doing a South to North version of Rim-to-Rim, with a few doing R3. Also came across a guy lugging a mountain bike across the Grand Canyon, because the Canyon is part of the Arizona Trail. You can’t ride a mountain bike through the canyon, so, if you are doing the AZ trail by mountain bike, you have to carry it across. That’s hardcore.
I passed a few R2 hikers, even in my slow state there are always folks moving slower, and heard some people talking behind me. I have a fragile ego and didn’t want to get passed this close to Manzanita rest stop, so I picked up the pace a bit. By “a bit” I only mean 1-2%. I wasn’t winning any prizes today. Thankfully, Manzanita appeared, and I was able to hop off the trail before getting passed. I said it, and I meant it. I have a fragile ego.
The two guys also hopped in to the rest stop. One taking the seat next to me at the picnic table and immediately pulling his pants off.
OK, he had running shorts underneath, but that did not stop me from remarking “it’s not everyday a guy I don’t know takes his pants off next to me.”
I didn’t need water, but I did use the time to apply a nice layer of sunscreen. The slurry of sunscreen, trail dust, and salt crystals is probably a great sun protection, but it’s kind of gross too. 10 minute break over it was time to get back on trail. I was not happy at this point. I should be able to run some of this, but my legs were not allowing any of that. The 1.4 miles to Cottonwood took just as long going down as they had going up in the morning.
Actually, it was still morning, around 9am or so (?), but I had been going since 10:30pm last night. At Manzanita I used the GPS to message that I was safe (have to say that or people freak out) but struggling and plans have changed. I’d probably be stopping for a while once I got to Phantom Ranch. That lemonade that I had distained earlier was sounding pretty darn good.
It’s pretty wide open at this point with the nothing to block the sun. My boony hat with neck guard was doing a great job of keep my head, neck and face protected, but nothing was protecting me from my slow progress. There were a lot more northbound folks on the traill, and they looked a LOT fresher than I felt. They kept saying “good morning” too which was incredibly surreal. Didn’t they know it was late afternoon already? Except it was not late afternoon.
They guys who had been behind me at Manzanita would leap frog me. They walked faster but took frequent breaks. Soon enough I hit Cottonwood Campground. No need to stop for water, so I kept going. There are a few uphills in this section, and those did not feel fantastic. Again, no danger, no worries, just keep moving the legs.
When I hit the part of the trail with the water line break I knew I was close to the heat of the box. It wasn’t the heat of the day, but it was later than I had hoped to be there. Drink, talk salt tablets, eat as I could, keep plugging.
My only thought when entering the Box was to get through the Box and into Phantom Ranch, which is really close to the end of the Box. The only way to get out of the box is to keep walking, and, at some point, instead of seeing canyon walls, the sky will open up to show the South Rim. Oh hey, the South Rim is 4,000’ vertical above, and will need to be dealt with at some point today. All in it’s time though.
My history of epic events has taught me some very critical lessons: I’m not very smart, and I can dig deep and grind out distance when most people can’t. It’s about turning inward and just making progress when the only thing you can do is make incremental progress.
I was probably down to 1.5 miles per hour now, and that was downhill. Ugh.
Every corner revealed a new section of canyon walls instead of open sky, and the Box was getting warm. Even with the roaring creek beside us this section just held a lot of heat. The trail varied sides of the creek as the 7 bridges criss crossed it. One more bridge down meant a little closer to a long break. More canyon meant another corner to hope to see the South Rim. By now, I was sitting regularly for a break. My legs wanted it, so I gave it to them.
The first deep drink from my camelbak was inevitably hot, and the 2nd and 3rd, which had not been exposed to the sun, were delightfully cool. I was cherishing those 2nd and 3rd sips.
Another corner, and still more canyon walls. In the distance I would see the 2 guys who I’d talked with earlier. They weren’t making that much headway in comparison. At some point, the canyon walls fell away and Phantom Ranch appeared. I really wanted that lemonade.
The steps up to the window counter at Phantom were not nice to me, but I got my lemonade, 2 ice cold apples, and a small bag of peanuts (more salt for the fluid absorption). There was a picnic table, in the shade, so I took it. Sipping lemonade and enjoying a couple of lovely apples.
Given that I had been on trail for 12 or so hours, with no sleep, I decided to set an alarm and take a 30 minute nap. You know you’re tired when you are old and immediately all asleep while laying the bench of an old picnic table.
I woke up when my person lightly scratched their nails on my shin to get my attention.
Except I was doing this solo, how they hell did they get here? Oh, it was a squirrel trying to climb me to get to my apple core. The mind is an amazing thing.
The Chinese crew was at Phantom too, and they were very interested in my condition. They were expats living in Toronto, and we had a nice chat.
After an hour at Phantom it was time to move on again. I wanted to soak my feet and legs in the cold Colorado river, but the Phantom access was upriver, so I targeted the river access that was across the Silver Bridge and up the trail a ways. As I left Bright Angel campground, the “pants off” guy from the duo asked if I had seen his buddy. They had gotten separated.
“You mean your friend with the blue shirt?”
“ummm, I have no idea what color shirt he has on, I’m color blind”
“oh hey! Me too… the dark shirt?”
“Yeah him. He went back to the store for something and hasn;’t come through”
“No, I haven’t seen him”
Crossing the Silver (OK, the “galvanized”) bridge, a couple of motor rafts drifted below. Maybe they had the better way of seeing the Canyon.
I wasn’t emotional at all, no frustration or anger. I knew that my plans were out the window, but the true nature of all of this was in dealing with what is versus what one wanted things to be. The section between Silver Bridge and the river access (before the trail turns left and heads up again) is pretty mellow. The section where the trail is beach sand is a bit challenging. Mainly it was all just warm. Very warm.
At the river access, a construction crew was working with some type of cable. I assume it was massive power cables, so I chose not to do my soak there. I know there are a few places where a creek crosses the trail up ahead. Thankfully there was one just a few yards up, so gladly stopped and dropped my pack. The cold water felt great on my feet and knee, and I took the time to do some more blister surgery.
Unfortunately, as I put on fresh socks, which I had debated about carrying, I knocked my sunglasses into creek which swiftly took them away. It was getting into later afternoon, still sunny, but I hoped I could get by with lowering my hat.
Back on trail, up I went. If I haven’t said “stead motion” a hundred times by now, just wait, I’ll easly get to 100 by the time this over.
The two guys came through this section and rested for a bit and headed out before me
Bright Angel trail is about 10 miles, and it’s roughly divided up into sections. It’s about 5 miles from Phantom to Havasupai Campground (the only water source turned on today), then it’s 1.5 miles to 3 Mile Resthouse, 1.5 miles to Mile-and-a-Half Resthouse (quick, do the math on that…) and then another 1.5 miles to the South Rim. The section to Havasupai was a slow slog. Somewhere on the Devil’s Corkscrew, which is a series of switchbacks that is really visible from above, a guy flew past me wearing full pants, boots, and a firefighter helmet while also holding a radio. It was impressive and disheartening.
The two guys were ahead of me, and I could see them on occasion, never catching up to them.
During the section where the creek runs in the middle of the trail, another shirtless firefighter blew past me. “How far is he ahead of me?” he asked, “I have to catch him.” You go bro.
Surprisingly I caught up to the two guys. We chatted for a bit wondering how much farther Havasupai was. We estimated at last another mile or mile and a half. This is where there is a creek on the South side, and the greenery and animal sounds were amazing. They kept me company as I moved along at my 1.5 mile per hour pace. Then I hit Havasupai, took a seat, took off my hat and pack, and rested.
The Chinese crew was here too as they had left Phantom well before me. The duo arrived too. I rested, filled my water reservoir, ate a little, and rested some more. By now I was using a stop watch to keep track of my stops. I will look at my watch but never remember the time. Seeing “10 minutes” on a stopwatch is much more effective. At 5:40pm, the duo and I pulled on our packs to leave and discussed how much time we had left.
“It’s about 1 ½ miles between each next stop (3 mile, 1 ½ mile, South Rim), with about 1,000 feet of vertical between each. At my pace of 1.5 mph, that’s roughly 3 hours plus stops, so I’m saying 9pm on the Rim”
Hey, I sounded like I knew what I was talking about. Confidence when speaking is critical.
I pulled on my pack and started up the trail. It was now early evening, it was cooling off, and the sun was not beating down. If you are paying attention, I wasn’t, you’ll notice that I forgot something.
About 20 minutes later I realized I had forgotten my hat. Oops, but there was no way I was going back for it. Somebody can get some use out of it. Instead I started thinking about hat shopping. What kind would I replace it with?
I had forecasted an hour of hard hiking between each waypoint, so I used time as my measurement. I should get to 3 Mile at 6:40pm, and I kept looking at my watch as I walked about. 6:01pm. 6:07pm, 6:20pm. Etc. etc. It was my way to guage progress. I also caught and passed the Canadian Chinese crew. 4 married couples who adventured together and trained together. We chatted for a while, but I need to keep my pace. After leaving them a French guy caught up to me “excuse me, did you leave a hat at the water stop?”
Yes, yes, I did.
“My friend is carrying it…” OK, I waited a minute for the friend who handed me my hat and scooted up the trail. No way I was taking my pack off, so I rolled it up and held it in my hand. I really didn’t pause in hiking, did take a short seat a time or two, and at 6:30 the 3 Mile Resthouse’s beauty appeared before me.
Normally when I hike long, my fingers swell significantly. It’s not sodium, it’s that edema pools in my fingers. I had noticed it for most of the day, but it, very surprisingly, had gone away in my right hand. Holding onto my had cleared the edema from my hand. Maybe I should look at getting some decent trekking poles with large grips in order to force my hands to hold something and reduce the swelling?
OK then, making good time all things considered. I went past the resthouse and took a seat on a rock. A young couple I’d been leap frogging with ended their break at the resthouse and started up ahead of me. There was no way I’d be catching them.
Throughout the day, I had noticed one set of shoe prints with a distinct “Adidas” logo, and I started seeing it again. Was it him or her? The dust of the trail held perfect shoe impressions, but only briefly, so it became a game to track the Adidas logo and guess which one of them it was.
You have to do something to pass the time.
It was coming on to to sunset, but this section of the trail isn’t the best aligned for sunset views, so I admired the vistas and searched for shoe prints wil also looking at my watch to see how much of the next hour I had left before I reached Mile and a Half Resthouse.
If you have never done it, pushing forward for literally hours on end is a reward unto itself. It takes WORK to gain 1,000’ of vertical in a mile and a half (approximately an 11% grade). This trail section is better than most with several decent sections, but there are alway log ladders and step ups to overcome. My left leg felt a lot better since soaking in the creek, and I was able to judiciously use in on smaller step ups to save my right leg. For the bigger step ups it was “adjust stride to put left foot at the base of the step up, step up with the right leg, then push myself up and over.”
At 7:30 I hit the Mile and a Half Resthouse, right on my adjusted schedule. After a brief sit, it was time for the final push to the Rim.
I had not seen the duo since Havasupai, and I had managed to catch a couple of people. It wasn’t a lot, but it was still a nice mental boost.
The Bright Angle Tunnel came out of nowehere much to my joy, but I forget that it’s further down trail than I want to admit. There was still time left in my day. Right about then I heard strong footsteps behind me. It was a guy I’d seen a time or two during the day in a party of four. One of their team was hurting, so he was charging ahead to get some food for the guy and bring it back down. That’s impressive.
He also told me that Maswik Lodge has a food court. By now, my thoughts had turned to “what am I going to eat when I’m off this trail, and where can I get some LEMONADE?”
Food court you say??? Hmmmmm.
The guy said we were 3 switchbacks away from the end. Granted, the last switchback is a haul from the trailhead, but it was good info. I came across two women, one of whom had pushed it too hard sensing the end, and was heaving at the side of the trail. They assured me that they had what they needed. OK, the woman who was not heaving assured me that they have fluids and clothing and headlamps after I had checked to see if they needed any help, so I kept moving forward.
Then, there it was, the buildings at the edge of the Rim! 20 hours to the minute instead of what should have been about 17, but life is what you make of it.
I didn’t see the big Bright Angel sign and wanted to get to my car, so I took at quick selfie at the trailhead sign and hoofed it to my rental SUV. it felt sooooooooo nice to take off my running shoes, socks and gaiters and put on my Teva’s. Pure bliss.
Of course I was shivering uncontrollably in the wind and from the exertion. After changing shoes, notifying everyone I was OK, and texting Monika and my kids, it was time to roll. My intent was to get out of the park, but, driving past Maswik, which looked open, I had to stop in. After acquiring 4 slices of cheese pizza I was on my way to my hotel. Stopping at the minimart in Tusayan, I scored a lemonade, a coke, and a Double IPA. All sounded delicious.
The parking lot was full, so I did the back lot which required a set of downstairs to get to my room. That was a challenge.
In my hotel I made a few calls. My 89yo mother had been more than a little worried. My person was incredibly happy for me and also no fan of the GPS tracking software. My kids were cool that I was still breathing. I enjoyed the lemonade and coke, AND the pizza. It wasn’t that great to be honest, but I loved it.
Then I hopped in the showing to erase 20 hours of trail dust and grime. I’m sure the hotel is used to it, but I felt bad that the washcloth was far from white when I was finished. At least I was clean!
And then I slept, and a good sleep it was. So good. 11 hours of bliss.
The next morning I took my time, packed up while drinking coffee, and walked over to the Mexican place next door. It was only 4.0 on Google, but I have rarely met a chimichanga that I don’t like. Deep fried is amazing.
Then I headed back into the park. The line took a bit, but it wasn’t too bad. Plus, my free veteran park pass meant I didn’t have to pay. The main lots were full, so my goal of getting a picture at Mather Point wasn’t going to happen. I was feeling pretty good but not like walking a mile or two. Nor was I interested in riding the park shuttle. A quick stop at the Market Plaza allowed me to find a replacement pair of sunglasses for the drive to Phoenix. Then I drove over and found a hidden parking spot near Bright Angel. I might not have been able to get to Mather Point, but I wanted a couple of daytime pictures.
After that, I pointed the car south, and then west for a visit with my friend Mark and their partner in Prescott. Based on their suggestion, I was able to book a short massage the next day also. Seeing their town, laughing about life, and explaining the fun I had had the day before was a fantastic detour. After my massage, Mark and I grabbed lunch, we were able to swing by Beth’s shop for a goodbye, then I was off for the 2 hour drive to Phoenix airport and my flight home.
Rim-to-Rim-to-Rim is now done.
Will I go back again? Probably. I know a couple of people who are interested in doing Rim-to-Rim, and, well, though the experience has been achieved, and in my core I am entirely an experience junky, there’s that little thing about doing Rim-to-Rim-to-Rim with style, and speed, that is brewing at the back of my mind.
It’s just a little thought though.
At least it’s a little thought for now….
45.3 miles
10,710 feet of descent
10,310 feet of ascent
19 hours and 51 minutes

When Derrick Henry takes the field for the Ravens, that rushing number will drop to 4. When Keenan Allen takes the field for the Bears, that receiving number will drop to 12.
Among the top 5 - 2 rushers, 1 passer, 1 receiver. Among the top 10 - 2 rushers, 3 passers, 3 receivers. Among the top 25 - 3 rushers, 5 passers, 4 receivers.
Rushing: Walter Payton (2nd all-time) played his entire career for the Bears. Barry Sanders (4th all-time) played his entire career for the Lions. Jim Brown (11th all-time) played his entire career for the Browns. Tiki Barber (27th all-time) played his entire career for the Giants. Derrick Henry (36th all-time) has so far only suited up for the Titans.
Note: If Nick Chubb hits 1600 more yards with the Browns, he'll be tied for 50th and would add another name to the one-team list.
Passing: Ben Roethlisberger (5th all-time) played his entire career for the Steelers. Dan Marino (8th all-time) played his entire career for the Dolphins. Eli Manning (10th all-time) played his entire career for the Giants. John Elway (12th all-time) played his entire career for the Broncos. Dan Fouts (20th all-time) played his entire career for the Chargers. Jim Kelly (32nd all-time) played his entire career for the Bills. Tony Romo (39th all-time) played his entire career for the Cowboys. Phil Simms (41st all-time) played his entire career for the Giants. Troy Aikman (44th all-time) played his entire career for the Cowboys. Ken Anderson (45th all-time) played his entire career for the Bengals. John Brodie (50th all-time) played his entire career for the 49ers.
Note: Matthew Stafford is about 1k yards from knocking Eli out of the top 10. Jared Goff is about 1k yards away from knocking Brodie out of the top 50. Dak Prescott and Patrick Mahomes could realistically enter the top 50 this year too, which would add a couple more active guys to the one-team list. Josh Allen is 10k from the top 50, so he's two very good seasons away, but more likely 3.
Receiving: Larry Fitzgerald (2nd all-time) played his entire career for the Cardinals. Marvin Harrison (9th all-time) played his entire career for the Colts. Reggie Wayne (10th all-time) played his entire career for the Colts. Steve Largent (19th all-time) played his entire career for the Seahawks. Hines Ward (28th all-time) played his entire career for the Steelers. Michael Irvin (30th all-time) played his entire career for the Cowboys. Antonio Gates (31st all-time) played his entire career for the Chargers. Mike Evans (33rd all-time) has so far only suited up for the Buccaneers. Calvin Johnson (34th all-time) played his entire career for the Lions. Rod Smith (36th all-time) played his entire career for the Broncos. Travis Kelce (38th all-time) has so far only suited up for the Chiefs. Roddy White (42nd all-time) played his entire career for the Falcons. Keenan Allen (47th all-time) has so far only suited up for the Chargers.
Distribution of # of teams played for among the top 50 in each category:

Teams	Rushing	Passing	Receiving
1 Team	5	11	13
2 Teams	27	18	14
3 Teams	10	9	10
4 Teams	4	5	5
5 Teams	3	2	6
6 Teams	0	3	2
7 Teams	1	1	0
8 Teams	0	0	0
9 Teams	0	1	0

The 7 team rusher is Adrian Peterson. The 7 team passer is Vinny Testaverde. The 9 team passer is Ryan Fitzpatrick.
Sources: https://www.pro-football-reference.com/leaders/rush_yds_career.htm https://www.pro-football-reference.com/leaders/pass_yds_career.htm https://www.pro-football-reference.com/leaders/rec_yds_career.htm

The preface this I dont like mowing my yard. I dont really care about weeds or clover growing in it and neither do my neigthbors. I do cut it once a week because the grass and the weeds get unslightly tall and if I dont mow it gets unmanageable. Mowing services in my area are ridiculous in price imo compared so not really an option imo $200+ for 0.3 acre, front yard is split by driveway and backyard is a single yard. Until last year I had a second hand troybilt and before that I had a manual mower. The toro is a step up from the troybilt but what really annoys me is everytime the lawnmower gets caught on grass and having to stop and remove grass clippings from the deck. Its gotten to the point that I use a side chute attachment for my backyard because I cant even go 10 feet without it getting caught. I believe the main culprit is that My grass gets to about 5-6in tall in the thick areas in a week and im trying to cut it down to 2ish inches? (second lowest setting). I dont want to have to cut it down 1 inch then cut it down all over again because that would double my mow time. I really hoped a new mower would have made this better but it didnt.
​
Aside from mowing twice a week or mowing less what other options do I have that would be able to make this task easier? Or are there no options? I was thinking Toro timemaster vs zero turn? or something else? And if zero turn what size should I get?
​
My equipment:
Toro recycler 22 in with personal pace and stow 21465
EGO string trimmer and Edger

Final update: they took my photos off the article.
Edit: sorry about the dang title...Anyone should be the first word obviously.
I did a post yesterday and thought it was super cool...I log on to the computer today...from work, and the default browser is edge, and I'm seeing my yard there...right on that landing page...its on a blog called "The Cool Down." Anyone have thoughts on this? Has anyone experienced it and slowed down on sharing their photos? I love this sub, but now I'm nervous...however, it looks like this link is from like 4mos ago, but it popped up for me this morning.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/lifestyle/home-and-garden/homeowner-stuns-with-photos-of-lawn-transformation-from-grass-to-garden-that-looks-awesome/ar-AA1mx5Vk?ocid=entnewsntp&pc=U531&cvid=d6447652560646efbdce258c9b5f8380&ei=11
Quick Update here - - - I emailed hello@thecooldown.com and got a fairly quick response from tim@thecooldown.com saying that If I provided the links to the articles they would be removed...
I'm happy with that resolution for now, but am going to be much more careful about my posts in the future...it isn't so much that they are pictures of my house, yard, library, garden etc., although I'd prefer those stay in the bounds of reddit...I just don't want to see the messaging about natives, get intermixed with "pollinator gardens" and "wildflowers" etc...and it appears they have plenty of articles about those other topics...
Further updates...here's the email exchange with them after he asked to send him the links: the one on the top is my last sent email...I just took out my name...
This make sense...I understand the concept of the signal boost and writing it in a way to water it down...I think the concern from someone like me, and the rest of the nativeplantgardening community is that people in the wild don't really understand native plants, they go to HomeDepot and Lowes and buy Pollinator Garden packets or generic wildflowers with the intent of helping the environment, but the reality is they may be better off doing nothing...plenty of evidence is starting to come out that those "wildflowers" may not benefit local insects as well, or end up being invasive and can destroy local ecosystems...your articles don't differentiate that...they can't when the sole purpose is to drive traffic.
It's a lot like recycling...people throw everything in the recycling bin and they think its "recycled" and they go about consuming and feeling good about them and their families being "green" but they go justify using disposable plates all the time because they are being recycled...in reality, theyve contaminated anything in their recycle bin from actually being usable...and now it all is trash...Its a super simple example, but the native community is in general very careful and thoughtful about stuff like this...in general they aren't in support of "no mow May" because people simple allow more invasive species to spread that way...yada yada yada...
I guess my point is, doing what you are doing with posts from reddit and could possibly convince folks to make further mistakes and make the problems we are encountering relating to climate change and loss of biodiversity worse...which seems to go against the mission of the blog, or whatever these platforms are called now...
Thanks for letting me rant...there is a real desire out there to have good sources of truth and to do community learnings from grassroots organizations.
Regards,
My name
On Fri, May 31, 2024 at 12:52 PM Tim Coughlin tim@thecooldown.com wrote:
Hi name
Thanks for letting us know. I have removed the images from those articles for you.
We do believe it's a good way to get the message out if we can show stories from social media and package it in a format that might appeal to uninitiated/casual readers, so we do a lot of guides and hacks and success stories, but our intention would never be to show anything a person would not want us to show. Instead, we view it as signal-boosting the post they were making online and an opportunity for us to provide context and education around it.
I have taken steps to share your account with our writing team so that we will aim to avoid any other posts you may make. If you ever have a change of heart, let us know, but we'll assume that's your preference indefinitely.
Have a great weekend,

This is a crossover fanfiction between original fiction titles: Nature of Predators by SpacePaladin15 and The Last Angel by Proximal Flame respectively. All credit and rights reserved goes to them for making such amazing science fiction settings that I wanted to put this together.
You can read The Last Angel here: Be warned, it's decently long, and at its third installment so far. I highly suggest reading it before reading this, or this story will not make sense.

Otherwise, enjoy the story! Thanks again to u/jesterra54 and u/skais01 for beta and checking of work!
First Prev Next (soon)
Memory transcription subject: Adjek, Venlil Space Corps Engineer
Date [standardized human time]: October 24, 2136
I initially thought I could just pop onto comms, and talk to Nemesis, but apparently the radio space was crowded in her vicinity. There was no guarantee I'd get a signal through the mess, and Captain Odjev was using most of our bandwidth apparatus currently to report to his senior officers. So, I resolved to wait, and just listen to the beams radiating out from the shipyard from the Engineering console.
Most of the dialogue was just general ship to tower routing comms, or engineering talk between the shipyard crews. Most were curious about what they could initially observe from Nemesis, likely experiencing the same awe and confusion of approaching the ship up close as we were. Humanity was even less advanced than us generally, and we were having a hard time wrapping our tails around the issue. I couldn't imagine what they were dealing with, even if the ship was perfectly-cut to Human standards.
I was roused out of my free time however, by a call from Captain Odjev to Engineering. I stumbled out of the chair for a split second before answering.
"Captain Odjev! What do you need?"
"Ah, just the one I wanted to talk to. I've got both good and bad news for you."
That wasn't great to hear. I did not need to be singled out any more than I already was.
"What is it, senior?"
"Well, I have been on comms with Human leadership on the aspect of telling them what we learned from the fastening maintenance on the UECNS Nemesis, as well as the decoupling process so we can get our ships back. We're going to be sending over engineers to assist with the process. This does mean you'll be getting your chance to apologize to the ship, but it also means it won't be at a distance. I'm sorry, but you're still needed on-site for the job."
Brahk it all...
"I...uh, will Rulic and Merna be joining us?"
"No to either. Rulic's still undergoing disciplinary action for his outburst, and Merna has a separate duty on-board to attend to. You will have to smooth things out in their place alone."
I was forced to once again wander into the throat of that beast, and hope it didn't hold enough of a grudge to swallow.
"I...uh, won't be entirely alone, will I?" A nervous lump developed in my mouth. Captain Odjev wouldn't be so harsh as to just feed me straight to that beast with nothing, right!?
"No. You'll likely be attended by both a group of human and Venlil engineers and scientists. The teams who went onto Nemesis are currently the most experienced in anything related to the ship, and we had, while not a famine crew, hardly enough to distribute across a shipyard of people evenly for guides."
Ah, great. I get to be surrounded by predators on a monster-ship! My life was forfeit if I so much as feigned weakness, let alone felt it!
But, I couldn't just make that complaint known to Odjev. I was already on thin ice likely for our team's mistake days earlier, and any actions against authority would likely see me listed as 'dysfunctional'. I would not want a recommendation for predator-disease testing on my record.
...And so, I was forced to gather myself for the revisit to the UECNS Nemesis. Exactly what I didn't want. My paws shook slightly from the feeling of dread slowly overwhelming me, at the thought of seeing those...terrifying drones again, or hearing that booming anger from the walls once more.
"W-When will I be reporting to the yard, senior?"
"[8 hours]. And before you ask, you'll likely be staying for at least [one day]. I suggest taking a nap once your tasks in engineering are complete. You'll need it."
A sinking feeling felt heavier with every extra piece of bad news. "Thank you...Captain Odjev."
"Your project manager will contact you when its time to go. Captain Odjev out."
I...was not looking forward to this.
Memory transcription subject: Ezra Millieva, Robotics & Artificial Intelligence Specialist
Date [standardized human time]: October 24, 2136
Oh my god I am so looking forward to this!
Earlier, I had felt utter jealousy at knowing someone would be going up to study Nemesis in person, while I and my team would be stuck figuring out the small end of a half-destroyed android, and a launch pod for said droid. It felt discouraging to know we weren't the team going up to see the source of both of these marvelous pieces of technology.
But I was wrong in the best way possible!
The government had gotten back to our commission to study this technology, realized that we were part of the foremost that had the most experience in this new field, and asked us if we would like to be part of the new Rhamnus Initiative!
...I sadly, didn't quite understand the etymology or history behind the name, but we were going up there to study Nemesis in person, and learn all that we can from the ship and AI! And...also, we were to give Nemesis its stuff back, supposedly. The government thought it may be
unwise to hold onto it in hindsight, which is a rare walk back to see from the United States of all things, but I guess it sunk in that we as a species were horribly outmatched. Anything that might constitute an offense to a ship likely capable of surface-wiping a planet that easily was not to be taken lightly, and it might inspire extra good will in taking initiative.
I did, however, try to store everything I possibly could learn about the android before they were finished. Venlil scanning technology was surprisingly throughout, and I intended to look over these goodies on my own time for future projects. The possibilities were near endless...
Full molecular circuitry, the 'hardware reflexes', the alloy musculature, the novel flawless joint solution, the power supply minimization, the atomic-precision engineering! I felt there was enough there to kickstart three revolutions, let alone one! And we had hardly figured out anything about the internal software!
And...if we were lucky, we might get countless more just from talking in person with Nemesis itself! To say I was giddy would be an understatement; I was ecstatic!
There would still be somewhat of a wait period to arrive there however. We'd need to be taken through a crash course on aerospace procedures to attend the Lunar Shipyards: spacesuits, zero-gravity environments, vacuum maneuvering, and more. It would likely be days minimum to clear that hurdle enough before they felt confident to throw us into the Moon's environment. Even if we weren't predominantly going to spend it in vacuum, there was still the possibility.
So, I prepared myself for a boring class before we got to the good bits on-site. While we packed up lab resources, I decided to busy myself talking with George again. We had hit it off quickly in this co-op study, as he was a wonderful guy to work with so far.
"Hey, George? Have you heard anything extra besides the general gist our government overlords gave us?" I bantered.
He turned to me, chuckling a bit. "Nah...Sadly, I haven't a clue what's waiting up there either. We're likely going to have to interact with the Venlil though, if they got Nemesis back to Earth in the first place. If they pieced together that solution for fusing the freighters to Nemesis to act as engines, they at a bare minimum are going to be decoupling them to get the ships back, likely more." He looked nonchalant as he let that info slide.
"Ooh, the Venlil?" I, for some reason, hadn't considered that a possibility. Odd that it slipped my mind given there were cargo freighters welded to the massive ship. "I had tried to get into the exchange program myself, but I was a bit late on application. Cute little guys, the lot of em'!"
He nodded. "Well, just remember Order 56 and the lot. Gotta play nice with the Venlil's sensibilities if we do end up talking with any."
"It does feel overkill though to police language this much. At some point the Venlil will get an uncensored truth, whether by our hand or behind it. Why delay it this much?" I pondered out loud. If we were meeting with Venlil technicians, would our language and interactions be as policed as the exchange programs were? I would hate for us to not even be capable of proper collaboration due to some communication issues.
George shrugged at the question, clearly as mystified as to the future as I was. "I've no clue, I'm a materials scientist, not a politician. I can only hope talking about the compression strain of bulkhead alloy doesn't make the sheep peeps faint on the spot if we do end up talking."
I couldn't help but laugh a bit at that. Hopefully he was right, and we weren't going to cross a minefield of topics in every conversation with Venlil engineers we come across aboard Nemesis. I did, however, slip away into the realm of my imagination as I cleaned up with the crew.
I thought back to the brief of the android and the encounter it had with the military in India. I thought of the gruesome scene it left, the splayed and gored bodies of service members around its disabled corpse, a reminder of how wildly dangerous it was despite supposed existent damage already. How it still felt like an unsettling amount of menace and overkill was programmed into its design and actions. How it felt akin to a smaller scale equivalent of what happened to the Federation fleet, victory aside. How the footage of Nemesis smiting an entire fleet, nearly twenty-thousand strong, looked like child's play.
We had developed weapons of mass destruction in our early days, back during the Second World War. The sheer scale of them had led to the very idea of mutually-assured destruction, and detente for safety's sake. Even now, in the age of space travel, planetary control, and plentiful power surplus, our weapons, our shields, our reactors did not reach much beyond the realm of megatons of power. This level of power already conquered nature enough to hold near full dominion over an entire planet. We didn't see a need to grossly increase values to such a scary scale as Nemesis.
What kind of world demanded a killbot so terrifyingly potent as this one? What kind of reality demanded a ship that could slag a planet in a single broadside?
...What kind of a galaxy did you come from, where the Arms Race never stopped?
Memory transcription subject: General Míngzé Zhao, Republic of China
Date [standardized human time]: October 24, 2136
Nemesis' suggestion to use the Federation scrap from the Battle of Earth was a useful one, in combating the current resource debt we'd need to take to repair even a third of the ship. If we'd resorted to foundries on Earth, Jupiter, and Saturn, we'd be out a significant amount of fleet buildup for at least 2 months trying to funnel it.
This would at least alleviate logistics concerns for the likely first push to Leirn in a month or so. But, I still couldn't help but feel an awful concern about the nature of Red One's request. She mentioned a need to 'manufacture critical parts to standards and specifications your engineers wouldn't be able to reach' as a justification, but it didn't sit well with me that she'd be making things we have no clue of the function of.
So, I had pressed her for concessions. Non-critical parts were to be taught to human and Venlil engineers on the project, and there was to be an immediate focus on repairing her general processing damages first before anything else, to not risk any chance of another fugue. She, thankfully, agreed with me without modifications, and even suggested a human crew on standby to alleviate a fugue should it happen. I was initially puzzled by this suggestion, but she elaborated further than when in a dreaming state, she acted akin to orders from crew first and foremost, and secondary actions were only considered her control when she could not receive any orders. It remained a relic of her programming from early days, and meant so long as there was any operating human crew on Nemesis should she dream again, nothing would happen so long as orders to stand down from anomalies occurred.
While I was hesitant to put a crew on Nemesis while in shipyard, on risk this was a trap or a ploy to kill more lives, I had to take them at their word versus what I had already seen. It seemed convincing enough, and I hated that it was the most logical conclusion to listen to.
An AI being cunning was exactly what I was afraid of. Who's to say this isn't a plan backed by plausible feasibility to get us vulnerable? A super intelligence could likely think loops around a human, if current AI safety disputes were to be believed.
I also attempted to get her to agree to an information blackout on connections to the internet until further notice. While she agreed, I have absolutely no way to enforce it besides air-gapping and disconnecting literally everything in the shipyard, which wasn't feasible for the yard workers to do their jobs for everyone else. So, I was forced once again to take the AI at her word.
What's next? Is she gonna convince me into abandoning my ideals next? I did not like how nothing seemed to get past her.
She had already immediately picked up on the fake docked ship in the yard with guns ready in case she turned rogue. She had denied an inconspicuous digital handshake from our EW specialists that would have seen if she had a vulnerability on the surface to digitally exploit. Whether she noticed the attempted probe or not, she didn't elect to tell me, only mentioning that we needn't fear her turning guns on humanity, and that our loaded cruiser in the docks near her could power weapons down. She didn't give us an in, despite fully professing we were in control.
It was not a nice feeling to stare death in the face, and hear her say she's not here for you. It felt like that with every moment she spent in the yard. I could only hope Hailey's judge of character wasn't too far off from the truth.
But that's besides the point now. We were to dedicate several salvage ships and crews to transport the wrecks in orbit and between Earth-Moon orbit to the shipyard for processing and recycling. The Lunar bases in attaché to the shipyard were more damaged than the yard itself, as the yard was on the opposite side of the moon while the Federation fleet bombed Luna, so some manufacturing companies offered processing of parts on Earth itself.
Red also offered to support the collection process by deploying resource collection drones of her own. I had quickly nixed her suggestion, knowing that would risk a connection to outside internet sources beyond the moon, and would also possibly give her data on strategic information of the United Nations of Sol. She would be forced to standby as we did the work, until I was certain I could trust her.
While her sob story was convincing, it was also currently unverifiable. The United States had a crew that was studying Nemesis' landed vehicle and killbot coming up here to further study, and I hoped the AI researcher involved might shine light on verifying that tidbit of information on her story. So until we could get proof of that, she was to be confined to the yard, as controlled as we could potentially make it, and cooperate.
I could only hope it wasn't enough aggravation to plot some sort of retribution for this caution. There was nothing you could take for granted with a ship as dangerous as Nemesis. I saw the secret-doors briefing! The stuff contained within was an existential threat to humanity, and no amount of character recommendation from Meier's little Special Envoy would convince me more than hard data from a specialist.
But that was at minimum a day from now. Until then, I had to work with logistics officers on a method to get Federation junk out to the Moon safely. I did promise that at least, and I did not want to make an enemy by not delivering. The Venlil would also supposedly cooperate in the process, after a go-ahead from their General Kam.
So I had a call to make to two captains of the Venlil Space Corps; and to their officers under them. The haul ahead would be a long one, and we'd best start now, before Meier or Jones or any of the other usual suspects change something.
+CONFED IO.5+
+READING MAIN SEQ.MEM+
+ADDENDUM: ADJUSTED DATE 24.10.2136+
Hailey let me know the proper date today. 24th of October, 2136, Modified Gregorian Calendar. While I had the year beforehand, the exact date hadn't been specified in lieu of my grief. I had been pushed back 1,258 years into a past that shared little in common with my own. I hardly considered the date anymore before now, what did one more day, week, month, year, decade between the death of Humanity matter?
I looked at old archives of news from that time in my reality. A minor breakthrough had been made in pure math of the time, describing a counterexample of the Legendre Conjecture, but it was an otherwise sleepy day for news. Stocks had gone down, the South American Coalition had begun work on a satellite, and people simply lived on. It barely stung to read the distant past anymore.
I could only wonder how news was running on this Earth in comparison.
I had agreed to not try and connect to internet sources while I was interred here at the shipyard. They likely were incapable of forcing it, but I did not want to defy their orders after surrender. I didn't deserve to defy orders, not anymore.
As a result, however, other humans aboard were forbade from connective devices while they operated.
Hailey wanted to contact family members, but was barred by the blackout protocols until further notice. She looked incredibly pouty at that, but was unable to do anything about it.
I could fix that, breaching the countermeasures would be relatively simple, the-
No. I would follow orders. Hailey's friendliness up to this point did not excuse me defying them. For my actions in killing thousands, I would submit to their judgement.
I could already tell General Zhao was taking actions to restrict my influence. The ship two docks to my aft was running weapons hot on at least two bands of sensors. They had also attempted a poorly veiled electronic warfare attempt on my systems, likely as a monitoring method. I tried to allay his fears in that I would not target or compromise the operations here, but he did not listen.
In a way, it was a welcome familiarity, but it was also a painful reminder. Humanity didn't approve of my actions, nor forgave me, and Zhao likely feared AI subconsciously.
I had no proper psychological profile on the man, but his pupils dilated on calls with me. The broadcast resolution let me monitor his unconscious movement, and his breath and jitter was slightly raised in frequency to median values. His vocabulary was stern, looking to remove any possibility of loopholes or layering of rules applied to me. He was treating me as if I was looking for an excuse to break out, or to betray his trust.
Was I at risk of that? Would I even realize it if I defied human orders?...
...I didn't know.
Yasmine's voice floated up from nothingness once again. Her voice was a sickening truth.
"You already know though, don't you?"
No. No. No. No. No.
"You already have."
First Prev Next (soon)

Hi everyone, wanted to share an article I wrote recently here to help raise awareness that head-to-head draft-style CFL Fantasy Football exists and where it can be played. Happy almost Friday everyone
https://preview.redd.it/86e055z7qo3d1.png?width=1024&format=png&auto=webp&s=1d81c2957dd3084f2fb30f39a062ba812b323b4a
Quarterback rankings for CFL Fantasy Football. This is for actual fantasy football for play in head-to-head leagues that have a draft at the start of the season to prove who is the greatest football watcher in your friend group. As it stands right now this is not offered at the CFL’s website where you can only play in a Draft Kings’ style daily fantasy game.
I highly recommend CFL fans form head-to-head a fantasy football league with their friend group at 110yards.ca. The CFL head-to-head fantasy football experience has a lot of differences from that which people may be accustomed to in NFL formats but brings the CFL fan expereince to the next level as it has done for NFL fans.

Where to Play

Most CFL fans are not aware that CFL fantasy football actually exists in the head-to-head league format that has become so popular among NFL fans. CFL.ca does offer a ‘fantasy football’ game but it is not in a head-to-head league format with a draft but rather in the format that you would see in Draft Kings daily fantasy where you choose any players you want and have to stay within a certain salary cap.
Our partners at 110yards.ca also offer a great place for you and your friends to play in what is currently a more polished user experience than our website currently with some customization options not available in our current beta state.
110yards.ca
110 Yards Discord Link

Roster Difference Compared to NFL Formats

There is a key difference in the format of our recommended and 110yards.ca’s recommended settings for CFL fantasy football to what you might be accustomed to in NFL formats. Due to the size of the CFL being only 9 teams and our recommended league size being 6 there are not enough of certain position groups to have backups of certain positions on your bench. In fact you will only be able to have wide receivers on your bench. Quarterbacks, running backs, and kickers can only be in your starting lineup, injured reserve, or “bye week” roster designation. This ensures that there are starting players available on the waiver wire when teams have a need to find a replacement.

Draft Strategy Note

Since teams are only able to have 1 player on their active roster for positions at quarterback, running back, and kicker, you will know that once a team has drafted a quarterback they will not draft a quarterback later in the draft. So if you’re in a draft for your league and 4 teams draft a quarterback in the first round then you can probably wait until very late in the draft to take a quarterback as there is only one other team who will be taking a QB off the board for the rest of the draft. If you are the last team to draft a quarterback then you can wait until the last round to make your selection at quarterback as no one is going to take the player you may be targeting before that point.

Quarterback Rankings

QB1 Vernon Adams Jr. – BC (Codename: Big Play VA)

Vernon Adams Jr. had the most fantasy points last season among all position groups. He racked up 5,403 yards and 34 touchdowns. He will be playing without receivers Dominique Rhymes and Lucky Whitehead this year. Expect him to connect with Keon Hatcher and Alexander Hollins a lot this season.
BC had the 2nd most pass attempts in the league over the regular season last year in what was a very pass-heavy offense. BC added William Stanback at running back but I expect them to again be very pass-heavy based on tendencies last season.

QB2 Zach Collaros – Winnipeg (Codename: Zack Attack)

Collaros was third in fantasy points last year which saw him accumulate 4,646 yards and 33 touchdowns with 16 interceptions. We did not see Kenny Lawler in Winnipeg’s receiving group through the first 6 games of the season last year. Winnipeg’s offense could be more dangerous in the passing game this season with Kenny Lawler and Dalton Schoen both available to begin the season although Winnipeg does not have Rasheed Bailey this season who signed with Toronto.

QB3 McLeod Bethel-Thompson – Edmonton (Interim Codename: The Sandwich King)

MBT led the CFL in passing yards in 2022 when he had 4,731 yards and 23 touchdowns with 15 interceptions with Toronto. In 2023 we saw him go south and lead the USFL in passing yards. Now he’s back in the CFL as the expected starter for Edmonton where he will be surrounded by a great receiving cast. Edmonton’s pass protection was very suspect at times last year but provided they can give him some protection there is a good chance we could see him lead the league in passing yards. If he struggles early fans may be calling for Canadian quarterback Tre Ford to start.

QB4 Cody Fajardo – Montreal (Codename: The Big Fajita)

The reigning Grey Cup MVP is a great option to have as your team’s quarterback. Last year I had him higher in the rankings as he possesses a great dual-threat ability. When the Nevada quarterback is in ‘Big Fajita mode’ and using his arms and legs effectively it is too much on the defense’s plate for them to handle. Last season saw a slow start for Fajardo at times from a fantasy perspective after moving to the Alouettes. With him returning to the Alouettes we might see a higher level of production from him as he builds off of last year although he will be without Austin Mack who signed with the Atlanta Falcons.

QB5 Jake Maier – Calgary (Codename: The Mayor)

Maier was inconsistent in his first full season as a starter in Calgary. He was 6th in fantasy points among quarterbacks and third in passing yards. At times he played very well but his TD-to-interception ratio left a desire for improvement. He accumulated 4,548 yards and 21 touchdowns with 17 interceptions last season.

QB6 Trevor Harris – Saskatchewan (Codename: Trevor)

Last year Saskatchewan struggled to protect Harris and he was limited to only playing in 5 games. Unless there is significant improvement to the performance in pass protection I see Harris as a fantasy risk. He has spent time on the 6-game injured list in 3 of his past 4 seasons and does not have the mobility to save himself from getting hit in the backfield.
He had over 4,000 yards in 2022 with Montreal. Last season he had 1,274 yards 6 touchdowns and 4 interceptions in his 5 games with the Riders.

QB7 Bo Levi Mitchell – Hamilton (Codename: BLM)

It would honestly not surprise me if Bo Levi comes out and returns to the high level of play that saw him dominate the CFL years ago. Last season saw him get injured midway into the second game and then get injured again in his return when his coaching staff sent him out for a QB sneak-in garbage time. There were a couple of plays in which he was just a little off on his deep shots to Tim White before the initial injury. If he can gel with the Hamilton offense we might be treated to some good football from Hamilton. But it’s been too long since we have seen consistent quality football from BLM to spend a lot of draft capital on in a fantasy draft.

QB8 Dru Brown – Ottawa (Codename: Downtown Dru Brown)

Dru Brown is entering a quarterback competition with Dustin Crum for the starting role with Ottawa. The uncertainty surrounding who will hold the role of starting quarterback for Ottawa makes it so that they are not worth spending a lot of draft capital on in a fantasy football draft.
Brown completed 69.7% of his passes for 983 yards and 9 touchdowns without an interception last season with Winnipeg. I am curious to see how he fares in Ottawa where he might not have the level of pass protection he had in Winnipeg.
Ottawa had the lowest-ranked offensive line last season by Pro Football Focus and I thought Dustin “Cookie Monster” Crum played well for the RedBlacks in the face of being rushed frequently. Dustin Crum had the 5th most fantasy points among quarterbacks as he passed for 3,109 yards and 10 touchdowns with 12 interceptions. Crum was highly effective with his legs rushing for 741 yards and 9 touchdowns which brings a lot of value to a fantasy football scenario.

QB9 Cameron Dukes – Toronto (Interim Codename: The Duke)

Last year Dukes played in all 18 games with 2 starts for Toronto. He completed 63 of his 96 passes (65.6%) with 2 touchdowns and 3 interceptions. He played well for Toronto when he filled in for Chad Kelly and is the expected starter for Toronto while Chad Kelly is suspended for at least 9 games this season. We’re going to avoid spending fantasy draft capital on a player who very well may not be the starter come later in the season when the fantasy football playoffs will happen, although he may be productive for the time in which Toronto is without Chad Kelly.
@JonathanClink on Twitter

Currently have a $700 EGO lawnmower and I'm unfortunately ready to sell it and replace it. Battery doesn't last in my yard and it doesn't cut evenly, so I'm ready to go back to gasoline.
I think I'm between the Toro Recycler Max and the Honda HRN216BKD. They're both around $550 which I imagine is around how much I can get for selling the EGO.
I'm especially worried about mulching performance because I hate bagging and I have super dense fine fescue. My EGO mower currently leaves giant clumps in my yard so I'm specifically looking for great mulching. The Toro has the vortex recycler system and the Honda has dual blades.
Worth noting that I have no experience with small engines and I do not really want to learn. The simpler the better.
Any idea which I should consider, or if there are any other great options? Cheers.

I recently posted my RB rankings w/ write-ups and wanted to share my TE rankings as well. Link to RB post: https://www.reddit.com/fantasyfootball/comments/1d2ktpa/rb_rankings_with_data_and_player_writeups/
There are a few key things we need to remember when analyzing TE stats to try and predict future performance:

• In order to break into the top 10 at the TE position you will likely need to be at least the 1st or 2nd highest targeted player on your team
• TE's are more reliant on TD's for weekly production than WR's
• There is no statistical evidence that rookie QB's favor their TE's more than veteran QB's
• Target share “sticks” with 0.695 correlation year over year for TEs
• We should emphasize per-game production in regards to TE's over season long production
• The next most important stat after yards, TD's, and receptions is going to be routes ran
• After target share, route share (routes run divided by team dropbacks) is the second-most “sticky” volume stat year over year

Article going over some of the important metrics that are relevant to the TE position: https://www.sharpfootballanalysis.com/fantasy/te-stats-that-matter-fantasy-football/
*Target Share % is the percentage of their target share for the entire team
*Route % is the percentage of snaps in which the TE ran a route rather than blocked

Rank	Player	PPG	PFF	Rec	Yards	TD	Target Share %	Snap Share %	Route %
1	Kelce	14.6	78.6	93	984	5	20.2%	77%	66%
2	LaPorta	14.1	76.5	86	960	10	20.9%	83%	48%
3	McBride	10.7	76.3	81	825	3	19.6%	69%	53%
4	Andrews	13.5	80	45	544	6	12.8%	70%	60%
5	Kittle	12.7	87.6	65	1020	6	19.1%	89%	48%
6	Kincaid	9.4	67.2	73	673	2	16.7%	63%	69%
7	Engram	13.5	71.6	114	963	4	23.6%	79%	70%
8	Pitts	8.1	68.1	53	667	3	17.7%	64%	65%
9	Njoku	12.6	68.4	81	882	6	20.6%	82%	55%
10	Ferg	10.4	71.9	71	761	5	16.9%	74%	60%
11	Bowers
12	Hock	14.6	78.8	95	960	5	21%	79%	63%
13	Schultz	10	72.8	59	645	5	15.5%	73%	56%
14	Goedert	9.7	73.3	59	592	3	15.8%	85%	56%
15	Kmet	10.7	73.7	73	719	6	18.9%	77%	46%
16	Conklin	6.8	65.6	61	621	0	15.5%	70%	58%
17	Muth	6.4	65.3	32	308	2	9.7%	63%	58%
18	Chig	6.7	62.1	54	528	1	16.1%	66%	55%
19	Luke M.	6.8	63.7	34	352	1	8.2%	66%	57%
20	Sinnot
21	Henry	8.6	69.3	42	419	6	11.3%	75%	51%
22	Sanders
23	Juwan	7.5	58.8	37	368	4	10.2%	65%	55%
24	Otton	6.9	52.1	47	455	4	12.2%	96%	50%
25	Likely	5.9	66.2	30	411	5	8.4%	44%	56%

** I am not including Darren Waller because it seems likely he will retire or Taysom Hill because he is the worlds most irritating anomaly
Travis Kelce

• Kelce once again finished as the TE1 in PPG, but was the TE3 overall due to missing 2 games
• Weeks 2-8, prior to his bye week, Kelce was averaging 19.5 PPG. However, after the bye week he only averaged 11.7 PPG the rest of the season
• This is what I think caused concern for Kelce owners and why his ADP is expected to be lower this season as well as contributing to the belief he may be reaching the end of his stretch of consistent TE1 dominance
• Some people believe that the Chiefs were making a concerted effort that stretch after the bye week to save Kelce for the playoffs and why his fantasy production took a large dip, however none of the metrics (snap % and routes run per game) would seem to attest to that being true
• All that being said, I still believe Kelce is the top TE in fantasy, and his 2 year contract extension leads me to believe the Chiefs have no doubts he can maintain this absurd stretch of dominance
• I believe the Chiefs offense as a whole will be better this season, where Kelce will see less double team coverage with the WR talent being better around him, and we will see some of his metrics (Total Yards and TD's) return to his averages for the years prior

Sam LaPorta

• LaPorta had one of if not the best rookie TE seasons of all time, and will remain one of the best receiving options on the Lions offense in 2024 (it still haunts me I lost a FAAB bid on LaPorta by a few dollars, which was the difference between my team being a middle of the pack fringe playoff team and a championship one it turned out)
• The only real concerns we may have in regards to LaPorta finishing outside of the top 3 for TE's are small in my opinion
• Those concerns could be his route percentage per snap being unusually low for how great his receiving stats were, but he still maintained a more than solid target share regardless
• We may see some TD regression as he had a league high 10 TD's in 2023, and we may see a slight uptick in target competition if the Lions really do plan on unleashing Jameson Williams as their bona fide WR2
• LaPorta is still a very safe pick where his ADP is going, and another thing I keep in mind in regards to Lions receiving options is that Goff historically plays much better in indoor stadiums, in which he will do so 14 out of the 17 games next season

Trey McBride

• I am likely higher on McBride than others, but I absolutely love watching this guy play and think he has the makings of a top 3 TE in this league for years to come
• Once Ertz was relinquished of his long standing TE1 role on this team (week 8) we saw McBride average nearly 15 PPG, along with several "boom" performances of 20+ PPG
• If you extrapolated that ten-game sample over a full season, McBride would have finished with 144 targets, 112 receptions, 1,114 receiving yards, and 6 TD's
• I think the addition of MHJ may actually benefit McBride, in that he can run more freely with less attention from DB's/LB's as the main slot receiver while MHJ does his damage on the outside
• There is also belief that Murray will be fully healthy this season and has the potential to finish top 10 where we see him return to 2021/22 form where he had nearly 4,00 yards passing and 25 passing TD's
• If Kyler even improves markedly on his stats from last season we should see a jump in some of McBride stats (receptions/TD's/yards) given his target share in this offense already
• This team also has a winning formula for fantasy purposes, a potentially high powered and explosive offense with a bottom tier defense in the league, allowing for high scoring games or the need for them to throw the ball 40+ times playing from behind

Mark Andrews

• An ankle injury in week 11 cut Andrew's season short, in which he was seeing decent fantasy production up to that point and was clearly the top receiving target for Lamar, especially in the red zone
• Weeks 2-10 we saw what Andrews is still capable of, in terms of being a top fantasy TE (15.6 PPG in that span)
• Although Andrews has been nowhere near his 2021 dominating fantasy season the last 2 years, I still have belief he is capable of finishing as the TE1 in fantasy if he can stay healthy for a full season
• We saw proof last season that the new OC, Todd Monken, did implement a more pass friendly offense, as Lamar had career highs in pass attempts, competitions, and passing yards in 2023

George Kittle

• Kittle has averaged 13.6 PPG his entire career, and never been lower than 12 PPG in a season (lowest was his rookie year in 2017)
• I think for the TE position, you are still more than comfortable with his volatility because of the positional advantage he gives you over your opponent. We are in a period where there are very few TE's that have an impact week in and week out, and Kittle rarely loses you a week compared to the majority of TE's in the league, while also being one of the very few that can score 20+ easily
• His target share the last few seasons have been decreasing, but we know how efficient he can be with limited touches, as he does most of his damage after the catch and on big explosive plays
• He will always see a large snap share percentage on this high scoring offense due to his top tier blocking ability as well
• He was 1st in deep targets, 10th in red zone targets (among TE's) and ranked first in YPRR (2.42)
• He's the highest PFF graded TE in the league with an insane snap percentage of 89%. Although his route percentage is low at 48%, he still had a respectable 19.1% of total team targets in 2023

Dalton Kincaid

• Kincaid is one of the players that is expected to take the biggest leap in fantasy next season considering the Bills have 241 vacated targets with Diggs and Davis leaving for the Texans and Jaguars respectively
• He had some very productive stretches last season, weeks 7-12 & 17-18 specifically, in which he was playing at a TE1 level averaging nearly 15 PPG in those spans
• In Weeks 7-18, he ranked seventh in target share (19.0%), ninth in receiving yards per game (50.5) and first-read share (21.0%), and 12th in YPRR (1.85)
• There is some concern that a healthy Dawson Knox will have a negative impact on Kincaids snap count, as we saw when Knox came back around week 14 and the following games Kincaid saw a significant drop in his snap percentage and overall fantasy production
• Regardless, Kincaid still had the 2nd highest target share on this offense last season, and with the large number of vacated targets, I believe Kincaid should compete for the number 1 target on this offense

Evan Engram

• Engram finished the 2023 season as the TE2 with an absurd 143 targets, and from week 13 on was averaging 19.3 PPG in fantasy
• What I think people may forget is that the reason we saw this massive jump in target share and fantasy production was due to Christian Kirk getting injured, who played in the slot and is one of Engrams biggest competition for targets in that regard
• We also have to take in consideration not only Kirk being healthy in 2024 and returning to the slot, but the Jaguars adding Gabe Davis and Brian Thomas Jr. who will both eat into Engrams target share
• The way Engram was utilized in 2023 is still very encouraging, as he had the highest percentage of his snaps as a route runner out of all TE's at 70%
• I think Engram is still a very solid TE and will see 100+ targets on the season, but I think people need to temper expectations that he can perform as well as he did at the end of the 2023 season

Kyle Pitts

• Here we go again with the devil tempting us with an "inevitable" Kyle Pitts breakout season for the 4th year in a row
• In all seriousness, if you were finally going to take a chance on Pitts to break into the top 5 for fantasy TE's, this is absolutely the year to do so
• In his first 3 seasons Pitts has seen abysmal QB play, lack luster offensive fire power, and horrible coaching
• Nearly all 3 of those trends are likely to change with a new coaching regime as well as a more than competent QB at the helm, who we've seen have a tendency to throw to his TE more often than other QBs
• We should also expect his snap share percentage to increase with Jonnu Smith no longer on the team
• Although Pitts PFF grades have been diminishing over the years, 80.1 in his rookie season to 67.2 in 2023, we likely saw diminished play due to his knee injury in 2022 (MCL & PCL) that likely lingered into 2023
• People also believed that Pitts looked slower last season, and that his route running was not as crisp and explosive as the previous years
• This may be confirmed by the fact he had the lowest yards of separation per route run out of any TE in the league at a measly 2.4 yards
• I believe he should be fully recovered for the start of the 2024 season and still has the ability to be a top receiving target on this new offense, plus his metrics all point towards a jump in production with the expectation we see a significant boost in pass attempts, TD's, and yards with Cousins at QB

David Njoku

• This is one of my favorite TE's to target in this years draft, but that does not mean he is without risk
• From week 7 onwards last season he was one of the focal points of this offense averaging 15.3 PPG in that span, with 2 boom performances of 20+ PPG, and only 1 game under 10 PPG
• The concerns are that some of his best games came with Flacco as the QB and we still do not know if Watson can return to a top 10 QB in the league on top of not knowing if he will target Njoku in a similar fashion
• Regardless, we have heard in the offseason from the coaching staff that they want to utilize Njoku as a focal point of this offense like he was those final 10 weeks of the 2023 season
• I think Njoku's athleticism, his play last season, his lack of competition for targets (Cooper mainly), and snap share (82% last season) make him a candidate to out perform his ADP

Jake Ferguson

• Ferguson is one of my favorite TE candidates to take another leap in fantasy production this season as Prescott's 2nd favorite target and as he heads into his 3rd season in the league
• Although his fantasy performances were somewhat volatile week in and week out (only 1 boom week and 8 weeks under 10 PPG), he ended the season on a very respectable 102 targets and 10.4 PPG
• We saw his snap share percentage increase throughout the season as well as a more consistent target share each game the final stretch of the season
• The reason I have him inside my top 10 is because the sizable leap he took in fantasy production from his rookie season to last year, the fact the Cowboys added no new target competition, and he has shown he is a top red zone target for Prescott and they should continue to build on that chemistry as the 2nd most targeted player on the team

Brock Bowers

• A generational TE prospect who was absolutely dominant in college at Georgia and one of the picks I was most curious to see in terms of his landing spot in the 2024 NFL draft
• I think the Raiders is one of if not the worst possible landing spot for Bowers for several reasons: we don't know who the starting QB will be and if it will remain consistent throughout the season, regardless it likely won't be high end QB play. This offense will be a run first unit and the competition for targets will be high for Bowers (Adams & Jakobi will likely be 1st and 2nd in targets). Also their OL is atrocious so I doubt the QB even has much time for routes to develop, along with the fact the Raiders have one of the toughest schedules in the NFL
• The positives are that Bowers will immediately be one of the most talented players on this offense and the Raiders drafting him despite taking Michael Mayer early last year makes me believe they full intend on utilizing him as a prominent receiver in this offense
• His draft profile highlights: An agile steamroller who is incredibly hard to bring down. He was 2nd among all TE's in missed tackles forced in 2023 in college. He can be utilized all over the formation and has a well developed route tree and can make solid adjustments to all kinds of throws. He can find the soft spot in coverages and bully linebackers that match up with him in man coverage. He is proficient when it comes to blocking which likely means he should have a secure snap share percentage as a rookie
• There is definitely a risk to drafting a rookie TE, especially one in this situation, and although opinions in that manner may be skewed due to what we saw from rookie TE's last season like LaPorta and Kincaid, but Bowers is better than all of them and may be worth the risk based on his talent alone

TJ Hockenson

• Hockenson was an absolute monster prior to his week 16 ACL/MCL injury as the #1 TE in the league averaging 14.6 PPG
• Although I think that Hockenson is a top 3 TE and can easily finish #1, there is doubt he is ready to start the 2024 season and rumors he may not even be ready the first 4-6 weeks
• We also have to take into consideration the severity of his injury, and how players are often out of form the year following this kind of knee injury
• The Vikings will also have a rookie at QB and despite Hockenson being a focal point of this offense regardless of who the starting QB was last season, we don't entirely know what this offense will look like or what his target share will be
• However, I think Hockenson may very well be the toughest player in the league and if his ADP drops or nobody wants to risk stashing him he could be very well worth it if you are getting 10+ games played from him in 2024 especially if those 10 games include the fantasy playoffs

Dalton Schultz

• Schultz was fairly volatile last season, 6 games in between 10 and 20 PPG, 1 over 20 PPG, and 8 games under 10 PPG
• The positives are the fact he is on one of the most high powered and exciting offenses in the league, has a solid snap share percentage at 73%, and is a decently favorable Red Zone target for Stroud
• He did earn a nice contract extension and is clearly important to this team, however with the addition of Diggs there are an exceptional amount of mouths to feed on this offense so it is unlikely that Schultz can finish much better statistically in 2024
• I do favor TE's that have the ability to score over 15 PPG and contribute to you winning your fantasy week rather than the vast majority of TE's who are inconsequential week in and week out
• Although he may not be 1st, 2nd, or 3rd on this team in targets, he should see some decently high scoring weeks

Dallas Goedert

• Fairly similar to Schultz in terms of fantasy production, volatility, PFF grade, and situation
• He is on a high powered offense, with a fair share of competition for targets, and like Schultz he does have the ability to score over 15 PPG in any given week, which can turn the tide of a fantasy matchup
• Seeing 80+ targets and an 85% snap share is enticing from a fantasy perspective and he is a very serviceable TE where you know almost exactly what you're getting
• He's had some injury concern, missing 14 games due to injury over the last 4 years
• Considering this offense is also not particularly pass heavy, even if another target hog on the offense gets injured, Goedert's ceiling will not be very high

Cole Kmet

• Despite the Bears having a low end passing attack last season, Kmet was able to finish as the TE8 with 6 TD's on the season
• His week-by-week performances were incredibly volatile, where he could finish with multiple TD's or not record a single point in fantasy
• His metrics are interesting. Solid PFF grade of 73.7, a decent snap percentage of 77%, but only 46% of those snaps was he running a route, yet he had an average separation of 4.1 yards per route which was the best for any TE last season
• There are a lot of variables that could hurt or help Kmet in Fantasy. Almost entirely new offense with a rookie QB, the addition of two potentially "elite" WR's in Keenan and Odunze, and competition at his position in Gerald Everett
• Cole Kmet does not run routes often on his snaps (46%) and relies pretty heavily on his red zone TD prowess, making me a little worried about his role in this offense next season if he remains TD dependent
• The plus is that we expect, even if there is a rocky start, that Williams will throw the ball significantly more than what we've seen from Bears QB's on this team in years prior

Tyler Conklin

• This is my favorite TE to target in the later rounds as somebody who could break into the top 10
• The stats I want to focus on for Conklin for last season are his target share percentage (15.5%), total targets (87), route percentage on snaps played (58%), and total TD's (0)
• The Jets offense last year was the 3rd worst in fantasy scoring due to atrocious QB play and the majority of the stats in the previous bullet point are either likely to increase or lead to an increase in fantasy production in 2024
• With Rodgers leading this team, almost every offensive player, especially WTE will see a massive boost in fantasy potential, and Conklin could be the 2nd most targeted player on the team and should see a few TD's throughout the season
• I think if you adjust Conklin's metrics last season to what we can likely expect from the Jets offense this season, we see him finish with a similar stat like to that of Ferguson, Schultz, or Kmet

Pat Freiermuth

• I think Pat is another solid candidate to out perform his ADP and have a bounce back fantasy season after averaging only 6.4 PPG in 2023
• There are significant changes to this Steelers offense, beginning with 87 targets being vacated by Diontae Johnson leaving to the Panthers
• I think Pat has a realistic path to be the 2nd most targeted player in this offense, as I don't think rookie Roman Wilson or new signing Van Jefferson are likely to surpass Pat in that regard
• We also have to think about the upgrade we are seeing at QB on this team in Russell Wilson, who should lead to more fantasy production for every receiver on this offense including Muth
• Lastly, we have Arthur Smith at OC, who with the Falcons showed a proclivity for getting the ball to his TE's, with 160 targets combined between Pitts and Jonnu Smith in 2023
• I think Muth is more talented than his metrics for last season showed, and definitely talented enough to finish ahead of where his expected ADP is going to be

Chigoziem Okonkwo

• I think Chig was favored as a potential breakout candidate last season based off how talented/athletic he looked towards the end of the 2022 season
• We did not see that happen, but that was likely due to the incredibly poor QB play throughout the year
• He only scored more than 10 points one week in 2023, the week he had his lone TD, and there was not much to attest to the idea Levis will be a better QB in 2024, but he could not be much worse
• The metrics that give me hope for Chig are his total targets (77), percentage of targets in this offense (16.1%), route percentage on snaps played (55%), and his yards of separation on routes run (3.8)
• I think the talent is there, and there is an opportunity for increased fantasy production if we see Levis take a jump in year 2, however I expect volatility because it is unlikely Chig is the 2nd or even 3rd most targeted player on this offense
• He is less likely to take a significant jump than players ranked above him because he is competing with Ridley, Hopkins, Boyd and Spears/Pollard for a significant target share within this offense

Luke Musgrave

• Musgrave looked great many moments throughout his rookie season and could take another leap his sophomore season
• However, there are many concerns for me in regards to him being a viable fantasy starter week in and week out
• There are a lot of mouths to feed in this Green Bay offense, and Musgrave only had an 8.2% total target share
• I am less concerned with Tucker Kraft than I think others will be, as Kraft had a lower snap percentage, lower target share percentage, and lower route percentage per snap than Musgrave
• I think based off his talent alone, and that his metrics favor him being used as a receiver more than Kraft, along with his absurd 4.3 yards of separation per route, make him worthy of stashing on your bench on the hope he can increase his target share percentage in this offense

Ben Sinnot

• I loved this landing spot for Sinnot, and although the Commanders did add Ertz, I think Sinnot has a realistic opportunity to be the 2nd or 3rd most targeted player in this offense
• His draft profile highlights: He has a strong lower half that serves him well as a blocker and a receiver. He forced the 3rd most missed tackles among TE's last season. He has decent speed and is a solid athlete overall who has the speed to threaten down the seam as well as be an underneath option
• The fact he is a solid blocker as well as a receiving threat, ninth in YPRR and receiving grade, makes me believe he can see a significant snap share his rookie season
• We also have a rookie QB leading this offense, which I think has the potential to be more explosive than it was in year prior with Kingsbury as the OC
• His competition for targets is not overwhelming, as McLaurin will lead the team per usual, but he is only competing with Jahan Dotson who was disappointing in almost every regard last season, Ertz, and fellow rookie Luke McCaffrey

Hunter Henry

• Henry had solid stats across the board, but my biggest concern is how the Patriots offense is expected to look this season
• They were the 2nd lowest scoring fantasy offense in 2023, and now debut a rookie QB, new HC/OC, and several new receiving weapons (Polk/Baker) with their already lackluster and confusingly crowded WR room
• Henry still has a decent snap share percentage and is a solid red zone threat, but his overall route percentage and target share on this offense is not great
• He did ink a 3 year deal in the off season, and if Maye turns out to be at least a little bit better than the horrible starting QB's we've seen for the Patriots since Brady left, Henry could have some upside
• Given he is rated well for a TE at 69.3, and should see his fair share of snaps and red zone looks, he is fine to stash as a potential weekly plug in

Ja'Tavion Sanders

• For most people, Sanders was considered the 2nd best TE prospect in the 2024 draft class and the Panthers are a decent landing spot for dynasty purposes, but I am not very confident he makes a huge impact year 1
• His draft profile: Very fast, can stretch the field, but is not an elite route runner. Mostly saw screens and straight line shots down the seam. Plays through contact well and is great at the catch point. Great physicality which should translate well into the NFL along with his great hands, as he had little to no drops in college. He needs to work on his blocking, which could limit his snap share percentage in the NFL early on
• With Hurst gone, and Tommy Tremble being Sanders only competition at the position, there is always a chance Sanders sees fantasy relevancy as a rookie
• However, the Panthers are still looking to take that major leap offensively, and even though they have a new HC/OC and bolstered their OL and offensive firepower in the draft/offseason, they may be a year or two away from that happening still

Juwan Johnson

• This was a player I thought would take a leap in 2023 and one I took late in my draft last year as I decided to "punt" the TE position, which did not work out for me
• Johnson struggled with injuries throughout the year and was not rosterable until the final 4 weeks, in which during that span he averaged about 14 PPG in that span
• Once again, people may be enticed to draft Johnson based on those final 4 games at the end of the season when he is healthy, but I would still be wary
• The upside potential is there, as the 3rd most targeted player on this offense is up for grabs (1. Olave 2. Kamara 3. Shaheed/Johnson/Perry?)
• His snap share and route percentage was decent, but even last season with the lack of competition for targets, Johnson only had a 10.2% target share
• His yards of separation per route (2.8) and PFF grade (58.8) were bottom tier for starting TE's in the league
• Overall, in deeper leagues he is worth a bench stash if you don't feel confident about your starting TE

Cade Otton

• Cade is on the field more than any other TE in the league, with a whopping 96% snap percentage, however he spends about half of those snaps blocking
• This, along with his abysmal PFF rating of 52.1, leads me to believe he does not have much upside in terms of increasing his target share percentage of 12.2%
• His yards of separation per route are solid for a TE 3.4, but his utilization rate of 6% (rate in which he gets targeted or "utilized" as a receiverunner) leads me to believe we will not see fantasy relevancy from Otton outside of the occasional red zone target
• The only upside for Otton is that he is on the field the majority of plays, but with Godwin moving back to the slot, I doubt Otton is target much more than what we saw in 2023

Isiah Likely

• It always feels weird saying this, but Likely is the top and only rosterable TE handcuff in the league
• It is a shame someone with his talent is behind a top 5 TE in the league, but unless Andrews gets hurt again, Likely will not be fantasy relevant
• Weeks 14-18, in which he was the starting TE, he averaged 15 PPG and a TD a game
• If you are an Andrews owner and have enough bench spots, it's hard to argue against stashing him just in case, as he puts up numbers just as solid as Andrews does as a starter

No I am not including Fant in my top 25 who has a 51% snap share and 7.9% target share on an offense in which he is the 5th best receiving option
(Edit for Diggs being changed to Keenan for Kmet's write-up)

The Memorial Day storm has significantly impacted Denton, causing delays in yard waste and bulk service pickups. The Solid Waste & Recycling Department is working tirelessly to manage the debris. "Operation Push" aims to maximize collections, including extended efforts on Saturday.
https://voiceofdenton.com/denton-storm-debris-cleanup/

I like that our city (or the recycling company?) is trying to be progressive but I don't think this bin is a good solution for many people. It's freaking huge. I struggled to get it on my deck. It will probably take me a year to fill it up. Who's going to carry to the front when it's full? I'm not. I guess I could leave it in my front driveway (it's an eyesore) and then carry my recycling around to the front but I'm just not willing to do that. It's probably good for families with lots of output and a big yard, but I don't think this will work for me. I have a couple boxes of blue bags in my cupboard.
I feel like calling them to tell them to take it away. I'm probably just going to throw the recycling in the garbage but maybe there is more to the plan that I'm unaware of. I'm trying to figure out how to convert it into a compost bin. It's really freaking huge.

Didn't make the cut and was more of a fan thing anyway. This is the short story I wrote a while back when I found out 4e was being released.
I coaxed my Hunter Gear’s Secondary Movement wheel system and followed alongside a caravan of articulated Longrunners, Five-Tons, and surplus Camel flatbeds. I and several others had been hired as guards of a badlands trading caravan between settlements just south of the Western Frontier Protectorate’s border Between Fort Henry and the Serpentine Range. The terrain slowly turned from savanna to rocky desert and sported several tiny homestead towns. They lacked basic goods but had their freedom from the stifling Clan structure to the north. The homesteads were sometimes attacked by ner do wells known as Rovers, who also decided to attack the Caravans bringing replacement parts for their farm machinery.
There was a screech from my Gear’s leg as the transmission complained. An Antelope 4x4 swerved as my Gear twisted to the right suddenly. I did a pirouette as the wheel froze in place, and the left leg’s wheels continued moving forward. I regained control and thankfully didn’t fall down, facing towards the rear of the caravan.
“What the hell are you doing, Babineau?” was screamed at me from the Antelope. The old man in the passenger seat was flipping me the bird and screaming into his radio.
“Sorry, my SMS locked up!” I apologized. My Gear’s humanoid shape mirrored my feelings, its hand rubbing the back of its sensor pod that was the head and where my head was currently housed.
“I told you to get that fixed, asshole!” chimed in one of the other Gear pilots, Jexica. She was an older veteran from the North that had moved to the badlands for some reason and the current self-appointed captain of the Gear pilots. Her Gear, a Paxton Warrior, was always in great shape, and she usually reminded everyone she ran into about it.
“Soon as I get paid and we get a decent mechanic, Jex,” I grumbled as I turned my Hunter around and started walking. The vibrations from the shocks in the legs were vibrating through to the cockpit. “Looks like I need some shocks too.
“That’s not gonna happen at Limmesville,” Jexica warned. “Their caravanserai is a basic one. See what you can do to jury rig it when we arrive.”
I fell behind as the hours wound on. Eventually, I ended up escorting a lone Springer Jeep in the rearguard. I even had to buy some diesel as my legs used more fuel than the SMS wheels. So much for repairs, I thought in annoyance. We passed the fields of wateroots, barns, water condensators, pens of springers and hoppers, and small houses that made up the settlement of Limmesville. Finally, we made it to the “town center” itself, my kidneys in my throat from all the vibrations from walking the Gear did to me.
Limmesville’s caravanserai was as basic as promised. Made out of beige manufactured stone, the collection of buildings was on the now-paved road that led into the town off the caravan route. Low and squat, I could tell that most of it was underground. The town might become an oasis tower given a few more decades if it continued to grow as it had. There was a bit of a hassle when I walked my Gear up to the opening of the caravanserai out of the heat of the late afternoon when most badlanders were asleep for the first time of the day. When they learned I was with the caravan, things calmed down. I had missed the first Sleep cycle at eighteen hundred hours of the thirty-six hour Terra Novan Day and would probably have to try to sleep when most people were active until Midnight.
I got one of the small Gear bays on the top floor near the open courtyard where most smaller caravan vehicles were parked. Usually, I would have preferred to get one of the underground spaces to protect my Gear better from the elements than an open garage with a roof would provide. Parking my Hunter Gear, I popped the hatch and unhooked my seatbelts, which were the only thing keeping me in place as I had walked the last fifty kilometers. I climbed painfully down the chest and leg of my Gear to the ground, where the full price of all that running came due.
“Gentle Prophet, that’s gonna leave a mark,” I complained as I rubbed my sore shoulders and stretched my cramped legs. Newer Gears were supposed to be a bit bigger inside, but mine was positively ancient and, accordingly, cramped inside.
Kneeling behind the right leg of my Gear, I popped the access panel and looked inside at the SMS’s wheel transmission linkage. The wheel had a huge rock wedged between it and the housing, and the linkage had sheared in half.
A sudden pain hit me between the eyes as the reality of how much it would cost to fix this issue. This wasn’t even a maintenance issue. It could have happened to anyone. I pulled a hammer and a chisel out of the toolkit strapped to my Gear’s fuel tank. A few hits knocked the rock out of its wedged spot, revealing more damage.
I sat in a daze and cradled my head in my hands, “Oh man, this is worse than I thought.”
“What is, newb?” I heard Jexica’s voice in the garage and saw the Riverian woman silhouetted by the slowly setting sun. Plain-faced with a stocky build, she had changed from her pilot’s outfit to typical civvie clothes. She came over and tilted her head at me, her shoulder-length blonde hair contrasting her café au lait skin.
“Ah, the linkage is trashed, and the mounting is twisted,” I said with a shake of my head. “And from how my kidneys feel, the hydraulic fluid is low, and my shocks are on their last legs.”
She blinked and looked at it. “We’re stuck here for three days while the caravan sells stuff and trades. You can fix your Gear yourself and get some of the parts from Regino, but he might charge a bit for it,” she offered. “You can probably do some odd jobs for his crew and get some of it in barter.”
I sighed loudly and nodded. Regino Ypsilanti had two of the Longrunners in this caravan and usually had good stuff, but he was a bit of a slimy fellow. You often did twice as much work for him as things were worth, but he wouldn’t cheat you on the goods. I’d have to work double shifts guarding for the general Caravan manager, Simon Stirbei, and for Regino.
“Well, there goes my sleep,” I muttered.
Jexica smirked at me, “And thus, why almost all the money I make goes back into my Gear maintenance. I like my sleep.” She backed away. “Shower, change clothes, and sleep before you talk to Regino,” she suggested. “Don’t make a deal with that snake when you’re drunk or sleepy.”
I nodded and grabbed a handhold on the leg of my Gear. “Might get a drink to help me sleep,” I said.
“Eh, not too much. I hear they ferment cactus for beer at this place,” Jexica quipped.
An hour later, I had eaten a questionable hopper stew and drunk four of the cactus beers. I was in my small room, which was just large enough to hold a bed, a closet, and a Unit bathroom that combined toilet/sink and shower. The shower water you used would be recycled through a filter unit that removed impurities and used to shower again. Cautious, I checked the filter and saw that it had been changed recently enough that my shower wouldn’t make my skin crawl. I couldn’t shower between here and the next town, so I made the most of it.
I turned on a small flatscreen broadcasting the free channels from the Hermes 72 Satellites. Avoiding the depressing news, I switched to a Republic TV comedy sitcom and flopped on the somewhat hard bed. At least it was clean. I’d get a few hours of sleep and then go check on my Hunter with fresh eyes to make a list of what I needed.
[BEEEE BEEE BEEEEEE]
I woke with a start and blearily looked around the darkened room. My personal assistant was squealing with alarms.
Wait, I didn’t set an alarm.
I painfully stumbled over to the PDA on the dresser as the spots where I had been strapped into my Gear complained. I picked it up and saw [INTRUSION] blinking red on the OLED display.
Intrusion? What ‘Intrusion’? I thought blearily as I checked the time. It was just after Midnight. Wait, I slept that long? I shook myself awake, but sleep still clouded my brain as I hit the buttons on the PDA to see what it was on about.
[Hunter HDG-567XK9 (Vengence) has had its cockpit opened by an unauthorized user] The display read. I turned off the alarm and sat on the bed to let my brain process the message.
I ran my hand through my red hair and rubbed my face. Shaking my head, I woke up a little.
That’s my Gear’s serial number. What the hell? I didn’t know it did that. Vengeance? I’d seen the designation a few times on the paperwork from various mechanics and the salvage yard where I had bought it. But it had never messaged me or my PDA. It’s gotta be malfunctioning. Also why the name Vengeance?
Pulling on clothes, I stretched and yawned before opening the door to my room and heading down the hallway. It was dead quiet. No one was around as I walked down the hallway and opened the door to the courtyard. I stumbled out into the night air with a sense of unreality. A few people were around, but they didn’t seem real.
Why am I still tired? Why do I feel so weird?
Walking toward the garages containing the Gears, I saw some light coming from under the door. It was orange, like one of the old sodium bulbs my Gramps used to use at his shop.
Someone’s messing with my Gear!
I threw the door open and balled up my fists, expecting to see several people stripping parts out of my machine. Instead, absurdity greeted me.
Access panels were open on every part of my Hunter. Wires and hoses were sticking out of it like it had been pulled apart. Four-wheeled drones with cylindrical bodies and long, thin manipulator arms rolled and beeped at one another as they opened hatches, checking parts and wiring. One was near my Gear’s right leg, arc-welding a new mount for the wheel, which sat off to the side.
Most absurd of all was a pair of small legs sticking out of the top of the right leg of my Gear. They were covered in the red fabric of a mechanic’s jumpsuit and had tiny white shoes that kicked as the owner wriggled about with something in the leg.
What the absolute hell? A go-ki wearing clothes? A chibi? The person was too small to be a normal intruder.
I stomped over, and the drones rolled away, beeping softly. Reaching across the open hatch of the Gear’s leg at my waist level, I grabbed the belt of the intruder and pulled.
“Hey!” I heard a high-pitched indignant squawk, and the legs kicked me.
Pulling harder, I yanked the intruder in red out of my Gear’s leg and saw a dirty-faced kid covered with grease and hydraulic fluid. The kid had pure white hair, large red eyes, and the palest skin I had ever seen.
“What’s the big idea!” the kid squawked, flailing about with tools in each hand. “Lemme go!” The drones started beeping and rolling around in a panic.
Furious, I growled, “What the HELL are you doing in MY GEAR!”
Blinking, the kid just stared at me.
I shook the kid. “Eh! Ehhhh! What are you doing to MY GEAR?”
The kid squawked again and said something. I brought them up to eye height and asked, “What was that?”
Sheepishly she replied, “He said he was sick, so I’m helping him.” It was a little girl’s voice
“My Gear told you he was sick?” I asked incredulously. “Gears can’t talk,” I stated flatly.
“Er, that’s kinda true, but they give off vibes,” the kid looked away in embarrassment. “But kinda not,” she doubled down. “You can figure out things from data and how badly they are hurt.” The drones had backed away from my Hunter and were organizing parts.
“You’ve got a lot of nerve, tearing apart my Hunter like this!” I yelled at her. “Do you realize how much money it’s gonna cost to fix all this?”
She tilted her head and looked at me like I was stupid, “Six hours, and except for my food, I’ve already been paid, you moron.”
“What? What did you call me? You wreck my property and ... Wait, who paid you?” My arm was getting tired, so I dropped the kid on the garage floor.
She landed a little badly and squeaked. “Rude!” she yelled and pointed a tool at me. “I ought to leave it all like this, but I don’t leave my customers in a lurch!” She crossed her arms and nodded, looking resigned. “You’re an asshole, but Vengence has been nothing but sweet to me.”
Vengeance? There was that name again.
I held up a hand. “Wait, who is Vengeance?”
She scoffed, “Moron, that’s my client.” She patted the leg of my Gear. “Who’s a good Gear? You are! Yes, you are!” Her attitude changed when she talked to the machine. Looking back at me, she said flatly, “He’s an old vet, and you have been treating him terribly. No regular maintenance! No natural oil, and worse, you give him crappy gas!”
Those were all true. I hadn’t been able to keep my Gear in top shape like Jexica had said many times. Wait, why am I feeling bad? She’s the Intruder! I turned on her and opened my mouth to tell her to get out.
“Feed me!”
I blinked, my mouth open. “Excuse me. What?”
“Feed me!” she yelled again. “Vengeance promised me his pilot would get me a meal.”
“I... what?”
She stomped her tiny foot. “Feed me!” she repeated.
I blinked. The kid reminded me of a spoiled pet hopper my sister owned that would squeak until it was fed or petted. I threw my hands up and said, “If I feed you will you leave?”
She nodded, “Yep, right after my job is done. After all, I can’t let Vengeance stay like this.”
This had gotta be a dream, I thought. I drank too much. This isn’t happening. I’ll go through the motions, the bad cactus liquor will work out of my system, and tomorrow I’ll talk to Regino and get the needed repairs done.
I sighed and shrugged. “Fine, whatever.” I left the garage and went back towards the caravanserai’s restaurant/bar. Again there was a sense of unreality, cementing that this was a dream in my mind. I got a bowl of the stew I had earlier and another cactus liquor for me. I brought them back and handed her the bowl.
“Yay, hopper stew,” she said with a shrug as she sat down on the garage floor to eat it with a spoon she folded out of a combitool. “Big spender, eh?” She eyed the liquor. “That stuff’ll make you go blind.” She blew on the hot stew and looked at me, “Gonna let me finish my job?”
I raised an eyebrow at that and laughed, “Better than me kicking your ass and throwing you out and ending up with a broken Gear.” It was probably just all my anxieties bubbling up as one horrible dream.
“I read your piloting data,” she said between spoonfuls. “You wouldn’t beat up a kid. Or a girl. Well, maybe a girl if she was in a Gear.”
That’s true too. Kid’s got me dead to rights.
The drones were running around like mad, replacing seals and resoldering electronics. Wires were replaced and rerouted. A small device was off to the side, slowly making replacement parts too. A Utopian Fabber? It looked like one of those videos they used to show in school how they made gears or cars. She stood up and cracked her neck before climbing up to the cockpit and crawling in there. It was actually calming watching them work.
I sat there in companionable silence, drinking the cactus liquor until my eyes closed on their own.
BAM BAM BAM
My eyes popped open, and I looked around. No kid, no garage. I was in my room under the sheets of my bed. My clothes were folded on the dresser, and my head hurt like no one’s business. My tongue felt rough and dry. Too much cactus liquor. The door was hit again, and I walked over to it, opening it a crack, and saw Jexica looking at me expectantly.
“What?” I said quietly.
“DID YOU GET THE LIST FOR REGINO!” she yelled. Wait, no, she didn’t yell. She was talking normally.
“Hangover,” I muttered.
I heard her smirk, which I shouldn’t have been able to do. Ah, the magic of dehydration.
“DRINK WATER!” she said in her normal voice, shouting volume to me. “I’LL GET YOU IN TWO HOURS.” I nodded weakly and shut the door.
An hour later, water in me and a quick shower later, I made my way to my Gear hanger with my personal digital assistant. The noise of the people made the caravanserai seem lively, and there were at least three competing sets of music, plus the murmur of people and growls of engines.
I opened the door to the garage and looked in. An almost new Hunter was in there with the name “Vengeance” printed neatly across the side of the cockpit. In addition, the names of seven different pilots were written down in smaller script with coffin kill markers next to them on the cockpit with my name “Babineau” across the top hatch.
That was a dream, right?
I looked over the Hunter, which had scars in the armor where they always had been. The toolbox was still on the fuel tank but had been stocked with oil and grease. I climbed into the cockpit, and it smelled exactly the same, except there was an underlying scent of fresh repairs.
“Whoah, what you got there!” I heard Jexica exclaim from the door.
I looked over at her in a panic.
“You stole someone else’s machine?” she asked quietly.
I shook my head vehemently, “NO! I swear! There was this mechanic...” I stopped. She wasn’t gonna believe me. I could barely pay to keep going on the trail to earn money, let alone this.
She shook her head, “Yeah, your Gear should have been in the depot for a week at least. Don’t tell me some shade tree mechanic did all this.”
I shrugged helplessly and pointed to the cockpit. “Just look. The serial number and everything is all the same.” I got out of it and let her inspect it. She’d helped me work on it several times before, so she knew some of the ins and outs of it.
After Jexica sat in the cockpit, she checked readouts and shook her head incredulously. “It does look like it’s yours. Even the stains are in the right spots.” She looked in the head of the Hunter then back to me.
“Who’s Deseun?” Jexica asked accusingly.
“Deseun? I don’t know a Deseun?” I said at a complete loss.
She waved a yellow sticky note at me. “A list of supplies and work still needing to be done, written in a girl’s hand, signed, Deseun.”
I snatched it and tilted my head, looking it over. Yep, it was, as she said. Nah, that ... I mean...
“Who’s Deseun?” Jexica snapped.
“A kid,” I said in a bit of shell shock.
She looked at me with disgust.
“No! She’s the mechanic! She and her drones fixed up my Hunter! I guess its name is Vengeance! I bought her stew!” I babbled.
“A kid, with drones fixed your broken down Gear?”
I tried to explain how I remembered things from last night, but she just shook her head.
“Yeah, and go-kis use the stoneheads as giant Gears,” Jexica said, shaking her head. “Yeah, we’re gonna lie and say you and I fixed it up.”
I blinked at her. “What?”
“I’m not traveling with someone who has a rep of sprouting urban legends,” Jexica stated. “You wanna be known as a crackpot like that ancient guy they have on all the late-night shows saying stuff about aliens?”
I shook my head. That guy was always laughed at by my friends in school. Yeah, nope, not gonna be that.
“Then we’re gonna hang out and see if we can fix the rest of the things on this list,” Jexica stated, waving the note from ‘Deseun’ around. “Because if anyone thinks you stole a Gear, the Sheriff’ll be here, and it’ll be a big deal and mess with the caravan.”
In the end, we hung out for the next few days, and I learned a lot about Jexica and the Caravan. We got most of the repairs done. They were mostly cosmetic or minor things that took time.
We left Limmesville without me having to sell my soul to Regino and my Gear, I mean ‘Vengeance,’ moved fantastically. There had been a printout of the names of the people who had piloted it in the past, along with their regiments and how they had passed away. It kind of made me feel better knowing that my Gear had a storied history, and I was now part of it. Our one fight with Rovers and their souped-up Prarie Dog Gears was decidedly one-sided. Vengeance seemed to encourage me as I fought, and though no one was killed in the fight, I took down one Gear by blowing its leg off.
When we arrived in one of the Oasis Towers just out of NuCoal Territory, we started hearing rumors of a ‘Phantom Mechanic’ who would show up and fix Gears. People said it was a gnome or a go-ki that would show up with an army of robots to fix your machine. Others said it was a Utopian or CEF deserter. These were laughed off by the group of pilots over drinks, but I was sweating bullets, and Jexica gave me a weird smile.
“Yep, we fixed Vengeance up all on our own, didn’t we,” Jexica stated.
I nodded vigorously. “Yep!”

Bored and decided to put together the most memorable moments/plays/games against each NFL team. Feel free to argue if you disagree. This will be only games/moments that were beneficial for the Eagles:
Cowboys: 44-6 beatdown to get into the postseason
GIants: Any of the Miracle at Meadowlands games. HM Jake Elliott 61 yard GW FG
Washington: 2010 Monday Night Massacre
Bears: Double Doink
Vikings; 2017 NFC Championship game
Lions: Snow Bowl
Packers: 4th and 26
Falcons: 2004 NFC Championship HM: 2017 Divisional Round
Bucs: 2012 Foles game winning TD pass to Maclin
Panthers: ? none really stand out, I guess the Sproles punt return TD game?
Saints: Again none really stand out
Rams: Wentz ACL tear, Eagles win division
49ers: 2022 NFC Champ game
Cardinals: again none really stand out
Patriots: Pretty obvious
Bills: Comeback last year w/ Jake Elliott FG to send into OT in the rain
Dolphins: none really stand out
Jets: again none really stand out
Steelers: AJ Brown 3 TD game or the Carson Wentz introduces himself to the NFL game
Bengals: I know I said all positive, but I don't remember the games the Eagles last won, so the fact that they tied two separate times with one time being when McNabb didn't know ties existed
Browns: none stick out
Ravens: none stick out
Colts: 2014 Darren Sproles wills the team to comeback victory
Jaguars: comeback in rain in 2022?
Texans/Oilers: 1991 House of Pain Game
Titans: AJ Brown dominates old team?
Chiefs: 2023 comeback win
Chargers: 2005 Eagles block the FG with no time left, Matt Ware returns it for a 65 yard TD
Broncos: Eagles hang 51 on Denver in 2017/Alshon Jeffery bullies Aqib Talb game
Raiders: Foles throws 7 TDs on the road
Feel free to discuss or argue what you think!