Other People Make Me Feel Bad About Myself

Many aspects of my lifestyle have changed since Rohan arrived. There are big changes and small changes, but somehow it is the small changes that make the biggest impact on my fragile but inflated ego. Big changes - like driving around BC more, or climbing big cliffs - are neat, but the subtle things are more likely to change the way you think about yourself or the world.

For example, before Rohan arrived, I showered roughly weekly and lived in a van - a situation to which I was accustomed and with which I was comfortable. After Rohan arrived, I showered roughly weekly and lived in a van, but now with added self consciousness.

But the most depressing part of traveling with Rohan is my mobile phone. Under normal circumstances, when I own a phone it is more of a gesture than a necessity. I own the phone so that I can write its number on resumes or application forms. It is one of the trappings of modern life and, as a token participant in the modern world, I partake in the social ritual of phone ownership.

God forbid that anyone might try to call me on the phone. That would be unseemly and would probably be a most unpleasant surprise. In Canada, where call charges make text messaging the preferred method of communication, I have received a few messages, mostly from people waiting for me at the bottom of a ski run who are worried that I have run into a tree and died. Fortunately (or perhaps unfortunately) I have never had such an excuse, I am simply slow.

But since Rohan's arrival, the phone has been working overtime. I have given up on keeping track of the phone, preferring to leave it to him to manage the barrage of incoming and outgoing messages. It is tragically unsurprising that after roughly eight months here, my friend who hasn't been here for several years not only knows more people than I do, but those people are in more places than the people I know and they actually want to talk to him.

It turns out that Rohan knowing people is pretty fantastic, because we can meet those people and stay with them. Plus, chasing old friends around is a good option for filling in the times when the weather is crap and we can't climb, which is proving to be more frequent than we had hoped. And sometimes those friends are friends with pretty amazing people, and you get to go climbing with them, and that's pretty rad as well.