Felt like an idiot for waiting" - join the club, I still trip over my old ones.

Small talk is a tax on introverts" is honestly the best way I've ever heard it put. I used to force myself to chat with every barista and cashier because I thought I was being rude if I didn't. One day I just started giving a quick smile and a "thanks" and leaving it at that. Nobody has ever called me out or looked offended. Most people are probably relieved to skip the weather talk too.

parker_park8 said "fancy buckets with expiration dates" and that's exactly right. But here's something nobody's mentioned. Those cheap plastic barrels are usually made from polypropylene or polyethylene that isn't UV stabilized. So the sun literally breaks down the plastic molecules over time. Makes them brittle. I've seen barrels crack just from the pressure of water freezing inside too. That's another angle. Metal expands differently with ice. Doesn't crack as easy. If you live somewhere with hard freezes, that's a bigger deal than the sun.

Oh man, that's like when I tried to save money by buying a $30 air sander from Harbor Freight and it literally caught fire in my hand. Not kidding, it started smoking and I dropped it on my driveway. My wife still brings it up every time I mention buying tools. The worst part is I knew better, I had a buddy who bought a no-name spray gun and it glopped paint all over his classic Mustang like it was a Jackson Pollock. I just keep falling for the "this time it'll be different" trap when I see those cheap prices. At least you only wasted time on a Honda hood, I had to repaint my whole fence after a cheap sprayer decided to just spit chunks of paint everywhere. Some lessons you gotta learn the hard way I guess.

My buddy Jason actually tried Gregory Bald last fall and told me it was so packed near the summit he ended up eating his sandwich behind a rhododendron just to get some peace. @christopher_sullivan you're probably right about the timing thing, but he said the middle section of the trail around the old log bridge was totally empty for like twenty minutes. He sat there and watched a pileated woodpecker work on a dead tree, no phones or voices or anything. That kind of quiet on a popular trail feels rare now, almost like you stole it.