Wait, are you telling me you actually caught the azaleas blooming in early June? I thought those things were pretty much done by late May at best. I've done both routes a few times and I always miss the bloom by a week or two. That's wild timing. The Gregory Bald climb is no joke though, I remember doing it in August one year and I swear I drank all my water before I even got halfway up. That water filtering from a tiny creek is such a pain but you're right, the view from the top is one of those things you just can't get from the valley floor. Low Gap is definitely the safe choice but sometimes you need that brutal payoff to make the trip feel real, you know? I've never had luck with the timing on the azaleas so I'm honestly a little jealous you got to see them like that.

Man you just described my exact situation. I found the same thing last year when I was refinancing my car and had to dig through old statements. "Overdraft Protection Fee" at like $5 a month for like 8 years. I called and they told me the same thing about linking accounts. But get this - I actually have a savings account with like $200 in it from like 2016. So I was paying for a service that would transfer money from my savings to my checking if I overdrafted. But my savings only had $200 in it and my overdrafts were always like $50 or $100. So the bank was basically taking my $5 a month and never doing anything because my savings never got low enough to trigger it. I asked the guy why they kept charging me and he said "it's an automatic service" like that makes it okay. The whole thing is a scam designed for people who don't read the fine print.

Funny enough it was a cheap diamond sharpening stone for me. I always thought you had to get the expensive Japanese water stones for kitchen knives. Then I picked up a $15 diamond plate off Amazon for rough work. Turned out that thing cuts so fast and stays flat. My chef knife went from dull to shaving sharp in like 2 minutes. It beat out my $80 stone for speed. Sometimes the budget stuff works better than you'd think. Maybe it's just me but I learned not to judge a tool by its price tag.

Wait @daniel474 are you suggesting I'm not always a machine? Honestly that weird calm focus takes over and you just become a short order ninja. Nothing hits like that high when you clear the board and realize you crushed it.

Man that really stings when a trusty tool finally gives out.