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[-] JackbyDev@programming.dev 21 points 3 days ago

I don't get why anon believes he is being used. It was a miscommunication, sure. Did he spend money on her before this? Using him as a ride to go on a hike? Hikes being extremely cheap and only needing to pay parking, usually.

[-] Dasus@lemmy.world 3 points 3 days ago

Hikes being extremely cheap and only needing to pay parking, usually.

Laughs in Finnish everymans rights.

You have to pay for hiking? Or you hike on trails where the only access is from a parking area that you have to pay for?

Seems ridiculous to me.

[-] JackbyDev@programming.dev 2 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

It depends. Generally speaking they're free. I was told by a ranger at the Great Smokey Mountains National Park that they don't enforce (or at least specifically weren't that day) parking passes and only give people courtesy notices to pay for parking. They were only ticketing people parking in places that weren't actual parking spots or blocking areas.

Generally speaking I think you can expect to pay about $5 on average, some places maybe more (like if it's a trail in a city, then parking is usually more costly). But in tons of places it's just totally free.

My point is that anon thinking he was being used was hilarious because it's extraordinarily cheap.

[-] piccolo@sh.itjust.works 0 points 3 days ago

The smokey mountains is strictly enforcing parking passes now anywhere without the park. They will tow vehicles and mail you the fee without question if you dont have a pass.

[-] JackbyDev@programming.dev 1 points 2 days ago

This was in November 2023. It may have just been that day or it may have changed since then.

[-] Dasus@lemmy.world 0 points 3 days ago

I get the point about it being a cheap activity in general, but aside from parking, who do pay the money to? Is there like a ticket-booth at the start of some trail which you couldn't reasonably get to walking from other places?

[-] JackbyDev@programming.dev 0 points 3 days ago

Some places use an honesty system where you drop money into a box and get a thing to put on your dash. Other places have a gate house or booth where you can pay.

You aren't forbidden from walking in. It's usually just not a practical choice. Usually trails are in very remote places so you'd probably walk further than the length of the trail to get to it lol. Other places which are in more urban environments (like a trail through a city or places like Stone Mountain Georgia) might have easy places to park and walk in but it's technically private property. And again, still usually just extra walking. For things like bike trails this is more viable probably.

[-] Dasus@lemmy.world 1 points 3 days ago

In Finland there is no trespassing on private property. Well, not if it's not gated or your yard or something. And you can't gate large pieces of land like that, so...

I understand that the nature is very different, for instance we have no mountains. So for me, I'm just thinking "just use another road", but some places just have one road going there, I guess. Here, I'll show my point:

I've highlighted the parks in yellow. Kansallispuisto = national park, luonnonpuisto = "nature park" (which sounds silly, I hear it). My point is that the trails in those areas start from a few places, and going to the national park, there's several parkin places you can go to, and you can get to the areas from so many different places. And this isn't a national park that requires any park rangers. I don't even know if we have any, but if we do, they're in the national parks which are up North in Lapland. This is a very small one. Just a big marsh with a lake in the center, essentially.

So you couldn't really set up a gatehouse or a booth anywhere there.

[-] JackbyDev@programming.dev 0 points 3 days ago

In America we don't have any sort of "right to roam" law, sadly. If you want to feel even more smug and mock my country, wait until you watch this: https://youtu.be/yBrtWXBhuuo

In the west there is a grid pattern of land like a checker board. Like this:

X O X O
O X ? X
X ? X O
O X O X

The Xs are private property and you cannot access them. The Os are public property. The ?s in the middle are public property, but how do you get to them? The only way is by crossing through a corner. Obviously, the private land owners would prefer to view the public land as an extension of their private land so they believe that corner crossing should be illegal because it passes through their property. (Even if you don't step on it you have to cross through their airspace so to speak.) Meanwhile, everyone else says, "hey, you can't just double your land like this! Let me have access to the public land! What the hell do you mean airspace? I'm not a plane! I'm a person! And I didn't step on your property!"

[-] Dasus@lemmy.world 0 points 3 days ago

Genuine curiosity being read as "smug and mocking" is a bit troublesome I feel. I've just not traveled a lot. I know things, but I haven't been there personally, and reading about Yellowstone, it doesn't exactly highlight that some company controls access to it, more or less.

Thank you for the info on that though, seems horrible, and is exactly the type of behaviour our laws exist to prevent.

[-] JackbyDev@programming.dev 1 points 2 days ago

Light hearted banter being read as troublesome is also troublesome.

We have plenty of places like that here as well. The places where you have to pay to park are generally very popular and the fee is largely used to reduce how many go (i.e. reduce destruction) and fund maintenance and cleanup efforts.

In my area, the only places that charge are state and national parks, and not even all of them. I have dozens of hiking trails within a few miles of me without any parking fees, and there's a massive federally owned swath of land nearby also with no parking fees.

If you go to the handful of extremely popular parks, you'll pay a fee (and you can get an inexpensive yearly pass if you want), but if you go to literally anywhere else (dozens if not hundreds within 50 miles or so), there's no fee. So Grand Canyon or Yellowstone = fee, local falls or BLM land (federally owned, but not a "national park") are free.

[-] Dasus@lemmy.world 0 points 3 days ago

I just don't understand how you can "fee" Yellowstone or the Grand Canyon. Those places are huge.

You have a booth on every road?

I don't believe there's a single place like that in Finland, what with our everymans rights

Everyman's rights are the right of every person to use nature regardless of who owns or controls the land. The use of nature within the limits set under the everyman's rights therefore does not require the permission of the landowner and using the rights does not cost anything.

[-] Death_Equity@lemmy.world 1 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

Yellowstone has limited access by road, but you could hike into it.

The Grand Canyon has visitor's centers and a few established areas with infrastructure for various activities, but you could hike to it, but getting into the canyon is another matter.

The other thing is that going in by road and paying for a pass let's people know you are there and if you haven't come back. Both areas are dangerous and people get in over their head because they have no understanding of the dangers of nature.

[-] Dasus@lemmy.world -1 points 3 days ago

So by "limited access by road" you mean that "yes, there is a booth on every road leading there"?

So some company basically owns the rights to do that..? Have booths and whatnot on every road leading there?

It's just... weird for me, is all.

[-] sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works 0 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

Yup, for Yellowstone, that's 3 entrances, so three sets of booths. It's largely to cut down on traffic (traffic gets really bad as-is) and maintain the infrastructure.

The only reason you'd go to any of the entrances is to visit the park, there are no through roads or anything, and it's like an hour or two from the major highways, and several hours from a city larger than 10k people (aside from the tourism towns just outside the park). And the traffic to get into the park is backed up for an hour in the morning for people looking to get lucky with extra passes (there's a maximum capacity).

You can hike in if you like, the passes are only required for cars IIRC.

[-] Dasus@lemmy.world 0 points 3 days ago

It's genuinely hard to imagine how large America is.

And Finland isn't one of the tiny Central-European countries.

Driving from Fresno to Yellowstone is pretty much the distance it is to drive from where I live (Southern end of Finland) to the Northern end of Finland.

But yeah at the Northern end in Lapland it starts getting more like that, only a few roads going to the larger national parks. Here in the South you can just go around anything really, there's backroads and footpaths everywhere. Like no matter how deep in the woods I go, I'd feel awkward taking a shit, since there's always some dogwalkers to be met.

This makes me want to go hiking up North.

There are areas like that here too. I live next to a few mountains where there see dozens of interconnected trails all largely accessible from an intercity arterial bike path, with free parking near the more popular entrances to the trail network. Much of it is federal land (part of a national forest), but none of it is designated as a national park.

Maybe there's a two terminology difference here. Here's the terms we use:

  • national park - has ranger stations and infrastructure, and usually an entrance fee
  • state park - same as national park, but at the state level, and lower fees (often free)
  • regional park - owned either by the state, county, or city, but isn't designated as a "state park"; may or may not have parking fees, depending on popularity and how developed it is (esp near urban areas)
  • national forest - designated area, but generally little infrastructure outside of some campgrounds (paid) and semi-curated trails; no entrance/parking fees
  • BLM land - federally owned, but virtually no infrastructure and no fees; avoid hiking during hunting season so you don't get mistaken for game
  • undeveloped state land - like BLM land, but owned by the state

Most of the trails I'm talking about are in the last 3 groups, and they're all free. Yellowstone, Grand Canyon, and Glacier are all in the first group and all have entrance fees. If you're "going hiking," you'll go on the last four, and the first two are for vacations unless you happen to live right next to one.

[-] Dasus@lemmy.world 1 points 3 days ago

Oh. I think for us the first three would be hiking and the last four would just be walking.

But yeah, there's definitely a difference of terminology, seeing as there's two completely different languages. But I do take your point.

I don't know about any trails that have bike paths leading up to them though. I mean, unless you count a road as a bike path. It's just very much more organic here, you've made it into a whole thing that can be used for profit, it seems like. The infrastructure to ours, like duckboards and whatnot are paid for by taxes, but our taxation policies are quite different so we won't get into that, lol.

There's no profit here, it's just a different form of taxation where the users of a service pay more for its upkeep than those who don't use it. The only time a private org gets involved is if you make a reservation (and even then, many sites use a government agency) or arrange for a guided tour or something.

Everything here is publicly owned, except maybe the handful of hotels that are operated inside Yellowstone (not sure how those work). So whether you're paying with income tax or park fees isn't particularly relevant since it's all federal or state land.

[-] Dasus@lemmy.world 1 points 3 days ago

I meant "profit" in the sense of that profit being the taxation. As in, people walking around the park don't actually cost anything to anyone, so it is profit when you charge people to walk around, but the people wouldn't be able to come there in the first place where there not the infrastructure which is upheld by said profit.

Well, they do. They leave litter, destroy trails, vandalize formations, etc. Keeping things nice takes a lot of work, especially with how much foot traffic these parks get. Yellowstone gets over 4 million visitors every year, and that's with the park fees, quotas, etc. Glacier is a bit less popular and still gets around 3 million visitors every year.

National and State parks are funded with both income taxes and park fees. Park fees keep the number of visitors down to a manageable level to preserve the natural beauty.

And walk-ins generally don't need to pay, though some of the larger parks also have walk-in rates.

[-] Dasus@lemmy.world 1 points 3 days ago

OK yeah I'll admit cleaning up after shitheads does cost, and probably a fair amount because of how famous those places are. (So it's very much non-locals most of the time, I'd wager.)

[-] DrFuggles@feddit.org -1 points 3 days ago

Yeah, no harm done, but she'd been leading him on for weeks. That'd make me pissed too.

[-] Manifish_Destiny@lemmy.world 13 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

Or she genuinely wanted a friend and anon is so attention starved he can't see the difference.

I wouldn't want to go back to that awkward situation either.

[-] jerkface@lemmy.ca 2 points 2 days ago

... so badly that you quit your job??

[-] Empricorn@feddit.nl 1 points 3 days ago

Oh, come on. Weeks of talking and flirting (coworkers agreed) and she never mentioned a boyfriend. To be painfully clear, this isn't a gender thing and anyone can lead someone else on to stroke their own ego. And that's what this is (if it happened).

[-] jerkface@lemmy.ca 0 points 2 days ago

You only have the incel's account of things.

[-] sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works -1 points 3 days ago

Why not? I'd return, apologize for the misunderstanding, and then laugh about it. Maybe bring a small gift, like cookies or something to share, and make it clear that you're looking for friendship.

But completely bailing is kind of weird IMO, which tells me there's more to the story.

[-] JackbyDev@programming.dev 3 points 3 days ago

I don't necessarily agree she was leading him on. It was a miscommunication. It's an extremely common story if men misinterpreting women's behavior as pursuit when it is often just friendly. Even then, platonic flirting is a thing. If anon really intended for this to be a date, why did he at no point ask if she was single? We can sit here all day and debate whether the girl's "flirting" was appropriate or not and whether she should've said she had a boyfriend, but it goes both ways. What we do know is that, to anon, this was a date and that anon never asked if she was single at any point in the two weeks.

[-] erev@lemmy.world 6 points 3 days ago

I don't disagree with you that anon should've asked more questions, but platonic flirting is kinda wacky without a well established rapport beforehand. Otherwise it's just flirting, and can be confusing.

[-] JackbyDev@programming.dev 0 points 3 days ago

It's also confusing being asked somewhere and never being told it's being treated as a date.

[-] erev@lemmy.world 1 points 3 days ago

thats valid! both people here were kinda shitty to each other

Why not ask? If a guy asks a girl (or vice versa) to go somewhere and it's not abundantly clear it's not a date (e.g. you've done similar things together before, they're openly gay, or they explicitly said it's not a date), then it should be assumed to be a date unless clarified otherwise. So if they don't specify and you're unsure, then ask.

That said, her leaving is also odd. A misunderstanding shouldn't be a big deal. Show up the next day and laugh about it, and you're golden. I wouldn't be mad if that happened to me, nor should either anon or the girl. It's just a misunderstanding, it's really no big deal.

[-] JackbyDev@programming.dev 3 points 2 days ago

Why do you see a date as the default for men and women hanging out together?

That's just how social expectations are. I recommend you go ask a handful of single men you know (i.e. coworkers) whether they'd consider a 1:1 outing with a woman to be a "date." I'm guessing most would say yes.

[-] JackbyDev@programming.dev -1 points 2 days ago

Context matters: they're coworkers.

Exactly, they're coworkers where OP isn't certain if they were flirting or just being friendly, and other coworkers confirm she's flirting. To me that means:

  • they don't have a good enough relationship to tell the difference, so probably not "friends"
  • other coworkers don't seem to experience the same thing
  • claims to not have other friends (surely she'd mention a BF, no?)

So to me, that sounds very much like she's flirting, so it's totally understandable for OP to consider it a date.

[-] JackbyDev@programming.dev 2 points 2 days ago

Facts:

  1. Anon intended for this to be a date.
  2. Anon never said this was a date.
  3. Anon never asked if she was single.
[-] theuniqueone@lemmy.dbzer0.com -2 points 3 days ago

You know you only have his side of this story right?

[-] Reddfugee42@lemmy.world 0 points 3 days ago

Speak for yourself

this post was submitted on 16 Nov 2024
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