When we talked about later one of my friends asked me why the guy seemed so excessively nice to us.
"Just look at us," I said (we had been in the woods for three days without a shower, shave, or anything of the sort -- and some of us include various and sundry military equipment in our hiking/camping gear) . . . "That strange dude is probably a serial killer, but one look at us and he could barely keep from crapping in his pants."
My rule of thumb in the outdoors is to make sure the group I'm with looks almost like something out of a Mad Max movie. The best defense in a situation like that is an aura of borderline derangement.
Your post really described me and my friends. Any nut case that runs into us would be standing straight, eyeballs spinning and looking for an escape route.
Same mixed military gear and boots, look like a bunch of pirates when we don’t shave and by the looks of us - somebody, if not all, have some type of weapon. And about half are Good ‘ol Boys so we have that problem covered also.
Looks can be deceiving...
From the late 70’s to the early 90’s — our motorcycle “gang” was a group of managers and engineeers from technology corporations in Silicon Valley, an assistant District Attorney from a local town and one venture capitalist..... We did not look unclean, unshaven or slovenly......
On many Sunday mornings, most of the eight of us would make the run to the beach at Santa Cruz, Capitola or Half Moon Bay for breakfast and then back home around Noon.... On long weekends we would frequently run North to Oregon or East to Tahoe or South to Death Valley.....
Rarely using Motels — we would usually just pull off into a forest fire road for the night...ground cloth, sleeping pad, sleeping bag with a throwover to stay dry.
One particular night near Mount Lassen -— there was an uneasiness due to unexplained sounds, and one guy simply mentioned that he had a pistol with him and for those in the group to announce themselves if they needed to move about that evening. This was common practice for those of us from the military...
Well - his announcement produced the acknowledgement that of the eight riders — 7 had pistols! This is in Kalifornicate - where no one had a concealed carry permit!
The assistant District Attorney was the only one without a piece and he was shocked that so many “righteous citizens” were violating the law by carrying weapons....
Our “clean” group of middle aged and affluent bikers, wouldn’t have struck fear into any serial killer -— until perhaps he learned that 7 of 8 were armed and 6 of 8 were “experienced veterans”......