Day 35: Zero in Tehachapi

Miles hiked: zero

Mile Marker: 566.5

Sleeping in? What’s that? It’s 5:45 AM when I finally get up and set out to do the laundry.

I try to be quiet, but I’m digging around for a stack of quarters and shoving some laundry into Savannah’s pump sack — a gray bag used to inflate an air mattress.

I get down to the laundry room and my key card doesn’t work. Great. Back up to the room and swap it for another key card.

This one worked.

I start the laundry and head over to the lobby for breakfast. I run into Iceage, a hiker who I’ve been seeing around for a couple of weeks now. We eat eggs and sausages on English muffins with cream cheese. Iceage eats this first, but it’s something I used to do when I was a kid staying at hotels.

Iceage has done the Appalachian Trail and the Iceage trail. He said he always leaves trail with a little bit of direction. At some point on trail you have to make a decision on what to do next in life. Usually it’s towards the end, because the trail will be over soon. Life comes next.

Truls joins us for a few minutes, then they’re off to the trail!

I’m making a coffee when Dad rounds the corner. “Oh hey!” I say.

“I just texted you,” he says. Sure enough, I see a text that reads: Good morning! I’m heading down to the lobby for coffee!

We sit away from the rowdy lobby and chat for a while. A group of hikers near us are saying that they won’t likely need the bear barrels because there are bear lockers at every campsite.

This is not true, of course. Bear barrels are very important for protecting people from attracting bears.

Bear big.

Bear strong.

Bear fast.

Bear don’t care you human.

We go upstairs and I hang out in the lively room where Rafiki and Lucie both do shakedowns on their bags — both have small injuries they don’t want escalated by heavy packs.

I spend the better part of the next three hours uploading blogs and being in the middle of everything. I can hear all conversations through my ear plugs. Dad comes in and props his feet up on my bed.

Everyone is organizing food or cleaning packs. Bumper and Savanah go to the library for a while. I’m alone for a few minutes because Lucie, Rafiki, and Socks head over to the post office.

I order a new sleeping quilt for Lucie. I get a decent sized discount for enlightened equipment because I also post my blogs on The Trek.

Lucie will be buying my quilt off of me and I’m getting a new one.

One that I can pull over my head.

Everyone else has ones that pull over their heads! This is, of course, too long. It’s just cozier!

Hopefully the extra room in the bag won’t cause me too much extra weight. Or maybe I can just get better at squeezing the air out of my things.

It’s past one o’clock in the afternoon when I finally finish my blogs. I pack up my food — literally over people who are laying in my bed.

We then go to the pool once everyone is back. The hot tub is warm.

“Yesterday I told Tails to turn the dial on the wall once the bubbles stopped. She goes up there and presses the emergency button, then panics and pulls it out!” Rafiki explains to my dad.

“The water turned hot, didn’t it? I’ll do it again!” I say.

I turn the hot tub off again and back on.

It starts getting hot! It actually worked!

We transfer to the pool. At first we’re just swimming around.